Jacqueline Lowe - Multimedia Artist

About Me

Hello everyone! My name is Jacqueline Lowe and I finished my studies in Digital Arts (masters degree) in 2020. I am now looking for a new place to learn, work and contribute to amazing project with my knowledge! I love to work on all kinds of digital design projects, especially working in the Games Industry, 3D Design and Animation. I am also fluent in graphic design and motion design - an allrounder so to say! Just send me a message if you are interested to work with me!

Getting to know me

A passionate coffee-lover who likes to see the world from a new perspective. Admires innovative and new art styles and loves to learn more about upcoming design trends. Currently practicing digtal painting and attending online courses to expand my knowledge about art! I love to get rid of my excess energy during long walks with my dog or intense exercise.

Experience

HR-Innoways | Multimedia Artist

(06/2020 - 08/2021)
Working as part of a small team in a dynamic start-up, developing a simulator game for PC (released in December 2020). Responsible for character design, asset creation, texturing, integration of characters in unity. Supporting community and managing bugs. Assisting release by creating video material, screenshots and animations, designing the graphics for Steam and marketing. Created in-house marketing materials such as business cards and similar. Using Unity, Blender, Adobe Suite and Substance Painter on a daily basis.

Tutor for 3D-Animation/3D-Design | University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria

(02/2020 - 06/2020)
Supporting students in 3D-Animation, 3D-Design, Problem solving, controlling their tasks, holding tutorials

Intern as Graphic/Multimedia-Artist

(03/2018 - 06/2018)
Creation of presentation videos of current and past projects, designing a screendesign for a in-house project

Intern in the technical Department

(06/2015 - 06/2015)
ORF Landesstudio Kärnten

Content creation

In my job as a content creator, I was able to gain extensive knowledge in the field of videography. Through the daily handling of cameras, camera lenses and light, the creation of sophisticated ads, exciting Youtube videos and controversial tiktoks became part of my extensive expertise in the field of media design.

My journey as a content creator

I quickly learned what it means to be a content creator. One day you hold the camera yourself and process the material into an exciting video. The next day, you deal with the creation of ads for social media - of course, the photos for this come from your own production. Soon, the fear of contact with social media platforms was lost. I looked after channels with 100k subscribers, did user analyses and played out appropriate content to the followers. The fact that I was able to combine all my skills as a media designer was just as much a challenge as it was fun.

No fear of contact with

Equipment handeling - the most diverse lenses, lights and cameras became my best friends
Setup - Complete 'fool's freedom' allowed me to test my way through a wide variety of set-ups
Interview shoot - Soon I was conducting all the interviews completely autonomously, from the planning to the last eye contact with the interview partner.
Dreh planning + support - Not only am I hands-on, I also have experience in planning shoots and guiding/supervising colleagues through the execution.
Scripts & texts - All scripts for my videos are written by me - research, content idea and storyboard included.
Organised all around - For me, my job doesn't end with the shoot, I check the equipment to see if anything new is needed or needs to be replaced.
Post-production - Snip-snip, I do the editing myself. I like to enhance my videos with animated content. The tools of choice: Premiere Pro & After Effects.

Learning by doing: the world of social media

Where should I start... Diving into the world as content creator was fun but quite a challenge in the beginning of my journey. I got to know Youtube, Tiktok and Instagram even better than I ever dreamt of. Looking behind the scenes, learning about Analytics and Statistic, User behaviour and follower preferences. Choosing new content and developing ideas according to that was a whole new world for my. I took that challenge and tried to learn everything as fast as possible. I am now familiar with managing a business Tiktok account, always beeing up-to-date on the latest trends. I managed two YouTube channels at the simultaneously and tried to push the follower count further. Social Media is an insanley fast paced industry but I am open to the challenge to keep up. Creating interesting Content pushing brands and getting great ideas out there.

Winter Resort Simulator Season 2

Winter Resort Simulator Season 2 is a realistic and authentic simulation of a ski resort. All vehicles and ropeways are built close to their counterpart in the real world. The player takes the role of the manager of a ski resort. Snowcats, Ropeways and other vehicles are waiting for the player to help with the daily tasks of the resort. The game is avaible on Steam for PC!

My part in the project

Character Design: Sculpting, Retopo, Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Integration into Unity
Asset Creation: Modeling, Texturing, Integration into Unity
Texture Design: Texturing in Substance of main assets like Ropeways, Ropeways Supports, Vehicles
UI Design: Redesign of the main menu and sub-menues
Marketing: Text writing, Screenshot preparation, Graphic Design
Support: Supporting the community on Discord and Steam, Bug Reporting (Jira), creating and updating Texts for the Wiki belonging to the game, managing Community Authors on Wiki, Moderation on Discord

My journey in the project

I joined the team half a year before the anticipated release date. My task was to improve and expand the design of the game. The new version of the game needed a playable character, new UI, redesigned assets and ropeways. At first, I started sculpting a male character base, created clothes and assets for it. After that, I had to retopologize the character in order to meet the poly count needed that the game would run effortlessly. That was kind of a challenge, because the game would need really low poly counts to run stable. So I needed to use a workflow to preserve as many details as possible. I baked details from high to low in Substance. After that, I hand painted the skin, clothes and created materials for the later use in Unity. The same workflow was used for the female player character and NPCs as well - only with the difference that the NPCs needed LODs as well. In the further course of the project, I was responsible for the new UI main menu design.

