Mind Over Magic Character Concepts

The initial cast of characters for "Mind Over Magic" these teachers would serve as the aesthetic blueprint for all of the students and character variations that would come after them.

Our initial student lineup. Later variations of students would eventually be concepted and added but this initial phase was crucial in determining the overall signifiers of the first phase of students in the game.

Apprentices are the second phase of student learning in the game, and as a result needed to feel both more prestigious and functional. They can complete a wider variety of tasks than initiates and are more capable mages.

A snapshot into the process of how our school members are created. Once an initial concept was selected we explored various hairstyles and texture variations for their clothing. The goal was to create a new look without changing existing geometry.

Variation sketches of a Vivified teacher.

A full lineup of one of our races of teachers. Between variations of head (or hair) styles, texture swaps, and color variations of both we created a fairly robust amount of variety.

A lineup of several of the outfits concepted for this particular teacher. We always tried to give design a range of options to choose from.

Assistant ambominations stitched together from sinew of viscera of small animals. These little cuties assist the player with various chores, and needed to be recognizable in their function and visually distinct.

A good magic school has magical animals. Instead of having a machine or an aparatus refine various resources we turned them into animals, giving them way more character.

Some of our earliest enemy concepts. The idea was to watch this particular adversary grow in size the further down into the dungeon the player explored.

Our cast of underschool adversaries, while not the extensive list these enemies are the main monsters the player fights in the dungeon.

In order to stretch our cast of enemies we created elemental variations of them that would require minimal geometry rework but still provide noticable distinction from the original.

A monster the character would encounter towards the end of their descent into the dungeon. The brief was for a monster composed of pure magic, but I wanted to give them a little more form. So I turned them into a sort of magical golem.

A boss monster, capable of firing psychic death magic as well as summoning elemental variations of its own tentacles that would become minions the player was forced to kill.

Some early sketches of magical aquatic creatures. We had ideas of creatures that could serve as class pets, or patron spirits of the magical elements that could guide characters on higher level learning quests.

Early visual development sketches of the students.