Jessica Plowman (she/her)

Now that I’ve reached 2400 followers, I think it’s time for a new intro post! Hi, I’m Jessica and I am a Tech Writer at Epic Games, focusing on Worldbuilding and Art Pipeline tools. Outside of that, I focus on Level Design in my spare time. Prior to the industry I was a teacher.

Back when I was working on Sweet Nibbles, I put together a quick brief for some contractors for the Steam page assets (I ended up doing all of these myself to save money). I'm posting this to share some insight that may help indie devs put together a brief to communicate with their contractors. This was still early on, and the project was moving quickly. It ended up draining me with how fast I was moving and how many plates I was spinning. Although it wasn't finished, I learned a lot from this project. #gamedev #indiedev

dev day 522: more work on the randomized architectural hotspot feature. Started work on a military base-set. Currently we only build a road-network and buildings on the plots. Next up: fences, poles, gates, and scattering of props. The goal is organic look. #solodev #procgen

Put together another UE5 Master Material Template for environments. This one is 2 texture tiling, blend, w/masks. Allows for 2 textures to be blended based on texture mask you are using. Plug & play. Many customization. Get it on Patreon: patreon.com/posts/ue5-mast…

Posted on LinkedIn last night, woke up to several hundred notifications, friends requests, etc. Seems I struck a nerve in the industry by saying I wanted to create my own projects and not be at the mercy of execs. It's going to have to be smaller studios and smaller projects.

Okay but this is officially the best hiring story ever. A company in Mexico rescued an orange stray cat and decided not only to keep him… but to hire him. They named him Engineer Miauricio and gave him the title of Emotional Support Director. His responsibilities include smiling at coworkers, gently meowing, and walking around the office making everyone’s day better.

In San Francisco for GDC today with a full slate of meetings. I’ll be at the Fortnite UEFN party tonight for a bit. If you’re attending, come say hi. Always great to meet more creators and developers building in this space. Quick turnaround trip for me, I’m flying out early tomorrow morning, so tonight is the window. Hope to see some of you there.

I get 90% of my sounds from Freesound (best website ever), but I cannot for the life of me find a subtle hand tightening on wood sound… so now this malarkey is happening

Don't sleep on Data Assets in UE. They allow you to separate your data from your blueprints and gameplay logic, which keeps your project clean and makes it super easy to create variants of objects. Full Tutorial: youtu.be/3PrpLvC5EO8

The storm is coming…and soon everyone can fight. Save the World. Free to play. April 16. epic.gm/fortnite-stw

Stylized anatomy isn’t talent — it’s a process. by lefties3d

This developer is making a game where you play as a cute ball of slime exploring Tokyo, but you must stay hydrated. Seriously. - Real slime physics - Complete mission - Insanely adorable Is this something you'd play?

Today has been an off day, but Idle Roller is out! Let's do 30 likes, and I'll tweet out 5 Steam keys for the game. #GameDev #Indiedev #Steam

.@JanvandenHemel, the author of Blender Secrets, shared a nice retopology tip that will help you place new geometry in Blender efficiently. Learn: 80.lv/articles/retop…

One of best ways to get accurate reference of any ext environment to create is use Google Street View. Immerse yourself & live through it. Other best way is to visit the location. For this, I had the chance to actually visit & take reference then revisit through Street View.

@Serellan That’s where most of the narrative and level design for my current level came from

Game design pro-tip: A lot of the best game design happens because of insomnia.

Interesting technique - build up the ear using Curves with depth, adjust the depth (Alt+S per Vertex), convert to meshes, adjust a bit in Sculpt mode (mostly with the Draw, Grab and Smooth brush). Not how I would normally sculpt an ear, but good to have another way. #Blender #B3D

UEFN Verse: Introduction to Persistence In this article I present the basics of using persistence in UEFN using Verse. romeroblueprints.blogspot.com/2026/02/uefn-v… #uefn #verse

“D&D Zombie Dragon Adventure” from @TeraCreators in collaboration with @Wizards of The Coast, is a Fortnite Island that challenges you to survive an increasingly difficult journey packed with enemies and fantastic creatures, until you finally get the chance to slay a humongous Dracolich. We spoke to Creative Director, Luis Daniel Zambrano, and Lead Game designer, Cesar Solis Galindo, at Teravision Games about their new take on Roguelikes made in Fortnite, currently in Early Access. Take a look behind their Dungeon Master’s screen with us🧵

This is it right here. The way out of tutorial hell is by just jumping in and doing. This also applies to everything in life: there is no “perfect time” for anything. Just get out there and do the thing :)

Had the pleasure of doing some concept work for Dan Trachtenberg's 'Predator Badlands'. Which was awesome as 'Predator' is in my top 5 films of all time! One early task involved concepting the new super powerloader. Hats off to Fausto DeMartini for modelling this up from the sketch! Dan did a great job on the movie, and ill share more down the line... #PredatorBadlands #conceptart #powerloader #Aliens