Nicholas Brings Life To the Walking Dead

Remember Nicholas? He created that awesome platformer game and the multi-layer Project Spark world. Nicholas works with instructor Mike M. as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program, and his most recent project involves recreating characters from The Walking Dead.

Humans recognized other humans by looking for distinctive marks that set a person apart from others – hair color, facial features, height, carriage, voice, clothing preferences, etc. When Nicholas set out to recreate Walking Dead characters, he, too, looked for distinctive marks. In fact, as Mike M. noted, he demonstrated a knack for identifying a character’s most memorable traits. Project Spark then allowed Nicholas to customize default characters, like the Male/Female Woodland Peasant, to share that look. Some distinctive marks required serious creativity and skill to recreate, like the barbed-wire bat, which Nicholas made by attaching shrunken goblin daggers to a regular bat. Check out his photos! Recognize anyone, Walking Dead fans?

Nicholas loves visual design, so he didn’t stop at characters. Using Project Spark’s Paint and Sculpt tools, he shaped the world’s environment to match his vision. Next, he used dungeon and building props to construct impressive towers that rear out of the ground. No world is complete without a few enemies, so Nicholas also added zombies – of course – and lowered their health, so that they die after a single hit. Finally, returning to his characters, he dug into the Kode that controls their Brains, customizing the friendly AIs to reflect their namesakes more accurately.

Check out the video of Nicholas’ completed project. He did some great work these last few weeks! Thanks for keeping us updated, Nicholas. It’s a pleasure to watch you develop your talent for game design.