Project Spark

Xbox, PC, Surface

Project Spark is a game creation system video game developed by SkyBox Labs and Team Dakota and published by Microsoft Studios for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One.

• StudioTeam Dakota, Microsoft
• ReleaseOctober 2014
• IndustryGaming/Entertainment
• ContributionsUI Art, UX, Illustration, Iconography

Project Spark is the most user-friendly game creation suite to date, enabling one to be crafted with less work than anything else like it on the market.

Hardcore Gamer

Frontend User Interface

"Hand Crafted" UI elements.

I was able to work on the breakthrough title, Project Spark, as an UI Artist and Designer. I started the project about midway into the development cycle and even at that stage, was blown away by the potential of the game. Project Spark is an open-world digital canvas that enables anyone to build, play, and share whatever they can imagine. It's a powerful, yet simple way to enjoy your own worlds, stories, and games.

When I first joined the project, we were developing for tablet/PC. Later on we added Xbox One and Xbox 360. This proposed a huge challenge for our UI team as we had to design for touch, mouse/keyboard and controller.

We wanted to really focus on pushing content to the user. We knew that there were going to be two categories of users: players and creators (and we hoped a fusion of both). For that reason, our system for finding content had to be easy.

Illustrations

Brain Tiles - Visual programming language.

Left Mouse Button Position Delta. Magnitude. On Land Acceleration. These are just a few (and I mean few) of the programming "brain tiles" that needed to be represented, visually, within our Brain system. Brains are Project Spark's approach to visual programming and are essentially a series of code that gives tasks, functions, variations and properties to all in-game props. By assigning commands through the brain editor, the player is able to program the prop through a series of visually represented choices.

My task at hand was to create art for the 700+ tiles that could be combined to program...pretty much anything! I worked closely with designers and programmers to brainstorm either an icon or symbol that would visually reinforce whatever that particular tile was capable of doing.

HUD UI Elements

The design philosophy behind just about everything in Project Spark, was that all content was hand crafted.

We wanted to instill the creativity of craftsmanship, and to stray away from mechanical, precise and straight-edged design. Therefore, our UI elements in the HUD were made out of natural crystal and rock, and had the feeling that they were made within our Project Spark universe.

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