Building a Painted World

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a narrative adventure about traveling across a mythologized America, trading stories and encountering characters drawn from folklore and history The game featured an enormous cast of writers and performers, including Sting, and paired its hand painted visual language with Ryan Ike’s acclaimed Americana soundtrack. It received an Independent Games Festival nomination for Excellence in Narrative.

When I came on, Dim Bulb needed to overhaul and streamline their 3D pipeline. I helped them redefine the 3D art style, figure out their asset pipeline, and set up production for outsourcing. I worked with technical artist Jonathan Topf to come up with shader solutions to translate Kellan Jetts unique paintings into a fully explorable world.