🏹 Poker Face 🏹

Hullo Zelda Amino!!

Welcome to the final part of "The Balatro Batch"! If you missed the other suits, you can find them here:

Diamonds

Without further ado, let me introduce the final suit:

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Jack of Spades: Maeve's Sheikah/Gerudo Girlie

This girlie was revealed after I made my list, and I immediately changed it upon seeing her design. I also pushed myself with the pose for this card and was honestly prepared for it to be a bad idea, but it genuinely turned out way better than I thought??? Why didn't I try something like this before???? Anyway, I am really happy with the final result, and I hope you like it, Maeve ^^

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Queen of Spades: Cosmic's Ethyura

I said last year that I would eventually draw a full body of Ethyura, and this kind of counts??? I still want to draw her properly one day, but we're getting closer!! I decided to really play into the butterfly motif this time to the point that I may have misinterpreted her bodice??? But I still hope you like it, Cosmic!!

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King of Spades: Illoganatii's Logan

Fun fact: this one piece is the entire reason I decided to start this project. I realized that I had never attacked Illo despite us both participating in every Art Fight (though the first year doesn't count since I was on his team), so I knew I had to this year. I don't exactly what led me to land on the idea of making my attack one of the Balatro playing cards, but I do that it originally was only going to be for Illo... and then I extended it to everyone else, and I'm so glad I did. As for Illo's card, I honestly had so much fun with the armor design and really only struggled with the left pauldron (which is why it looks kinda weird). I also changed my plan for the border -- I was originally going to use the sword for the border -- and I'm so glad I did. Overall, I'm just really happy with this one, and I'm sorry it took four years to finally attack you, Illo ^^"

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Ace of Spades: Will's Profile Picture

Rounding out the suit, we have the lovely Blupee Lady who should totally be adapted into a full character. I honestly struggled with translating the hair, so if it looks bad, I'm so sorry :')) That said, I did have a lot of fun trying to think of how to translate the details to fit the pixel limitations, and am genuinely very happy with the final result.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention this was a counter for this beautiful picture of Aesther how did I forget that oh my goodness--

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...did you think I was done?

You see, a deck of cards traditionally has 52 cards -- four suits with 13 cards each -- but most modern decks have 54. So then, where do these additional cards come from??

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Bonus Joker - Loran's Antonio

Not going to lie, I had no idea how I was going to do the skull (since I wasn't sure how to translate it into the pixel style), so I did reference Balatro's Mr. Bones to figure out how to shape things. Once I was over that hurdle, the next problem was actually the color palette -- I know Loran had said something about how to color Antonio when I asked, but I am an idiot who forgot to screenshot it so I forgot... hence why I just decided to go greyscale to play it safe. I will say that I am genuinely very proud of this one, especially the hat, as this design would already challenge me if I was just drawing normally, but translating it to pixel art? I genuinely wasn't sure if I could do it.

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Bonus Joker - Madoka's Sona

Madoka attacked me really early on (as in, day one) with this beautiful portrait of Miki, so naturally I had to attack her back at some point in time... my plan for how I would do so just kept changing. I originally was only going to have the one Joker for Loran, but then I ed that a lot of decks have two Jokers (though technically you can have a deck with only one or even up to six), and decided this would be the perfect way to counter. I did struggle a little bit with the Fierce Deity markings, but I hope I did them justice. I also kept debating if I wanted to include the eyes or not, but did decide to include them in the end.

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This project has been quite the undertaking, but it was genuinely so much fun. It's so fascinating looking at this last suit compared to the first, as you can definitely see me growing more comfortable with this style and its limitations while also learning how to push those limitations. In some ways, I still can't believe I did it?? Like, if you told the Dorkling of last year that she would make this...

...she would think you were lying.

Anyway, with this project completed, it is time to begin work on my final attack (and perhaps any others I have the time for). I'm super excited for everyone to see what I have planned for it, but until then...

#TeamBow