Morphite, Mexallon, Pyerite, and Tritanium from left to right, top to bottom. These are the four Resource Cards that come in the core box set for the War for New Eden Board Game. Believe it or not, these were surprisingly challenging pieces to get right.
Eve Online is twenty years old and you'd think after all this time we'd have tons of resources regarding minerals and ore built up. And while there is a good amount of third-party reference out there in the community - it is difficult to find accurate in-game references. Most of what is available is very very small screen-res icons. Like this:
And a lot of those third-party references contradict each other in significant ways. Of course they aren't going for total accuracy or anything, most of the guides out there are excellent and well made. But accuracy in visual representation isn't always the priority. I wanted to try and get these pieces as accurate as I could.
After much consternation I eventually came to the conclusion that total accuracy was a fool's errand on my part. I don't know why I was getting hung up on accuracy back in the early days of the project. I think I was feeling my way through the process and finding my way creatively. These four cards were done very early on, almost a year ago back in early August of last year. So these probably followed closely after the spaceship cards were completed.
I ended up using other card game art for reference on the style I wanted to use. I actually started out trying a few different styles, I even started drawing these in Illustrator at one point. But eventually I landed on a style I liked. I had never painted anything like this before and it took some practice getting my sea legs under me. But it isn't all that different and once I got the hang of it the pieces happened pretty quickly.
They are just four cards out of hundreds, but I'm proud of them and I hope they add to the enjoyment of the game. If you get the Resource Expansion you wont even need these cards and you can use the 3d pieces instead.