After being out of print for over a decade, the cult-classic racing game Magical Athlete is being relaunched by CMYK, the party games developer behind beloved games like Wavelength, Spots and Monikers, as well as reimagined classics like Quacks. Better yet, the reimagined edition features new product design and vibrant artwork from Angela Kirkwood, with gameplay refined and updated by Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield.
Magical Athlete is as absurd as it sounds – players draft a team of strange characters, like Sisyphus, Banana and Huge Baby, all of which have different abilities and effects on the board. Originally created by Takashi Ishida and released in Japan, the re-issue carries over a wealth of the unique humour and absurdity of it’s creator.
Angela feels that if there was ever a project made for her, this would be it. Like the board game, her work is character driven and eccentric, but after drawing 36 characters, she did begin to wonder how many more ways she could draw a nose. CMYK pushed Angela to lean on her skills as an animator as much as she is a skilled illustrator. The updated visual identity is bold and kinetic, superpowering the already over-the-top characters. Taking inspiration from the Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Wacky Races, and drawing on her background as an animator, Angela tried to inject dynamism by posing characters so they would feel in motion, adding speed lines and animation smears to create that exaggerated sense of energy and action.