So, gentlemen, can we call this case settled and get the topic back on track?  It's always good to keep in mind how easily people's words can get misconstrued when your printing a conversation, in essence.

Indeed. And, when one has invested many, many hours (not to mention dollars) thinking up, creating, refining and trying to market an idea, it can be all-too easy to get defensive over even the mildest of criticisms of said idea.

I may not find the deck to be my cup of tea, but it's not hard to see where some people would.  That doesn't mean I need to get into a public shouting match about it.

Was this a "shouting match"?  For my part, it was more of a "trying (none-too successfully) to clarify myself" match.

Sorry Robert, I did get defensive there.  Since you are replying to a post on a thread for the "Fantastic Fur" deck and said things like...

Quote

And, with full-transformational cards, an observer KNOWS that the pips were not just added, slap-dash, after the rest of the card was drawn.

Yes, this thread is about Fantastic Fur, but I think I was clear in the posts you quoted that I was comparing semi-transformational decks (in general) to fully-transformational decks (again, in general), and NOT Fantastic Fur specifically. I stand by the above quote, and believe it to be self-evident: With fully-transformational cards, an observer sees that the pips are sized, located, and oriented precisely where they are on a standard card. It's part of the charm of them, after all, seeing how the artist "transformed" a regular playing card into a scene, while leaving it still fully recognizable as a card. Whereas, with semi-transformational cards (some more than others, certainly), the pips are in different locations, orientations and sizes than on a standard card, sometimes making it very difficult to even figure out what card you are looking at without checking the indices (I own more than a few semi-trans decks which would be impossible to use in a game of cards). While some semi-trans decks do this in very clever ways ("Key to the Kingdom" being a good example), others do indeed have a very slap-dash look to them. Some (but by no means all) of Peter's semi-trans cards border on this. Back to your quoting me:

Then referring to Emmanuel you stated...

Quote

From what I recall of your decks, your designs do not play as "fast and easy" with all of these things as do Peter Wood's semi-transformational decks.

Saying that Peter "plays fast and easy" with the size, orientation and location of the pips on his semi-trans cards is NOT saying, as I believe you said that I said, that his art is "fast and easy". It is, however, a statement of fact, and one I doubt Peter would disagree with.

Back to you...

Quote

Then in another comment you tell Emmanuel....
And, for what it's worth, I don't recall any of your designs striking me as "creatively lazy" in the least. Far from it, in fact.

I guess you may have been saying some other deck was "creatively lazy", but again, since you are writing in this thread and we've already had the artwork called "lazy", childish, it looks like a kid drew it, etc. then without a doubt I became more defensive and sensitive.  This forum is already cut throat for the most part and not very open to different forms of art.  I have actually stayed away from it just for that reason.  Instead of just saying they don't "like" something, well, I'm not going to beat a dead bush, we know how some respond.

No, I was not saying that Fantastic Fur was "creatively lazy". I was talking about many semi-trans decks in general.

I agree with you Robert, it's time to move on.  I love to collect playing cards.  I love to create playing cards.  I love to talk about collecting and creating playing cards.  Sadly, on this forum, although it's getting better, it still just does not compliment any of those things...unless you fit in to their niche or art form.

On the Fantastic Fur project, I really don't mind listening to some of the feedback that you and others have given me here.  We've actually been showing followers of the Kickstarter campaign some of those ideas and we are implementing them.  I thank everyone for that.  I was always told not to "engage" your critics.  I guess I should have known better than to engage here.  I should have just read the constructive comments and never replied back to anything.

To everyone, please, go collect some playing cards but also understand that different people like and collect different things.  That doesn't make one worse, lazy, or because it was not drawn on a computer that doesn't mean a child drew it.  There are lots of different forms of art and different types of playing cards to collect.

To me, the key difference does not lie in whether its a full-transformation deck, or a semi-transformation deck. To me it is rather whether the pips are used meaningfully, or simply added on after the fact to make it a transformation deck. The design should definitely revolve around making the graphics work with the pips, rather than simply adding in pips here and there after the fact. There is a vast difference between the two.

Comparing this deck and Emmanuel's decks, we can see the stark contrast with what i just highlighted. Emmanuel's decks are simply in a different world, there is no argument against that.

Well said, Volant! And some of Peter Wood's cards at least give the appearance of what I bolded in your post, when they may, in fact,  have been carefully planned before the first line was drawn on the card.

