Hey everyone!
Read below for an exclusive offer for united cardists
Firsty, WOW! loving this feedback guys!
really appreciate it!
and yes Dawn, being concise with what I say is something that I really need to work on.
Thankyou for all the comments everyone! and sorry for this late reply as I have been crasy busy with kickstarter, work, family and deck developments for this project.
Your feedback has been very helpful and I have been taking all of it onboard as I move forward with developments for this project and I have now added an exclusive reward tier for cardists wanting to unite in support of me as an artist so that I may be able to bring you decks of the highest quality in the near future by setting up shop with new manufacturer and new card stock........the best part is, 'YOU' get to vote on who that will be and I will make it happen!!.
You can vote for card card manufacturer, card stock, plus suggest any other special design features you would like to see the decks have and I will make it happen and get the decks produced to your needs and delivered to you
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See Project Page link below for the new Cardists Unite Pledge, which is being offered at unmissable pricing just for you!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/75 ... tion-black" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Please come and support me as an artist so that I can continue to grow as a playing card designer and I promise to start delivering the highest quality decks,tailored to suit your needs and the needs of the cardist community, once I have additional support
By the way, I have been cleaning up the presentation of project on the Kickstarter page in response to all of your feedback and have been making improvements for you.
Read below if you are also interested in more in depth details about the Vintage Label Wine/Deck Collection Project and the reason for the number of decks and colour options.
I will try and explain this with concision guys, though this will be almost impossible for me as I always struggled in english at school
.... but I always got top marks in Art and design
yay!
Ok, here we go:
After launching the premier and private reserve poker/magic deck sets in black and white, which are the current decks launching on Kickstarter to pop the cork on the on the upcoming wine decks for the wine/deck collection (hence the corkscrew illustration on the back of the private reserve tuck box, which is also a design feature included for being able to display the decks in a wooden dual wine/deck case (so it looks like an actual wine kit case with a corkscrew stored next to a bottle of wine.... See Kickstarter page for new image that demonstrats this display feature)......oops that was a bit long winded , sorry fabout that haha!....so much for being concice lol)
Anyway my vision for this project is that I am hoping to eventually create a complete wine/deck collection, with each deck in the collection offering a new flavour of card design inside.
The vintage label tuck box design is purposefully repeated thoughtout the collection to give a sence of a line of wine bottles of the same wine producer, and aside from the different wine colours on the labelling system on the tuck box and the wine dating system printed on the back and sides, each box doesn't give away too much illustrative visuals of what the wine deck/wine bottle contains, which encourages the person to select a year using the dating system and to then take the deck off the shelf and crack it open to taste the flavour of wine inside, by having a look at the illustrative card designs within.
The design features for the 100% custom wine decks for the collection are more for collectors, so I also plan on launching a standard version of the collection in the same range of wine colours in futute, but with the white bordered card backing and standard USA card faces so they have more functionality for card magic, cardistry poker and other card games etc and I will be launching them through another leading card manufacturer that can meet the needs of the broader card community in terms of card stock preferences and quality.
As for printing decks through other printers:
I have attempted to set up through other printing companies several times, however due to my current design features for theses decks plus budget and time restraints with work and family it has been too difficult and out of reach as there are startup costs involved plus correspondace and preperation of decks for printing is a much longer process, with extended correspondance times and time required to submit designs etc, so I have just been hoping to have have good results from previous and current Kickstarter projects, to hopefully be able to raise enough funding to afford to begin investing more time and money to work with other manufacturers.
So that's where i'm at with my vision for the Vintage Label WIne/Deck Collection
By the way, in reply to HSBC's comment, MPC's new cardistry stock that has been 3 years in development has been something that I have been looking forward to from MPC, and have been in contact with their RND team in the past about getting my hands on this stock some time in the near future to use for my decks. The final descision will come down to what cardists would like though, and I will begin producing future cardistry decks, starting with the Top secret Cardistry deck (that is now available to pledge for in my current Kickstarter) using the card stock and manufacturer that is the most popular voted by cardists.
Thankyou for reading this post, and I hope you haven't had to take the day off work to read it lol!
One more thing.....I feel like I kind of just walked in the door to this forum being like, hey look at my new cards on KIckstarter before giving a propper introudction to myself, so while I am writing this post, I feel like I may as well properly introduce my self as best I can, and share with you guys more about me as an artist and how I started out as a playing cards designer.....read on through my 'most likely extrewmely long rambling' if you are feeling keen to get through it all to know more about me
Ok here we go.....
