During my last year at Blue Wizard Digital, I was asked to make some low-poly art for their new web game, Shell Shockers. It was a goofy FPS, but deceptively well put together and an absolutely frenzied web experience. I was a kid who grew up in arcades and quickly transitioned to the first FPS (Castle Wolfenstein) when it came out for PC in the early 90’s. I then followed the Doom/Quake series along and played a ton of Counterstrike, Hexen, Unreal and others as they came out. Though I’d tried my hand at making Quake 2 and 3 maps, this was the first chance I had to do some map making professionally and I was stoked.
I soon figured out the art pipeline and started vector painting low-poly objects for the maps I was about to build. By the time I was done, I’d created 6 maps; 4 of which were full of unique art I’d made for the game. One of those maps (Castle) became the go-to map for all competitive matches between clans and the proving ground for new players hoping to join clan ranks. 7+ years later, these maps are still the fan favorites and the art I created has been used to make dozens of subsequent maps. Shadowed by the map making, a little known fact is that I also created the first 20 or so hats in the game. Below are screenshots of the maps and hats I made:
