Author (Read 4119 times)

Zaid · « **on:** December 12, 2012, 03:31:31 AM »

Hello folks,

My name is Zaid. I'm new to the world of cards. I'm an artist and photographer specializing in body art and creative photography. I've been doing photography for 16 years, over the last 10 years I've focused on bodypainting and body art, but since 2007, I have narrowed my art to a technique I call "lightpainting", which is art created by projecting images onto live models and photographing the result. You can see high-res samples of that art here: images.surrealscapes.net/Artwork/Lumens and if you want to learn more about the technique you can check out some video here: vimeo.com/channels/surrealscapes

One day three months ago, on a whim, I put together a deck of cards featuring my artwork, knowing nothing about cards and what makes a good deck. You can see that deck here: www.fineartplayingcards.com. I didn't make any attempt to customize the images for the cards, I just slapped a different art piece on each card face, added generic indices and pips, and that was that. The tuckbox ain't nothin' special neither. I used a small printer in Florida and printed 100 decks and put them up for sale on Amazon, just to see what they would do. They're actually doing pretty well so far, and the interesting thing is that they're being purchased mostly by women, i.e. 70% of the buyers so far have been women. I imagine these buyers to just be people who like the artwork and not particularly card enthusiasts, but I really have no way of knowing.

Originally I was intending the cards to just be a promotional device for my artwork, to increase exposure of my art and thus generate more fine art print sales. But over the past few months I've been checking out all the fantastic custom decks that are out there, I've really started to get into card decks as art pieces in and of themselves and now I'm looking into doing a custom deck of my own utilizing my lightpainting technique. What I would do would be a series of photographs of models whereby the projected images are card-themed somehow.

It would definitely be an expensive and long undertaking as I would first need to design and create all the images to be projected, at least 56. And then I would need to photograph the models to end up with 56 distinct final images for the cards. I use professional models for my artwork and they don't come cheap, at least the good ones don't.

I would probably hire 15-20 models and intend to get several card images from each shoot. Each photoshoot takes 3-4 hours, so we're talking 80 hours of shooting, not to mention the dozens if not hundreds of hours designing the projection images before I could even get to the shoots. And then of course there's all the time spent actually designing and laying out the deck itself and the tuckbox. I would get the cards printed with USPCC and they have specific content restrictions, i.e. no juicy naked bits can be showing, so I'll either have to be careful with my shoots and arrange the models in a way that hides their girl parts, or post-edit the images to censor all the racy parts out in some creative and looks-like-its-meant-to-be-there way.

So the question is this: is this something of interest to you, the experts in the world of cards?

Because a deck like this would have a picture of an actual person on each card face, it seems like it would really only appeal to card game players, i.e. people who just like looking at pretty pictures on their card faces. not magicians or cardists. I wonder if that might not be a big enough audience to justify the undertaking. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of ways to incorporate the fact that there's a real person in the picture, but emphasize the pips on the card face, so that at first glance it looks like a regular card with just creatively-arranged pips, but when you look closer, you see a real person. It could actually be pretty cool if it works and probably the first of its kind to be done that way. Sure there are bodypainting card decks out there, but again, those are just decks with a pretty picture on each card and no attempt made to customize those images for a card deck.

Then there's the money side of it. The pro models I use charge upwards of $100 per hour, so each photoshoot could be $400 in model fees. Let's say I manage to find less expensive models and got the rate down to $50/hr. Multiply that by 20 shoots and you're at $4000 in just model fees. And this isn't something that I could pre-fund with Kickstarter because I wouldn't want to take the risk that I couldn't pull it off. I would spend my own money upfront to generate all the photographs and artwork and then go to Kickstarter once the deck is actually ready to go to production. But I would definitely need to be confident that such a deck would be popular enough to generate enough funding via KS to cover my costs, and then hopefully have enough of a retail market afterwards to actually turn a profit. I'd love to do this deck just for the sake of the art, but I don't can't afford to risk that kind of money on just an art piece, it would need to make business sense for me to take the risk.

What do you think? Would you go for a deck like this with the same fervor as other recent popular decks have received?

Zaid

Don Boyer · « **Reply #1 on:** December 12, 2012, 04:23:04 AM »

Wow - where do I begin? (And I mean that in a good way, Zaid!)

