Art

Setting has always been one of the strengths of our project. We wanted its richness and its many different facets to emerge from each card, not only through the character, but also for the world around it. To do this, we opted for a choice that would facilitate the work of those who collaborate with us without forcing them to ‘study’ the world of Redemption – The Third Era and to do that we have made several backdrops depicting various glimpses of the cities and territories in which the different ethnic groups usually move.

In order to realize the cards’ Characters, which we lovingly call ‘PC’ (PC = Player Character  is a ‘friendly’ way to shorten the word ‘Character’ coming from the several D&D played games), we looked for help of digital graphic designers and colorists that were able to use a painting technique that resulted aesthetically more related to reality.

The graphic designer is provided by a Format giving him instructions about posture, clothing, equipment and racial features the PC has to shown, accompanied by a cut from the bottom backdrop on which the character has to be inserted and adjusted (for example, if on the backdrop there is a staircase and the Character is walking on it, his posture has to be integrated with the scenario in which it will be set).

Once the graphic designer terminate PC creation, it is permanently placed on its backdrop, then it is changed and reprocessed in order to make it better blended with both the surrounding setting and what will be the actual frame of the playing card.

This, if in one part requires a long process for backdrops preparation, on the other allows us both to give the player a bit of the world in each card and to let him learn more about the whole setting. In other similar games, a character of a card rarely has an explanatory backdrop and it becomes the only protagonist. On the contrary we wanted every card having two main protagonists: the character with his skills and one of thousands glimpses of the world he lives in.

We deal with several races, each with its own physical characteristics, so we realized a graphic compendium to guide designers and colorists better in the production, in addition to provide them with a detailed description of the specific racial traits.

For all that is specific to the various races, we will examine in depth the topic later.