Astraware Solitaire - a sneak peek...
You've probably noticed from our Preview Page that Astraware Solitaire is coming soon, and I've been working on the graphics for it.
One of the more interesting parts is creating decorative card backs. When the game was in the planning stages, the staff threw around some ideas for card backs and the first one that came up was a set of characters from Astraware games. Some of the older characters, like Dirk Nebula, needed a makeover in the graphics department, so we've buffed him up a bit, and this is his new look.
Next, we asked our beta testers for some suggestions and got loads of great ideas including Landscapes, Pets, and Outer Space. In fact we had over 30 suggestions for themed card backs. Some ideas couldn't be used because they feature copyrighted characters, but many have been included and for the first release of the game we hope to have about 25 different card backs, some of which will be unlocked by achieving certain things in the games.
One of the suggestions which came from the beta testers was Mythical Characters, and this Unicorn is the first card from the set.
To give you an idea of how this is created, I start with a basic sketch on A4 paper which takes about 5 minutes. Once I'm happy with the basic picture, I scan it into my PC and use Photoshop to build up layers of colour and detail.
When I'm working on the picture I have to bear in mind that not all of the picture is visible when the cards are being played in game. Here's an example using our Cute Alien card. The production process takes about 4 hours in total.
When the full size image is finished, I flatten it, shrink it down and modify its colours to make it display well on handheld screens with only 256 colours. That can sometimes remove some of the detail in the picture, so I zoom in to the image and add it back in pixel by pixel. Once that's done I make 4 different card sizes to cover all the screen resolutions and I create a half-flipped version for the card animation.
The next step is to hand the graphics over to Kat and she puts them into the game.
We're always happy to get feedback and suggestions from the people who are going to play the games, so if there's a particular type of picture you'd like to see on the card backs, why not reply to this post in our forum? You never know, it might appear in the finished game!