Hearth - Lei's Journey

Final project for the Master's Degree in Animation and New Technologies at Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo: a 2.5D hand-painted platform demo. 

The project is born from the intention that Claudio Benedetto and I have to speak up about themes we care about while making videogames with our favourite style, hand-painted frame-by-frame animation.

This particular project is about the corrupted environment and the effect of the pollution on the world from the perspective of a little girl called Lei. While Lei is struggling with her own problems, she accidentaly undertakes a journey in the magic land of Hearth. The human impact on that land is catastrophic, the nature itself has changed into something monstrous and our character is forced to overcome her fears and help the creatures of Hearth in order to come back home.

Our target is PEG3 because it's a game meant to be played by both adults and children: the tasks are simple and easy and it's story driven.

I can't thank enough everyone who helped us, in a world in which we always run on our own paths, when a friends finds even a minute to stop and give you their free time, it means the world to me.

• Agnese Lucchese, Claudio Ferri and Benedetto Musso - Concept & Scriptwriting
• Mauro Cirafisi and Michele Rossi - Gameplay Programmers
• Claudio Ferri - Gameplay Artist and 2DAnimator
• Agnese Lucchese - 2D Cutscenes Animator
• Elettra Ciofalo - Background Video Illustrator
• Angelo Carnemolla - Sound Designer and Music Composer

You can see at this timing the cutscens that I made with the immense help of Elettra Ciofalo that brought everything together, with her illustration for the background and the details that she added to the videos:

00:00:08 Lei's

00:01:37 Hearth

00:05:51 Magpie

00:08:46 Run

Thank you for watching and let me know if you try our game in the comments!