Game Idea
As part of my vocational education, I worked in a team on a VR game, where the player draws symbols with the controller to cast spells and defeat rampaging elementals. The natural elements have fallen out of balance and are spreading across the land, corrupting both landscape and people. It is the player's task to find a way to heal the land and defeat the evil mage who is at the core of it all.
My part of this project consisted mostly of working close with the lead artist and proposing design ideas.
Concept Art
The first step was to figure out what the elemental corruption looks like, specifically that of the earth element. To get a feeling for it, I thought of how it could look like on normal base shapes.
Going from there, I made a quick sketch for a potential earth elemental. In the game we decided to have a large and a small variant of each elemental, so this was for the smaller, faster one, not the hulking bigger one.
I then turned the quick sketch into an appropriate art that can be used on a character sheet later.
I also had an idea for how a design for the people who got corrupted by the elements and turned it into a sketch of a village lady that got infected with the ice element. Out of target audience concerns, we decided to not go further into this design direction.
Fonts, Alphabets, and Symbols
In addition to the symbols that represent the three elements -Fire, Ice, and Earth- in our game (bottom left corner), I was tasked with coming up with a fictional alphabet that was based on the elemental symbols.
After deliberations with team members, I got a complete simple alphabet. It was important to us that it is visibly derived from the elemental symbols while keeping a geometric and calculated feeling. For the alphabet to be used by other team member for props and marketing material, I created a guide with an example word to the side.
In the spirit of our three elemental symbols, I also designed the crests of the mage orders in the game, trying to incorporate all three of them. The crest for the mage order that the player is part of (left) was a given and I proposed ideas for the evil counterpart for the antagonistic mage order.
Eventually, the time came where we needed a title and a fitting font. I explored several directions with a selection of titles we had agreed upon.
After deliberation, we agreed on a title and its style, so I propose further iterations.