Epic Duels Aesthetics

Along with the 8 decks from the Disney movies, I updated 9 other decks with nice new card back art, which include the minor as well as the major character. The only exception is Jyn Erso, for whom I tried to merge some Commando minors into the art I’m using for the back, but the really awesome art looks better as it is, with no minors on it.

Rogue One decks: Cassian & K-2SO, Chirrut & Baze, Director Krennic

Force Awakens decks: Finn & Poe, General Hux, Rey & BB-8, Kylo Ren

Old decks: 4-LOM & Zuckuss (found the old image that Rich made), Adi Gallia & Stass Allie, Ahsoka & Rex, Cin Drallig (had this image for a long time, don’t know why it wasn’t included), The Great Jabba, Ki-Adi-Mundi, Nute Gunray, Plagueis & Sidious, Plo Koon

Why now?

I had always been bad at making card backs, but in designing some of the Rogue One decks, I had a breakthrough.

Used to be, unless I used to either have to find a suitable image with both the major and minor (e.g. Lando & Han, Tarfful & Chewbacca), or just picture the major (e.g. Aayla Secura, Bultar Swan) or ask Rich (e.g. Luminara, Tarkin) or Docmogs (e.g. Darth Sidious, Shaak Ti) to make backs for me, or just lift the back directly from someone else’s deck (I don’t think I have any that still fit that description but I honestly can’t say for sure).

Then, I found that I was able to successfully merge images for the major and minor in the Cassian & K-2SO deck and realized that I had already done the same for Rey & BB-8 and for Finn & Poe. Then I realized that hey, I can do it! So then I went back and identified a bunch of other decks where the minor was missing. I especially like getting personality minors into the relevant backs, such as Sidious with Plagueis or Stass Allie with Adi Gallia, but also strong, unique minors like Nute’s Droidekas, Ki-Adi-Mundi’s ARC Troopers and Jabba’s Gammorean Guards.

However, I’m still not great at these, so I may not ever get to all the decks. I haven’t figured out how to have images fade to transparent or fade to black, limiting what I can do. A good example is the Nute Gunray deck, where I was just able to set a shooting Droideka as a background to Nute, as opposed to fading the images into each other like the original Luke & Leia deck does. In most cases, I just snuck the minor’s image into a corner, like with Ahsoka & Rex or Plagueis & Sidious.  I also wish I had more images for a young Sidious but they’re pretty impossible to find.

Therefore, I may never bother addressing all the deck backs in this way. Aayla Secura and Bultar Swan, for example, should have Clone Troopers on their deck backs, but do you really miss them? They’re just Clones, not personality minors, not even ARC Troopers. A lot of work and it might not even make them look better, nor add any key information. The Plagueis back might actually have looked better before, but Sidious is such a key minor that I felt it worth making it possibly worse to include him, but I don’t feel the same way about Clone Troopers.

Anyways, check out the new deck backs and let me know what you think!

 

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