And, with full-transformational cards, an observer KNOWS that the pips were not just added, slap-dash, after the rest of the card was drawn.

And perhaps THAT is at least part of what I was trying to say above.

Thanks for stepping in and providing some clarity.

-RSL

Bob, admittedly it was a little harsh to read your post. Additionally, if I'm being honest, it gets a little tiring to see statements that a semi-transformation deck has less merits than a pure transformation deck (for example, any thread related to the Eclecdeck here). With that said though, I can't fault you for liking what you like, and I apologize if I came across as angry.

Also, thank you to Newtsgames and Firdawesome!

Emmanuel, I don't think I said, nor did I mean to imply, that semi-transformational decks have "less merit" than full-transformational ones.

I just believe that a full-transformational card (say, a six of clubs) is more difficult to design than is a semi-transformational six of clubs, since the full-transformational one has more rules/restrictions placed on the designer/artist (the pips have to be a certain size, in specific places, in specific orientations, whereas, in a semi-transformational card, the artist/designer can make the pips any size, in any location, in any orientation he or she pleases!

I also believe that those limitations make it more difficult for the artist/designer of the full-transformation card to come up with a "scene" for the card which does not look too artificial/posed. For example, I designed a full-transformational ten of spades in which all of the pips were fish. but having all of those fish be EXACTLY the same size, in EXACTLY the same pose, swimming at EXACTLY the same distance from each other... well, it was pretty much a textbook example of a stilted, overly-posed-looking scene! Had I the luxury of making the fish in various sizes, poses, and in various distances from each other, it would have been FAR easier to make the scene look more "natural".

From what I recall of your decks, your designs do not play as "fast and easy" with all of these things as do Peter Wood's semi-transformational decks. so much of what I said of semi-trans decks within the context of my comments about "Fantastic Fur" don't even apply to your work.

But, as I said, if and when I ever design a semi-transformational deck, all of my thoughts about how much "easier" it would be than designing a full-transformational deck may totally change!

Sorry, but I don't recall: are any of your decks full-transformation decks? If so, did you find designing them to be more difficult, less difficult, or just as difficult as designing your semi-transformational ones?

Hi RSL,

nice to see you here!
If i might interject my own opinion... I read back through the entire topic, and I think you (RSL) might be confusing Mollusk with Victor/Vjose/CardCollector.

most of the other posters on this thread were reacting to Victor's usual negative and offensive bull$hit. Mollusk, while he did have a pretty negative first post, came back with much more constructive and detailed criticism later.

seems like you got them mixed up, at least that's how it looks to me. Hope that helps clear the air a bit.

Right you are, th4mo - thanks for the correction!

My sincere apologies to any mollusks who were hurt during the making of my first post in this thread.

Hello, all!

This is my first post here in quite some time.

For those who don't know me from my posts on UC, a quick introduction:

My name is Robert S. Lancaster. I have actively collected unusual decks of playing cards (mostly ones with custom courts) since 1978 (although I purchased the first deck in what later became my collection/obsession in 1968, when I was ten years old.

I now have more than 2,500 unique decks in my collection, mostly stored in thirty boxes from BCW, each of which hold approximately eighty poker-sized decks.

I first became aware that I was not the only person in the world with this unusual hobby in 1996, when I started what I believe was the first web site devoted to the hobby ("The Bob Lancaster Gallery of Unusual Playing Cards") and started receiving emails from people all over the world who also collected playing cards!

I ended up joining both the IPCS (the International Playing-Card Society) and 52 Plus Joker, creating 52+J's first web site in 1997.

My old-school web site was hosted on AOL, and so was destroyed when AOL deleted all of their members' web sites in October 2008 (I missed the warning that this was going to happen, having had the bad sense of timing to be in a hospital, in a coma, when AOL warned its members about the upcoming mass deletion.

I have recovered much of the old web site using "The Wayback Machine" (www.archive.org), and plan/hope to open a new-and-improved version of it online in the coming months.

As for the "Fantastic Fur" deck:

================================================

First, I should say that I am pleased and proud to count Peter Wood (the artist behind the deck) as a friend, having corresponded with him, off and on, ever since he found a card from his first deck ("The Teddy Bear Playing Cards") on my web site in the late 1990s.

I own several of his decks ("The Teddy Bear Playing Cards", "2000 Pips", "Busy Bears", "Goblins and...", "Pips-N-Paws", "The Chamber of 52 Cards", "The Journey", and "Wild!", as well as some Souvenir decks published by Newt's Games for which Peter designed the tuck box, and a children's book which Peter illustrated, so I will definitely be pledging on "Fantastic Fur" on Kickstarter.

