The Unwanted Helper
The Unwanted Helper is a game in which you explore a whole kitchen as a small house spider! It was created by 4 artists and 5 programmers from YRGO.
You can check it out here: https://yrgo-game-creator.itch.io/the-unwanted-helper
I worked as the character designer and animator for the main character Kevin, as well as the UI artist.
The textures for the 3D models were made by: https://www.artstation.com/axel1na
Kevin the spider
Turntable of Kevin
Kitchen clutter
Idle
Idle variation 1: shake / shiver
Idle variation 2: look around
Walking
Falling / jump
Unused jumping animation, scrapped because the anticipation and settling were too long.
Swinging / hanging from a web pose
Death pose
Some of the earliest concepts for Kevin, as well as the flies that he eats as one of the quests, since by this point in the development they served a bigger purpose.
We had a hard time finalizing his design, trying to tread the line between cute and realistic. It helped to have an actual arachnophobe on the team to point out what parts of the designs were the most unsettling.
The turntable I used to model him. Even with the design being final, parts of it was modified to make the animation easier, like the legs gaining a few extra joints.
Some color concepts of Kevin. We decided to base his coloration on the Red Knee Tarantula in the end.
Inventory UI assets
Inventory food icons in their original size
Main Menu UI assets
Main Menu buttons in their original size, minus the text
Pause menu UI assets
GUI assets of the health bar, energy bar, and interact button.
Scrapped web GUI, from an earlier build in which you could choose between spider webs with different functions. The only one that made it through was the "swing" one, the rest were deemed too over-powered.
A scrapped inventory from before we decided Kevin should wear a backpack.
A main menu design that was scrapped early on.
An earlier pause menu concept that later got reworked as the quest menu.
Early concepts of the health and energy bars.