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Okay folks, it's here: the SurrealScapes deck, version 2.0. I went back and artistically censored my images to pass USPCC's content restrictions and they have given me their approval to print the deck! So the deck will be printed by the USPCC on Bicycle stock with embossed finish. I redesigned everything on the deck, including designing custom pips, and I think it looks a lot better now. If you're curious, you can check out the original version here: http://www.fineartplayingcards.com

Here's the tuckbox:



The card back:



The aces:



The courts. I designed two-way versions from the base images. They turned out pretty well.









The jokers:



And finally a random sampling of some cards to show the different types of images:



The artwork has been uploaded to USPCC and I should be receiving a prototype deck in a few weeks. After that, on to Kickstarter and if the project is successful, I can get to work on the follow-on deck which would be the transformation deck.

-Z

Oh, wow, these always looked good but they're stunning now. Hope the proof looks as good as the pictures!

VERY cool and unique. Won't be to everyone's taste, but I'm definitely up for a couple decks (assuming pricing is decent of course).

Do hope it is successful as I'm VERY much looking forward to seeing what's possible with your photography and a transformation deck!

I'm not too sure about the back, but the faces are great. And I love the two-way courts, nice work!

Thanks for the kind words!

Strag: for KS, I'm pricing the deck at $8 for early bird and $10 for regular for a single deck, which includes US shipping, and then the per-deck price goes down as you get more decks. As for doing the transformation deck, this kind of work is very expensive. I have to hire professional models at anywhere from $75 to $100 per hour, and each photoshoot takes 3-4 hours. Multiply that by 54 cards and you're talking thousands of dollars to generate the artwork. So I need to price the deck at a level that will generate enough of a return to justify that. I was even thinking of going higher than $10, maybe $12, because I think this deck will appeal to a lot of non-card people, i.e. fine art photography people, and they're used to paying higher prices, but I'm going to cap the price at $10 because that seems to be a good upper threshold and I want to keep the hardcore card people happy.

MagikFingerz: can you give me more detail on what you think doesn't work on the back? I played with the design for weeks, bouncing back and forth between a photo image on the back vs. something abstract, and playing with black vs. white and border vs. no border. I added the ornaments around the image because I wanted to make it easier to distinguish the face of the card from the back during game play. Everything on the face of the card is straight lines and thus the curved lines on the back provide a visual cue.

Below is a concept for one of the abstract back designs.



-Z

I think the thing that bothers me about the back is that I have to look very closely to make out the actual picture. I appreciate what you did with the curved lines, which is brilliant. And you should also keep the borders of the back and faces the same color. I think something abstract will go too far away from the theme, and it being white even more so.

Was there any other images you thought about using for the backs?

When it is launch on KS !?

Oswin: I just ordered the prototype deck from USPCC, which will take a few weeks to come back to me. Once everything is kosher on that, I can launch the Kickstarter campaign, so probably March timeframe.

MagikFingerz: okay, thanks for the detail. I'll definitely stick with the photo back and black all around. I had to censor my artwork to get it past USPCC, which means that I had to throw out about 7 images that I could have used. And of the images I have in my portfolio, very few of them lent themselves to being made two-way anyway, and I used them all up on the courts. I didn't want to have a back image that duplicated anything on the faces, so this back image was all I had left. No matter what I do, the image on the back is going to be small because it's essentially being made half-size to accomodate being two-way.

Here's one image I considered for the back. Using this image would mean the ornaments would have to change, though.



-Z

By the way, for the back, I did consider the fact that the image at first looks like a jumbled mess of pattern but when you look closer, you see that it's an actual person there and that she's squatting on the ground. Can we call that a reveal?

-Z

Hmmm... It's not really that big of an issue for me, and I might just grow to like it as I see it more (it has happened before). Hard to say without having the actual deck though.

It might also help to hear someone else's perspective on the backs, if anyone has any similar or different views.

neongrey wrote:Oh, wow, these always looked good but they're stunning now. Hope the proof looks as good as the pictures!