First, I looked over the sites you linked to, except for Vimeo - I'm at work and video's been disabled on this machine. It's some breathtaking stuff, and not just the lightscapes but all of it. I wouldn't abandon your ideas for latex completely - they're impressive and allow for you to use backgrounds that you wouldn't be able to use for lightscapes. You could attempt a combination of latex with bodypainting, only covering selected areas for effect or to enhance/diminish a body part's appearance. There's also the option of using non-liquid latex bodysuits painted to suit your needs, as well as Spandex full-body "zentai" suits, covering every single part of the body and in essence making it your complete canvas.

But more to the point - your simple art deck has some appeal, but it's more limited in an audience like this. (Bearing in mind we probably represent less than one percent of the entire playing card market, albeit an enthusiastic segment that tends to spend more on cards than the average hundred people combined...) "Art decks", in the sense of a deck created simply as a showcase for artwork and not as a work of art itself, tend to not get much traction here - the only major exception I can think of would be the artist Anne Stokes, who's produced two fantasy/Gothic art decks under her own name and two "tattoo flash" art decks for Alchemy 1997 England, a retailer of alternative, Gothic and steampunk fashion and accessories.

If you're looking to make a deck that's a work of art using your signature style, there would definitely be an audience for that. One of the many things you'll need would be a designer to work with, preferably one that has experience in successful playing card design and who'd be interested in working with you on this project. There's no such thing as a deck that's both a "work of art" and uses 100% generic design, pips, indices, etc. It's like ordering foie gras or a 12-ounce filet mignon with haricots vert at McDonald's; it just doesn't happen.

I can imagine a very good theme for this deck - there's a deck type called a "transformation deck" which takes the traditional pip layouts (or the traditional pips in a unique layout) and incorporates them into a drawing, a painting, etc. for the face of each card. One of the best recent examples of this would be the Curator deck: click here to go where they're on sale now. The artist created each card as an artwork made about two feet long out of hand-cut paper laid on a white paper surface, having the images copied and reduced in size for reproduction as playing cards. Every pip, every index, everything else, all made by hand without any computer intervention until after the art was completed. I could easily imagine a sort-of transformation deck being made using your models as the "canvas" on which to lay out your designs for the individual cards - and the court cards would look particularly nice, I think.

I really do have a lot more ideas for how to approach a deck of this nature. I encourage you to contact me using the signature information at the bottom of this post - I do consulting work for designers and artists interested in creating beautiful playing cards but who don't have the experience/knowledge to create a truly serious deck, something you'd never think of as a simple novelty. I've consulted on a few recent successful Kickstarter deck projects, such as the Bohemia deck for the design studio Uusi and Bicycle Apocalyptica Chromatics.

Zaid · « **Reply #2 on:** December 12, 2012, 05:49:43 AM »

Don,

Thanks for the kind words! It's good to know that my art has some appeal here.

I don't use latex anymore. Yes, it does offer some more creative options than the lightpaintings, but it's a total PITA to work with and very hard on the models, and it would add hours to the prep time, so the 4-hour shoots would become 7-hour shoots. As an example, this image, http://images.surrealscapes.net/Artwork/Latex/17030162_M8dsvh#!i=1686687343&k=PbH3GqB took 5 hours to paint and 2 hours to shoot. The model, now a friend of mine, was an ex-Marine and had the physical constitution to take such torment. She had to stand up perfectly still for the entire 5 hours of painting, and we only did half her body!

However that is an interesting idea to use latex selectively on the models' bodies to make the images tame enough to satisfy USPCC's content restrictions. What I do now is paint the model up with a base coat of silver bodypaint, which gives a nice reflective surface for the projected image, as well as toning down the appearance of nudity. I could use things like nipple pasties and other small coverups to cover the models' girl parts and make things PG-13 enough. Also the way the image is projected can serve that purpose as well. If you look at my portfolio there are many images where the model is mostly in shadow, i.e. not being light by any part of the projected image, and that's a technique that I would also use to tone down the nudity.

Definitely I was thinking that if I did a deck like this that everything would be custom, including the indices and pips. For the deck I have now, I wanted to just test the waters so I used the generic stuff to get it out quickly, but I would definitely design custom elements for the new deck.

I would be very happy to speak to you and hear your ideas, but now we're talking about more money, consulting fees and the like.

That would raise the bar for the financial return on this deck to justify the expenditure. That's the issue with this type of artwork: since I'm using real models, there's an upfront cost just to generate the art to go on the cards in the first place. As I think about it some more, I suppose I could get by with just 10 separate photoshoots instead of 20, and net 5 images from each shoot. Now we've cut the model fee expense from $4000 to $2000 (still assuming $50/hr, which is hard to find) and it's starting to look more palatable.

