Read An Excerpt From Double Fine’s 20th Anniversary Art Book

Double Fine Productions recently celebrated their 20th anniversary. They are the developers behind Psychonauts, Broken Age and other series. To celebrate this milestone, Double Fine partnered with Indie By Design to release a comprehensive art book that details the visual history of every single game the developer has released over the years – including insights from developers, in-depth interviews, and never-before-seen concept art. 

For an exclusive extract from the book, see below 20 Fine Years – DoubleThis article will give you a glimpse at the design choices behind Psychonauts 2’s Aquato clan and its many, many brains. A few pages have been collected so that you can get an idea of how the book looks. 

You can check it out 20 Fine Years – Double for yourself, it is available in a standard and collector’s Legend Edition right here. In addition to peeking behind the scenes of each Double Fine game’s production, the book also includes 2 Player Productions. Double Fine Adventure Webcomics, documentary series and webcomics the Studio used to publish on their website, Day of the Devs events, among other things. 

For more information on Double Fine Productions, please visit our History of Double Fine Productions article we published back in July. It will tell you how all the studio got together. 

20 Fine Years – Double It is now available.

Raz & The Aquatos

“It was crazy addictive to be drawing these characters again,” describes concept artist Scott Campbell, art director on the original Psychonauts. “It was almost like being wrapped in this warm, comforting blanket.”

Psychonauts 2 features Raz as the protagonist. This time, more members of Raz’s family are featured. Their lives and relationships are shown in great detail. Campbell found that it was easier to create meaning than to design them. This is what brought Campbell a lot of joy.

“It’s like you’re pulling at an old family patchwork quilt that you’re also adding to at the same time. You need these characters to feel as though they’ve been brought here through the lore of the previous games. 

“They can’t feel wholly new, you want them to feel like they’ve existed in this world and created their own place within it. Taking something that already exists and creating connections and history for it is really fulfilling.”

The Brain

Psychonauts 2 introduces a wide range of brains. Each one is a level that the player can explore. These levels are connected in the sense that you’re always seeing them through the eyes of Raz and that each represents a character’s innermost thoughts, but visually they are strikingly distinct.

“We looked back to Psychonauts to figure out what it was that made those different environments feel cohesive even though you’re jumping through all of these different brains,” explains environment artist Levi Ryken.

“One of the biggest things is proportions. We have this thing that we call the ‘Psychonauts wonk,’ which is basically that you can include stuff that seems pretty normal and consistent but you can’t present it normally. It has to have the ‘wonk’ to it.”

For example, parallel lines are best avoided. Characters are allowed to have two eyes that are essentially the same, but they’re typically presented as one being bigger than the other or one being higher or lower on the face.

“It makes the whole world feel a little off at all times,” Ryken continues. “It’s almost as though it was drawn by someone who holds a pencil really haphazardly and is dropping it all of the time.”