Pavor Nocturnus

As an artist, I define my experience as a recurrent navigation of the many spaces I inhabit. Constantly reevaluating, I seek to reveal the ever-changing perspectives and experiences that converge through stories. Night terrors and nightmares have driven my works for as long as I can remember. I call upon my own fears and phobias, as well as experiment with the experiences of others, to generate a world that is able to resonate through a visceral connection with its audience.

Titled Pavor Nocturnus, my capstone project is a 2D mobile dungeon-crawler style game. The project utilizes unique sprites, each one created to represent different childhood phobias, set within an environment designed to incite a nostalgic response of the experience of those fears. The characters, eight in total, have been designed in pen-and-ink, then transferred into photoshop to generate sprite sheets. The characters each have upwards of five sprite sheets to depict select actions, they have been reduced in their size to accommodate a smaller screen, and they are created with a layer of transparency built in to help them transition seamlessly into the environment. The sprites are then brought to life in Unity using C# and C++ to activate the animation sequence associated with the script. Specifically, this project is built as a Mobile game—one that is accessible on PC, Android, and iOS devices. I am using this experience to expand upon my previous involvement in creating games for PC, and I am excited to utilize new processes to work with altering screen resolutions for a wide array of devices of varying sizes while maintaining consistent game quality.