The old UI needed an overhaul, so I took the challenge and started creating a new design for the updated version of the game. I took reference from similar games and tried to create a design, that would fit into the genre of simulation games. I had no specific education in UI design, so I started teaching myself about it. I tried make it as simple as possible. The color scheme (dark grey, orange, white) fitted perfectly for the big tiles. I kept them slightly transparent to make the background more apparent. The feeling of winter should be apparent in every aspect of the game, even in the main menu. I took the flasing orange color from the logo and used it as accent color.

Texturing, texutring and more texturing...

Next to my work on the UI design and character, I started reworking some of the excisting textures and creating new textures for the brand new vehicles, ropeways and other assets. For that I used Substance Painter. The game as simulation demanded a high grad of realism in the textures itself. I looked for references in the internet, searched for machines and materials and applied the knowledge in my work. I created textures for the new snow vehicle (Prinoth), a new ropeway that came into the game after the update, updated textures for the renewed NPCs and painted the skin of my characters.

Art meets Tech' Stuff: Rigging and Animation

After the update, the game featured visible characters due to the introduction of the multiplayer mode. So the two characters (named Bob and Alice), needed all the animations to explore the snowy mountains of Hallstein. I rigged the characters in Blender, weightpainted them and did the animations. We faced some challenges with the integration inside of Unity (because Blender -> Unity is pain sometimes. Oh boy, I learned that the hard way...). I learned that I needed to keep a look at all the animations inside the fbx and if everyone is exported probably. With the achieved knowledge about the pain of exporting animation, I turned to Alice, the female character. I tried to make the rig more simple so it would export more easily. I applied the same animations I created for the male character, but changed them to fit them better to her body and female movement.

After the release is before the release...

Another thing I learned was that the work does not stop when the game is released. After the release I was responsible for the support of the community. I reported bugs and stayed in contact to our community on discord and steam. I was responsible for organizing the bug reports on Jira.

About Taiji

Taiji is currently a work in progress project. This 3D animation movie project originated during my master studies (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria - Digital Arts) and is realized with the help of two other artists: Corina Sand and Peter Weinlich.

Story

The movie is about a young monk whom we called Djin. He follows an amulett which leads him through the forest to an old temple. All vegetation is dead and weathered. In the temple he needs to execute a ritual including the four elements to bring nature back to life. The elements are embodied by four statues, one for each element. A bonsai in the middle of the temple represents nature. While Djin performs the ritual, something goes wrong and he risks his life to save it.

To give some insights into my project, you can find some examples of my work on this project here. At the moment, I am mainly responsible for animation. But at the conception phase of Taiji, Corina and I were both working on the over all concept and idea of the movie. It all started with a simple idea of two monchs on two tall mountains, controlling the elements in order to save their own land. The idea took on a life of its own and gradually transformed into the story as it is now.

This shot represents the desired look of the movie. We are still working on the final look and feel of the film. For the rendering Vray is used.

These are two examples of my animation work, both examples are so called 'playplasts' (captures of the viewport of Maya) and do not represent the final look of the movie. We try to achieve a kind of realistic style with toon elements in animation. The character was rigged by me with the help of Rapid Rig. For face animation I added a face controller which controlls custom blend shapes (made by Corina in Maya).

Statues, amuletts, elements and fauna in the movie of Taiji.

Further plans

At the moment we are still working on the project. Updates will be posted in here. We are still having fun with this project and look forward to finish it!

About NaN0x

NaN0x is some kind of Artificial Intelligence which tries to communicate with human beings about what she wants. Different visual and audio-visual cues indicate how NaN0x currently feels. If nobody does what NaN0x wants, she will start to get angry. NaN0x impatiently waits for the present people to fulfill her will and will react even angrier than before - until her system crashes and reboots. If the people achieve to make NaN0x happy, it won’t take long until she has new demands for them.

Idea behind

In recent years AI and algorithms have taken over our day to day life. Smart Home devices for example help us with everyday tasks, but sometimes they do not understand us, which causes us to repeat ourselves over and over again. We even try to pronounce the sentence differently and wrong so that we are understood by the AI. Other systems like self-driving cars do the parking for us, smart assistants on smartphones plan our calendar. These are just some examples of how we hand over control over our lives to machines. .

Technical realization

NaN0x is a project for the Deep Space in the Ars Electronica Center and requires its people tracking and wall and floor projection techniques. The project was realized in Processing. The biggest part of the project was to work out the idea behind and how to communicate it to the people participating in this experience. Of course, NaNox needed to be appealing so we looked out for a vibe that makes the player believe, that NaNox is an actual AI. This project was realized in my Master's Study Digital Arts with my project partner Johannes Lugstein. He was also responsible for the coding part, helping out with the more difficult part of it. We both were responsible for developing the idea and realizing the whole project.

