Since mid-2021, I have been involved in several modded projects for the video game Celeste, ranging from creating assets for the largest-ever collaborative project to my own levels and experiences. I'm still working on collaborative projects to this day, and here I'll showcase almost all of the work I've done over the years.
Strawberry Jam is the largest collaborative mod to ever be published for Celeste. I worked as an artist on this project, covering bases like parallaxing backgrounds, decals, and logos and stickers for many levels! Strawberry Jam includes 111 custom maps for the game. I created several stickers for the maps in the project, as well as three “stylegrounds”, the parallaxing background assets for levels that help create depth in the environment and a feeling of progression through the levels. This project setting helped me learn how to work in an art role in a large-scale production project, receiving artistic prompts of varying specificity. While one request may be as simple as a “city”, another may have a specific theme or design philosophy attached to it, such as the tree stump with honey pouring out of it. This project helped me work in vastly different contexts when creating art, with the stickers being an example of user interface art, and the sylegrounds being designed around a central purpose of enhancing the user experience within a developed world.
These backgrounds and decals really inspired me to continue creating art assets for Celeste mods, as they combine environment art with viewer / player interaction in such a unique way that I feel no other medium of art can let me do. Especially with a unique feature with parallaxing (having looping background elements that scroll at different speeds to give the illusion of movement through the environment in the background) creating complex design choices and workarounds.
This project was a departure from my previous work within the Celeste community, as I participated in the Vanilla Contest 2023. Vanilla Contest had one rule which was that every asset used in the map's creation can ONLY be in the original game. No custom / new assets were allowed. This forced me to be creative with what was already made to create a new and engaging environment and experience to traverse through. Starting with unassuming weathered industrial pillars, I made an aesthetic and environment never seen before in Celeste using assets only from the original game. I worked with Teo to help focus and refine the gameplay movement, so the map itself was a two-person team within a larger collaborative Contest involving over 65 contestants. We placed 24th overall and 14th in Decoration. Our map was regarded as one of the best atmospheres and environments.