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"Pixel Gore" Illustrated Pixel Art Cards

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"Pixel Gore" Illustrated Pixel Art Cards
« on: May 13, 2017, 11:14:41 PM »
 

steffbradley

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Hello all. I've designed a deck of cards that I wanted to pass by for some feedback from actual cardists. I'm interested in kickstarting these cards, and was looking for input from people who actively use cards, since I made these designs for class and this is my first foray into designing cards. The concept is a four-color deck, with illustrations on each face card and ace, as well as two joker illustrations. The "white" version is the original, while I recently made the "inverse" version as a possible kickstarter exclusive deck variant. Please let me know what you think.
 

Re: "Pixel Gore" Illustrated Pixel Art Cards
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2017, 12:46:11 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Hello, Steff, and welcome to the forum.

I think you've made a nice deck considering that it's your first effort, but it does suffer from a few design flaws, flaws that are large enough to potentially sink your project if you launched it on a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter.

The biggest, most glaring flaw would be your choice of where you placed your indices - the miniature value-and-suit markings found in the upper-left and lower-right corners of a typical playing card.  Your indices are WAY, WAY TOO CLOSE to the center of the card.  Have you tried holding your cards in your hand and spreading them so you can see the indices?  Because they're so far from the corner, you have to really spread the cards very far in order to see them all, meaning a player is limited as to how many cards they can spread at once and see the indices.  In addition, the further you have to spread the cards, the more likely you are to accidentally flash some of them to an opposing player.

I noticed you have these cute little border lines around the cards near the edge, with teeny little markings that resemble your suit pips in the four corners.  Unfortunately, because of your pixelated design and angular placement of these corner pips, they don't resemble the suit images closely enough - they really don't look the same.  The only way you can tell them apart is because of your choice of a four-color design.  It would suit your design better to have proper indices in the corners instead of these pixelated, off-angle pips.

The choice of a four-color design is another potential issue.  I will grant you that some people like and prefer a four-color design, but the reason for this in most cases is because they're vision-impaired and it makes pip identification easier for them if each pip has its own color.  However, if you've ever played certain games that are dependent on a two-color design, like Klondike solitaire, a four-color deck is more of a hindrance than a help.

Then there's the theme - "Pixel Gore."  The closest I can see to a portion of the design that clearly shows "pixel gore" is the jokers, which appear to be the severed heads of game animals dripping with blood, all rendered in a low-res, pixelated style.  The rest of the art lacks clarity to support the theme and the theme itself is of questionable popularity.

One thing you need to bear in mind when bringing a project to Kickstarter is that there's a LOT of playing card projects on Kickstarter - typically there's about thirty decks running at any given time and only about half typically end successfully funded.  If you want your project to be noticed, you really need to raise the bar - come to the table with kick-ass art and preferably a theme and/or style that people haven't seen before, or a theme/style that you've executed so well that it blows other decks of the same type out of the water.  If it's "just another type-x deck" or a real head-scratcher, you're less likely to turn heads and get people to click that "pledge" button.

If you want to see just how high the bar has been raised for pixel art, check out Bicycle Ultimate Universe, by Japanese artist Junichi Tsuneoka.  It comes in color and greyscale editions.  The artist used a four-color palette as well for his color version, but he stuck to using warm colors for the traditionally-red suits and cool colors for the traditionally-black suits, making it easier to use the four suit colors for a two-color game.  Stylistically, while the art is "pixel art," the resolution is high enough that he includes a great deal of detail work in his art, making it really stand out and look impressive.  The use of primitive characters rendered in a faux high-tech style was a theme idea that no one had ever presented before and the deck was warmly received by many fans.

Am I saying that you should knock one out of the park and only come back to us if you can top the Bicycle Ultimate Universe deck?  No - you're a beginning artist and Tsuneoka is an experienced commercial graphic designer with many projects under his belt.  But I am saying that if you want to make a successful crowdfunded deck, you want to bring more to the table than just this.

