Art Process

This post is an excerpt from our Kickstarter campaign. If you like it, you can read the rest there!

Early character designs. We decided to use animals to capture the personality (and therefore function) of the three non-mask characters. The Fool began and remained a crow. The count began an Ox and became a mountain goat, allowing for more ornate and less macho features. The friar, or vicar at the time, was more of a mystery. I explored a deer, then a lamb for vaguely religious associations. I actually quite liked the weird little lamb but David thought him too creepy, understandably, so we moved to rodents. We landed on a church mouse. 

Early card layouts. As the characters began to shape up, we started exploring card designs. Illustration and composition logic, UI, fonts, prototype sketching. Most of the game had been developed at this point, so I had a lot of sample cards to riff off for testing out the feel of the game. That being said, I still didn't really understand its nuances, so character vibes largely drove this process.

As I mentioned, this became an interesting process as I needed to understand the game to inform the card design. The literal meaning of the title, combined with the general implication of the card's role in the game, as captured by the character of the card. We spent hours discussing what the visual for each card could look like. Some came easily, some we figured out together, and some manifested as if by ... providence. 

David started pulling his weight on the concrete design side around this time. He populated our initial card base with some direction for each card. Please enjoy this limited edition Keeps original artwork by the man himself (more on Kickstarter):

-Elaina