Introduction
From January 29th, to February 7th I was a participant in the 2026 Bigmode game jam! As the sole artist in my team, Over the course of two weeks I was in charge of the art direction as well as the production of character art, animated sprites, background art, props/assets, and splash/cover/promotional art. This was a demanding challenge, but the end result is something I’m proud of.
You can play our game, Signed, Seal-Delivered by clicking the link here:
play!
Theme, Concept and Gameplay
The theme of this year’s Bigmode game jam is ‘Slick’. This word is what we had to base our game idea and mechanics on. The conceptual phase had to take place on the first day- as every minute counted when it came to production! After conferring with my team, we decided to go through the different meanings and associations of the word ‘slick’ to come up with an appealing idea as fast as possible.
- Slick as in cool or suave
- Clever, efficient, deceptive
- Slick as in slippery
- oil, slime, glass, ice, smooth
We decide to go with ice as our core representation of slick, and our game mechanic would be the act of sliding around on the ice and gaining momentum.
One of our main inspirations for gameplay was the game ‘Crazy Taxi’, where players have to collect and drop off passengers to set locations as fast as possible. This made us think of a delivery service- perhaps our player could be delivering something whilst using the icy roads for speed, trying not to crash or fall through the ice. However, 3d was too large a scope for us to create in the timeframe, and so we settled for a 2D approach to this instead.
In our game, you must pick up fish and other items across the map whilst using icy roads to guide your path. If you lose control on the ice though, you’ll fall in the water and lose time. The more items you deliver to the other animals across the antarctic before the timer runs out, the bigger your score. Here is the synopsis I wrote for our game page:
Using the SLICK ice roads around town, help Seal and his friends stock up on fish. It’s your job to help the community, whether that be hauling tasty seafood from igloo to igloo, or saving oil-SLICKed birds from an accident at sea.
The quicker you slide, the faster you deliver- the higher your score! But be careful, slip into the water and you’ll lose your item in a splash!
Seal time!
Now it was time to consider our player character. We decided that a character mascot would be most appealing and easy to animate, something cute to draw people into clicking our game and giving it a play. We thought of a penguin first, as they slide around in cold climates- but eventually settled on a seal. Seals slide around on their bellies, are very approachable and cute, as well as popular currently. Many people are fans of Niko the seal, a particularly famous seal with a unique face born at Japan’s Toba Aquarium- I will be taking inspiration from his charm for my own artwork! Now we had come to a conclusion, it was my job to start designing our seal protagonist.
I began drawing our seal delivery driver right away. The image above contains some of my first iterations. When getting feedback from my team, they said I should try to make their features even bigger and cuter- and so I went on to exaggerate the proportions further, giving my seal an incredibly bulbous chibi style head for maximum cuteness that can be read at a distance. We also wanted the seal to be wearing uniform, somewhat resembling a post officer, as the main objective of the game is making deliveries to other animals.
Despite originally wanting Seal’s colours to be airbrushed, resembling the softness in colour of seal pelts in real life, I decided to opt for flat colours in clear shapes. This is because I would have to animate this seal in the game sprites, the clearer the design the easier it will be. Time is of the essence!
Animations
To start with, I needed to make sure I had sprites of the seal facing all 8 directions. It was Important to keep incredibly consistent, as I didnt want the forms to warp out of place or become unreadable at different angles. In my first draft (pictured below), there were many issues. The height and shape of the hat was different in almost every sprite- giving the impression of it wiggling strangely when the seal turned. As well as this, It took me the feedback of a team member to realise that the eye shine was flipping directions with each turn! Thankfully, after some revisions, I managed to create consistency. These 8 directions would be the foundation for all of my other animations, as soon I would have to animate both the walking and slide animations in 8 directions as well.
For the walk animation, I watched videos of seals galumphing as reference. My aim was to capture the movement of a seal propelling itself forward using their flippers and bellies. I kept the animations as simple as possible to ensure enough time for the rest of the art production.
Map and Level Design
My team wanted the map to be in the shape of a whimsical star and to look like the antarctic, the ground made of snow. We also wanted icy roads, and for the map to be surrounded by and filled with water as an obstacle for our seal player to avoid falling into. It was difficult drawing out an entire level like this, as it was something i’d never done before! Eventually in the testing phases, we found the star design a little impractical… but, it was too late to change now. With our time constraints, our only option was to keep moving forward and work with what we have.
The map was finished, but without other assets- it looked incredibly bare. My next step was to populate the levels and create visual interest, as well as things for our seal to bump into and interact with.
The most essential obstacles for me to create were trees and igloos, bringing life to the icy landscape and providing places for the seal to deliver to. I took lots of inspiration in the environment art from Club Penguin.
Other obstacles I designed included a snowman, and a hospital lodge. This lodge is intended to be the delivery destination of an oil-covered bird, who you find and help out after a blizzard caused an oil spill at sea.
Props and NPCs
Our seal has places to deliver to, but who are these deliveries for? and of what? I aimed to make at least 3 NPCs, and 3 deliverable props for variety between levels. To my surprise, I was able to make more than I expected. My NPCs included a stoat, a penguin in a puffer jacket, a fishing walrus- and Biggie the frog, the Bigmode game jam mascot.
My main prop designs were incredibly simple, tiny objects that related to the NPCs that were requesting them, and that the seal could carry on their head. Other props were far more intense to create, like the oil-covered bird that you have to deliver to the hospital- and the flaming torch that I had to learn to animate.
Unfortunately, only the main blue fish and bird were ever implemented into the game due to time constraints. It was a shame for these assets to go unused, but that is often the case in game jams and game development as a whole. Despite that, I had a great time making them. Animating a flame was a particularly large learning curve that i’m happy to have overcome.
Cover and Splash Art
For people to actually play our itch.io game, it needed to have an appealing icon. In my thumbnails, I wanted to make sure every aspect of our gameplay loop was present and easy to read. The ice paths were a must, as well as iconography associated with deliveries and postmen.
I showed my teammates these two compositions, and the main critique was that in the second thumbnail the seals eyes werent open, making it harder to connect with the character and design. I would later take on this feedback and incoroporate the open eyes into te icon. My team couldn’t decide between the two, and so I decided to reuse the first thumbnail’s composition and tweak it somewhat to be included in the title screen.
As well as a title screen, I had to design splash art for every state where a player finishes the level. A lose state, where the player does not deliver enough fish results in a picture of our seal carrying too much fish to handle. A win state, where everything is delivered on time, results in an image where the seal is jumping for joy. Finally, a completion state for finishing all levels, where the seal can relax after a hard day of work.
My work was still not over, as now the Itch.io page itself needed designing! I created an alternate composition of the start screen for the banner, and designed a custom watery background using the icebergs i’d drawn for the map. The final step was writing out a fun description fitting of our lovely seal.
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