Kurt Horsfall
Kurt Horsfall (Fenixblue)
Website: http://firebornform.deviantart.com
Location: Fairport, NY, USA
Role on Project: Artist, Player 2
Solo Contributions: Art- Evil Wall , Palace of Darkness, Light Palace, Water Palace, Sunken Continent (coral marsh), The Mana Beast, Haunted Forest, Mana Tree Plateau, SC Neko's Business, SC Not so Heroic , All Spectrum of Mana shirts, Album Art Disc wheels, Spirit (Sprite) Disc, Art Book layout and design
Collaborations: Art- Northtown Ruins, Sword at the Falls, Gigas, Karons Ferry, Kakkara, Flight to the Mana Fortress, Crystal Forest, Rising Continent, Mechrider, Ice Palace, The Great Viper, Flammie's Cave, Geshtar
Description: Kurt has been involved with art from nearly the beginning of his life, but having a perfectionist drive under the surface caused Kurt to abandon many personal projects and seek out new ways to improve. Kurt has touched on various subjects including basic 3d modeling (3ds max and google sketchup), texturing, cartoon characters and writing but his current passion is painting environmental art. Kurt has been entirely self taught with some helpful guidence and feedback from his brother Nate. Recently he has decided to take a more serious approach to art and has been taking online classes like Noah's Art Camp and Chris Oatley's Magic Box.
About the Game: Kurt has grown up with Secret of Mana since early childhood playing co-operative with his brother. Secret of Mana is one of the all time best games in his opinion and he has beaten the game over 30 times with different people and in different ways, including difficulty hacks and speed runs. From the very start the SOM album took the most dedication to address out of any previous projects and the initial 3 man art team of Ali Floyd, Kurt and his brother Nate playing through the entire game as 3p co-op, to get a feel for what jumps out at them for inspiration.
About the Project: A funny thing about this project was that I was too motivated and inspired. Nate needed to put stumbling blocks and bar me off from claiming too many scenes doing too much artwork, we would have this conversation a bunch of times and I can say that I may have ended up doing everything! or at least quite a bit more, but can you blame me? It's Mana! I can say that we never expected or planned for spectrum to blow up like this with 60+ musicians and a few different artists but it's been a great experience. The game deserves more recognition and it's great to be able to send the anniversary out with trumpets and fireworks.
Notable Works: - Vampire Variations (http://kngi.org/vampirevariations/)
- Harmony of a Hunter 101% Run (link)
- Early concept development for the indie game "Star Beast"
- More to come in the future!
BONUS: Making of "Time Flows Like a River" art (link)