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Already getting ready for May.

Mariachi is inspired by traditional Mexican Paper Cutting, "Papel Picado".

Each court card will be a fully custom tissue paper cut out. Each suite will have its own colored paper. I'm pretty stoked about this deck. It's always a great experience and exercise to explore beautiful artforms of different cultures.

Very cool!

Is the Cut still happening?

Bring on Cinco de Mayo!! I'm very excited to see what you do with this Jackson!

hsbc wrote:Very cool!

Is the Cut still happening?

Yes, The Cut is still happening. The Cut will be one of my complete custom decks like Mariachi is. I'm trying to stagger my fully custom decks ever other deck to keep the workload manageable. I already have June and July planned so my guess is that it will most likely be in August.

Thanks for the reply! Your recent posts especially have been remarkably transparent and give us all valuable insight into how a playing card company actually works. You certainly don't need to be so forthcoming, so it's appreciated

nice ! cant wait to see it all. will it be a kickstarter deck?

Honestly, this is the most disappointed deck back I have seen so far in the shorts program IMHO. The musical instrument the way it is arranged is just not doing it for me. Maybe it is the one color. Maybe it just doesn't ring festive or mariachi enough to me. It just seems boring. I hate to say it, but I feel I need to state my honest reaction.

Am I going to drop my subscription because one deck doesn't resonate with me?

. Yeah, NO! Every other deck has been a great hit for me, so I'll give you a few passes (maybe more than a few). I do appreciate that Jackson is just cranking out an insane number of deck designs AND producing them. It is insane.

Bradius wrote:Honestly, this is the most disappointed deck back I have seen so far in the shorts program IMHO. The musical instrument the way it is arranged is just not doing it for me. Maybe it is the one color. Maybe it just doesn't ring festive or mariachi enough to me. It just seems boring. I hate to say it, but I feel I need to state my honest reaction.

Am I going to drop my subscription because one deck doesn't resonate with me?

. Yeah, NO! Every other deck has been a great hit for me, so I'll give you a few passes (maybe more than a few). I do appreciate that Jackson is just cranking out an insane number of deck designs AND producing them. It is insane.

Thanks for your comments. Have no fear. We have tons of time before this has to go to production. This was the first initial sketch I did today while I was waiting on the USPCC Labyrinth decks to be delivered (which they were I want to try and incorporate either musical notes or fans of playing cards swirling around the guitar in the negative space.

As for the festiveness, I think more elements like that will help. I like challenges like this as it forces me to use basically one color and only shapes and no lines to create the story. This is only because I really want to stick to the theme of cut paper which is always one sheet of one colored tissue paper.

Everybody and their dog have put out a Day of the Dead / Sugar Skull deck and I wanted to stay as far away from that as possible. I'm really excited to see where the court cards go for this one.

Here are some of the references Images I was looking at today while drawing.

When I think of Mariachi, I am not thinking about the Day of the Dead and skulls. I think of music, dancing, maybe sombreros. Festive and colorful. Colorful Indian clothing and such. But maybe that is me. Keep in mind violins, and trumpets are also used in a mariachi band.

I like the back! For me this is much more something that I would get involved with. Looking forward to it!

I don’t dislike the back but also think that you can do something else there. For instance, just looking at the pictures above, you might want to consider the colours and pattern of that flamenco dancer dress or do a sombrero inspired back.

Jackson,
Just to let you know, you have a strong competition releasing Mariachi at the same time as the upcoming Six Strings deck by Kardify and Murphy's: https://www.kardify.com/2019/01/the-fir ... rings.html
Photo source: https://www.instagram.com/wonderfulmystical/ (see more here)

Good thing you're keeping Mariachi for the subscribers; if it was going retail, there would be two decks of the same theme coming out nearly the same time. To be honest, I quite agree with Bradius on your take, but I'm confident that you'll come up with something stunning at the end! This post is just to let you know there's someone else finalizing on the same mexican mariachi theme.

I wouldn’t say the theme is similar. As a guitarist I love the six strings deck as a celebration of guitars. Mariachi might feature guitars but it’s really a celebration of a culture more than anything I’d have thought.

Jocu wrote:I wouldn’t say the theme is similar. As a guitarist I love the six strings deck as a celebration of guitars. Mariachi might feature guitars but it’s really a celebration of a culture more than anything I’d have thought.

Also I don't think JR has to worry about other people releasing similar themes as him. Based on his reputation and fan base I think it might be opposite in fact..

No criticism intended there
Just for information purposes folks!