And of course, this leads us back to the money again. With the custom decks I've been studying over the past few months, most if not all of them have been limited run, i.e. the initial 2500- or 5000-deck printing from USPCC and that's it. Given that there's only $3-4$ of profit in a deck that's sold at $8 means that I would probably just barely break even after I sold 5000 decks, once you count all the money required to put the deck together in the first place. Would you think that a deck like this could retail for higher than $8, say $10?

The transformation idea is along the lines of what I've already been thinking about with regards to how to incorporate card elements, specifically the face pips, in with the bodyart aspect. The more I think about it, the more I think it could be really cool. I just have to decide whether to pull the trigger and commit to the project, given the 4 other business and art projects I have going on at the same time, and all that with a wife, 3rd grade daughter, and regular day job!

You know, what I could really use your help with is marketing. I'll give you a buzz and we'll get the conversation started offline.

Zaid

Zaid · « **Reply #3 on:** January 23, 2013, 04:52:15 AM »

All right, before I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars creating a bunch of new images for the cards, I decided to go back and redesign the deck I have. I went through and artistically censored the images to pass USPCC's content restrictions and now I have their approval to print the deck with them!

So the new deck will be printed by USPCC on Bicycle stock with the embossed finish. Everything has been redesigned, including custom pips.

First, the tuckbox:

Here is the card back:

The aces:

For the courts, I created two-way versions of the base images. I think they turned out quite nicely. ;-)

Here are the jokers:

And finally, a sampling of some cards:

The artwork has been uploaded to USPCC and I should be receiving a prototype deck in a few weeks. After that, it's on to Kickstarter. If the deck is successful, then I can justify spending the time and money to create the follow-on deck, i.e. the transformation bodyart deck.

Don Boyer · « **Reply #4 on:** January 23, 2013, 05:58:45 AM »

I think the art is still gorgeous. In fact, I'd even suggest simplifying the pips and values a bit, and consider ditching the white frames altogether. They only serve to distract one from the artwork. Some of the most gorgeous playing card decks of late had no frames around the courts at all and they looked awesome.

I'd put in simple pips in red and black (improves functionality of the deck) with a white outline around the pips to make them noticeable but less distracting. I wouldn't even substitute white for black, as many do when creating a black deck. In this case, I think simply the outlines would be enough to make them visible and useable.

Zaid · « **Reply #5 on:** January 23, 2013, 02:29:00 PM »

Don, thanks for the feedback, and the kind words. Regarding the pips, are you saying the designs are too complex and they should be simplified? I was trying to spruce everything up and so I went for a custom design and something that I thought was original and that would create a unique motif to go along with the artwork. As for colored pips, the previous design of the cards does have red and white pips, with the red pips being outlined in white. The problem with red is that the color can clash with the colors in the art on some of the cards, and it was just disturbing to my artistic eye, as well as making the cards look lower-class, so I went with white for everything.

As for the borders, the very first version of this deck had no borders around the images and the images bled all the way to the edges of the cards. I thought it made the cards look cheap and like a nudie card deck you'd get a Vegas gift shop. Most of my images have the artwork cropped right to the edge of the image, and there's no way around that because that's how the photograph was taken. So either the images have to bleed right to the edge of the card, which I think makes the cards look really cheap, or there's no border, and then the image just cuts off in midair. See below for comparisons:

I dunno, I'm really feeling that I need the border around the non-court cards. However, for the court cards, I could ditch the border because none of the image are cropped at the edges. But border serves another purpose besides just making the card look better. I use a different border around the courts, the non-courts, and the jokers, to add a layer of distinguishability between them. If you take the border away, you lose that extra level.

Okay, let me go back and play with a few things and see what happens...

Don Boyer · « **Reply #6 on:** January 23, 2013, 03:27:59 PM »

The deck has beautiful art - simple indices in this case would serve the art better, no matter how you come up with them. Try different shades or red, or perhaps even different colors. While it's conventional for black pips to be white on a black deck, there's no rule about what must be used for the red colors - purple, blue, green, pink, orange, etc. Even the black pips can be something other than black or white, but make the black-pip colors darker than the red ones if you're not using white, and make two different colors. A lot of people actually play solitaire with their cards, and monochrome pips make that exceptionally difficult. It also makes spotting a flush in poker more challenging.

The court cards are distinguished enough from the spot cards - no need for the framing. It only serves to distract from the art. BTW, the typical nudie deck has rather solid frames around its artwork, not the other way around.

