Nour: Play With Your Food Q&A: talking experimental food art with the game’s creator TJ Hughes

blog.playstation.com:

What types of explosive expression can one expect from a creator who is relentlessly driven to break away from the mediocre and mundane? We decided to ask video game designer and digital artist TJ Hughes, who creates under the alias Terrifying Jellyfish, about working on the aesthetically ascendant adventure Nour: Play with Your Food.

In this profile, we speak with TJ Hughes about Nour, how he works with his team, his origin story, and advice he’d give to developers hoping to leave their mark in gaming. Hughes’ first project Feesh, which featured microscopic arcade gameplay and vibrant visuals, showcased TJ’s drive to break the mold in a work space equally microscopic, as it was conceived and completed within a 48-hour Ludum Dare game jam. With no tight time constraints he is magnifying color and playfulness with his sophomore project, Nour: Play with Your Food.

PlayStation Blog: What inspired Nour: Play with Your Food?

Nour is described as “an experimental food art game designed to make you hungry,” giving players a space to play with their food like a kid but without any mess to clean up. A further testament to the difference in working on Nour and Feesh, Nour’s development process was slow and methodical, with no one “eureka moment.”

“I was learning how to make shaders, and was brainstorming the best subject to try and emulate,” Hughes explains. “I was just starting to travel and eat more diverse foods, so I thought it was the perfect subject. I started to upload my art tests onto Twitter, where folks would tell me how the images made them hungry. Being intrigued by that response, I started to try more things like using the tech art concept of sub-surface scattering to simulate the material of noodles and using