That's right my friends, the relaunch of Alien Empires is now live!  If you're looking for something fairly unique to the playing card world (aliens), I think you should check this out! Plus, there's not just one early bird special for a single deck of cards, there's a second early bird special for two decks of cards, what's not to love!

I want to thank you in advance for taking a look 

Here's the Kickstarter link:
http://kck.st/2Krdkcx

And a peek at the Clubs from the deck can be found below, and the rest of the court cards can be found on my campaign:

My Kickstarter is officially live!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2127474916/alien-empires-illustrated-playing-cards-0?ref=user_menu

Well folks, looks like I'm finally able to get back into the swing of things and will be relaunching my Kickstarter mid-May (tentatively May 15th)!

I'm super excited for my relaunch and, as always, totally open to any advice from everyone

Thanks for the glimpse into this project and good luck as you retool and jump into Kickstart the next time.  There is a lot of good advice above especially about drumming up attention/demand as you go to conventions.  Where did you get your prototype deck printed?

Sorry for the delay getting back to you on your question, I got the prototype printed through makeplayingcards.com.  For one off print runs, they do really good work.  I had them printed on mid tier paper quality so it's possible the high end paper quality could turn out really great and may have to try it down the road for another prototype.

Hi Dan,

Sorry to hear that, but good luck with your relaunch.

If you don't mind some advise. If you're going to conventions, have you thought of drumming up interest with people buying your work there? If you think about it, if they're willing to buy one print, a deck has a lot more in it at a very affordable price. Equally, have you thought of reaching out to new of the playing card news site such as Kardify. The guys that run are amazing people and playing card fans. I'm sure they'd love to have an article about your deck on their site.

I'm always down for advice!  I tried drumming up advice at conventions and got a bunch of email address for a mailing list as well as provided a business card and directions on how to get to the Kickstarter campaign.  I had hoped I'd get quite a few more backers, especially based on the positive responses I received but it didn't have the impact I had hoped for.

As for Kardify, I hadn't actually heard of them so I thank you for bringing them to my attention.  When I'm ready to relaunch I'll be sure to reach out to them.  I'm actually working with a couple of friends to figure out how to do press releases and contacts to get the word out there.

So I've decided to cancel my Kickstarter for the time being.  I believe I rushed into launching it despite not having taken all the steps necessary to ensure it had enough publicity.  I haven't been able to focus on updates either due to having multiple conventions, helping my roommate get ready to move, and having to get myself ready to move as well. 

I will definitely be relaunching Alien Empires when things settle down, which will hopefully be the end of April or beginning of May.

On that note, I'd also like to thank you all for your support, both for backing the project and for helping spread the word of Alien Empires, I truly appreciate y'all's support

My Kickstarter is live!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2127474916/alien-empires-illustrated-playing-cards

Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback on my Kickstarter, I think it's helping to improve my campaign!

On a side note, I had a prototype deck printed up to see how the images would appear in card format and I'd say, for the most part, I'm pretty happy with the results.  There's a few cards that printed darker than desired so I'll have to do some tweaking but overall I like 'em

More eyes on something you want feedback on is always better than less eyes isn't it? We don't always see the same things. You can link it either way you'd like. Here or in msgs I'm happy to have a look at it for you.

Makes sense, I'll go ahead and post a link.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2127474916/1148968627?token=3ee8c4d8

I plan on launching a Kickstarter in about 2 or so weeks. I still have to get some design work for the page finished but it's getting close. I'll be posting a preview link before I launch to get feedback.

This is a great point/inquiry! As someone currently working on a deck of cards this is certainly something I'd be interested in hearing more about.

I decided to take a little step back from the cards to make sure I was still happy with the design of the cards.  I know there are concerns with complete symmetry of the court cards but I think the design of the background, while not symmetrical, lends itself to not needing to be symmetrical. Below is what the King cards look like when held both "right side up" and "upside down".  While there is a difference I don't believe there'd be a desire or need for a player to flip their card over to make sure it was facing the correct way.  Though I will admit I may be way off and biased as I personally like the design better; it feels less cluttered and the Kings appears to be more easily readable.  What are y'all's thoughts on this seeing them side by side?

Jokers are looking good. K and R in the word Joker have a little offset issue. May consider lining the spine of each letter with the outer edge of the O. The O is the anchor letter and the one which will enable other letters to illusion one way or the other. The outer edge should be as straight as possible, again for illusion purposes and because our human eyes like an outer line giving a frame quality.

After you pointed out the offset nature of the K and R on the word Joker, I noticed it.  Funnily enough, I checked the alignment and they were spot on; must be something with the shape of the letters.  I moved the two letters over like 1-2 pixels to see if it'd alleviate the problem, which I think it did.

Cool! In my opinion smaller background is better. I would leave Jokers without background at all, to highlight them. Good Luck!!!

Thanks SunDay811 for the input, I'm glad to hear from as many people as I can While I do like the smaller background, the larger background does feel more appealing to my eye so for this deck at least I'll probably keep it that way.  If all goes well I'd definitely like to do more decks and will likely have to utilize the white space a bit more down the road.  Oh, and I check to see what the Jokers would look like without the background and while cool, when I compared them to the rest of the deck they felt out of place.  Again though, its definitely something I'll have to consider for future decks

So I took a moment to make a few adjustments to the design of the background to see what it would look like if it extended nearer to the edge of the card.  Not sure what everyone else's thoughts are, but I'm kinda digging this look. Funny enough, the prints I plan on making would have the full bleed background, which is something I really liked but hadn't considered doing with the cards.



An example of one of the prints