There is the question of how the embossed, aka air-cushion, finish will affect the images. Everyone, including the kind folks at USPCC, say that using a smooth finish is better when you have photographs on the cards, but I want these cards to handle properly and thus I don't want to take the risk of using a smooth finish. Also, personally, any type of embossed finish makes the cards feel higher-quality to me than smooth.

We'll see how it looks when the prototypes come back. Granted, the prototypes are not printed on the offset press, so there will already be a quality difference between that and the final production decks, but if the prototypes look good with the air-cushion finish, then the production decks will only look better.

-Z

MagikFingerz wrote:Hmmm... It's not really that big of an issue for me, and I might just grow to like it as I see it more (it has happened before). Hard to say without having the actual deck though.

It might also help to hear someone else's perspective on the backs, if anyone has any similar or different views.

I kind of like the back, but I may not be the best judge; I tend to have pretty different tastes from a lot of the other collectors here.

zsalman wrote: There is the question of how the embossed, aka air-cushion, finish will affect the images. Everyone, including the kind folks at USPCC, say that using a smooth finish is better when you have photographs on the cards, but I want these cards to handle properly and thus I don't want to take the risk of using a smooth finish. Also, personally, any type of embossed finish makes the cards feel higher-quality to me than smooth.

We'll see how it looks when the prototypes come back. Granted, the prototypes are not printed on the offset press, so there will already be a quality difference between that and the final production decks, but if the prototypes look good with the air-cushion finish, then the production decks will only look better.

Yeah, I don't know that I'd worry too much though I'm glad you're checking it out first before going to KS. I don't have anything with photographs and an embossed finish on hand, but looking at the decks I've got that are depicting an actual picture, it comes out looking good. I just hope it comes out as vivid as these deserve to be.

I don't think a smooth finish would hurt the handling too much, they are still printed by USPCC. It may decrease fan-ability, but the design doesn't really cater to fanning anyway. I'm usually pro anything that improves handling, but this is one deck I don't really need to do everything perfectly with.

Hmm, I'm still thinking I should stay with the embossed finish...

By the way, I just got an email back from USPCC that told me that because of the juicy nature of this artwork, I can't have ANYTHING USPCC-related on the tuckbox. So I'm going to have to remove the "Air-Cushion Finish" language as well as the "Manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company" language from the tuckbox. You guys won't miss that, right? As long as you know it's made by USPCC? I've asked if I can say "Made in the USA in Erlanger, KY" as a hint for the people who know but without actually mentioning USPCC itself.

-Z

Eh, you gotta do what you gotta do. You can certainly say who made it when you kickstart/sell it, I am sure, and as long as the quality's there in the end, who could reasonably quibble?

I'm not sure mentioning Erlanger, KY is a nudge towards quality - Cincinnati, OH - yes... he he he (Really, I don't care if the USPCC stuff is on a deck as long as I knew somehow where it came from, and it wasn't Carti Mundi.

Had to throw my quick jab at USPCC quality as of late.


In terms of the deck, MUCH improved over the prior version. I'm partial on the card back design... perhaps something could be done differently? Maybe do a silhouette sort of thing? Something leanings towards the joker cards on the Cambric Fultons from D&D... just a thought...

But props to you man! Much improvement!

Some more questions:

I'm hearing from some other people that they don't like the fact that all the pips are the same color because that makes certain gameplay, e.g. solitaire, more difficult. On my first deck, I actually did have red pips and white pips, but the problem is that no matter what color I use for the red pip, the color was going to clash with the colors in the images on some of the cards. So I just stayed with white all around for this version to make it look classier. What do you guys think?

Next question: what do you think about the borders around the images? I think they make the cards look more professional, and the different borders around the spot cards, court cards, and jokers assist in distinguishability between them. Also, since some of the images are cropped right to the edge of the frame, the border serves to properly frame the image, and I haven't been able to find a way around that.

-Z

I like the borders, they work well for distinguishing different cards from each other like you say.

For the pips, maybe you could have the red suit pips have white borders a la Ellusionist's Black Ghost deck? Don't know how that would work with your pip designs though.

Something like this?



