Place du Supplice
(Place of Torment)
Concept Art - Customizable Card Game
This picture is part of the "Ashragors" world design project which can be found HERE
Common Card
Since many effects of the Ashragors' cards would imply many, many gruesome consequences for the opponent's deck, I had to use a form of variation in their depiction to avoid any feeling of redundancy. Ergo, I chose purposefully a distant framing of the actual torture scene which was ongoing, instead of a close depiction of the torture scene itself (I was keeping that option for the "Torture" card below). Preparing in advance a set choice of concepts helps you to decide faster which concept you apply to which scene and you save more time.
Thus, the "Place of Torment" card was my "zoomed out" scene as it was serving the concept of the "place" type of card, enabling me to emphasize more onto the architecture than onto the character figures.
The scene is bathed in hellish red with the inferno's light source coming upwards, inducing an effect of an underground "dark cathedral" mixed with middle-age catacombs. The only bright contrast of the card is on the distant scene in the middle of the card where three hooded figure are surrounding a man bound to a torture stake ; it helps to guide the eye towards the burning source of bright yellow light, almost white, of the scene, evoking the color of an iron bar brought to a white hot temperature… The iron grate made of spikes on the left foreground is also here to guide the eye towards the main scene.
You don't know what is really going on here, but you might definitely guess; sometimes, suggesting is better than showing…
