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.