Dominion - A Personal & Artistic Adventure

With this project finally completed, I have had some time to think about what I have learned, what I liked and disliked. Overall I found this a very enjoyable project, certainly one of the most interesting I have ever done in my academic life. One aspect that was very appealing to me was the task of doing some cool artwork for all the different counters and species. This was one thing that from the very beginning I knew would enjoy as well as to give me a chance to show off what I felt was one of my stronger talents. One thing that I had not initially grasped however was the sheer amount of artwork our game would require. Having built up a reasonable ability using photoshop over the years, I felt I was ready for such a task and very much enjoyed the challenge.

The first thing that player should notice when playing the game is the different ship counters. The silhouettes of the different ships was an idea I had at the very beginning of the long personal journey that is Dominion. I had originally planned to have the different ship types displayed as a normal type of picture maybe in an isometric view. However I also wanted to do something a little different and so tried out a few designs with a blacked out silhouette. I was very happy with the initial results and so tried to create some alien looking silhouettes for the other playable species that had to be named. Again I was happy with the early results and so decided to go with this for the first edition of the game. After much positive feedback I decided to keep this look and got to work churning out the various craft employed by the different species. While many of these did not make it to the final edition of the game, this was a rewarding and fun part of the project and something I would like to pursue again in the future.

The gameboard which has been discussed already was something that would be the most noticeable part of the game and again I was very happy with the final look.

Each of the different planets, anomalies and colonies also need their own counters. As well as being a sci fi nerd, I am also avidly interested in astronomy and planetary study. I have read and do read as much as I can about the different planets in our solar system as well as the more exotic extrasolar worlds being discovered all the time. I like to think I have a good knowledge of the different worlds so far discovered as well as how we think they have formed. Over the last year I have been steadily creating planets in photoshop as I enjoy visualising how these bizarre objects could look. So for Dominion, I had a lot of planets ready made that could be used in the game. I also took the project as an opportunity to create lots of new ones, and can now populate a couple of solar systems with my collection. I wanted to give the game as much variety as possible so creating these new worlds was quite necessary.

For the different colonies, I had planned to create a view of a world slowly being colonised from a frontier outpost until it eventually ended up as a ecumenopolis. This was an enjoyable part also, as it gave me a chance to tryout some new techniques in photoshop as well as trying to create a realistic colony and its gradual growth. The other aspect of this was to try to come up with different types of habitations for the other 3 alien races we had so far. With the species ranging from an intelligent biomechanical fluid to creatures living in the hot superfluid cores of gas giants, this was an interesting part of the project. Creating the helium mines was also very interesting as I have often thought about how such levitating facilities would look. Again i was happy with the final result, but would have liked to have spent more time on them. This is also something I plan on revisiting.

There were also a deck of resource cards, research cards and the gamebox that all needed to be done. These also went through several revisions during the games development as rules were added and subtracted. Other anomalies needed were asteroids, nebula, derelicts, demigods and some alien hitch-hikers. There were also several others created that were cut from the final game such as minefields and hyperspace disturbances. All in all it was a very busy task coming up with the many different parts of the game as almost every element needed a image and counter. In the end, probably forgetting one of two things, Dominion required 36 different ships, 20 different colonies, 15 planets, 10 anomalies, 12 research cards, 2 research resource cards,  metal & helium cards, 4 gameboard sections, 4 HUDs, upper and lower lids for the games box, numerous different examples of gameplay and all the different revisions each of these images went through, all done in 3 weeks! While enjoyable and challenging this is one of the most exhausting projects I have ever worked on.

Despite the high workload, as mentioned several times, this was a very rewarding experience throughout the project and I look forward to flexing my artistic muscle in creating something digital in the semesters to come.