InnerSpace (2018, Polyknight Games & Aspyr Media

Worlds of Beautiful Stasis and Movement

Role: Art director, in-engine level design and blockout

I was responsible for designing the game's worlds, architecture, creatures, and vehicles. Art ranged from production sketches to key-art, and each was made with an eye towards communicating with other team members and fans.

Art Direction Goals:

Build a visually striking style that would be economical to develop as a small studio.
Flesh out a world with a distinct history tied to its unique physics.
Communicate with bold colors and distinct forms to accommodate player movement.

Concept art and visual design by me. Final environment mesh, models, and shaders by Steve Zapata and Tashkeel Shah.

Art Book

I compiled an art book at the end of production to showcase the evolution of initial concepts to final product.

Download the Art Book

Mood and Key Art

Due to the focus on exploration and discovery, the worlds of InnerSpace express the impacts of a common past. Materials, technologies, and visual motifs recur throughout to help tell the story of this forgotten place.

Working closely with our 3D artists, I created concept art to determine the look and feel for the physical, material world of the game, from its landscapes and architecture to its creatures.

Technical Art, Process and Drawovers

Raw and unrefined, these collages centralize communications between design and 3D art. These are largely draw- or paint-overs of level whiteboxes, combined with specific notes on behaviors to aid the crafting of animations and FX.

Airframes

Highly specific, technical 3-view art was needed by the 3d art team to accurately model each airframe. Each piece of art also needed functional and technical detail to help convey the intent behind a given airframe's motion.

Further Material

Art Direction Deep-Dive

As InnerSpace developed, I wrote an article on the Polyknight Games blog outlining my approach to building the game’s aesthetic through an approach I called a “functional aesthetic.”

Read Article

Plane Design Deep-Dive

During our initial Kickstarter campaign, I also wrote an article on the Polyknight Games blog detailing the design process for the player’s main vessel, which came to be known as the Cartographer Airframe.