Alternately, if you can find a small niche audience that likes this work, set your sights low - pick a printer such as MakePlayingCards.com, someone that has an extremely low print run size (they'll make print runs as small as a single deck, for the right price) and set a high-enough price per deck in your rewards to cover printing costs of a really short print run, thus allowing you to set an exceptionally low goal.  It will insure that even if you only find a dozen or so backers, you'll still be able to make your dream of creating a printed deck a reality.  Other artists with a small but loyal following willing to pay a premium per deck have used such printers and were able to create a deck with a goal as low as US$1,000.
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Re: "Pixel Gore" Illustrated Pixel Art Cards
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2017, 11:07:55 AM »
 

steffbradley

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Hi Don, thanks so much for the input.

I definitely agree on the indice placement, and have fixed that for a second prototype printing, which I think are reflected in the digital mockups. I'll post some more pics once I get some new prototypes made.
Maybe I should get rid of the corner flourishes entirely? That way the indices can go even further into the corner. But they're a very nice touch when splaying out the deck. I tried to make them a bit more legible, please let me know what you (or anybody else) thinks.

with updated, tilted pips:

with straight pips:

without the extra pips:


You make a good point on four-color, and I've been brainstorming perhaps how to have it work better when pairing suits. I based the color scheme off of color variants that already exist. The four-color is so central to the design that I would have a hard time scrapping it (without also starting completely over). I'm hopeful the yellow/orange pairing of the diamonds/hearts is enough. I might play with a cooler pink/purple for the clubs and see how that looks, but I rather like the CMYK vibe the deck has.

You're probably right about the name, and I'm notoriously bad with naming my work, this was something I came up with on the spot so I had something to call the project. I will definitely think on this more and report back when I have a better name... Each animal is beheaded, but since it's pixel art, the image isn't as striking as it is on the jokers.

Regarding MPC, I made my prototypes through them and they look great visually, but the question comes to whether or not they're actually good as cards. Again, I'm not a cardist, but I was doing some research and found not everyone is in love with MPC's quality, and I was wondering whether or not that reputation effects whether or not people will buy a deck. The ideal is always USPCC, it seems, and I don't know if what the willingness is for people to spend potentially more on each deck if I were to do a smaller production run through MPC. Also, I haven't heard much of what people think about Gambler's Warehouse, even though I see many kickstarters done through them.

In another forum, someone mentioned making the designs on the court cards much bigger, what is the consensus on that? I always prefer to have a lot of negative space and air to let a design breath, but that might not work as well when dealing with 54 cards all at once...

I love these designs you linked, this artist has very awesome work. It's very helpful to be able to compare similar concepts, I'm definitely going to be looking at the whole deck for further inspiration.
 

Re: "Pixel Gore" Illustrated Pixel Art Cards
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2017, 06:36:29 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Hi Don, thanks so much for the input.

I definitely agree on the indice placement, and have fixed that for a second prototype printing, which I think are reflected in the digital mockups. I'll post some more pics once I get some new prototypes made.
Maybe I should get rid of the corner flourishes entirely? That way the indices can go even further into the corner. But they're a very nice touch when splaying out the deck. I tried to make them a bit more legible, please let me know what you (or anybody else) thinks.

You make a good point on four-color, and I've been brainstorming perhaps how to have it work better when pairing suits. I based the color scheme off of color variants that already exist. The four-color is so central to the design that I would have a hard time scrapping it (without also starting completely over). I'm hopeful the yellow/orange pairing of the diamonds/hearts is enough. I might play with a cooler pink/purple for the clubs and see how that looks, but I rather like the CMYK vibe the deck has.

You're probably right about the name, and I'm notoriously bad with naming my work, this was something I came up with on the spot so I had something to call the project. I will definitely think on this more and report back when I have a better name... Each animal is beheaded, but since it's pixel art, the image isn't as striking as it is on the jokers.

Regarding MPC, I made my prototypes through them and they look great visually, but the question comes to whether or not they're actually good as cards. Again, I'm not a cardist, but I was doing some research and found not everyone is in love with MPC's quality, and I was wondering whether or not that reputation effects whether or not people will buy a deck. The ideal is always USPCC, it seems, and I don't know if what the willingness is for people to spend potentially more on each deck if I were to do a smaller production run through MPC. Also, I haven't heard much of what people think about Gambler's Warehouse, even though I see many kickstarters done through them.

