Designing Potion Ingredients

Designing and Making Potion Ingredients for my game The Wandering Witch.

For my game I wanted the magic system to be based around the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, plus the Sun and Moon as special ingredients.  These would be used in creating potions to fight the corresponding elemental spirits of the island.

I wanted to create unique assets beginning with the drawings which I will use as the icons in the inventory, then model 3D assets to be placed in the environment for the player to collect.

Starting with Air, I designed the Butterfly Seed, based on a mix of a dandelion, and helicopter seeds.  The seed would spin as it fell and look like the fluttering of a butterfly.

Earth, is represented by the constricting vines. I wanted to design something that came from the Earth, but also to create more variety in the collectables, hence the vines will hang from the trees.

The Fire element is an Electric Beetle, this beetle uses electricity to paralyse its prey, however in the height of summer and on particularly dry days this little guy has been know to start fires.

The Ice Flower represents water, a flower that is cold to the touch even on the hottest days and can freeze the morning dew as it settles on the plant.

Next are the Moon Bells and Sun Drops, these ingredients only appear in their respective times of day, and give the witch special buffs when used in potions.  The buds of the Moon flower resemble round bells, and as the wind brushes past it creates a soft ringing sound.  Finally the Sun Drop is created when condensing dew is hit by the morning sun rays for just long enough that it captures the warmth and energy of the sun.

After designing the icons I needed to create the 3D models to use in the game.  I modelled them in Maya, trying to keep them simple while still capturing the essence of the original designs.  And texturing was done in Substance Painter, using the same stylized method as in the environment assets previously posted.

Below is the final design for these assets, showing the wireframe, base model and textured model in a line up. While I could have simplified some of the models, by having more definition in the models I could use generators to quickly achieve various lighting effects I would have otherwise had to hand draw.