Icon See Clearly Now!

Planning for some of the cards started in earnest last night starting with a search for suitable icons for the Resource cards. The plan is to find images that I can use as inspiration for drawing my own icons in Inkscape.

That brings me to another decision; the majority of the graphics for this project will be developed in Inkscape. I've got the program installed both at home and at work, it's feature/capability rich, and best of all, it's vector based, which is something I'm very keen on; it provides the best image scaleability.

Finding individual images in similar styles might be a challenge; but with some reasonable effort, should be a surmountable problem. As I write this, the strangest idea has struck me; drawing icons and artwork in a similar style as Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick Comic. It would certainly have that whimsical appearance that I'm hoping for. I'd best tuck that idea away for now, I think.

Yesterday, I found a custom resource icon set on boardgamegeek.com that has a nice iconic/whimsical look to it. Check it out below:



It was the sheep and the wood that appealed to me the most. It fits the bill nicely, and will be relatively easy to trace and modify for my own purposes. I'm not entirely satisfied with the wheat and ore icons though; so I may look for alternates of them.

I've also started comparing different fonts in order to select a decorative font that I'll use for the Card Titles, a more practical font for the card body text, and a font for the numbers and letters on the chits.

With regards to the numbered chits, I've decided the easiest way to deal with them is to draft up the faces in Inkscape, and then glue/adhere them to circular wooden cutouts. 3/4" diameter cutouts ought to be just the perfect size. The technique of choice here will be to print the chit faces on a heavyweight, high quality paper stock using a color laser printer so prevent ink bleed - gee, I wonder where I can get access to that kind of equipment, heh heh. Then using carefully applied white glue or similar craft glue, attach them onto the cutouts, which will have been painted prior to the face application. Once the faces are applied, a clear acrylic spray lacquer/sealer applied in a couple or few thin coats. I know that sticker sheets could make the sticking to the wood cutouts easier; but in my experience, label sheets compromise the print quality, and the adhesion of the sticker sheet to the wood can sometimes be hit or miss.

I'm starting to put some thought into the hex tiles size. My initial thoughts were to make the tiles 3" from edge to opposite edge; but I have to do some diagrammatic planning to get an idea of how big that would make the fully laid out board.