The two earliest doodles of characters that would eventually inspire Sayonara Wild Hearts were not tarot card themed. The theme of tarot cards came as we were imagining the story to revolve around a pyramid which the protagonist would visit to have her fortune read.

The tarot characters differed a bit from the final versions. The Queen of Swords was meant to be a short fighting sequence, which eventually turned into the dance-battling level “Fighting Hearts”, and The Towers (with lightning inspired masks) was changed to the VR-mask wearing Hermit 64. These pieces of concept art was made using paint-overs of reference poses and photos. We often use very quick photo collages and paint-over to get ideas across internally. Both are great methods if you are not skilled at drawing.