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I'd like to show you some pictures of my latest playing cards design: Viceroys.

The deck is similar in concept to my last design (the Inglewood hunting deck) in that it explores the early history of playing cards. But the appearance is quite different: while the hunting deck had 52 picture cards, this deck has none.

I imagine some of you will be familiar with the so-called Mamluk playing cards. These are a 4x13 set of playing cards (modified) probably from around the 15th century, probably from somewhere around Egypt. The Mamluk cards have suits of coins, cups (myriads), swords, and polo sticks, which are obviously related to the suits that would become standard on Spanish, Italian, and tarot cards.

The idea behind my Viceroys deck then is this: how could a deck of cards look if drawn with the French (International) suits but in the Mamluk style?

And this is what I came up with.
Each of the 52 cards in the Viceroys deck is unique. The patterns were drawn in ink. The colours were then done in watercolour over a trace of the pattern outline. And then the layers were combined digitally.

I am hoping to raise funds on Kickstarter for a print run of these cards (the plan is to do this early in the new year), and for this I have added corner indices and a further outer pattern in red or black to each of the designs. These corner-indexed cards shown in the pictures are "poker sized". I may also have an index-free variant printed. We shall see.

Pretty nice! It's always nice to have different kinds of custom decks. I do hope that these will be poker sized.

I might back this, let's see.

Also I am a fan of how you make decks that are historical, but with your own artwork.

Really nice artwork.

If I may suggest removing the black and red "frill" under the pip because the pip is hard to see to me. Or put some more white space between the pip and colored "frill" design.

shimmering wrote:how could a deck of cards look if drawn with the French (International) suits but in the Mamluk style?

Hi Ian.
I think you`ve hit the nail on the head , Nice idea and done rather well.
Beautiful Artwork (again) and the colour scheme works well.
However the blue used in the top archways on the number cards looks darker than the blue used on your courts,could be due to it being water-colour or my eyesight, but i would prefer the light blue colour used on all cards.

I also agree with RichK , i would also like to see that extra border removed , i don`t see the need for that extra "frill".

I`ll be in on the kickstarter

This is a really beautifully executed design. I typically will give a deck a hard time for not having characters for their courts but this is just so attractively done. I'm in, when and where?

Many thanks for all your comments. I am waiting on a test print of these cards at the moment.

The dark blue is all basically the same colour ... there is some variation in the shade and intensity, but I'll have a look again at how well it has survived the scanning, and also how it turns out on the test print.

The frilly border ... yes it doesn't correspond to anything on the actual Mamluk cards. In widening the cards to poker size to fit the corner indices there opens up a widish white edge to the card that I found a little disconcerting. Similar frilly borders can be seen around the edges of most illuminated pages in Mamluk manuscripts (I noticed ...). So that's why I added that there. Again, we'll see how it looks in real life.

Of course I'll keep you updated!

So I have got a prototype deck printed by MPC ... and the cards have come out nicely I think. So that's good.

I thought I would post some pics of the back and the box:
I have also been talking to printers ... and my plan at the moment is to get the cards printed here in the UK with Cartamundi (UK).

shimmering wrote: I thought I would post some pics of the back and the box

So much color and beauty on the faces for such an unappealing, monochromatic card back

They look like two totally unrelated decks. Tuck and faces are very interesting. The back is ok but doesn't fit this deck.

Justin O. wrote:

shimmering wrote: I thought I would post some pics of the back and the box

So much color and beauty on the faces for such an unappealing, monochromatic card back

^This^. That back design would break this deck for me.

Yeah the backs are kind of meh and as for the faces I think the pips get lost in the artwork which kind of defeats the purpose of them

The back of the tuck should be the card back or something like that. The black back kills the art on the front.

RichK wrote:The back of the tuck should be the card back or something like that. The black back kills the art on the front.

I thought the exact same thing!

The tuck design would be perfect for the card back.

Thanks for all the comments ... keeping the thread alive!

Of course I'm surprised so many of you disliked the back.

I don't think the back should resemble the front of the cards, not just in this case but in general. And I don't think that's a particularly controversial view either. For these cards I want to have above all a contrasting design, and I want to use a relatively simple repeating pattern.

If anyone is curious as to where that pattern comes from, it is not completely unrelated. It is a simplified version of what is formed when the square geometrical object that appears on the king cards is used as a tile.

Anyway I have redrawn it again. Lighter. And more ragged ...

shimmering wrote:I don't think the back should resemble the front of the cards, not just in this case but in general. And I don't think that's a particularly controversial view either. For these cards I want to have above all a contrasting design, and I want to use a relatively simple repeating pattern.

But why? Contrast just for the sake of having contrast? Not trying to argue, just spark a discussion to help me understand and see it from your perspective.