As far as the spot cards, you can make the art fade as it reaches the edge of the card, eliminating the sudden cut-off issue. It should look quite elegant.

Zaid · « **Reply #7 on:** January 23, 2013, 07:49:29 PM »

I was looking at doing something like this:

However, when I presented this to the prepress folks at USPCC, they said that since the red is actually made of up two colors, magenta and yellow, if there's a registration problem between one of the plates, either magenta or yellow, you'll see that color creep into the white area of the pip. It's not that they won't print it, it's just that they are warning me that there could be issues.

The only solution would be to make the entire pip a solid color. And no matter what color I choose, there would some images in the deck with which that color would clash.

I'll keep working on it.

-Z

xela · « **Reply #8 on:** January 23, 2013, 09:29:12 PM »

Might want a NSFW tag in the title.

Have you used DeviantART to get more publicity for your work? They love this kind of stuff.

Zaid · « **Reply #9 on:** January 23, 2013, 09:31:57 PM »

No NSFW tag necessary. Everything has been censored, so there's no naughty bits visible anywhere. ;-)

You know, I've had a DeviantArt account for years and never populated it with anything. Maybe it's time to start...

-Z

Don Boyer · « **Reply #10 on:** January 23, 2013, 11:07:17 PM »

Quote from: Zaid on January 23, 2013, 09:31:57 PM

No NSFW tag necessary. Everything has been censored, so there's no naughty bits visible anywhere. ;-)

You know, I've had a DeviantArt account for years and never populated it with anything. Maybe it's time to start...

-Z

Now that's a game plan!

Zaid · « **Reply #11 on:** January 24, 2013, 01:36:25 PM »

Okay, after wrestling with it for hours, here are two options for pip colors:

Option 1:

Option 2:

I like option 1 better because having the white facing towards the inside of the card isolates the red from the colors in the face image and reduces the impact when the red color clashes with whatever color is in the image. I also like the fact that the pips are still hollow and the black background shows through, whereas in option 2, the pips are now completely filled with color.

Option 1 also seems to fit the design motif of the cards better.

Feedback?

-Z

Lara Krystle "Lane" · « **Reply #12 on:** January 24, 2013, 09:32:32 PM »

Quote from: Zaid on January 24, 2013, 01:36:25 PM

Okay, after wrestling with it for hours, here are two options for pip colors:

Option 1:

Option 2:

I like option 1 better because having the white facing towards the inside of the card isolates the red from the colors in the face image and reduces the impact when the red color clashes with whatever color is in the image. I also like the fact that the pips are still hollow and the black background shows through, whereas in option 2, the pips are now completely filled with color.

Option 1 also seems to fit the design motif of the cards better.

Feedback?

-Z

First of all welcome welcome! Its nice to see new faces and specially new deck designers

I like Option 1.

Don Boyer · « **Reply #13 on:** January 24, 2013, 09:42:36 PM »

Yeah, I'd go for option 1. It just plain looks better. Mock up a card or two with both versions so we can really see how they look in action.

Zaid · « **Reply #14 on:** January 24, 2013, 09:47:39 PM »

Thank you! It's good to be here and be able to get feedback about design and deck creation from the people who really appreciate this stuff. ;-)

The more I look at it, for option 1, I like the red in the pips, but I'm not happy with the gray. I'd like to pick a color instead of just a gray value, because the spades and clubs just aren't popping like the hearts and diamonds are. But I have to choose a color that is relatively neutral because I don't want to much clashing of the pip color with the colors in the photographs. I'm leaning towards a dark blue. Okay, a few more hours of experimentation...

-Z

Zaid · « **Reply #15 on:** January 24, 2013, 09:50:50 PM »

Here you go. Like I said, I'm not feeling the gray, that needs more work... By the way, I'm going to change the assignment of the images in the heart and diamond suits to images with which the pip colors match better. All the pink in this king of hearts image certainly doesn't go with the deep red in the pip.

-Z

Zaid · « **Reply #16 on:** January 24, 2013, 10:02:55 PM »

And option 2:

-Z

Don Boyer · « **Reply #17 on:** January 24, 2013, 10:45:01 PM »

Option one is the better of the two. The pips practically overshadow the art in option two.

Here's a thought regarding the colors of the pips. Try maroon for the red, and a deep blue (but not violet) for the black. They're dark enough that they won't take anything away from the center art, which is predominantly bright colors and shadows.