About 'Hast an Vogl?!

This project was created in the course of the study "Digital Arts" at the University of Applied Sciences Hagenberg. With the help of two fellow students we produced this hand-drawn animation within 3 months.

Idea behind

Every person has their rough edges. Some are more closed, so these special sides show up less often in these people and are more difficult to recognize. Sometimes you can't stand these sides of yourself or suffer from them. In this story we want to tell that one can be a lovable personality just because of these peculiarities.

We animated our movie with the help of Adobe Animate and After Effects. Each frame is hand drawn (12 frames per second), as well as the backgrounds in the movie. We tried to use a neutral color palette to convey a calm mood. I was responsible for the audio and sound design as well. For that I used the in-house equipment of the university to create the sounds, mix them and underlay the animation with them. On the bottom you can find the finished movie, enjoy!

Challenges

Animating frame by frame was quite a new challenge for me personally. I always worked in 3D animation, where you can move your characters around freely. But every frame had to be drawn by hand, so it required consistency during drawing the characters and movements. During that project I found a hidden love to hand animated movies and really enjoyed the process.

About 'Gemeinsam erleben'

I was allowed to realize a presentation video for the social media platform "Gemeinsam Erleben". The project offers a platform for adventurous people who want to make new contacts and get to learn new people. New contacts are used to share hobbies together. The video can be found on the website of the project and on the bottom of this page.

Concept

The video should also tell this story, so it was divided into three acts. The first one shows rather bored people who obviously long for excitement and adventure. This look was reinforced by overdrawing the characters in black and white. After that, the explanation of the project should take place. Here, attention was paid to clips that showed happier people. To bring momentum into the video, I relied on jump cuts here. The climax of the video consists of full video clips of people experiencing something. Since the platform covers many different areas of leisure and hobbies, the video should be clear and understandable for every user. The style should be simplistic and speaking. I decided to go for a sticker look and fast animations. In terms of color, I stuck to the basic design of "Experience Together". Further colors were discussed with the client, but I was oriented towards bright, contrasting colors.

You can see the first designs that were made for the client. Here the sticker look was tested and demontrated. In addition, a feeling for the flow of the animations should be conveyed (video, freezing, overdrawing, text). The video itself was then implemented using Photoshop and After Effects. The graphics that came from the videos were first edited and then cut back together with the original clips. The tricky part here was the right timing of the texts and animations.

About Gamejams and Animatonjams

A game jam is a contest where participants try to make a video game from scratch. Depending on the format, participants might work independently, or in teams. The contest duration usually ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Participants are generally programmers, game designers, artists, writers, and others in game development-related fields. An animation jam works just the same. The focus here is on creating a short animation movie instead of creating a game. During my studies in Hagenberg, I participated in multiple jams. In summary, we created four games and three animation shorts during all of the jams.

Work

Most of the time, I was responsible for the art part of these short projects. In the nature of these jams that you take action in various parts of the project to complete it as fast as you can. So created the concepts, storyboards, designs of world and characters. I spend time animating characters in Maya and building levels in Unity. I created and edited different sounds to accentuate the right mood in the recording studio with Logic. But best of all was the fun of the project itself and the people you are working with! You can find some of these projects on the bottom, enjoy!

About Machinery

Machinery was created during my studies for the master programm Digital Arts at the university of applied sciences upper austria. It was produced together with a fellow student Corina Sand. At first, we were given a audio file. We had to create a short movie that fits the overall mood of the clip. After that, the next step to create a new audio design for our movie. For that, we used the in house studio at our university. We recorded sounds like violins and screams and mixed them together.

The mood

Machinery tells the story of a fustrated artist, searching for inspiration in his own work. During the movie, the artist struggels with aggression towards his own art. Realising his anger, he throws colors onto his canvas - maybe creating one of his best artworks in lifetime.

About HoleyMoley

HoleyMoley is a game project that was created during my studies. In a group of two, me and Hannes Lugstein created the concept for this little game. It is about two moles rushing down a mine shaft. Two people have to steer together, to come as far as possible. They have to use the arrow and wasd keys to lean and jump.

Endless mine shafts

The goal is to come as far as possible. But the twist is you need to cooperate with your partner to achieve that. The game itself gets faster the further the players come. So failure is just a part of the game. We wanted to create a feeling of 'motivating fustration' inside of the players. It should be the kind of game that you love and hate just the same.

Unreal & Maya

The mine shaft is generated randomly and procedurally while the game is running, so one round is never the same as the one before. Johannes Lugstein did the logic for the game and created the algorithm for the map creation. I modeled the assets, map parts and characters. I rigged and animated them in maya. Due to time restriction, the game itself has a rather simple art approach. We plan to work our remaining ideas into the game and improve the art style in the future.
Look down below to find some artwork and gameplay footage!