Well basically, I have long had a vision to be able to apply myself as an artist and recently about 2 years ago I started out from scratch as a playing card designer, with no money or computer skills, and it has only been recently that I was inspired by daughter as well as by illustrator Marine Loup to take up my passion for art again by buying my first home computer to learn how to draw on and create art, as prior to that I could not afford a computer and have long been aspiring to be a computer artist and designer, which has been a constant struggle for me to pursue since I wasn't dealt the best cards in life, and to make ends meet, my life has mostly been work, more work, eat sleep repeat, just to make ends meet for the bare nessessities to afford to pay the bills and put food on the table for my family while trying to give my kids the best education and stability in the home that I can, so they do not have to go through the same struggles that I myself faced growing up.....anyway, getting a bit DNM I know lol! but I just want to share with you my passion and determination to succed in something to show my kids that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.....you see several years ago I had a converstion with my eldest daughter along thee lines where I said ''You know you can do anything in your life if you just put your mind to it, and you can make your dreams come true if you do this''....and her response was ....''So Dad, did you always want to working in the Abbotoirs?''... I was shocked at her response and realised what sort of example am I setting by saying to my kids that they can do anything in their life if they just put their mind to it, when I myself have not been following this advice!. My following response to her was, OK lets set a goal together and we will make it come truetogether!. I then said to her ''what is one thing that you want to be able to do and we will make it happen'', and she said that she wanted to make a board game called rescue the princess lol, so we then spent the whole afternoon creating a game called resuce the princess and we have since played it together many times it it has been something that we both cherrish that we accomplished together
. Following the converstion I had mwith my eldest daughterand the joy that creating something wither her brought into our lives, it has been that instead of giving up on my dreams I began seeking an opportunity to be able to create art again and be able to share it with others to create the same joy, and it was then, after being inspired by an illustrator by the name of Marine Loup' with her illustration a koi fish swimming up stream, I developed this overwhelming sense of determination to pursure my passion for art against all odds..... this led me to creating my first ever playing card project on Kickstarter a couple of years ago for the Black Dragon Series of playing cards, which included a limited Editon Turning Japanese deck that I created to finish off the series and to demostrate the perseverance and determiation that it took me to be able to pursure my passion for being able to create art all of the decks featured the original Kio fish illustration that inspired me to pursure my passion for art again, by creating decks of playing cards....... I figured that if I wasn't dealt the best cards in life, then why not create my own cards and see where that gets me.....
So that is what I have been doing for the past couple of years and it has been both a challenging and rewarding experience and I have learn so much along the way and have had so much support from my kickstarter supports for each project that I have launched so far, though without more support It has been challenging for me to be able to create larger scale playing card productions using other leading manufaturers.
I think I have come a long way as an artist from my days as a kid when I was drawing on the walls of my bedroom and on the back of torn up cardboard boxes....(word of notice, more deep and meaningfull to now follow lol) as I lived in very poor conditions without access to basic stationary, pens, texters etc nor pieces of plain blank paper to draw on....and I remember that finding a blank white piece of paper to me was like finding gold!. Back then, when I was about 10 years old I began trying to bring some money into the house to help my mum out as well as to save money to afford to buy some art supplies, so I would stay up all night drawing pictures of ninja turtle cards on torn up pieces of cardboard and them take them into school the next day to sell to all of the school kids for 50c each lol, I was making about $50 per day until a teacher caught me and took all of my money and drawings out of my lunchbox and gave me detention! and I remember feeling so upset that day! I couldn't understand why the teacher would do that to me when I was just trying to earn some money to help my mum out and was very upset that I could not longer afford to buy art supplies.
Before long I had to move schools, which was to be the four time, as my mum wasn't dealt the best cards in life either and every day was a strugggle for her to get by and to be able to afford to feed us kids growing up and she made many life choices that had a huge effect on us kids growing up with moving tows and going to differnet schools as she was determided to not let our father find out where we were. The reason my english is so poor and that I struggle to write express myself with words is because I went to over 10 different schools (I have lost count) as well as living in 40 different flat rentals, caravan parks and housing commission houses across Australia....that's a long story in itself to go int odetail over so I wont get into all of that for now, but the result of all of that instablilty was that I grew up basically never getting the opportunity to form any lasting relationships anyone to be able to learn how to communicate effectively.....so basically I have struggled with a social dissability for the most part of my life, well until I became old enough to legally make my own descisions in life, at which point in time I moved out on my own to go about creating a stable living enviroment for myself and to get my life on track so that I could to start to form relationships with people and to start to interact in the community, enter into the workforce. and to try to fit in with society....though without any prior education history, the only work that Iwas able to get was heavy labour work that is extremly physcially demanding for me every day and leaves little time or energy to do other things such creating art, which up until 2 years ago had always remained a dream.... because of all of this, this is why I now have so much determination to pursue and create art so, that I can hopefully find a way to work less and have more time with my kids and family, and to do what I am passionate about...... and to not have to work 3 jobs anymore!.
