Nubs!
When I joined Ronimo Games, Nubs! had already been in production for about a year. At the time, there were no full time 3D artists; 2 of their artists had followed courses and done research on how to implement 3D characters, but they needed a more experienced 3D artist, specifically someone with a lot of experience with Blender.
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Together with the art director, the lead animator and the programmer who had developed the custom render engine used for the 3D player character, I created guidelines for the 3D player character's skins, weapons, and animations. The custom render engine allowed the character to swap out different models depending on the camera angle. This gave a lot of freedom in regards to the style, allowing the character to maintain a very stylized 2D look no matter what they were doing. I was primarily responsible for the skins and weapons, working closely together with one of our concept artists, though I would also create custom emotes or weapon animations sometimes.
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Aside from the player character, I was also responsible for the original announcer and final boss: the Pony King. This rambunctious cartoon villain would comment on the player's actions as they fought other players and took on quests, and when the players reached his castle, they had to fight against him (they could fight him together, or use his attacks to weed out the competition).
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Sadly, Ronimo Games filed for bankruptcy in August of 2023, but the IP was bought by one of the founders of Ronimo, as well as 2 of the senior programmers, who founded a new studio called Rangatang. They continued working on the game together with Glowfish interactive and released it in 2025. Due to these circumstances, some major changes were made to the game, including the complete removal of the Pony King.
From February 2022 until August 2023, I was a 3D artist for Ronimo Games and worked on the game Nubs!
Ronimo Games closed in August 2023 but the game continued being produced by Rangatang and was released in 2025.
Programs used: Blender, Photoshop, Unity
> Modeling; Texturing, Rigging, Animation
The Player
Here are some of the skins the player character can wear. Each skin has 2 costume colours, and parts of the model will be swapped for alternate versions depending on the camera angle. For example, the eyes on the bear costume disappear when seen from the front, as this would add visual clutter that is not desirable (particularly for a 2D look).
The Pony King
I worked closely with the concept artist who designed the Pony King, as well as the art director to create a faithful 3D rendition. It was a fun challenge to combine more "realistic" elements (fur, intense musculature) with highly cartoony facial expressions. I also enjoyed creating the shaders for the colourful jewelry sections and his mane/tail a lot (the render above shows the Pony King with a simple white mane and tail, but you can see the more glittery/holographic shader in the animations below) These shaders needed to have a somewhat ethereal quality.
The Pony King was originally going be an announcer within the game, commenting on the actions of the player and giving them updates. These are the talking animations I made for this announcer.
Additionally, the Pony King was going to be the final boss of the game, using copies of his legs and head to attack several players at the same time.