Visual world / Commander system / print artifact

Compleated
Loyalty

A deck, a visual language and a production system built together.
The mechanics shaped the imagery. The imagery changed how the deck was understood. The print process forced both to become consistent.

01

The project

A visual world with rules underneath it.

Compleated Loyalty grew from a five-colour planeswalker Commander deck into a design project about corruption, transformation and control.

The aim was never simply to put new art on cards. The deck needed a consistent visual grammar: biomechanical architecture, porcelain and machine surfaces, black oil, corrupted light, and a captured Prismatic Bridge as the central image. At the same time, every card still had to remain usable, legible and mechanically faithful.

Art directionCard systemsPrint productionGameplay doctrineQuality controlWorld-building

Actual project assets

The images are the artifact.

Finished and review-stage assets are shown with their production state intact. The gallery is intentionally not a wall of generic mood imagery: it documents the work that was actually made.

Before and after comparison of The Prismatic Bridge card interface — **Interface refinement**A visible before / after record rather than hiding the iteration.Process evidence

Creative + logical

The system beneath the surface.

The visual result only works because the invisible parts were treated with the same care. This is where the project most clearly shows how I work: atmosphere and structure developed together.

01 / visual grammar

One world, many cards

Biomechanical borders, dark cathedral architecture, machine textures and corrupted light create continuity without making every card identical.

02 / information

Legibility is part of design

Title fields, rules boxes, symbols, typography, crop safety and brightness were treated as system-level decisions rather than one-off fixes.

03 / production

Review before “final”

Large master files were broken into category batches so artwork, text and print geometry could be checked before anything entered a final-ready state.

Mechanics as narrative

Establish → Endure → Breach → Multiply → Ascend

The deck’s play doctrine became a useful expression of the same design idea: build the system, protect it, open the Bridge, then let loyalty and proliferation compound. Theme supports performance rather than replacing it.

Process

Iteration is visible here.

The project repeatedly moved from aesthetic experiment to technical correction. Keeping the intermediate evidence matters because it shows why the final language looks the way it does.

Start with identity

Lock the central image, theme and role before polishing the interface around it.

Find the failure

Missing text, inconsistent borders, off-centre symbols or overly dark print output are treated as design failures, not cosmetic annoyances.

Correct without erasing

Preserve approved artwork while rebuilding the part that actually failed: type, layout, crop, brightness or production geometry.

Validate the artifact

Check the real output — card-sized print sheets, category PDFs, a 61 × 35.5 cm playmat and manufacturer preview — rather than judging only on screen.

Production state

Finished where finished.
Open where open.

The site distinguishes between a completed artifact and a review asset. That keeps the story accurate and makes the project more useful as a record of process.

PlaymatDigitally finished / print positioned

LandsApproved v3.7 batch

Commander + creaturesReview-stage interface assets

EmblemsAccessory system preserved

Back to the creative world See the wider process

Compleated Loyalty / David Walsh

Design the world.
Then make the system hold.

For me, that is the point of the project: the creative decision and the logical decision should reinforce each other until the result feels inevitable.

Approved land detail

Prairie Stream

Project archive

CompleatedLoyalty