That being said, here are my thoughts on the deck:

=====[ THE NAME ]=====

First, I love the deck's name! When Peter was working on it, he ran a few names he was considering for it past me, and "Fantastic Fur" was my favorite by far.

=====[ "SEMI-TRANSFORMATIONAL" DECKS ]=====

Second (and Peter knows this), Although I (usually) love "fully-transformational" decks (those in which the pips on each card are in the same location, orientation and size as those in a "standard" deck), I am (generally) NOT a fan of "semi-transformational" decks (those, like this one, in which each card has the right number of pips, but they are located, oriented, sized and skewed in whatever way the artist feels best serves his or her concept for the card). I have designed many "fully transformational" cards (though not a complete deck), and so, I think that I understand and appreciate better than most the challenge behind designing and creating a fully-transformed card which "works". Creating an entire deck of fully-transformed cards, in which all of the cards are not only fully-transformed, but also serve the deck's "theme", takes far more creativity (and work!) than most of us realize.  Appreciating all of that, I tend to think of "semi-transformational" cards as somewhat a product of creative laziness (of course, if I ever designed and created one myself, my appreciation for them might increase tremendously).

Peter's "The Teddy Bear Playing Cards" deck was a "fully-transformational" deck, and I loved it. But most, perhaps all of his decks since then have been "semi-transformational", and I can't help but be disappointed in them, if only for that reason.

=====[ THE THEME ]=====

The deck's theme (teddy bears as comic book superheroes and villains) would seem to be a natural for a Peter Wood deck, but I don't think that theme was fully-realized here. The computer-graphic backgrounds of the cards was chosen, according to the deck's Kickstarter page, to give the cards more of a "comic book look", but fail to do so it my eyes. Offhand, I don't recall that effect used in many comic books. To me, it gives the cards more of the look of cheesy web pages (such as some on my old playing card site).  As I believe others have said here, I think that the "comic book" theme would have been better served by narrow white borders, with the inner edge outlined in a thin, black line, and the background of the card a simple background (buildings, etcetera) as are usually used in the panels of a comic book. A rectangular white or pastel "Post-It-like" narrative tag containing simple narrative (such as "MEANWHILE...") could be placed in a corner of some cards, further enhancing the "comic book" look and feel of the deck.

I think that the scene, title and dialog (explaining the hero's powers) used on most of the cards would seem more appropriate to the cover of a comic book than to a panel within a comic book. It may have better served the theme (and have been more fun as well) to make each card the cover of the first issue of that Superhero's comic, including a crisp logo of their name, a small logo of the comic's publisher (a'la Marvel or DC), a price, and even a "comics code seal" in a corner. That would serve to make the blatant describing of the hero's powers/abilities more in keeping with where such things are generally done in real comic books. If, on the other hand, you want the cards to be like panels within a comic book, you should cut way back on the explaining of the hero's powers, and, with a background scene (and perhaps secondary characters, such as a villain), make it look like a panel WITHIN A STORY, and not like a stand-alone advertisement for the hero (which is what a comic book's cover is, if you think about it...)

I know that it would be a LOT of work, but if you came up with at least a general outline of the story in the comic books depicted on each card (whether that card depicts the cover or just a panel), that storyline would inform the way the card was designed and drawn, and would greatly increase both the variety of the images AND the feeling that we are looking at parts of actual comic books rather than contrived comic book-like images.

Personally, I enjoyed the nods to heroes from actual comic books ("The Incredible Hug", for one) more than I did the ones which were solely the product of Peter's imagination. For one thing, they were more open to "inside jokes/references", which would make the deck more attractive to comic book fans (a HUGE market). The more that those jokes/references tied into the world of teddy bears ("Hug", for example), the better. And the more cohesive it makes the deck's theme, I believe.

====[ A FINAL THOUGHT ]=====

Perhaps one more SuperVillain is called for:

Named "Mr. Mollusk" (or, perhaps, "Dr. Mollusk"), his supervillainous power would be discouraging the hero with pointless and vacuous non-constructive criticism. The hero ends up losing interest in what he or she was trying to accomplish.

If by "the recent Smurf movie" you mean the 2011 film with CGI smurfs, I did not see it, but CGI versions of characters from 2D animation and comic strips tend to be disappointing (Garfield and Yogi Bear being prime examples).

