the intention to suggest, rather than to show. A lot of detail is implied.


HOW MUCH OF A DEPARTURE WAS CARD SHARK FROM YOUR PREVIOUS TITLES YOU’VE WORKED ON?


Not a significant departure as, even though each project looks distinct, the work process is not very different. What changes are the thematic and design requirements.


WHO WERE THE ARTISTS ON THE PROJECT AND WHAT DID THEY BRING TO THE IT? Three illustrators helped finalise the background art. Ana Pez produced the vast majority of the monoprinted textures based on my designs. She then worked with Pablo Alcázar and Marina Martin compositing the textures digitally to achieve the final look.


WHAT WERE THE ART TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES USED DURING DEVELOPMENT? The main technique was monoprinting, used to create the backgrounds, which is the process of spreading paint on a surface and stamping it on a paper in different ways. The characters are drawn in ink on paper. All the drawings are scanned, processed and colored digitally. The animations were created in the Spine animation tool.


WERE THERE ANY UNEXPECTED DIFFICULTIES IN IMPLEMENTING THE LOOK AND FEEL OF THE GAME? The main difficulty was how to break down and organise the animations for the cheating technique close-ups. They had to look consistent with the rest of the game: a hand drawn cut-out style animated at 12fps, however they could not be just a sequence of pre- made animations, instead they had to dynamically react to the player inputs and reflect at all times the state of the deck. Things such as the amount of cards changing in each hand, any injogged cards poking at the correct position in the deck and so on. Many of these animations are broken down into several skeletons and into many very short animations that are dynamically altered at runtime.


July 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 63


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