Nucleus PS3 PSN (2007)

Nucleus is a PSN downloadable game developed by Kuju and published by Sony Liverpool - Nucleus was the first downloadable content game developed by Kuju and started out as a side line project created by programmer, Charles James.

Charlie had come up with the idea of a cellular shooter in which you controlled a genetically modified micro weapon able to manipulate cells, fire using a number of different weapon types and also use special weapons.
The game had simularities to Geometry Wars but was slower paced and had a more strategic element as you could manipulate benign cells to form walls and conduits.

The early demo was a personal project and didnt really have any specific comercial goal.
It was eventually shown in informal circumstances to staff from Sony Liverpool.

The initial reaction was that the game play would be ideal for Sony's PSN platform however the graphics were not up to the standard they wanted for PS3 and at the time this was very important as they were still trying to establish the platform as the superior console.

At this point I was draughted in to help. Kuju wanted to develop this business further (they now have a studio founded on this product) and so I was given a very tight deadline of 3 weeks to come up with something for the official pitch meeting.

I knew that with the time scale and lack of resources (I was the only art resource) that updating the graphics in the actual playable demo wasn't going to happen. I looked towards the best medium for the job and chose to produce a mood video that could be show along side the playable demo to get the art style across.

Original Prototype: Video presentation of the original 2D prototype created by Charles James. This demo was shown along side the PS3 art style video that I created (below) to Sony and was signed up with he publisher as a result.
Phil Harrison also showed these videos to the press in a talk about the future of Playstation Network.

Art Style: Based on Sony's requests for the game to look truly "next-gen" I set about referencing styles. I knew that i had always wanted to do a game in the style of electron microscope photography. However that type of imagery is usualy monochromatic, this was a video game that really needed to be in colour.
Further research brought up the technique of "Microscopy" which is the technique of injecting coloured dyes into cell types to allow them to be photographed and viewed more easily. This yields the familiar petri-dish images of different bacteria in varying colours.
By blending this with the style of electron micro scope photography and adding a stylised simplification of detail, I created the art style for Nucleus.

Concept: Once the style was laid out, I set about story boarding the video.
I wanted to keep it simple, not try to tell a story or get across the complex mechanics. We already had a playable demo for that. The idea was to market this like a lifestyle product selling the viewer a style.

Getting this to work in the deadline was tough and the magnification shutter was an idea I had that meant that I could transition between different organic locations without the need for some form of narrative to connect the imagery.

The use of depth of field effects helped to create a sense of space and to give a more authentic, scientific look while also drawing the attention away from a multitude of rough edges.

I feel that the video came out really well considering I created the whole thing from scratch in such a short period.
The animation is basic and ending was rushed but it did the job. Sony signed the product and really liked the art style.

52Mb

Video: I created this from scratch on my own in 3 weeks including the initial art style research and test work.

The finished game: Moving into production I was moved away from this product to work on a full scale 360/PS3 title. Unfortunately the budget of only £250,000 meant that the finished product got very little iteration and polish time.

A selection of screen shots taken from the final game. Note that the sense of 3D space created in the video didn't really make it over to the finished product.