Zaid · « **Reply #18 on:** January 26, 2013, 02:23:53 AM »

I wrangled doing some sort of blue for hours and I just couldn't come up with something that worked. Firstly, I could find a blue that looked good. Blues in CMYK processes always look crappy to me. There are some nice PMS blues, but mixing spot colors with CMYK colors would add to the cost of the card and make my life more difficult with prepping the output files. But aside from that, with whatever blue I tried, when you put a red pip card next to a blue one, with all the white going on, it looks like some sort of American and French patriotic frenzy.

So I'm ditching the blue and sticking with the gray. It's starting to grow on me and as I'm laying out the cards with the photographs it's actually looking pretty good.

-Z

Don Boyer · « **Reply #19 on:** January 26, 2013, 02:31:45 AM »

Quote from: Zaid on January 26, 2013, 02:23:53 AM

I wrangled doing some sort of blue for hours and I just couldn't come up with something that worked. Firstly, I could find a blue that looked good. Blues in CMYK processes always look crappy to me. There are some nice PMS blues, but mixing spot colors with CMYK colors would add to the cost of the card and make my life more difficult with prepping the output files. But aside from that, with whatever blue I tried, when you put a red pip card next to a blue one, with all the white going on, it looks like some sort of American and French patriotic frenzy.

So I'm ditching the blue and sticking with the gray. It's starting to grow on me and as I'm laying out the cards with the photographs it's actually looking pretty good.

-Z

Sounds good. The only other option I could think of would be metallic inks for the pips and values. That would definitely set them apart from the art, but the question then would be will they attract too much attention. Done right, though, it could look pretty classy.

Zaid · « **Reply #20 on:** January 26, 2013, 02:51:44 AM »

I've been thinking about metallic inks, but they're treated the same as PMS colors, so there would be the same issues there with respect to cost and file prep. And I thought Nikki at USPC told me that anything with metallic ink is outsourced, but I'll have to confirm that. As for whether it would take away from the art, that's possible, but I also want these cards to be functional for gameplay so maybe having indices and pips that stand out would be a good thing.

At this point, I'm going to wrap up this design and move forward, or else these cards will never get printed! So I'll save the metallic ink for the next deck. I have ideas for two more decks that have nothing to do with my body art work and I want to get this project out so I can get on to designing those. They would be more traditional decks so I have more room to play with design elements on the spot and court cards.

-Z

Don Boyer · « **Reply #21 on:** January 26, 2013, 03:28:23 AM »

Sounds good, Zaid. I'm just spitballing ideas around here, but in the end, you as the artist must know when to put the brush down and say, "I'm done."

Maybe metallic foil on boxes is outsourced, but to my knowledge the metallic ink on the cards is down in-house and at an additional per-deck cost. Consider maybe down the road making a single proof sheet with metallics on the indices - they could look awful or fantastic, but it's the only way to know for certain. (Then again, I'm not sure they can do metallics on proofs...darn, this card-making stuff is so HARD...)

Zaid · « **Reply #22 on:** January 26, 2013, 03:36:42 AM »

Yep, as we say in the art world: "Projects are never done, they're only due." One of my big problems as an artist is spinning round and round on different ideas, unable to commit to anything, so indeed it always comes down to me just saying enough is enough and moving on so that the project can actually see the light of day.

I'm looking to get the files uploaded on Monday for the prototype deck order.

-Z

Zaid · « **Reply #23 on:** January 31, 2013, 03:36:52 PM »

The prototype deck is in production at USPCC!

Here's the uncut for the faces:

http://www.surrealscapes.net/depot/uncut_sheet_faces.jpg

And the backs:

http://www.surrealscapes.net/depot/uncut_sheet_backs.jpg

The black background on the cards is made of up a CMYK value of 0/0/0/100, so that's why it looks gray onscreen. But USPCC tells me it will print as a rich black so the cards will look right when they're printed.

-Z

Don Boyer · « **Reply #24 on:** January 31, 2013, 09:51:36 PM »

Quote from: Zaid on January 31, 2013, 03:36:52 PM

The prototype deck is in production at USPCC!

Here's the uncut for the faces:

http://www.surrealscapes.net/depot/uncut_sheet_faces.jpg

And the backs:

http://www.surrealscapes.net/depot/uncut_sheet_backs.jpg

The black background on the cards is made of up a CMYK value of 0/0/0/100, so that's why it looks gray onscreen. But USPCC tells me it will print as a rich black so the cards will look right when they're printed.

-Z

RGB doesn't usually translate to CMYK well - and vice versa. But oddly enough, it looks good on my screen, as black as I'd expect. MacBooks have good screens.