Time Machines!

I've had a much needed few weeks away from social media, which meant that my blog has been quiet too, however I'm back on track now so I'm going to share some new cards I did recently for Escape from Fusion Earth.

The core element of the game is time travel (you can read up on the game and give it a play test here) so obviously we needed some time machines! I'm mainly a character/creature designer and although I've designed plenty of weapons for this game, I initially found trying to design something that is more vehicle like quite difficult.

Initially when I started to sketch up some ideas they were all very 'obvious' options, they pretty much looked exactly how you'd think a time machine would look which is not what I wanted. If you're struggling to come up with ideas, one thing that makes a big difference is your own life, and what has influenced you throughout, so it's always important to use that. I started to think about what could possibly influence some new ideas. Probably my favourite game ever is Ratchet and Clank, and when I was thinking about time machines I instantly thought of the Ratchet and Clank game 'A Crack in Time' which is all about controlling time and using it to help you through the game. I did a bit of research into this, but not too much as I didn't want to be too influenced by the designs in the game. 

Instead of drawing an obvious box shape, I started working on some sphere ideas, even experimenting with some shapes inspired by the deep sea submarines you see on nature documentaries. Riley (my client on this project) preferred this direction, but another requirement was that we needed not one time machine, but four. 

One thing that I, and I'm sure most other illustrators/character designers/concept artists etc. like to do, as it is kind of essential, is to tell a story through my designs. I started to think about how we could have four different time machines, what makes them different from each other? But what ties them together at the same time? I came up with this really random idea to have each one look as if it had crash landed into a Fusion world and been left there so long that it had been reclaimed by that world and become part of the environment. I felt like it was a little too farfetched, but Escape from Fusion Earth is already full of fantasy weapons and characters that wouldn't exsist in the real world, so why not?!

I tried to think of some concepts that would be completely different so you could easily tell them apart. Time machine number one is an underwater theme, but seeing as this is a fantasy game I thought it would be cool to add in some mythology which is where the Leviathan came from. Time machine two is a futuristic design, there are a fair few futuristic weapons in the game so I thought it would make sense for one of the time machines to come from the same world. Time machine three is a sky pirate theme, Smuggler's Cove is an environment card in the game, so I thought that this tied in well, but I also wanted to add that Fusion Earth twist, which is why I wanted the time machine to be able to also be influenced by the sky. Last but not least, with the Dinosaur Knight card and the Doom Bringer cards, plus my love for anything prehistoric, I drew up a prehistoric themed time machine. 

I tried out quite a few new ideas with each one of the time machines and the lava was extremely difficult to get how I wanted it, but I think the extra time spent experimenting adds that bit extra to each one! We're very close to launching the Kickstarter for the game now so feel free to follow me on Twitter and Instagram @aldersaur (or links at the bottom of this page) to stay up to date! Here's a bigger view of each time machine....

Thank you for reading guys!