Apotheosis Rising

I worked on the artwork for this project originally for a class assignment in college. I then expanded on the project to create a playable card game.

The original job was to create 8 different illustrations that could be in a card game. These cards were to be the player cards. I then had to create unique battle cards, each with their own graphic. I wanted to see if I could take on such an extensive project all by myself. The aim was to create a playable card game that also looked visually appealing. This was an important portfolio piece and would show my ability to work with large volumes of art. What made the project challenging was the number of cards I had to create. Each card had to have its own unique properties and be playable in the game.

I used my knowledge of other card games like Yu-gi-oh and Magic: The Gathering to help me brainstorm the card properties. I first created an excel sheet listing out all the cards and what they do. After I did that, it made the project much easier to approach. I knew I couldn’t straight up copy mechanics from the card games, so I tried to combine them to make them more unique. I ended up choosing the combination that sounded the most balanced to me. This was especially important for the character cards. My strategy for the game mechanics was to keep testing the cards until they reached the difficulty level I was looking for. I didn’t want the game to be too hard to track or understand, so I added trackers and descriptive actions to the cards themselves. The results were a successful card game filled with my artwork, just like intended.