Expenditure

Maile Sakamoto (Visual Designer, Artist)

David Ball (Designer, Programmer)

Expenditure is a deckbuilder card game where you conquer planets and played cards are lost forever in the vacuum of space. Heavily inspired by Gwent (2015). Developed in Godot 4.5, art made with Clip Studio Paint and Procreate.

Our goal for the project was to show off our respective skills applied into an MVP with a small trailer.

Early Development

Visual Development

Art Creation and Final

Final Product, Trailer (WIP)

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Inspirations

Gwent from Witcher 3 (2015) Star Wars Battlefront (2017)

Our goal was to make a card game, and David referenced Gwent from his playthrough of Witcher 3. The limited card deck, 3 rounds, 2 lives and point system, were all pivotal to our development.

We decided to iterate on the larger meta-loop of the game, where you gain/lose cards in your deck between games on a map. For that layout, Star Wars Battlefront II had an elaborate starmap of the galaxy, which we used as further inspiration for the setting.

Design

Based on these, we made a quick physical test deck (with cards we planned out on left paper) and played some rounds to figure out the full scope of our deck.

Visual Development

The themes of our game so far worked around space and warfare technology. My art style typically strays from such, so the first question I asked was, "How do I bridge my art style with the current themes?"

As I tend to experiment with my art style and processes, I created a moodboard for certain pieces that could be applied. This mostly included painterly/rendered styles with harsh lighting and bright colors, particularly with a warmer color palette.

From there, I assembled a moodboard of similar aesthetics to my defined style. This included a retro-style space aesthetic with collage elements, which laid the groundwork for experimentation.

Moodboard

My art style is stronger with biomorphic forms, so I discovered some interesting heavy gear with animal motifs inspirations. The idea of limited resources for living things helps push the feeling of desolation. I also analyzed some art I thought worked great compositionally for cards.

Card Process Development

From the moodboard, I took select inspiration to develop a single card all the way to finish. Once I had a sketch, I referenced a rendering process of one of my past pieces, graphical elements for the card border, and the lighting and composition of the art.

I also tested different processes for doing line art to account for balancing time and quality in the process. The 3hr line art was done tracing over the sketch, the 1hr line art was done subtractive-ly with an eraser.

Once I had the finished product, I took a step back to analyze the workflow. The card took me 8 hours total, with shading taking the most time.

As feedback, David suggested analyzing the work of Mike Mignola, whose art style is bold and graphical, but simple with little to no shading. I applied this artstyle to the cards I developed moving forward.

Streamlining the process of creating cards was essential, as I had to complete 12 cards within 2 weeks time IN ADDITION to all other supporting art. It was also important to maintain consistency, clarity, and modularity for easier implementation into the project.

Art Creation

I approached this again with a mindset of "measure twice, cut once". Before I got into drawing each card art, I spent some time finalizing the card borders and backgrounds, which I later used in my Clip Studio file to ensure each character didn't clash with the colors and patterns.