IU Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology Internship.
IU themed sports mini-games! Made 3 small games in 3 months with a small team of 5 people.
Client:
Indiana University Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology
IU Arcade is a small collection of sports arcade games with an IU theme! I helped develop them as part of the Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology internship I did during summer 2017.
It's goals were to promote IU athletics and draw students to the University.
The Design Process
Our team met 4 days a week and worked 4 hours each day. We were expected to have at least 3 games in 3 months which is what we accomplished. We worked on more of a waterfall method, making each game individually. Most of our first days where spent planning what kind of games we wanted to make, early designs were done on whiteboards and discussed among team members. We had a very rough design doc and started work!
Before I starting designing the art for the games, I did quick research on similar games that we were trying to make. Research was done to study art styles as well as button placements. After my research I realized most UI's have relatively simple design so I decided to stick with straightforward designs and art. It was important that I kept the menu interactions simple as we were designing these games to work with mobile.
The First Game: Pigskin Pitch!
The first game we decided to work on was a game called Pigskin Pitch, which was the game I pitched! This game was my favorite one to work and test! Pigskin Pitch is a football throwing game where players had to get footballs thrown into holes using 2 taps.
1st tap for horizontal placement.
2nd tap for vertical placement.
It was done this way to maximize simplicity and allow easy mastery. Play Pigskin Pitch! Below are some photos of UI art I made for the game! Most art was made in Photoshop!
Logo for the game!
Main Menu!
Main Gameplay Screen!
Pause Menu!
Game Over Menu!
Second Game: Lil' 5!
A Lil' 5 is a bike racing game based off the popular IU event, Little 500 bike race which is held every year! The main gameplay loop of this game was to manage your biking stamina to win this game. The UI, of this game followed a completely unique art style which helped keep it distinct from the other games. I would say making the UI for this game was probably the least difficult as most things were simple menu placements.
Click here to play Lil' 5! Below are some photos of UI art I made for the game! Most art was made in Photoshop!
Main Menu!
Main Gameplay Screen!
Pause Menu!
Pause Menu
Third Game: B-Ball Balance!
B-Ball Balance is exactly what it sound like, its a basketball balance game. It's based on the famous spin on finger technique, with our game we wanted a unique twist. We found that just having it balance on a finger wasn't enough to stimulate an enjoyable gameplay experience, so I proposed the idea to have objects fly at the basketball. We had to add a jump feature on the ball for that one. Overall this one was my second favorite to design and work on! I got to draw a unique art style for this particular game and I even drew the food items that were thrown at the ball!
I did finish all of the art for the games and got everything looking the way I wanted. But some things I did were for the website. I made the menu background for the main menu as well as the scrolling video seen on the home screen.
There was also a website art design mock-up I did to show off what the website could look like. Below you will find random art and mock-ups I did!
This is what I made for the website background, it was made in Adobe Photoshop and was entirely created by me!
Something Quick I did for the website mockup!
This mockup I worked on for 2 weeks, but unfortunately ran out of time to implement it. I followed some IU website guidelines to make it match the IU branding.
Conclusion
This internship was a very valuable experience, I got to show of my skills as well as learn many new things that I can apply to my future designs!
Graphic Designer for Indiana University's first satirical newspaper. I did work for print issues, as well as social media photos that went along with written headlines!
Graphic Designer for Indiana University's first satirical newspaper. I did work for print issues, as well as social media photos that went along with written headlines!
