Daniel Solis

  If you're at PAX Unplugged this weekend, you'll see four Marvel games I've been working on as art director/graphic designer. Looking at these now and what's coming in the future, I'm really proud of how different we were able to make each of them look, even with the same IP across them all. While you're at the WizKids booth, give Marvel: Remix a try and receive a Squirrel Girl card when you purchase the game! Marvel: Damage Control and Marvel: Age of Heroes will also be available for demo games. These are both original game designs. Age of Heroes is designed by Rodney Thompson and Damage Control is designed by Omari Akil.  Hope you enjoy them!

  Here's a full design session where I lay out a rulebook from scratch. I start with the original text doc provided by the client and go over my step-by-step process of breaking it down, then building it back up into a first draft rulebook. It's a long one, so if you have any questions along the way feel free to ask! [Originally published April 30, 2017]

  Here's an extra bit of my interview with Seth Jaffee about revising Yokohama for Tasty Minstrel Games. This time we focus pretty much on the rulebook on its own, from the writing to little details in the diagrams. It's good stuff. Many thanks to Seth for lending his time for this call and to Adam McIver for letting me use high-res images of the rulebook for the slideshow at the end. [Originally published March 31, 2017]

My new jigsaw puzzle just dropped! » THESE BOOKS DO NOT EXIST 20 covers from (nonexistent) author Clubworth Croak, all in one dizzying image. This includes all your favorite novel cover tropes: Cloak Guy! Silhouette of Lady with Hair Bun! Inexplicable still photo of one object on a neutral background! And more! Phew! This took a long while to put together! Hope you have fun with it! 

Here's a little InDesign goodie for you this week. It's a complete paragraph style with GREP strings that automatically turns text into colored euro-style cube icons.  Red cube is [R] Orange cube is [O] Yellow cube is [Y] Green cube is [G] Blue cube is [B] Indigo cube is [I] Violet cube is [V] Black cube is [K] White cube is [W] Just type the code and the icon magically appears! Here's a video tutorial showing it in action. Download "Eurocube" paragraph style and font kit [Originally published February 22, 2017]

Let's go into more detail about a very common art direction task: A single character on a transparent background. You'll be doing this kind of art order a LOT in this business, so I thought it was worth exploring. Hopefully you still dig this topic! [Originally published February 15, 2017]

  This video introduces the basics of the art director job. What does an art director do exactly? What can you learn from the job when you have to hire and direct an artist?  Take a look and see! [Originally published January 20, 2017]

Here's a card design template inspired by the sci-fantasy aesthetic of digital CCGs that was popular a few years ago. You get layered TIFs of each card design with five different colors so you can toggle the name bar, sidebar, and text window. You also get the original PSD complete with every original layer and the original vector INDD wireframe design. Download "Star Duel" Card Design Template [Originally published on Patreon October 26, 2016]

  This episode of card at work is all about scoring tracks! Those humble devices that keep track of your current score during the game. Now, you'll get some opinions out there about one type of scoring tracker being objectively better than another, but I tend to take a more subjective view. This video outlines four different methods of keeping score, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to best handle their graphic design. This video closes with a handful of best practices applicable to any style of scoring track. Thanks so much for your support! If you have any comments or questions, please leave them down below. If you have other topics you'd like me to discuss, feel free to make a request! Thanks so much! [Originally published on December 15, 2016]

  This episode continues the previous lesson  in setting up custom tags for highlighting key words in card text. In this lesson, we learn how to make "capsule" style highlights that flow with your text. No need for anchored graphics with this method! This episode concludes with a peek at I CAN'T EVEN WITH THESE MONSTERS, the first in my I CAN'T EVEN card game series. The card text in this game uses more advanced highlight tags which include special "escape" slashes in the GREP expression. The result is a tagging system that pretty much looks just like HTML, which makes it easier for your team to style their raw text. If you found this useful or have some additional techniques related to this, please share in the comments! [Originally published on Patreon: September 15, 2016]

Hi! I'm Daniel Solis and this blog has been dormant for a long time. Given the shake-ups on other social media platforms, I thought it prudent to revive this blog again for game ideas, graphic design tutorials, free downloads, and other ephemera. You know, a blog. If you're new here, I've had a few games published over the years, including: Indie Game Studio * Kodama: The Tree Spirits * Kodama Duo * Trickster: Champions of Time Renegade Games * Junk Orbit * Spacebattle Lunchtime * Wonderland Buttonshy Games * Anthelion and its expansions * Pod-X * Kintsugi (with Mark McGee) Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games * The Cube: Area 51 (with Drew Hicks) * Belle of the Ball These days, I haven't been hustling so hard to get published. I'll still share the odd game mechanic idea here, but I'd like to expand it beyond just game design. Aside from this place, http://www.patreon.com/danielsolis is where you can toss me a couple bucks if you like my stuff. You'll get access