The reason I would want, for example, the front of the box as the back design (as was suggested), is because it would fit the theme and tie the deck together. A good back design encompasses the theme and the general "feel" of the deck, and displays it better than any of the individual face cards.

I would also think that it should be possible to create a back design that is contrasting but still fits the theme in at least one way, but I am no designer.

Before your comment I did not see the relationship between the Kings and the back design. I do like that. But I think the adjustment in color and "tightness" you did makes the link more evident. While I agree that back designs historically do not generally have or require deep design connections to the card faces, the all-black design field here did seem somewhat jarring against the deck theme, imo. The redraw is going in the right direction.


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MagikFingerz wrote:

shimmering wrote:I don't think the back should resemble the front of the cards, not just in this case but in general. And I don't think that's a particularly controversial view either. For these cards I want to have above all a contrasting design, and I want to use a relatively simple repeating pattern.

But why? Contrast just for the sake of having contrast? Not trying to argue, just spark a discussion to help me understand and see it from your perspective.

The reason I would want, for example, the front of the box as the back design (as was suggested), is because it would fit the theme and tie the deck together. A good back design encompasses the theme and the general "feel" of the deck, and displays it better than any of the individual face cards.

I would also think that it should be possible to create a back design that is contrasting but still fits the theme in at least one way, but I am no designer.

I agree with MagicFingerz with the back and I'm no designer either. I do like your new back design much better than the black. I hope the star elements are in the Mamluk style.

All right, here comes the live link ... Hope some of you like the design.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73 ... ying-cards" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Why do you insist on ignoring all of your beautiful design and illustration for the back of the cards? you have this rich, vibrant and beautiful aesthetic and you seem to very genuinely not want to include it on the back of the cards. I don't understand. I have no doubts you will fund with this beautiful artwork, but without a different back I think you are losing backers that would otherwise be on board

I just backed for one.

Although I'm not a huge fan of the backs, the faces won me over. Also curious to see a Cartamundi printed custom deck, so far I have only really seen Star-Wars-Prequels-bullshit-George-take-your-CGI-Jar-Jar-and-absolutely-everything-about-those-"movies"-and-go-shove-it-up-your... themed ugly tourist decks.

But anyways, I like this and I hope that it does not remind me too much that there are movies called Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 and 3 in this universe

I am unfortunately thrown off to much by the back. The difference from front to back is so "off putting" for me to enjoy the cards.
I would back these in a heart beat if the back art matched the beauty (and color) of the front art.

Räpylätassu wrote:
But anyways, I like this and I hope that it does not remind me too much that there are movies called Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 and 3 in this universe

This is a common mistake.
There are no episodes 1, 2, or 3. Lucas (the original director) started his series with episode 4. Although when it was first released it was not labeled or named as such.
This starting with 4 confuses many people.
Many young people have just started learning about Star Wars with Episode 7.
Not having seen the original trilogy, they assume that there are 6 other movies. When the series actually began with episode 4.
So in total there are 4 Star Wars movies. 5 if you count Rouge One (which I don't)

I hope that clears things up for you Räpylätassu

UtterFool wrote:

Räpylätassu wrote:
But anyways, I like this and I hope that it does not remind me too much that there are movies called Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 and 3 in this universe

This is a common mistake.
There are no episodes 1, 2, or 3. Lucas (the original director) started his series with episode 4. Although when it was first released it was not labeled or named as such.
This starting with 4 confuses many people.
Many young people have just started learning about Star Wars with Episode 7.
Not having seen the original trilogy, they assume that there are 6 other movies. When the series actually began with episode 4.
So in total there are 4 Star Wars movies. 5 if you count Rouge One (which I don't)

I hope that clears things up for you Räpylätassu

I assume that next you will tell me that water is wet?
There are 4 Star Wars movies and 3 abominations that are unfortunately Star Wars movies. As much as I would like to forget that they were actually made, there is no escaping the horrible truth.

And what's with Rouge One? It wasn't great but it wasn't a bad movie by any means, I quite enjoyed it although I hoped that it would be better.

I hate to kill J.J. Abrams reputation but Star Wars 7 was a 4-6 mashup. I felt after watching 7 that nothing was new about it.

As for Viceroys I backed it. The blue back much better than black one but still needs color. The pattern is on a King so there's a lose tie together of back and front.

shimmering wrote:All right, here comes the live link ... Hope some of you like the design.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73 ... ying-cards" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

If you are going to order through Cartamundi, ask for our B9 finish and the DMC ELITES Rouge as reference! I'm 100% sure you will prefer the quality of these over anything else we can provide.

Kind regards

Jirs

If any of you are interested in getting some of these cards, see here:

http://www.northerndisplayers.co.uk/viceroys.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;