The Temporal War is a board game created by Infinity Fiction LLC. The game is a cross between a dice-battler and a trading card game.

I was hired as the lead artist on the project and had QUITE a lot to do on this project

Go to the website

The first part of this project was of course, to create the logo. The logo is representative of the 6 crystals in the game that serve as gateways to the battleground; 1 for each faction. I took some inspiration from the success of the triforce from the Zelda series. With a focus on rotational symmetry, the logo came out quite nicely.

Next, came the card design. This was the original card design, which utilized the crystals even further. One crystal per stat with abstract symbols underneath to help identify each stat. This design didn’t work for a number of reasons. One being that even with the shapes, it wasn’t very clear which stat was which, and the another being that it forces the illustration to be much smaller.

The second design, however, was much more successful for readability. Still going with the crystal concept, I crafted crystalline symbols to correspond with each stat. One of the stats was nixed in developments, leaving 5 instead, which really helped with the design. The warrior class symbol and size symbol (in the bottom left and right respectively of the old design) was also removed, but in it’s place came the rarity symbol. Overall, I think the first design was way more visually appealing, but the second was way more practical and readable, so this is the design that stuck. Also, the QR code is only for this card as it is a promo card the CEO wanted to use to help promote the game.

As for the card art, this was the first illustration I worked on for this project. I spent a LOT of time on this piece as it was to be used to promote the game and also had the face of the game’s creator within the piece. Below is the reference I used to make sure it looked just like him. I ended up doing around 70 Illustrations for this project, and you can see them all if you scroll all the way down. This one was important so I decided to give it it’s own section.

After designing the card fronts, next was to design the back of the cards. I approached this knowing the logo needed to be front and center. I also warped a hexagonal grid and created nebula-like structures to replicate that warped grid as the game is played on a hexagonal board. Painted some stars and swirly effects and added the watermark in the bottom right corner.

Designing the cards wasn’t all that I was tasked to do. I was tasked with the design of every single element of the game as well! Pictured here are the game board and tile pieces (but only one faction is shown. Two tile sheets were made for each faction.)

Beasts

Humans

Angels

Elves

Undead

Demons

Factionless

Another design element I was tasked with was designing logos for each faction type. I thoroughly enjoyed this endeavor and I feel like I came up with some really cohesive designs. For example, the angels are the faction that watch over everyone so their design is an eye embedded within a wing. The elves logo functions both as an elf ear and as a leaf as they are closest to nature.

I was also tasked with adding three additional card types. One for spells, one for the wraiths, and one for equipment and I achieved this by using an astral-like design for the spells and combining leather and metal textures for the equipment. The wraiths, I went for a blue fire texture to showcase the evil nature of the wraiths. Pictured to the right of the wraith cards is the Chaos Wraith, which I made a full art card out of to showcase their power and have players notice immediately when they draw him that they are about to have to fight for their lives.