Menagerie

Getting there

I've nearly completed the line art. The boarder has been grayed out on some because I was trying to look at the line art. I think I'm going to make all the boarders a dark brown/sepia color like it is in Conquest King. The Horse acts as the Jack and will be the same image for each suit but will be different colors.

Woah I almost forgot!

For cutting intricate things out of paper or wood carving or other general cool things this is free for CCAD students (with in reason, if you want to build a huge 3d print then you might end up paying for part of materials).

CCAD Fab Lab

They have instructions on the page about how to go about making your files but you should also make an appointment asap and they will help you figure out how to do your project.

Character Roughs

The suits are more European based with a Spanish influence on death, Roman war, French Famine and Old English for conquest represented by bowmen. These are some thumbnails of how the characters will look and some concepting of a boarder that would indicate the face value of the card. Possibly an Art Nouveau inspired boarder.

I think the first color palette concepts that I had were a bit all over the place and am currently thinking of simplifying it. My idea now is to incorporate all the colors and then the greater percentage of the color found on the card would help indicate what the suit is as well as other visual elements.

Here I downloaded a template for the card faces and have started sketching in what I want the cards to look like. I'm undecided on what the Ace and Joker cards will look like. Most aces are just larger depictions of the symbol of the suit. I don't know if this means I will use the weapon that each horseman is said to be holding or if I will find another symbol to depict them i.e. a skull for death. Another concept would be to use the horse as the Ace and have the color of the Horse indicate suit. However this may be too far from the norm and not read quickly enough as a standard deck of cards would. Perhaps it would work better if the horse represented the Joker.

Card deck concept-Menagerie

This post is an expansion of one of the concepts from the Menagerie Thumbnailing stage

(sketches will be added as an update)

4 horsemen of the apocalypse:

• The red horse, War, the suit color is red, symbol is the sword
• The white horse, Conquest, the suit color is white, symbol is the Bow and arrow
• The black horse, Famine, the suit color is black, symbol is scales
• The pale horse, Death (not sure on color), symbol is scythe

Story of the cards:

Original suits were cups, swords, coins and polo sticks (German version had acorns and leaves). The suit symbols changed for every culture and often represented what was important to the people. French were the ones that came up with the two color suit system with the symbols; hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs.

For my deck the suits would be Swords, Scales, Scythes and Bow(arrows).

There will be the 3 royals, the King, Queens and Jacks/Nave in my deck. Death cards will have a more western interpreted 'grim reaper' like character mixed in with Day of the Dead makeup. War cards maybe more spartan inspired. Conquest cards, having bows and arrows could go either a European way or possibly Japanese route, currently undecided. Also I'm playing with the idea that Famine cards would be based on Marie Antoinette and Louis Quatorze.

Some screen shots of a gamut color palette picker. These are not final but rough ideas of where the palettes might be for each suit. I will also have to consider color continuity between the suits to make it a unified set. Perhaps this could be accomplished by patterned boarders?
Gamut Mask Palette Maker (Here is the site I used)

Conquest

Famine

War

Death