#not the secret knots

The HDMI Law: IT’S ALWAYS UPSIDE DOWN

Good morning, Nina

Going through some old boxes, I found the mock-up of the card game I designed as my college degree project. It’s a game about Dreams, so it’s called simply “Sueños”

It was a graphic design project and sort of thesis at the same time, so it also involved research into new aesthetics in fantasy art (back then, around 2004) and its impact on various media.

That’s why it features a lot of digital collage and some art trends from the late 90’s going into mid 00s, particularly more than a pinch of influence from artist Dave McKean.

It had a fancy cardboard clock (sadly missed), to show the time progression of the “night” during the game occurs in.

The game has two types of cards overall, the first one is “Dreams”, divided in four kinds: Fears and traumas, Visions, Daily debris (I’m quick translating here) and Archetypes.

All of which come from different traditions or interpretation of the act of dreaming in culture: archetypes, for instance, come from Jungian theories, while “visions” were more in line with traditional magical thinking.

The second type of card was called “Laws”, and had several authors that deal with dreams in their work, writers and thinkers. Those are the cards with the yellow page.

WhileDreams were played in a simple way, similar to some traditional cards games, Lawcards permuted some rules. It was a rules light game, after all.

As a curiosity, one of the authors featured in the Law cards is @neil-gaiman, specifically due to The Sandman, which was of course a big influence for the project. He was featured in the company of Goya, Borges and Shakespeare, which I believe would please him.

It’s a lovely, pretty much complete game model, living in my old boxes. I have good memories of working on this project, and over the years I’ve even seen some similar ideas around (as it happens with all ideas in time).

Hello Bruno.

A small poster I made for a friends’ band gig. The shadowy kid is like their recurring character. Here’s the illustration without titles

I wanted to draw a crazier fantasy car, but I found myself out of my depth on that idea, specially considering the time that I had, so I stayed near to a real Cadillac as reference. Still, I’d love to draw wacky machines sometime. There’s a small glimpse of strange machines in the next Secret Knots comic, which I think may have been a reminder of this itch.