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It's great to see UC make another comeback!

Now's a good time to take the Imperial Deck designs to their own thread. The finished elements so far consist of the Back Card, Face Cards, 2 Aces and 5 Courts. None of the Heart Eggs are finished yet but they will have the Russian 2-Headed Eagle incorporated in the designs.

Here's a look at the finished Diamonds Suit and the 8 non-number cards completed so far!
The Jacks will be the Armoured Warrior Eggs, the Queens have a feminine look with lighter colors and the Kings will be the elaborately detailed and ornate Eggs.

Thanks, Randy

Hey randy, to me it might not seem like there is enough distinction between the pips at the indices and the pips in the center, it might be because the pips are aboutttt the same size, it makes the lower suits look like there are two extra pips, not sure bout what the others thinks, might just be me lol. But the cards as a whole are looking good

volantangel wrote:Hey randy, to me it might not seem like there is enough distinction between the pips at the indices and the pips in the center, it might be because the pips are aboutttt the same size, it makes the lower suits look like there are two extra pips, not sure bout what the others thinks, might just be me lol. But the cards as a whole are looking good

Good call on the inside PIPS Volantangel! My original design was to go small on the inner PIPS and big on the outer PIPS. I did a change to the PIPS' shapes and when I brought them back into the layouts I made them larger than they originally were. I'll make the changes and post in a couple days.

Thanks, Randy

Great stuff, I loved the theme of the deck and watching it play out is very enjoyable. This is an instant buy for me, can't wait for these to be released. 2013 is shaping up to be a fun year for card lovers

The Queens are eye popping vibrant...any thoughts into doing a high quality print poster for some of them?

MagikFingerz wrote:

Just quotin' this.

Sir I have expressed my opinion on previous occasion but allow me to do so again.
These are seriosly some of the most handsome cards I have ever seen. I ususlly limit
my purchases to two or three decks but I will probably buy more of these. So nice I shall
leave at least one deck unopened. The colors are perfect. I saw the Russian Eggs
(Faberge) and they always stuck with me. Excellent job by the way. If they sell out
and I do not get any I will need to commit hari kari

walrus wrote:Sir I have expressed my opinion on previous occasion but allow me to do so again.
These are seriosly some of the most handsome cards I have ever seen. I ususlly limit
my purchases to two or three decks but I will probably buy more of these. So nice I shall
leave at least one deck unopened. The colors are perfect. I saw the Russian Eggs
(Faberge) and they always stuck with me. Excellent job by the way. If they sell out
and I do not get any I will need to commit hari kari

You can't commit Hari Kari. You don't have hands, you have flippers my boy!!!

Thanks!

walrus wrote:Sir I have expressed my opinion on previous occasion but allow me to do so again.
These are seriosly some of the most handsome cards I have ever seen. I ususlly limit
my purchases to two or three decks but I will probably buy more of these. So nice I shall
leave at least one deck unopened. The colors are perfect. I saw the Russian Eggs
(Faberge) and they always stuck with me. Excellent job by the way. If they sell out
and I do not get any I will need to commit hari kari

Thanks Walrus!

My family and I caught the Faberge exhibit (VMFA's collection) in Detroit a couple months ago. It was amazing!! Our 3 and 5 year old kids were a little bored, but they survived the cultural experience! Once the dust settles from the new ORNATES and the UC Deck I'll get right back into modeling some more Eggs.

thanks, Randy

Back into the swing of things on the Imperial Deck.
It's a good sign when you actually miss working on a project that had to get pushed back!
It feels good to be working on these again.

Here's another of the "Warrior" Jacks - the Jack of Clubs.

thanks, Randy

Oh my, the courts just get better and better, the jack looks pretty darn neat

oh and trust me, you are not that only one that misses you working on this deck

volantangel wrote:Oh my, the courts just get better and better, the jack looks pretty darn neat

oh and trust me, you are not that only one that misses you working on this deck

Thanks! Your post reminded me that I never reposted the finished Diamonds with the smaller inner PIPS.
Good catch on that Volantangel!

Randy

RandyButterfield wrote:

volantangel wrote:Oh my, the courts just get better and better, the jack looks pretty darn neat

oh and trust me, you are not that only one that misses you working on this deck

Thanks! Your post reminded me that I never reposted the finished Diamonds with the smaller inner PIPS.
Good catch on that Volantangel!

Randy

Glad to be of any service at all and the different kind of pips are much more distinguishable now

volantangel wrote: Glad to be of any service at all and the different kind of pips are much more distinguishable now

I agree! And great work on the cards, as well as being a stellar example of a designer who listens to his fans

I just finished up the next Court card - The King of Clubs.
This one is a Mosaic Egg that was a ton of work but I think turned out pretty cool!
I've attached a closeup this time as well.

thanks, Randy

RandyButterfield wrote:I think turned out pretty cool!