Perhaps I like the Smurfs because I have many fond memories of watching the animated TV series back in the 1980s/1990s with my three kids (who were born in 1982, 1983 and 1985).

As for Peanuts & Charlie Brown, I tend to think of the humor there as being American, and I don't know how well it translates to other cultures (although I understand that Snoopy's appeal is fairly universal), so perhaps that would account for your not liking it (you are Russian, right?)

brownmagician, you're welcome.

I have a couple of card-collecting friends (whose collections and knowledge of playing card FAR exceed my own) who have gotten together to play Skat once a week for many years now.

They have invited me to join them in this, but - unfortunately, they get together about 3,000 miles away from me (they live in New England, I live in Oregon).

Also, I rarely play cards (other than Windows Solitaire) - this has been true for many years (odd, for someone with more than 2,000 decks of cards in his home), but is even truer since I lost the use of my left hand in 2008 (Try playing cards using only your dominant hand. Frustrating, at best).

I have never experienced this.

Perhaps a deck with a Sorbet finish to cleanse your palate?

Here's an odd, long (but cool, I think) story which relates to the topic (be patient, though):

A couple of years ago, I received an email with the subject "Are you the Robert Lancaster who attended Cal State Fullerton" and the body of the email continued "...in the mid 1970s?"

I did indeed attend CSU Fullerton from around 1976-1978, but had not made any lasting nor meaningful friendships there. I could not remember the names of anyone I had met there, and would have been surprised if anyone I had met there remembered my name either, so I was very curious as to who might have sent the email.

When I replied that I had indeed attended back then, and asked if I knew the person who had sent the email, he replied that no, he did not know me. He had recently purchased an old edition of a Justice League of America comic book at a comic store and, when he opened it at home to read it, a CSUF report card for Robert Lancaster from 1976 fell out!

Intrigued, he had Googled my name, and found a page about me which showed him that I was about the right age, and had lived in Southern California in my youth, so he contacted me.

Another thing which absolutely confirmed (for me, anyway) that it was me: Justice League of America was the only comic I had ever collected with any consistency. I had collected it from grade school through my college years, and had every issue from around #12 through around #120 in a shoebox somewhere.

So how did my comic end up in a comic store near San Diego?

Well, I had recently spent nearly a year in various hospitals, after having suffered a massive stroke. I had spent about the first two months of that in a coma, and was not expected to live (my wife says that the docs told her that I should have died at least twice by that point).

Facing mounting medical bills and the likelihood of soon becoming a widow, Susan had, at the urging of my siblings, decided to try to sell off some of the fifty years' worth of junk I had accumulated (I'm a bit of a packrat), and my JLA collection had been a part of what she had asked my brother and his wife to sell off. Luckily, my mother, knowing how much my playing card collection meant to me, had convinced her not to sell THAT. (whew!)

I called my brother and found out that, while they had sold via eBay most of what Susan had given them, they had sold my JLA collection to a comic store near their home in San Diego.

The gentleman who had emailed me was kind enough to snailmail me the comic and the report card (holy crap I had bad grades!), and refused my offer to reimburse him for them.

So that's another thing I collected - JLA comics. Modi's post reminded me of that.

no flash that's all sun glare. You can call me J J Abrams. 'Sides you guys know what these decks look like

Speaking of Abrams...

Quote from: RSLancastr on February 06, 2013, 02:39:18 AM

Thanks, Lara!

Are you saying that Don and I are both old?

We don't fart dust yet, but we're getting there...  I think you're five or ten years my senior (born Aug. '67).

Nine years and six months (Feb. 1958), but who's counting?

Welcome RSL

Thanks, Ibrahim!

BTW, you said you are a software engineer. On what platforms, if I might ask?

hey, I am right up there with you guys! I am 44, born in 68. And I bought reading glasses this year! YIPEE!

Just wait until you buy bifocals/trifocals! And then, wait until you wear them on a chain around your neck so you won't forget where you put them!!

Well, I was born in 1968, so I am pretty sure that I didn't buy a deck of cards when I was 10. (jk)

Funny you should say that, David. I was born in 1958, and bought the first deck in what would later become my collection/addiction/obsession (2,200 decks and growing) in 1968, when I was ten years old!

I still have it, too!

Welcome to the forums, by the way and...is a "cardician" the same as a "cardist"?

I am neither, being merely a collector.

-RSL