Vexx was my first platformer game project to work on, as well as my first introduction into doing particle effects. Two particle effects artists ended up on maternity leave near the same time and they needed someone to create effects and optimize existing ones. Sarma Vanguri introduced me to WonderTouch Particle Illusion, an excellent consumer particle editor which contained tons of free emitters to pick apart and learn from. Particle effects on VEXX were created using a proprietary particle editor. Particle effects had to fit strict budgets for memory and CPU time on multiple platforms.
I created almost all of the particles shown in this movie using an in-house particle editor and Photoshop. These included: air gust platform, candle flame, scroll glow, wind and door opening effects, flames, ground punch, horn blast, gate chamber sequence, ice sliding and crashing, steam and platforms, button press puzzle solve pickups, gate entrance, bug eye glow, bug wing blur, Vexx slash effects, bug creature death (but not the final bouncing death pickup), sumo splashes, sumo force fields, sumo hit particles, and all particles on the final sequence except effects emanating directly from the purple villain (black smoke and creature spawning lightning flashes)