However, when I presented this to the prepress folks at USPCC, they said that since the red is actually made of up two colors, magenta and yellow, if there's a registration problem between one of the plates, either magenta or yellow, you'll see that color creep into the white area of the pip. It's not that they won't print it, it's just that they are warning me that there could be issues.

I've been trying out different colors of the red pip and no matter what color I choose, there's always at least one image that the red color clashes with, and having the red pip there really changes the feel of the card. I'm thinking I need to stick with white all around.

-Z

Damn you, red pips! I'm not giving up just yet!

If you could get those to work, I think that would look awesome. And please the people wanting red pips as well

zsalman wrote:Something like this?



However, when I presented this to the prepress folks at USPCC, they said that since the red is actually made of up two colors, magenta and yellow, if there's a registration problem between one of the plates, either magenta or yellow, you'll see that color creep into the white area of the pip. It's not that they won't print it, it's just that they are warning me that there could be issues.

I've been trying out different colors of the red pip and no matter what color I choose, there's always at least one image that the red color clashes with, and having the red pip there really changes the feel of the card. I'm thinking I need to stick with white all around.

-Z

Man I like these, but yeah I get it about the registration issues. Then again, might be so small as to be unnoticeable. Definitely do need 2 colors for pips tho.

People say red because it is what they are comfortable with. you could do yellow and white, blue and white....

DukeBoy wrote:People say red because it is what they are comfortable with. you could do yellow and white, blue and white....

Agreed, doesn't need to be red, can be any two colours which work.

Okay, here are two options:

Option 1:



Option 2:



I like option 1 better because having the white facing towards the inside of the card isolates the red from the colors in the face image and reduces the impact when the red color clashes with whatever color is in the image. I also like the fact that the pips are still hollow and the black background shows through, whereas in option 2, the pips are now completely filled with color.

Option 1 also seems to fit the design motif of the cards better.

-Z

I concur, option 1 looks much better.

What are your thoughts on the indices (A, K, Q, J and 2-10); will they be the same or remain white?

Strag wrote:

DukeBoy wrote:People say red because it is what they are comfortable with. you could do yellow and white, blue and white....

Agreed, doesn't need to be red, can be any two colours which work.

Yeah, I thought about different colors other than red and white, but I need to minimize the amount of exotic coloring on the card elements. I'm trying to keep things as neutral as possible so there aren't discordant colors. People say that only artists worry about these things, but even if you're not an artist, you can tell when the colors in an image are off. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you know something about the image isn't right or doesn't feel good. That's the big headache with cards like these that have photographs on them.

-Z

MagikFingerz wrote:I concur, option 1 looks much better.

What are your thoughts on the indices (A, K, Q, J and 2-10); will they be the same or remain white?

All the indices will be white. I played with coloring them, but doing the vertical split coloring of option 1 didn't work, and coloring the whole index added to the amount of color that would clash with the image.

Here's what option 1 pips look like on the cards:



I'm actually going to change the assignment of the images to the heart and diamond suits to choose images with which the red color matches better. But this king of hearts image shows the worst case situation and it still looks okay.

-Z

Love it!

One more small thing (and I'm being very picky now ): The vertical lines along the edges crossing behind the pips bothers me a bit. Could you make them fade earlier and maybe even shorten them a bit and see if it looks better? Maybe have them end the same distance from the edge as the horizontal lines?

MagikFingerz wrote:Love it!

One more small thing (and I'm being very picky now ): The vertical lines along the edges crossing behind the pips bothers me a bit. Could you make them fade earlier and maybe even shorten them a bit and see if it looks better? Maybe have them end the same distance from the edge as the horizontal lines?

The gradients on the vertical lines have been troubling me, because I'm not sure exactly how they will end up in the final print. I've been doing test prints on my inkjet printer and they have been looking different depending on how I've set the black point settings, and of course they look very different on the screen than in print. I'm thinking that no matter what I do, short of signficantly changing the size of the borders, there will be some unpredictability in exactly where the gradient fades out. It depends on how USPCC does their image processing to make the plates.

Here's an example of shorting the vertical borders. I don't quite like it.



-Z