The Art may fall into my responsibility as well... At least some of it...

So I have not mentioned in this blog yet that I do have some experience and skill in field of Art.  Back in my teenage days I would spend countless hours drawing and coloring pictures, usually based on comics or fantasy.

It is a hobby I have not developed very much, nor invested time/energy over the years.  I have discovered through the game developing process that gathering Art for cards is a little bit of a challenge, particularly at a low cost.  I appreciate that artists require funding for their skill and time, it is how they make a living after all!

It would probably be a lot easier if I had a lot of money to pay, or if I was a well known game designer, but neither of those is the case right now.

Sooo.... to get this game off the ground I am going to invest some of my personal time and energy over the coming months into drawing/coloring my own images for some of the cards.  Primarily things like creatures and items (I struggle with faces/poses when it comes to people, but I may forge into that area once I am more comfortable with digital art forms).

Years ago my wife was kind enough to give me a Wacom tablet to use for digital art.  I have only used it a few times over the past three years... now its time to put it to the test.

I have tried a few programs for digital art that I have not liked, as either the tools or interface don't seem to work for me (ie Inkscape, GIMP).  I am sure they are great for some, just not for me.  After doing some more net searches and video examples I have decided to give Krita a try, it looks like it has all the features I am looking for, with a focus on drawing tools and brushes.  I will post my first art piece on here once I am satisfied with it (this could take a day, or even a week depending on how the program works).

I also discovered a simple application called PureRef, which keeps an image of your reference pic on the screen (without having to toggle windows, etc).  Going to try that as well.

Now... what to try and make first?

I think I am going to try and make one of my favorite animal creatures from the game... Savage Bear.  The idea is to have a partial image of the bear (like a closeup) with it swiping a massive paw (which is the card's combat ability).  Will have to see how it goes.