Ascension Playing Cards 2 Deck Set
Ascension Playing Cards 2 Deck Set
From Creator Steve Minty:
With a certain personally beloved series broadcasting its final season this year, I was inspired to create these decks as an homage while giving it a spin in my style and interpretation. To me, the aspect I wanted to focus on were the diverse "families" depicted in the series as opposed to individual heroes, villains and so forth. Each house has their own agendas and values that they live (or die, a lot) by and I couldn't help but find that intriguing. I thought to myself, how could I represent each family visually and voila, "Ascension Playing Cards" came into existence.
Before I continue, I do want to point out that if you are expecting specific characters, that's not happening. While the characters are fantastic, I felt it was a disservice to the series and myself as it wouldn't be an inspiration, but rather a copycat. The face cards will follow a straightforward system of a patriarchal figure, matriarchal figure, children, advisors, and helpers.
Anyways, if you're still with me, here's the process on how I designed the decks:
When it came to designing the decks, I had to boil down the essence of the families into a couple of words to use as a launching point. The Wolves were dark, brooding and stalwart whereas the Lions were opulent, lush and ornate. In addition to that, I felt that it was obvious to incorporate the moon and sun motifs due to two factors:
1. It felt natural as wolves have been synonymous with howling at the moon and lions basked in the warmth of the sun.
2. It further visually contrasted with both families.
Once I had figured this out, my final goal was to tie these decks together so that it would be obvious to a passerby that they were designed to be in the "siblings". One solution is to color swap and call it a different edition, but I felt it wasn't enough. I decided that I didn't want that and so I walked a fine line to make it different enough so it embodies the essence of my distillation while making sure it was similar enough to each other that it wasn't jarring. I hope I was able to achieve that.
2019 Release