poe-euan-baxter

[poe-euan-baxter]

Hearthstone is a CCG based on the Warcraft universe and it is by far my favourite card game of all time. I cannot comment on the modern game but back in 2015 this game was incredible. All the different cards in the game are based on characters from the warcraft universe and the arts are plainly amazing.

[poe-euan-baxter]

I have no idea what Gloom is but the cards look very interesting. They are drawn in a very whimsical fashion, reminiscent of designs from Don't starve! I think the designs of the second set are much better than the 1st since they have an almost creepy aroma to them while the 1st set is simply cartoony and whacky which isn't my cup of tea.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Magic the gathering has some gorgeous card designs. It is a fantasy card game where you play land cards to gain elemental resources and then use those resources to play minions, spells etc with the goal of reducing your opponent's HP to zero. I think my favourite arts are the ones that have a little roughness to them that makes them feel more like a painting or like it was made by an actual artist and not just a photograph.

In particular this one is incredible. The art is emotional and the composition is impeccable.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Designing a board game box cover:

The most important part of designing a box cover is making sure everything fits inside. For my box specifically, I pursued a design theory of plasticless packaging. The amount of single use plastic in board games is horrendous, wasteful and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. (You can thank useless government regulations for this.) I made sure that things fit snugly so that by default the amount of movement inside the box would be minimal.

For the cover design, I set out to highlight the game as a fun party game with the players front and centre.

[poe-euan-baxter]

As unfortunate as it may be, the single biggest hint as to what an alien society would do with us can be found in our own history. In the colonization of the Americas, European diseases laid waste to the local population. The Spanish in particular were fond of conquering and murdering their way through the Americas, replacing the native population with Spaniards and later, the Portugese in Brazil.

Aliens would likely see our track record of constant war and violence and use it to justify our extermination as lesser beasts, barbarians. I have seen enough Stellaris (A game by Paradox interactive) in my time to know we would do the same if the roles were reversed.

In situation A, aliens are like us, addicted to war crimes like an alchoholic to beer. We are not surviving that, no questions asked. Situation B suggests that Aliens are pacifists which would most likely mean they aren't expansionist. An alien civilization that isn't expansionist would probably never leave their own solar system, or at least for a very long time.

[poe-euan-baxter]

A side shot of Alice with her hair tied back. Yes her bangs are that stupidly long. This was fun to do and gave me a ton of experience with hair and perspective.

[poe-euan-baxter]

This was a better attempt at capturing Inoitoh's style but I think It's still just off. I think a third attempt is required. I am starting to see the patterns in how he draws though.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Inoitoh has an amazing art style and I've decided to actively study it. I think this was a decent attempt but can do much better.

[poe-euan-baxter]

I painted the mad captain on the blocks using acryllics. Using brushes on such a small scale was a pain as I'm inexperienced with them. I am satisfied with the turn out however.

[poe-euan-baxter]

When designing the mad captain model token thing I initially wanted to make it out of clay or super sculpy. However I found inspiration with this jumble of rat wooden pieces. I immediately went to designing a 2.5D version of the captain, using basic shapes. I settled on 4 layers, 2 arms, body + feet & the head + hat + ears. In the final cut out I chose not to use the nose and instead paint it. I plugged these into Adobe Illustrator and with some help, transferred the designs to a laser cutter, cutting out small, flat pieces of wood.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Designing the board game box:

When designing the packaging I wanted to make one with as little wasted space as possible. I hate plastic packaging and intended to make something that could hold everything without any wrapping, purely by compression. I intended to make some sort of model to show who is the captain and this would be squeezed against the cards to hold them in place. I also started designing the cover art for the game, the primary focus being to show off the "party game" aspect.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Alfred was the first character I designed for the campaign so I thought it would be fun to make another drawing of him. I use Krita for my art and the brush I used 99% of the time is one called "Bristles-4 Glaze." I find it works quite well for my liking. I specifically wanted to focus on the lighting, using aggressive shading to try and shake my tendency to use very slight gradients. I really like the effect I made. As standard I did the lines, then the base colours and shaded on top.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Every good villain needs goons, and for Elizabeth I have zombified students. They are controlled by magical puppet strings, boney growths coming out of them as the curse / infection / spell takes hold. The headpiece retains imagery from Elizabeth's Avatar, that being the feathers and donut block.

