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Hey all,

Just wanted to share with you one of the projects that I'm currently working on. It's a new deck concept that I'm working with Srdjan on and we're still in the very early stages of design. He's done some amazing work already with a very detailed court illustration style and I'm excited to see the rest of the process unfold.

From Srdjan:
"My idea is to create a deck that will show that every story have two sides and you don't have a complete story if you don't know both sides. Working title of the deck is "Stories". I want each of the court cards to have an illustration of a whole figure instead of just half of the body. Each of them would have two different sides. So when you flip the card you see slightly different version of the image above. For example in the King of Spades we see happy king on one side, and that same king, but this time sad, on the other side. Above the illustration there will be a saying that goes along the image. Sayings need to be organized in a way that it doesn't matter which one you read first. It needs to always makes sense. I already have few of them in my mind, for example: 'don't forget where you came from / know where you are heading' ; 'humble in victory / gracious in defeat' ; 'after sun comes the rain / after rain comes the sun' etc. And because of this sayings and illustrations that goes along with them, deck is called "Stories" ( or something similar ), you have the feeling like you read a little story with each court card. Also, I want court cards to be very detailed, and to have unique placement of the card suit and letter K, Q and J ( like you can see in the attached photo ). "

Nice idea and great first illustration. Given the current color choice for Spades and Clubs, I'd suggest a dark maroon for the Hearts and Diamonds!
I also like the placement of the furthest cornered spades (on top of the K). Very subtle and will likely be hard for people to tell between spade and clubs right off the bat when spreading the cards, but this deck is clearly for looks.

Good work, looking forward to seeing what comes next.

This is a very compelling concept - thanks for sharing this. I love the illustration and it definitely conveys that duality you were discussing in the description. I think the only thing I would tweak would be to remove the name of the card. I think it would be more visually appealing if there was a crosshatch or simple baroque pattern in that space instead. I am excited to see the progress on this project. Do you have a target launch date in mind? Cheers!

This is a great idea! I'm looking forward to seeing this expand.

This does look very interesting. I look forward to seeing more. That backs and tuck can make or break, but great concept so far.

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Holy shit. That's nice. That's really nice.

I love what we can see so far. Nice touch on the small pip above the "K". Will this just be a one-off deck or a series of decks?

Thanks for the feedback!

No target date yet...as I said, very early in the design process. Remember we spent about a year designing the planets decks before the kickstarter launched... :p

I'm not expecting this to be a series—probably a single deck but with a few surprises

-David

I'm really liking this. Part of me wishes there was one more color in the design to make the detail easier to parse, but I like the monochromatic approach as well.

Nice "ing of Spades" under the K index.

Any idea on when an update will be posted?

This is different in a very good way. Wylie Beckett's Wicked Kingdom comes to mind when I see this. His newest project, Reign of Sin/Rule of Virtue also has something similar, but yours is different with the sayings and the whole body layout. Just worried the details will get lost once they're squished into a playing card size

Eric Lee wrote:Wylie Beckett's Wicked Kingdom comes to mind when I see this. H̶i̶s̶ Her newest project, Reign of Sin/Rule of Virtue also has something similar, but yours is different with the sayings and the whole body layout. Just worried the details will get lost once they're squished into a playing card size

It's a hard comparison for me to concur with, just because her art style is so different from Srdjan's. But the use of pseudo-mirrored, one-way courts as a visual representation of narrative progression is definitely a point of commonality. We've seen this technique used with Gio's Betrayers Veritas as well, I think.

One court isn't enough for me to make a decision either way, but I'm definitely interested in seeing more.

Hello All,

Here's an update. We are working very hard to create something new and interesting here. There are a lot of details in the actual cards plus a lot of other things that needs to be taken in consideration. So the whole process is moving slowly but we are getting there...For now I want to show you two Jacks. The idea behind all this is the duality of things. Nothing is black and white, there's always a flip side.
One Jack is riding a donkey and on one side, we can see that he is happy and confident and looking straight ahead, because he knows where he is going; on the other side, he is a bit worried, looking back, knowing what he is leaving behind.
Second Jack is about practicing and being ready/showing the result. People only see the result, they don't want to know about the work behind it. I thought nice way to present this would be a man reaching for an arrow and a man ready to shoot.
Hope you guys like it! We have so much interesting ideas for this deck, I personally can't wait to see everything once all is finished. Hopefully, complete artwork for this deck will be done in next two months.
.

I think the "looking back" Spade Jack should have his head turned back more.

Club Jack "result" crossbow should not have bolt in it and string not drawn but needed to re-pull (after he shot it).

Just my thoughts. Nice stories though.

Thanks for this. I really like what I am seeing here. The level of detail on this is insane so the choice of a printer will become very important. Any thoughts on this?

Between this and the cardistry series, and in the wake of the Planets series, Vanda is doing some very exciting projects

Just wanted to let you know that Srdjan is still working on illustrations for this amazing deck. Here's a mockup of the kings.

Regarding printers, we'll most likely be using USPC for the standard edition and after seeing what cartamundi has done with the Parlour deck gold foiling, we may be doing something similar for a limited edition version. And other fun stuff planned as well...

More progress...the tuck is coming along nicely as are the aces...we're getting close with finishing up artwork for this project and will be focusing soon on the packaging design and other details that need to be figured out. I can't wait to get this one into production and see the final result...

Any chance you are going to emboss the tuck, including the horizontal lines on the "spine" of the story book? These look great, Dave!

BaconWise wrote:Any chance you are going to emboss the tuck, including the horizontal lines on the "spine" of the story book? These look great, Dave!

Full bling, i promise...you're gonna like the way these look, I guarantee it!

davegk wrote:

BaconWise wrote:Any chance you are going to emboss the tuck, including the horizontal lines on the "spine" of the story book? These look great, Dave!

Full bling, i promise...you're gonna like the way these look, I guarantee it!

I am really looking forward to this deck. Thanks for all your posts and updates.

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Given the colour scheme of the cards, I am not sure that red and gold for the tuck makes a whole lot of sense. If you are going for the full bling, I would have thought that black and silver would look better or else you may consider burgundy and blue/black lettering.

These are greattt!!

Eric Lee wrote:Wylie Beckett's Wicked Kingdom comes to mind when I see this. H̶i̶s̶ Her newest project, Reign of Sin/Rule of Virtue...

*Wylie Beckert (I don't know how to strike through ) Thanks for reminding me to put some gold aside,for the time her project hits kickstarter.[/off-topic]

Related to Stories; I don't like the name of the card at the side, in general. Maybe because I'm a gambler/gameplay person first and am used to realize cards immediatly. Which I think isn't a hard task anyways. Therefore having the name of the card on it is kind of... well dunno how to put it into words; kind of like the deck says to me, "hey stupid, I need to explan the court cards to you."

wingedpotato wrote:I'm really liking this. Part of me wishes there was one more color in the design to make the detail easier to parse, ...

+1

I too, prefer this rich art to be with a bit more colors.

Decknowledgy wrote:I too, prefer this rich art to be with a bit more colors.

Completely disagree - the monochrome feel of the cards is one of the best things about this deck.

I am looking forward to the deck. Don't expect the same level of insanity as I did from The Planets, but I will certainly be backing it for sure.

I'm a bit over the adversarial nature of red/blue tucks. After Pinocchio, Parlour and these it feels ... blegh. That said, I would dig a black variant in this design. Maybe pink.