Imagine Cup

Awhile back in my C++ programming class, we were sucked into entering the Microsoft Imagine Cup (official site here), competing in embedded systems. However, I'm not exactly a coding logic-oriented person, and found little interest in competing in it. I found that there were other fields other than embedded systems, such as, well, game design. I talked to my professor about it and how I was majoring in game art & design. She practically flipped and told me about another team she was mentoring in Huntington Beach, that was in need of an artist (their original guy apparently flaked out or something, I'm not too sure on the details) and I agreed to join. The theme for the year's national competition was something along the lines of educational gaming. The team's subject was a rather grim one: infant mortality. So I was charged with making a simple house interior, with a crib, some toys, and a fridge. Just some of the more important things to focus on, as well as the GUI:

The texturing and GUI was developed with Photoshop and Illustrator, and modeled & rendered with Blender. Many of the other teams were quite impressed with the work, and I was asked to do a splash page by another team, whose project was oceanic pollution:


Despite our hard efforts, however, our team did not make it to round 3. Hopefully, we will get back together for 2011, as we do have much of the artwork and source code completed.