Conjure Brief:

• Create a Conjure inspired by self-enriching escapism and flight
• Conjure should be humanoid, with crystalline wings
  • Wings should disperse light into rainbows
• Artwork should be vibrant and colourful, almost like an explosion of colour
• Posing should play into the supernova/explosion inspiration, a pose representing the Conjure ‘exploding’ with power and energy, visually accompanied by light rays coming out of the Conjure

Sketches and Ideas

I have a pretty solid visualisation of what I want Liberty to look like, so I’m not going to spend unnecessary time drawing up sketches, just to make sure I’m being as efficient as possible.

Designing Liberty

1. I began by making the humanoid, using a ‘let loose’ type of pose in which Liberty looks like they are ‘exploding’ outwards in an explosion of power and light. I then began on the wings. I was initially going to go for a more crystalline look, but I felt more organic curves would help to fit the shape language of the overall piece, since the Conjure itself is organic and humanoid.

2. With a wing design made, I then played around with chromatic aberration and glitch effects to make it look like the wings were manipulating the light around them, and as though they could not contain the light within them. I also began adding some light rays descending from the sky, as though Liberty is pulling light from above towards it.

3. I then added some chromatic aberration and bloom to the rays, to reference the prism inspiration and to really make them pop. I feel as though the imperfections and noise also help to make the piece feel more dramatic, really selling the idea that Liberty is letting loose.

4. Finally, I added some more noise and effects to the rays to make sure they stand out as best they can.

Final Default Artwork

Lifeline Protocol

1. I wanted Liberty’s new form to basically be a completely over the top version of the default art, so I began redesigning the wings to be completely asymmetric, and massive.

4. Finally got to a point where I can think about something OTHER than the wings. I’m really happy with how they turned out, the patterns are really interesting to me and they feel otherworldly, which I wanted.

2. Further development of Liberty’s wings. At this point, I realised it was important to keep an eye on the line weights that I was using, as that would be a major contributor to ensuring the wings flow organically.

5. I then began to mess around with some colour and bloom. I unfortunately found out that, to achieve the bloom effects I wanted, a lot of the detail in the patterns would be lost. I tried to circumvent this by masking over the centre to create a gradient from black to white, which shows more of the detail, but it doesn’t look right unfortunately.

3. My girlfriend suggested changing how Liberty looked in the centre, since it didn’t really fit in line with the progression from default art to Lifeline, and that I had unintentionally skipped over the seraph inspiration - so I went over the middle point and temporarily made it into a circle to go back to later. It was around this point that I realised this was going to be a really long piece, as this took me well over 5 hours of tinkering.

6. I then turned the whole piece white and just conceded to having to lose detail in the wings, but it’d be for the best. I also added an eye into the centre of the wings, to really sell Liberty’s ascension into a seraph-like being.

7. I began to experiment with glitch and noise effects to add some chaos to the piece in an effort to emphasise Liberty’s power.

8. Additional bloom and background experiments.

9. The background beginning to take shape. I opted to distort the background around Liberty in order to help it stand out.

Final Lifeline Artwork

Card Iteration History