V:TES Cards — Redesigned 2.0

Version 2.0 of the redesigned Crypt and Library cards are now available on: amaranth.vtes.co.nz

So far high res artwork has been implemented for all KOT and HTTB cards +  a few others — more to come soon.

Am fairly happy with the end results:

















And some direct comparisons:































These are all now live on https://amaranth.vtes.co.nz.

Immortal Grapple — VTES Artwork

Here's another take on a popular card — Immortal Grapple

This one was a struggle from the offset, I had a clear image in my head about how I wanted to to portray the shot (a much smaller minion being mangled by a much larger one viewed from the larger minion's perspective) — although this posed problems in terms of scale. The other difficulty was getting the balance right between the image reducing well and looking too cartoony...

Burst of Sunlight — more VTES artwork.

I decided to have a go at some more VTES artwork and taking into account the lessons I learnt from the last card. I spent quite a bit more time on this one, but I'm very happy with the results:

Although I got caught up in the detail (like the last card) this time I was able to ensure that the image was striking and would scale well by using plenty of contrast (including colours). Again I used Sketchbook Pro on the iPad — I'm happy with the process, it has quite a natural feel to it (you don't really get more hands on) and I doubt I'm going to bother with a tablet. For those interested here's an overview of the process:

VTES Card Artwork

After reading that the VEKN were looking for artists for a possible expansion set, I thought I'd have a go creating some artwork during TV series / movie downtime. For convenience, I thought the iPad would be the best thing to use and downloaded Sketchbook Pro an App I've had success with on my phone.

The next task was to decide on a card to create artwork for. One of my favourite cards (artwork and functionality) was the "Taste of Death" from the Final Nights set, unfortuantely this was was muted somewhat in following releases:

Hmm. This card deserved some justice and should rightly strike fear in the hearts of other methuselahs. So it seemed like the perfect choice — here's my attempt at it:

What I found quite interesting was the degree of detail required due to the size of the card. The image contains far more detail than is actually required — a lot of it's lost when printed and is only visible when zoomed onscreen. The turnaround time was fairly good (a couple of hours) and I believe a decent amount of time can be saved by spending less time detailing.

I imagine that artwork for vampires would require the detail as it occupies the majority of the card — so perhaps a vampire will be my next attempt. The other thing observed was the boldness required in terms of colour and linework (again due to the size of the card) — so that's definitely an area that I need to improve upon.

I'm not sure if I'll submit any cards to the VEKN, it depends on how much time I spend chilling out in front of the big square box. That said, I really like the idea of having artwork featured — that would be very cool indeed.

So, any suggestions for what card to target next?