Hello there! My name is Kyra Ruhlen, and I worked with Evelyn (and later Kylar) as an artist on LAPD!

Since we had a much larger team this time around, I was free to solely focus on art, for better or for worse. The first thing I did was concept art for half the UI (Evelyn did the other half) so we could visualize how we wanted the gameplay to look/feel. I also made splash art for a "these are the controls" widget and blocked in the main menu widget that links to said controls panel. Other than that, I mainly made props. It did take a while to find out what props were needed for the narrative, but I still managed to make 9 props for this game. My favorite was definitely the bug spray, haha! I also rigged the handcuffs so they could open, close, and bend as needed, and I rigged the folder model Evelyn made so that it could open and close as well. Thank you to Evelyn and Kylar for being great artists and great teammates! Your props and art look amazing, and I'm glad I got to work with you!

Unfortunately, since it took a bit to know what props were needed for the evidence table, it was pretty hard to estimate how long I'd spend on this project. I still expected to spend at least 25-30 hours on this based on previous projects. In the end, I think I spent closer to 35-40 (getting rigged props into UE is horrible) hours on this project.

I'd say the most difficult part of this project was cohesion. We have a lot of talented people with a lot of great ideas, but I think we might have struggled to straighten those ideas out at times, especially in the beginning. I think a significant contributing factor to this was a readiness to rely on a select few to put too many pieces together in too little time. Our producer and coder were both one-man teams with a lot on their plate. I'd ask them what art they wanted from me, they'd have to go chase down an answer from another department, I'd make that art, and dump it off on them. They were left to put all the pieces together alone. I feel I should have been more proactive in helping them manage the project. Helping them plan meetings, hammer out the story, or coordinate how different work from various departments should fit together would have helped things run more smoothly. This experience has made me realize that no man is an island, and even if I'm not the producer, I should do more to reach out and coordinate with other departments throughout a project. In future projects, I plan to do just that.

I am, however, very proud of the assets I made for this game. While I'm disappointed that some of them will not be used, (RIP cool knife model) I still think they look great given the short amount of time I had to make them. Again, my favorite was the wasp spray. I love weird knock-off products in games and was excited that I got the chance to make one. I'm very happy with the final result.

I'm also proud of Evelyn and Kylar! Evelyn, as usual, has been great to work with from the beginning. She's been communicative and ready to do her part every step of the way. The models she made are fantastic, and the Polaroids/menu art she made are sick af! As always, it was a pleasure to work with her. While Kylar was technically with a different department, he offered to help with modeling, which was much appreciated. He made two incredible book models that are also sick as hell. While I didn't get to directly work with Kylar as much during this project, he did awesome work on short notice, and I'm very grateful to him for volunteering to help Evelyn and I. Thank you both!