raz the wonder kitten

blog assignment


At USC, I am currently in the Writing 340 class for visual and performing arts. Given that it is a writing class, we obviously write a lot, but one of our most recent assignments was a group project. The purpose of this project is to have people from different disciplines collaborate and create something. Honestly, anything. Several projects were presented this Thursday. Two were films, but with very different approaches and techniques, making it difficult to even compare them.

My group also presented. Our group name is team blAWESOME. It is meant to be a combination of blaw and awesome, but when spoken it sounds like blossom. Unfortunately. We also have two alternative names - The Disciples of Feagin and the Feaginites. Both inspired by our teacher, Feagin, if you couldn't tell.

So, who is team blAWESOME?

Allison the actress.
Brian the filmmaker.
David the game designer.
And me, Katherine the graphic designer.

We were unsure about what to do with all our talents, but after a short discussion we decided to make a video game. Nothing cooler, right?! But we had no idea what the game would be about. We all have very different interests and experiences with video games. We decided to sit on the idea and about a week later we began the most bizarre brainstorming session ever. Below is our thought process. I included this exact copy in our PowerPoint presentation and before I began speaking, the slide was greeted with an eruption of laughter because of the ridiculousness of the content.

OK, here we go:

cats vs. dogs OR pirates vs. ninjas

what about cat ninjas vs. dog pirates?

I want the cats to have wolverine claws! We need laser eyes!
what about an alley cat? roaming the streets? cat in the big city?

what if the cat was frozen and then had to deal with modern times?

like a pre-historic cat?

like a saber-tooth tiger? or kitten!!

And that is how we arrived at saber-tooth kitten.

From there we decided on a basic plot, which Brian refined and greatly improved. There are no longer vampires or pterodactyls in the Arctic.

Now with a plot I could do some design. However, I know nothing about designing video games. I own many, but I have never considered designing for one. I work with text and images. Static things. Sometimes I have to create illustrations, but rarely. Ahhhhh video game art! I wasn't sure where to begin, so I started with my favorite program, Adobe Illustrator, and drew some ice with the pen tool. No big deal. Ice is rigid. My design worked.


But then came the saber-tooth tiger kitten. My tablet is at home so I had to draw with my laptop mouse. Probably the worst idea ever, but I made it, an illustrated saber-tooth tiger kitten! Below is its evolution. I had to rework it because the first one was bug eyed, awkward, and it looked like Garfield. The second one looked a little like Simba, but way less cute. So I merged the two and got our protagonist, Raz!


Wooooo I did a cute little vector illustration! I thought I was done, but then David requested different images so he could make Raz move in the video game. I had no desire to redraw this thing four more times, so I used the direct select tool in illustrator and just moved the legs around. That is why the positions are a little odd, but they worked well enough for the game.


Allison did some character research for Raz in order to prepare for a voice over, but we never actually got around to recording her voice. (With these projects, there is no established end. Presenting unfinished pieces was acceptable).

Then David took all our work and coded a video game. A working video game, well kind of. It has a few kinks. But when we busted out the game for our presentation and played it, the class got so excited. I have never had so much fun giving a presentation. David and I may actually work to complete the video game.

Best group project ever. We are blAWESOME!