New test print

The first layout changes! Now the artwork is a little more maximized and centralized. Also I really like the wet plate look they have now. I will be printing these off soon to compare them to the old design, also to make sure they work as card game cards still.

The Wet plate photo effect is not easy to apply so I want to find a way to streamline the process for the next batch of cards. I mean there is at least 128 to do...

UPDATE:

After printing this out I noticed that everything about these cards was far too dark for printing, presumably that is the difference between printing the cards out and having them on screen. The wet plate effect needs refining, at present the effect is geared up to work on photographs, as such it does not work on these illustrations. I will update the process and upload the image next.

Braggart: A similar game

While board games is not as large (or profitable) a market as their digital cousins, it is every bit as competitive. While shopping for other card games I was told of a card game known as Braggart; quite frankly it sounded as though it was almost exactly the same game as Preposterous! Now if this game was exactly the same as as Preposterous it would mean that the concept was sound and profitable (depending on how well the game did), but it was also mean that I could not produce preposterous. To my relief the game was very different to my game, focusing on very different ideas to that of my card game. Similarly in braggart your aim is to impress people with tales of great deeds with story element cards. However unlike my game in Braggart the cards come in 4 categories, the perfect construction of a story being one of each; the cards also have exact sentences used to make up the story, meaning there is no player based storytelling at all!

When I first heard about Braggart I was concerned for my concept, however after seeing the game's mechanics and workings I feel a need to distance myself from this. I Was thinking of giving a numerical value to different proof cards to determine proof strength, however after seeing this system it seems completely counter-productive to what I want to do with Preposterous. The idea behind Preposterous is that the true strength of analog games is role-playing and that systems should encourage this instead of finding ways to ignore it. I need to keep this in mind as I finish refining the rules for Preposterous!

Proof card layout change

The last design for the proof card was far too busy, to improve the card I have decided on a second, slightly better layout. My next move is to go through the other card layouts and fine tune them slightly, hopefully improving the card game as I do.

The Artwork is here!

Lipstick mark artwork first pass
by Rebecca Michalak

What a summer! I have just got ahold of 90 of the images for my Preposterous game! I think they really capture the mood of the world and while some of them require slight tweaking (this one as an example the lipstick mark is a tad too big) they perfectly capture Preposterous world, providing a much needed immersion. 

I have been looking into different post processing methods for the images to make them look as if they are 'wet plate photography'. I really like the results, especially when combined with background imagery. I do need to go out and take some background photographs (at current I am using a stock background image, something I do not want to do for the final) however this should not be too much of a problem.

Same image with post process effects.

I was lucky enough to find a tutorial for the above effect : 

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/wet-plate-photo-effect/

Obviously I did not follow this tutorial to the letter but I did follow it very closely!

My next step is to redesign the Card layouts, making sure to take in the feedback I received on the previous designs; the key focus I want the new cards to have is the stunning artwork!

While I am doing that my artist will be finishing off the box art and adding finishing touches to the card art. I will also need to make a final choice on font, I might even need to make my own if I have the time!

But things are looking up for preposterous now that the artwork is coming in...