Making of The Jackalope

I already shared my first sketch of the Jackalope for CryptidCam back in my post about early CryptidCam sketches, but here's his dopey little face again before we get into it.

I knew pretty early on I wanted Jackalope to be the main mascot of my game, so in subsequent sketches I really tried to emphasize his roundness and cuteness. He ended up with kind of a Pikachu feel, which felt appropriate to me.

The 3D model for the Jackalope was the first model I did for CryptidCam, and the most complicated 3D model I had made up to that point. I had enough 3D modeling experience to know you need to draw a front and side view for reference, but not enough experience to notice the places where my front and side view didn't quite line up or gave mixed messages about what the final form would be. I ended up having to solve a lot of problems on the fly with this design, but it was a really helpful learning experience for my next 3D model.

I've come a long way since making the Jackalope model, so it's hard for me to look back at it and not think about all the ways I could make it better if I were to do it again now. But resisting the urge to redo previous work is an essential skill for devs that ever want to finish anything. The Jackalope might also be lower poly than you would've guessed, at a little under 1200 tris. My cel shader does a lot to make things look smoother than they are.

When texturing I also made the decision to give the Jackalope paw pads, mostly because I thought they'd be a cute touch. Paw pads like these aren't accurate to real life rabbits; usually only predators who stalk their prey have them, because their main purpose is to dampen the sounds of approaching footsteps. We only ever see Jackalopes eat carrots in CryptidCam, but I think the implication that they might actually be stealth hunters is pretty funny.