Mind Over Magic
(Sparkypants Studios with Klei) As the Art Director on this game I was concepting, creating mockups, prototyping assets, designing UI and managing a remote team. The entire team put everything they had into this project and it was exciting to see the results. I'm extremely proud of the art team and what we accomplished. We were also fortunate to work with and get assistance from some of the talented folks at Klei.
This is a screenshot of MoM showing how all the rooms connect and how the dungeons can be explored. Everyone on the team contributed to this image.
These are mockups to help us work out how the schools might be built.
Concepts of the research station while thinking about size variations and how they would be powered by electrical magic.
Concepts for the potion station where mages use water magic to mix different ingredients.
This is more exploration of a 2D solution thinking about modular sizing, stairs, and the silhouette of the school.
Concepts for the Dragon Egg Incubators.
I was responsible for the layout of this battle space. MoM puts the player into these scenes during combat situations. The props, characters and FX were created by the rest of the team.
I did the initial layout for many of the dungeon rooms. I then updated the details with props created by the rest of the team. This allowed our dungeons to be playable very quickly.
Some UI work I did in Figma for the research screen.
This is a 3D mockup to help us define hallways vs schoolrooms while also allowing room for pipes and other bits that might go in the walls.
Paintover of a screenshot to show how water and smoke might flow through the school and eventually be expelled.
This is an early 3D mockup of a school trying to establish interesting silhouettes with a functional interior.
Concepts of the Gondola used by the dragon to ferry mages on missions.
Here are some more concepts of different types of deadly plants the player might encounter.
These are some sketches of helper creatures that might gather up debris such as leaves and dead plants.
A concept proposing a solution to connecting the dungeons and upper floors while retaining the functions of the central rooms.
This is a 3D mockup to show how the terrain would be broken up to allow for smooth hills and elevation changes.
Design and layout for the game roadmap.
This is a mockup cut and paste I did in Photoshop to show the importance of light color changes.
Paintover of a screenshot to show the idea of floating islands that the player could build to and then use for support.
This screenshot shows how we used colored lighting to differentiate the dungeon zones.
A massive school designed by one of our players.