I approved all the sketches a couple of weeks ago and I was shocked and amazed at how much detail he put into them. I'm used to line drawings, vague representations or just outlines. Joe, who apologized for the sloppiness of the work, created some of the most impressive art I've seen. I can't imagine how fine the finished work will be. Honestly, I'm just assembling the deck, he's truly doing all the work. I tried to get him to do the deck himself, but he just wants a paycheck. So 'slap a sticker on it and sell it' as my dad always said.
Well, it would probably be a good idea to check with USPC regarding how fine the detail work can be before it turns to mush on the press plate. I've seen big, detailed pieces of art get shrunk to playing card size and become a shadow of its former self. I have some Arcanes from an earlier print run, and the art is awful. In what appeared to be an attempt to make the black deck blacker, they managed in the process to mush all the fine detail work at the edges and make it fuzzy, indistinct or simply no longer visible. I got a later pressing, the first batch with Performance Coating on it - the black isn't as black (more of a mid-range gray) but those lost details returned and the deck really pops now.
Worst is when it's dark-colored work without good contrast - that turns into an indistinct blob. You've probably heard me mention the Bicycle Venom and Venom Strike decks. They looked like they were going to be awesome, with some outstanding art on the back. But because all the colors were dark with very little contrast among them and there was a good deal of detail work, in the end it really looked like someone took the finished canvas, smushed it into the mud and rinsed it off just a little - as attractive as a bowl of chlorophyll for breakfast.
It's kind of a fine line - artists who aren't minimalists tend to like a fair amount of detail, but you have to remember that the finished work in question is only going to be 3.5 inches tall and 2.5 inches wide. Classic card backs had detail to them, but only to a point, and the majority were monochromatic (a dark or darkish color on white), allowing for excellent contrast. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the artists (at least some of them) actually worked on a canvas that small or close to it when coming up with card back designs. Enlargements and reductions weren't quite as easy back then, I'd imagine, certainly not when brands like Bee, Congress and Bicycle were created (mid-late 19th-century)!
(Read 2528 times)
