Thanks, Emmanuel.

But TOL, this post is for you. Tim Burton? Thank you so much! That 2 of clubs is special to me since it was my first attempt (and the first draft). And thanks for calling out that three. I was pretty happy when the design for her mantilla came to me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts  and for that second look.

Hello Discourse members,

Thank you for posting my deck and thanks for your honest first impressions. I'd like to share a little information about myself and this deck in particular. I only discovered transformation playing cards 5 years ago. Since then I've collected 38 transformation and semi-transformation decks. I wasn't aware of your card forum or United Cardists. But a google search turned up discussions on both about my deck, so I'm glad I found you.

Apparently I am a little out of touch with the market, as I was unaware of The Curator deck or the unpublished Clipped Wings deck. The Curator hasn't appeared on eBay yet, and that's been my primary source of decks. I thought there hadn’t been any new true transformation decks since 2006’s “Pips in Pictures” by Jenny Gaudion, from the UK, or the “State by State Transformation Deck” by Wendy Cipolla. But to be fair, while many of the cards in Mr. Jose’s decks are transformations, he has moved the pips around in some of the cards or changed their orientation, which makes it is really a semi-transformation deck in my book. That makes the images no less breathtakingly beautiful, but they aren’t “pure transformation decks.”

Additionally, Mr. Jose also sometimes just ignores some of the pips on the cards, so they're just sort of hanging in space. I applied a more rigorous standard to my deck, requiring me to use all of the pips on each card. (I'll grant you that the 7 of spades was a bit of a stretch, but I use the edges of the pips to outline portions of my drawing, so it still (barely) qualifies.

And yes, I bought a deck of cards from Walmart and drew right on them. At the time I created this deck, I was just enjoying the challenge of trying to complete 54 works of art on tiny canvases only 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches and the challenge of using all the pips. It was only after finishing the 40 numbered cards and showing them around that people suggested I look into publishing. So, I will have to restore the indexes on some of the cards, but that's not a big deal. That way they can be used for traditional card games as well as the card games I've created for this type of deck.

Finally, I'm a published cartoonist with over 30 cartoons in print. Our artwork does look like doodles, and I went for that look with the five of clubs, but if you look more closely at the drawings, you will see the nuances that you won't find on many napkin drawings. But it's all a matter of taste, and cartoonists are frequently looked down upon by "serious artists." Such is our fate.

So, I thank you for the discourse, and I will close by asking you to consider backing this project. It IS a new true transformation deck and one that uses ALL of the pips on each card. And I don't think we've seen one of those since 2006. If you have, please share that information with me, as I'd love to add it to my collection (as I did with The Curator deck a few days ago).