Mind Over Magic
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Mind Over Magic is a colony sim set at the site of a cursed magic school. Build and optimize your own magical academy, train powerful Mages, and master mighty relics in order to battle through the Underschool, a mysterious underground dungeon that holds the key to liberation from a deadly curse. Published by Klei Publishing and developed by Sparkypants Studios, Mind Over Magic is now available on Steam. Check it out here!
As a senior concept artist I was responsible for the character, prop, environment, creature and FX concept designs in addition to the early concept paintings for multiple projects Sparkypants was actively developing. This included all stages of the game's development; from the first painting of a magic school, creating paintovers from in game screenshots, to assisting our junior artists with feedback and critiques to make sure that all of our finished production assets met the standard that our Art Director was looking for. Working together with the Art Director, Lead Artist and Creative Director we made something that I think looks incredibly unique and amazingly appealing. All of the projects that I've worked on at Sparkypants have been unique in the art style, deviating fairly significantly from my personal portfolio. This change has not been a challenge, but rather a helpful variation that has only improved my illustration and design sensibilities.
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Early Magic School Visual Development and Concepts
These are some of the earlies previz concepts for Mind Over Magic. They explore the overall look and feel we wanted to establish with the game with regards to camera, look and artistic style. We very quickly gravitated towards an off kilter or "wonky" look for everything in the game. A loose term for slightly asymmetrical with a hesitancy to incorporate parallel lines. Because the game is a simulation game everything in the playspace has to conform to a grid system, and we wanted the art to disrupt that reality. The early classroom concepts explored the type of magic being taught and the overall mood of the class itself. We explored a lot of themes, such as student progression in learning, how and where a student would actually learn, the feel of the classrooms and whether we wanted player choice in dictating that feeling through different furniture and materials, and tried to establish a shape language for the various materials and objects in our world. The clear lesson from these concepts, everything is more fun with wonk.