I think that through it all, I have managed to come out of things ok, as I had been lucky enough that through my isolation of being locked in the house growing up, I was not caught up in crime and drugs of the neighbourhood, which other kids in similar situations living in the same rundown neighbourhoods that I was living, ended up getting involved with sivce they started roaming the streets with all of these kids that didn't have a stable home to live in or decent parents or role models to give them guidance.
It was a differnet story for sister growing up, as she got a boyfriend that got her into drugs and for many years her life was a mess..... but recently she has overcome some challenges in her life and has been doing really well and I am so happy that she has been able to also get her life on track.
As for my older brother, he never left the house as did growing up and never got involved with crime or drugs and has lived a very quite an isloated life as an adult, though he has gone on to get married and have kids and is doing ok, however he still struggles everyday with communicating with people and has an extreme social phobia and has never held a job and has spent the most part of his life indoors as an adult and avoids interacting with people. He is only comfortable talking to his closest family members. Whenever I call him he alway asks how im going with my art, as he always thought that I would be the one child that would accomplish something in life...... and until recently my reply to him was always na bro still just working at the abbottoirs, driving taxi's on the weekend and cleaning office buildings to help mum out with her cleaning job, and that \i haven't had time to try and make anything happen with my art. But for the past 2 years now whenever I talk to him now at least have been able to say that I have been trying and that I have set up a design studio to create custom products for the gaming industry, magic industry and the card indstry, and I have been designing card games, board games and playing cards, as well as launching several Kickstarter projects etc and he has been really happy to hear that I having been givng it a go that I have finally been putting my artistic talents to use. This all hasn't helped much with paying the bills yet to be able to quit one or more of my day jobs, but it has been rewarding in other ways, and to have some success with designing products and to be able to design playing cards , which I have been enjoying the most as I find that playing cards offer the best form of artistic expression
Where I am at now in my life, I no longer struggle as much with being socially interactive and I have many friends and workmates, and I actually really enjoy my weekend work as a taxi driver as I get to meet people of all walks of life, and from helping the elderly, to having converstations with teenagers who have been struggling with life much as I did....who I have been able to relate to well and offer them words of encouragement help keep them going......I think I will always want to trive a taxi once a week to have that opportunity to interact with the community, as it has been very rewarding, though risky at the same time as I have nearly been bashed ant stabbed nummerous times by people who are lost in the world and who are caught up in drugs and crime (Every day I feel sorry for these people despite thier actions as they were once kids like me, and for most were lost in the system without any guidance....the only difference between them and myself was that while they were all out roaming the streets with the other kids in the neighbourhood, I was inside drawing on the walls of my bedroom and drawing pictures on torn up cereal boxes..... and beer cartons, as my mther was an alcholic and alway left us kids locked in the house while she was either at the pub or working on the cotton fields, or the fruit on farms, or cutting cockle shells off the rocks (each timewe lived in coastal towns) to earn money to feed us kids, and she would always come home from work with her hands all cut up from her jobs and would then drink beer after beer and tell us the story of how our father had an affair with our babysitter and that's why she ran away with us kids and that we can never see him again, and she would slur her words telling us this story until she finished her carton of beer passed out. Even though I am painting a picture that my mum was a terrible parent, she was just trying to get by the only way she new how to cope with her life...l. When I was a kid she told me to alway do my best at school so one day I would be able to buy her a house, and that was something I always held on to and one day hoped to achieve to help my mum out.........recently I have been lucky enough to, in a way , make this come true for her as I have been able to purchase a house using equity from my current house, and she is noe living there and all she has to do is to cover the loan repayments for the house...... now she has been able to finally live a stable life in the same house she can call her home and she has even started her own cleaning company, and cleans office blocks that I help her with as she is getting old now and the work in getting too physically demaning for her do on her own.
Also where I am at now, I am married with 3 children, which is why I work 3 jobs to be able to send them to the best private school in town, as well provide the mwith a stable home by purchasing a house in a quite part of town to give them the stabily and a the safe living enviromnet to grow up in that I never had as a kid.
So yeah thats a bit of a backstory about me....well more than a bit haha!, but If you got through reading up unitl this point then I thankyou, and I congratulate you lol!
I think you deserve an award for your efforts and can I just say that I really appreciate that you have gone to such great lengths to read this post at to take the time to get to know me and to read my story
and I look forward to writing the next chapter..... hopefully the next chapter will inlcude having more success as a playing card designer and launching decks that are produced by leading card manufaturers, and to be producing decks that are enjoyed not only by card enthusuasts in general, but cardists, card magicians and the enitre the card community worldwide! and I hope to do this to show my kids that anything is posible if you put your mind to it!
that is my dream......