Dear artists, so I am going to start do discuss about a project I worked on. It is a project of fantasy, darkness and of course because we are close to Halloween, about vampires. ( Dracula to be more specific)
A couple of years ago, I met a guy named Kris, and because we had a great time talking we became friends. He needed an artist to help him create a board game, he needed help with vision, he liked inking and wanted a Darkest Dungeon vibe to it. Things are pretty simple so far, so when we managed to discuss about what he wanted to the project, I asked for creative control of the artistic path this project would go. We had limits in the budget and many other problems occuring spontaneous here and there, but we managed to do whatever we could best to make it happen.
The first thing I did was building an art direction document, with locations, references, boards and technical development to have a production estimate in place for each asset that was built for the game itself. We discussed each ability and we set up a production workflow for each card.
The workflow was simple :
1. A brief 2.Visual references (use of moodboards from the AD document) 3. Sketching phase ( 3 sketches for each asset) 4.Inking phase
5. Color Phase 6.FX and filters 7. Final asset with UI/UX and Icons
PS: There were a couple hundred sketches, so there was a lot of sketching :D
After we got a few tests done, we started a discussion about the rooms and the board itself, and we were trying to come up with a cool board, that doesn't become crazy expensive to build. By doing that we did the rooms on the board top view, and that made them look ok regardless of the angle you are sitting at the table - that was a decision made for everyone to enjoy.
Around 9 months pass, and a small team of people made this game happen. The sole responsible person for the UI is Anca Albu, which showcased some amazing skills when it comes to combining the art with the UI. Kris was testing the game and managing the project while I was working on the art of it. Other people got involved along the way and helped with whatever they could to get this off the ground and get it to a final state.
Thank you and hope this would be informative and please show it some love :D
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blacklettergames/damnation-the-gothic-game-0/
PS: If you want to get notified about its release on Kickstarter click on "Notify me" button!