I utilized this pose piece as the base for the anatomy. I adjusted the body shape to be less feminine and made it more aggressive. I love the aesthetic of a creepy marionette doll enemy and making this threat be the people the party would study with other 3 months adds a nice personal touch.

[poe-euan-baxter]

The white whale is the monster that took Forsetia's father. It is a gigantic creature that dwarfs most ships and some Galleons. The 4 serpents attached to the whale are a part of it, not separate creatures. I did this pretty standard as to how most of my digitally painted work is, with sketches followed by a base layer and then shading. I specifically wanted to do this without lineart and minimal line work. The large tube in its mouth is a hydro cannon that can fire an immense jet of water with the serpents having mini versions of it.

The design is themed off of a mix of a whale, a boat and a shark with the back fin based off the rudder of a ship.

This reference was by far the one I used the most, I really liked the mouth and how it's a mix of a fish and a whale. It adds to the monstrous aspect of it.

My sketches in order of when I made them. I settled on a hybrid of the shape of 1 & 2 with the top of 3, adding in the top fin, front eye and rudder later. The 1st sketch is shorter because that's before I increased the canvas size. If I were to make a 5th trial I would keep the top heaviness of the 3rd trial and simply focus on improving the mouth. I did settle on a more gluttonous look though since that fits the idea of a carnivorous whale that brings death and destruction.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Designing a board game: cards!

When designing my cards I wanted a simple style but also one that has decoration to it. I feel that if I designed the cards too "extra" then that would distract from the game itself or give their eyes too much to look at in a sense. They are inspired by the designs of the cards from funemployed but I felt that those cards were designed too simply with too much white space. For these, I reduced the white space and added pirate themed illustrations.

The cards go as follows: Red - Slander: Use these to apply negative traits to someone else and make them look worse. Green - Persuasion: Use these to apply positive traits to yourself. Blue - Technical: These have special effects that can swap hands and even change the win condition of the game. Grey - Plank: These are also known as situation cards and are used to set the context that people will be playing around as well as keeping score of who has been thrown off the plank. Dark green - Curse: Optional cards that add an extra rule to how the game is played. Here's some examples:

Plank cards will have a second plank card played to add additional context. Only the 1st plank card is given out and the 2nd is reshuffled in.

The dimensions of the cards are double that of a standard playing card or 128mm x 178mm.

[poe-euan-baxter]

Forsetia Stormblood is a bonus character I made because I accidentally made my party too poor to go to university. She is the main character of a new side story to hunt sinners (fish) in the ocean with the hopes of catching their dark prince (the white whale.) Forsetia comes off as an overly enthusiastic crusader of justice but it's an act. Her father was consumed by the white whale when she was little. She is on a mission of revenge, one where her persona of righteousness is a coping mechanism. The second image is the one used after defeating the white whale, where she shows her true face, tired and rough around the edges. This is by far my most complicated design yet and it has a lot of mistakes but I am happy with it. She is actually a character design I revived from 2022, the axe hair cut meant to be a physical representation of her personality as an executioner of justice.

Her personality (well her fake one) is based off this specimen, Don Quixote from Limbus company. She lives in my head rent free.

[poe-euan-baxter]

In Winds of Change, the players can visit restaurants to cheaply engage with my new food system, one that gives buffs to those that properly fill their stomachs. Brombar Nielson is the owner of the Boar, a pub/tavern that serves traditional Celtic, Norse and Irish foods. His character is actually based off my Grandfather, a cheerful, simple man who laughs away his troubles. He also has a daughter, Hilda Nielson. Hilda is a little more on the temperamental side, as typical as a grumpy teenager can get. She works at the Boar as an assistant chef, Brombar wanting to pass on his skills as cook to his daughter as an excuse to spend time with her. Hilda is the second character I designed with partial AI assistance, also being a result of the apocalyptic fatigue after finishing the campaign. Making her wasn't necessary, I could have just had it so that she was away in University, but I felt that the story would suffer as a result, so I decided to include her.