A Spotlight on Season of Performance Concept Art

Every show, whether grand or humble, begins as a series of ideas, brainstorms, and plans. This was also true for Season of Performance as our teams at TGC prepared its debut. In this post you’ll find some of the concept art that helped us bring the Season to life—we hope it was as memorable for you as it was for us!

An important question to ask when planning a Season: What kind of environment will it take place in? The theater itself was placed in a level that represents the period when entertainment was at its heights in Sky’s kingdom, but this time we also needed a stage and a backstage. After exploring different possibilities, the theater was made a cozy size. Designs for the backstage area, too, drew on experiences in actual theaters using all available space for props, set pieces, tools, and costumes.

Some of the items in the Season took inspiration from real-world theater performances—after all, no curtain call is complete without flowers! These early designs experimented with the types of things a Spirit might carry with them, and explored how flowers could be included for players as well. Meanwhile, many designs (of which the ones below are but a few!) auditioned for the role of Season symbol before the final version was decided.

A stage, of course, needs characters. The concept pieces below from the earliest phases of the season’s development worked to capture ideas for the essence of who each Spirit would be. Some kept a familiar form between these images and their Season debut, but others evolved and changed as some ideas were revised, or even moved around to different Spirits.

Later iterations turned towards not only what each Spirit might wear or carry, but also the visual theme and color palette at the heart of it all. Early stages featured jewel tones, or explored designs based off of an animal theme, for example. Eventually, of course, the colors turned to the scarlets and dark tones reminiscent of a theater itself, with certain touches such as large stitches on capes and clothing to convey the feeling of the crew working to create their performance from scratch.

Though this is just some of the concept art that helped us eventually bring Season of Performance to players, we hope you enjoyed this small glimpse behind the curtain of the Season’s art. See you in the skies!