VFX for NIVA 
The first “big” project I was working on was the master’s degree project of my team and me - the exploration art game NIVA. Besides game design I took care of almost all visual effects within the game:
A little bit of context: NIVA is a pacifistic exploration game set in a mystical forest. The player slips into the role of a deer-like forest god and uses the power of nurturing and withering plants to solve environmental puzzles. It’s available for free on itch.io - why not give it a whirl to unwind from a hard day’s work? 
↑ Forest God (player character) - positive and negative aura (abilities to interact with certain plants in the forest)
↑ energy pulse of a magical tree (game spoiler: jumping through this tree is the final step of completing a puzzle in the game)
↑ another magical tree (game spoiler: it’s light fruits can drop, what makes them burst. if the player steps into the puddle, he will leave a trail of glowing footsteps)
↑ atmosphere effects in the forest
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Zill, the Wandering Merchant - VFX for a 2D Illustration
Recently I wanted to explore VFX for 2D illustrations a bit. My former projects have all been in 3D and I am thrilled by the VFX of the golden cards in Hearthstone, so I too wanted to be able to ‘upgrade’ illustrations like that and thus give them more liveliness.
So here is my first attempt at doing this kind of artwork upgrades:
upgraded artwork - full size
original illustration
upgraded artwork - close up
The original illustration was done by Verena Demel (http://verenademelca.daportfolio.com/). It’s one of her personal characters, called Zill. For the effects I used Unity’s shuriken particle system as well as the plugins Shader Forge and DOTween. Verena gave me the original PSD file, which was well organized, so it was easy for me to create as many separate layers and masks as I needed, while creating the effects.