In another forum, someone mentioned making the designs on the court cards much bigger, what is the consensus on that? I always prefer to have a lot of negative space and air to let a design breath, but that might not work as well when dealing with 54 cards all at once...

I love these designs you linked, this artist has very awesome work. It's very helpful to be able to compare similar concepts, I'm definitely going to be looking at the whole deck for further inspiration.

So you know, "indices" is the plural form of "index," not "indice."  "Indice" isn't a word, as far as I know.  "Indexes" is also considered acceptable today as a plural form, though I'm more old-school and use the older form.

I suggest ditching the extra corner pips altogether and going with more traditional indices, in addition to getting rid of the border lines and making your art larger.  The current design isn't doing your artwork any favors.  Go for a higher level of detail and a little bit bigger on the art - just because you're making pixel art, it doesn't mean you have to have large pixels and small art.  Indices really do need to be deep into the corners of the cards in order to be useful - the further from the card edge they are, the further a player has to spread the hand cards in order to see them, the more likely someone else at the table will accidentally see a player's hand cards.

The "CMYK" vibe doesn't work as well as going with a specific pattern to help make your four-color deck easier to use for two-color applications.  And do bear in mind, there are people who simply dislike and won't buy a four-color deck, period.  There's a number of ways one can do a four-color deck or a modified two-color deck.  I've seen warm colors for red, cool colors for black.  I've seen light colors for red, dark colors for black.  I've seen shades of a color - for example, shades of red for red and shades of blue for black - but it really depends on the shades chosen, because if you make two light shades and two dark shades, that can be confusing as well, so you're better, for example, going light with the reds (say, for example, pink and red) and dark with the blacks (say, for example, medium blue and midnight blue/indigo - but not purple, because it's has not just blue in it but red as well).  Orange and yellow are good choices for traditionally red suits because they're nice and bright, so maybe a forest green and a deep blue for the traditionally black suits would work well?  Avoid pink/purple - pink's a little too warm and purple, again, has red in it.

You need not keep the court art strictly to the two colors you have for your dark or light theme - regular courts in a standard deck use a four-color palette for a reason!  It's one thing if you're going for a mono- or duo-chrome look for a purpose, but in such cases, it's better to stick with a more traditional design or a more shades in the colors chosen.

USPC is for many the "golden standard" for getting a deck of cards produced, but they're not exactly what one would call cheap.  It's only recently they even allow for short print runs, and their idea of a short run is 1,000 decks.  Previously, their minimum was 2,500, and before that, 5,000!  Their per-deck costs are pretty high for short runs, but that will be the case for nearly any printer you use, even high-quality alternative printers like Expert PCC and Legends PCC.  MPC's big advantage is that they're among the most flexible in terms of print run size - Expert has a minimum of 1,000 decks and Legends has a minimum of 900.  Decks will always cost less per deck the more you're printing, but then you have to sell all those extra decks as well, unless you happen to like using full, unsold cases of playing cards as modular living room furniture, beds, kitchen tables and chairs, etc.!

Do what many projects do.  Figure out your cost analysis for using more than one printer, then set a base goal to get the job done with the cheapest printer, with stretch goals for higher quality printers with larger print runs.  For example, perhaps you set a simple goal that covers selling 100 decks printed by MPC, then a larger stretch goal of printing 1,000 with Expert.  If your deck is a runaway success, maybe a third stretch goal would be a print run of 5,000 with USPC and with Bicycle branding - unless you have other thoughts in mind, like perhaps getting fancy foil stamping on the box, metallic inks, embossing on the box, a custom, serially-numbered deck seal, etc.  Make these goals known up front, so people don't get upset with a printer switch mid-project - some people might prefer one printer over another.

Gambler's Warehouse does most of their decks with either USPC or Expert PCC.  A few of their designs they do in-house - they own the Liberty Playing Card Company.  I've not heard a lot about Liberty's quality - you'd have to do a little research of your own to learn more.
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