Development Diary #14

A CREST FOR THE FALLEN

I finished the Astracite crest, hooray! I'm now officially halfway done with the crests, which will let me move on to all the other things I need to do. Unlike the Xizeks and the Ethereals, I did not get to start the painting process for the crest. I do have a sketch of the original concept, which has changed since finishing the final version, but the differences aren't that exciting to elaborate on.

Something borrowed, something Trilisian Blue

So here is the crest in all its parasitic glory.

The key things I wanted to capture in this image was the Astracite's parasitic nature and reference to the Trilisians, which were wiped out by the Astracites when they arrived to Immacus. The skull is the classic Trilisian shape, and the blue fire is the Trilisian fire that burns from their heads.

The trinity of pure Astracite references are the tentacles, iconic eye, and D'Dorian's armor color reference. The shape of the crest is also an homage to the Astracite's kingdom icon.

Desaturate the hate

In the original card frame, I used the saturated pink/salmon colors that were the classic Astracite colors. However, as I added art into the card frame, I found those saturated colors really distracted from the art image. To rectify this, I dramatically desaturated their tentacle/skin color. The crest used desaturated tones that mimic the Astracite card frame header.

What's next?

Well doing the Astracite Crest was a lot of fun because it was my first step outside of the Xizek and Ethereal world in a long time. They are a mean mechanic-heavy kingdom that is punishing to their opponents. I'm looking forward to seeing how people play the Astracties as well as rallying behind their cool-looking crest. I hope the players enjoy the crest as much as I enjoyed making it.