You're way too modest, Randy

This is amazing!

Oh wow this is crazy awesome work, this is probably the finest piece of work from you yet, im in awe

Thanks guys!

I threw the 2 completed sets of Courts on the same page to see if they're meshing well. I really like how they're looking.
It will definitely be easy to tell if you have a Club or Diamond in your hand while playing a game!

thanks, Randy

Gorgeous Randy...really love the blues. Keep it Up!

In the midst of yesterday's flame wars, here's a quick image I put together for today's holiday. I figured it would be a fun thing since the Imperial Eggs were always given to the Tsars on Easter.

Thanks, Randy

Randy you're doing an amazing job with this deck. I'll admit I'm still kind of iffy with it because well by the end of the day it's still an egg deck, but what I'm really impressed with is the 3d models and renders.
You're using 3dsmax right? The lighting is just beautiful. Honestly I wish I could get that type in my program (Maya). A hell of a lot harder to get that look.

SeanWhelan wrote:Randy you're doing an amazing job with this deck. I'll admit I'm still kind of iffy with it because well by the end of the day it's still an egg deck, but what I'm really impressed with is the 3d models and renders.
You're using 3dsmax right? The lighting is just beautiful. Honestly I wish I could get that type in my program (Maya). A hell of a lot harder to get that look.

Hey Sean,

Thanks for the compliments!

I've been using Newtek's Lightwave 3d for all of the Imperial elements. I've had a few years experience with Maya when I was taking some graduate classes at the Academy of Art in SF and later on an animated short. I think Maya is awesome for Character Animation and Particle Dynamics but I prefer the Modeling tools in Lightwave. Also Lightwave makes it extremely quick and useful to import entire scenes or parts of scenes. That's really useful for my day job, where I have to sometimes setup lobby displays or endcap displays with a few hundred 3d bottles of booze at a minutes notice!

One thing I've learned over the years with 3d is doing a bunch of test renders to get the lighting and surfaces just right is always more time consuming than getting something close and then doing a few separate renders to composite into Photoshop. A lot of the raw renders for the Imperial Court Eggs are not nearly as cool as the final composites. A good example is the King of Clubs Mosaic Egg. I think I had 6 separate renders to get what I was going for with that one. 1 - Hero Render, the surfaces combo I liked best in Lightwave. 2 - A version with every surface as the Metallic Gold. 3 - An all Metallic Silver version. 4 - An all Light Blue shiny surface version. 5 - An all Dark Blue shiny surface version. and finally 6 - A render with each surface as a different bright color, so I could easily isolate areas.

After all of the renders were finished (about 3-4 hours for each one at hi res), I added them into one PSD file and spent a good 2 or 3 hours isolating areas, messing around with Layer modes and playing around with other techniques to get the look I originally pictured in my head. I always look at 3d as a great starting pitcher and Photoshop as the Ace closer.

That just reminded me that today is Opening Day for baseball. Go Tigers!!

thanks, Randy

Just finished up the Ace of Clubs!
Tomorrow I'll setup and post a layout of all the Clubs together.

thanks, Randy

As promised, here's the finished Clubs!

thanks, Randy

Here's the finished Ace of Hearts and an image of all 4 Aces together.

thanks, Randy

Mmmm very very nice, cant believe the items inside the large pip on the aces fit so well, alot of thought must have went into what item goes into what pip, brilliant work randy !

volantangel wrote:Mmmm very very nice, cant believe the items inside the large pip on the aces fit so well, alot of thought must have went into what item goes into what pip, brilliant work randy !

Thanks Volantangel! The hardest element to find was by far the Club's Petrovsky Palace. It took a while to find an important Russian building that shared some historical value with the Tsars and Faberge AND fit snuggly within the Club shape.

Here's the first of the Hearts - the Jack of Hearts!

http://www.midnightcardcompany.com/IMPJackHeart.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



(My maximum upload image size is only 1000 Bytes now. That's only 100 KB. Is that a universal change?)

thanks, Randy

Randy

Everytime I link a picture I make sure the pixel size is about 600x600 or in the ballpark. I resized your pic and relinked it and it looks perfect. When the pics are too big it does like the other pics where you have to scroll left and right and up and down to see anything

Jack of hearts just became my new favorite...that looks awesome Randy, nice work

I'm still working on getting myself to love the spades...the brown is definitely different, taking some getting used to. Still, an instant buy though, the theme is great and its coming together very nicely. Really cool idea to fit iconic images inside the aces.

Thanks for the assist Badpete69!

I just finished up the next Heart and final Queen - the Queen of Hearts.

thanks, Randy