VALORANT: Magepunk

Magepunk has one of the more fun creative stories behind it for the team. Back in 2019 when we were diving head first into skins, Magepunk was maybe still in the first 5 or so that we made. The goal at the time was to try and cover a large bucket of thematic categories, so we had done a little scifi, some fantasy, and someone brought up the idea of steampunk. Once we concepted out a steampunk gun, we felt like it was good but too familiar, and we really wanted to do something unexpected. Our Product Lead at the time said "what if it wasnt steam, but it was magic, like magepunk" which got some ideas flowing from the team. We tasked out concept artist with making a Magepunk update of his original design, which he misunderstood (misread) and created a MEGApunk concept design. While not what we wanted, we were absolutely floored by the design, and that idea eventually went on to become Glitchpop!
Happy accidents like that are the result of artists being allowed to creatively play in spaces and do things that are different than the norm, and with Magepunk I'm happy we landed with a design language that feels unique and distinct for the game. Its a refined high tier skin set for "up and coming intellectuals" as someone put it. :)
Concepts done by the amazing Timur Mutsaev!
https://www.artstation.com/timur