The Coldest Winter
"The Coldest Winter" is a psychological horror story that promises a haunting adventure with difficult decisions. You play as Jovanna Peña, a hardened New Yorker who is dealing with the coldest winter she has ever experienced.
I was chosen for the first wave of Block Builders, each responsible for a real New York City block translated into a playable environment for The Coldest Winter. This role gave me first‑hand experience inside a professional 3D pipeline, collaborating with environment artists, receiving structured feedback, and contributing directly to a commercial release.
My Work
Owned the full creation of a low‑poly MTA bus interior & exterior using Blender and Adobe Illustrator - designed for player traversal, resource pickup, and enemy‑avoidance gameplay implemented in Unity.
Designed gameplay‑driven flow, ensuring the player could move through the bus, hide at the back, and interact with key areas.
Added visual indicators using material edges and colour cues (e.g., yellow paint on the step) to guide player behaviour and highlight interaction points.
Solved the challenge of designing 3D space for a 2D character, balancing readability, depth, and movement constraints.
Worked within a structured production pipeline, including mentorship, feedback cycles, and cross‑artist collaboration.
Achieved the target of 10k triangles for the exterior and 30k for the interior as set by Art Lead.
Reference
Images
Stickers were applied by shrink wrapping planes, so that they can be moved and changed, as a future proofing measure, but also so that multiple buses can be created fairly easily.
Stickers I designed by hand in Adobe illustrator creating the illusion of depth - they are .svg files so can be changed in size.
The windscreen of the interior can be turned on and off to enable the camera to fit the appropriate view.
I left enough room for the character to move and pick up objects from chairs, but still retain accuracy.
Internal stickers add some visual interest to the empty bus. The player will pass them on the way to hide in the back section from an enemy.
Although not part of the assignment, I made sure the back of the bus had an interesting view to the front, in case producers wanted to switch camera views to a POV.
The Interior was designed separately to the exterior so the player space could be loaded effectively. The interior features a shadowed driver to give a sense of it being a functional bus, but also horror themed.
2D Image sets - I was particularly pleased with the grating design.
Beer Can Creative
Feedback given on initial block out. Restricted to under 15k triangles. Ended up with 10k.
Development of silhouette and features
Development of silhouette and features
Wheel arch details to break up the box shape.
Core shape language of the mirrors simplified.
Figuring out inside back space of the bus for the character to hide in.
Testing camera angles to plot out the poles of the bus so they don't obscure visibility.
UV development & maximum layouts.
Colour overlay to ensure no texture stretching.
3D colour overlay to check textures are consistent in size based on the object size and visibility.