Wonderland deck official thread

[moonexe]

Hey, I'm currently getting in the process of designing a new deck and need some advice
To save time and for convenience I'll copy-paste a part of my UC thread:

I was wondering if there was any specific guidelines to follow for the court cards in order to respect the standard pattern. I know about the weapons, head directions etc. but I wanted to be sure that I'm not missing anything. I'm going for custom faces AND pips.

Also, my first design(not necessarily final) is a full-bleed design with fade-to-black borders, and I'm kinda worried about ink chipping as I've heard it usually happens on black decks. What exactly causes the chipping and is it really an issue or just a result of not taking care of your cards?

Well, there we go, those two points are all I can think of for now, but any extra advice is welcome of course

[xela]

There really is no required standard, you can go anywhere you like with your court cards. Your priority should be to have them fit your theme, and then focus on the little things like paying homage to the classic designs.

The chipping is caused by black ink coming off the cards, and exposing the white stock underneath. This occurs after prolonged use, especially via faros. More experienced card handlers can make a black deck last much longer, since the faros will always be smooth.

[moonexe]

What leads my priorities to a more faithful representation of the English pattern is the fact that the Alice novel itself is based on playing cards to begin with. So in a way, respecting the English pattern goes in the favor of my theme, too.

[Don Boyer]

Ironically, the "English" pattern actually originated in Rouen, France.


You have some degree of flexibility when redesigning the court cards.  Some people do whatever they please - I had a non-traditional set of courts in some old Caesar's Palace decks I had as a kid.  Some do try to pay varying degrees of attention to the traditions.  The minimum there would be to insure that the king of hearts had a sword (or other weapon) pointed towards his head, so it remains the "suicide King", and that any "one-eyed" faces in profile are reproduced in profile in your design.  This way a poker player calling for one-eyed Jacks to be wild will be referring the the same cards in a standard deck as in your deck.


For higher degrees of faithfulness, the look of the Americana deck takes it to the max, from what I've seen thus far.  Cards carrying weapons are still carrying them the same way, cards with crowns still have head coverings, but now they're cowboy hats, etc.


Think of your target audience.  If you're going for a more magic or cardistry-oriented group, the precision of the face cards' faithfulness in your design is minimally important.  If you're going for the more general card-playing or poker-playing audiences, hewing closer to the Rouen original would be better.

[PoundFFFFFF]

  Court cards are an extremely powerful option that offers the option to strengthen the impact your deck by I would estimate two or three times. But they are a hassle to do~ Custom courts are not always good, though - Look at Dan Sperry's resurrections -

  You want them to fit your theme. Nowadays court cards with Swords, axes, spears don't fit 90% of the decks out on the market, and yet people continue because they cannot or do not want to invest that extra amount, too lazy to change them up or even too lazy to come up with a concept in their heads, or lack the creativity to do so.

[xela]

Let me speak out of personal experience with court cards fitting the theme. With the Vortex deck, we were going to launch with standard court cards (back when I was working with Robert Butler). Eventually the two of us decided to tackle recolored court cards ($1,000 extra to do). When Robert left, I made the decision to make "custom" court cards by modifying the standard ones to be borderless and slightly more thematically matching. The issue for me was time, since I made the decision to drop cash on custom court cards about a day before I launched Kickstarter.

What saves me is that this is a first edition deck of a series, and I can't wait to get started on the next Vortex and make real custom court cards. Also, I had custom everything when it came to art, so in my case, the oddly themed court cards are a bit less annoying (for me anyway, I'm sure some of you will love them), because of the pips, fonts, backs, etc.

On any next deck I make 100% real custom court cards for, I will not even announce the launch date until I have all of them completed. It's something you should be spending 3-6 months on to perfect.

Honestly, a good back design can take no more than a few weeks to achieve. A tuck case shouldn't take more than that amount as well. Court cards should take up 75% of your design time if not more.

[John B.]

i think with the deck im working on im leaving the face cards normal, might change their background though.

[KPopFever605]

Here are some major things you want:
Custom Pips
Custom Court Cards
Color scheme will be nice!
Stick away from darkness and skulls, there's just been so many of them!
Go with a theme like science fiction, something original!

Good Luck!

[Paul Carpenter]

Being in the middle of design phases, I can agree with Alex. Back designs, pips, overall theme, tuck case: those are the "easy" things. Custom court cards, regardless of whether you want to stay faithful to the original Bicycle or do something completely different take a vast amount of time. For my deck I purposefully want to remain similar to the familiar Bicycle, have them all be recognizable but also want to redo/simplify/add to each of them. This means redrawing them all, from scratch, and that is proving to be a serious undertaking. This is why I have no release dates or Kickstarter launch set, as that art takes time and needs to be very well done before moving on to those phases of the project.

I think I could design a 'normal' deck, from scratch, with a tuck in probably a week if I seriously worked at it. (not saying it would be amazing or anything, but going through the mechanics of doing a custom back and assembling all the pieces). Simply add in custom court cards, and suddenly you are looking at many, many weeks.

I see advantages to both. I love my decks that use the standard faces in new colors or with subtle changes, but also love the completely new. I think collectors like to see both, but doing something custom does help you stand out.

[Don Boyer]

Many collectors and users are a little tired of "standard" court cards.  Any deck of Bicycle cards has them.

Some decks thematically call for unique courts.  I think most would agree that Sentinels set the current gold standard for unique courts.

But not all themes require this.  You can make more subtle changes and still make a fine deck.  I personally loved the courts in the Aristocrat Banknote 727 reprints and the Bicycle Premier deck designed by Brooke Michael's Poker World - they employed a different color scheme and tasteful use of metallic inks.  The ones in DeckONE are also subtly unique in the washed-out color theme, giving them an industrial look that utterly matched the deck design.

Figure out your theme.  Then you can decide how you want to go with the courts.  And yes, custom courts will consume massive amounts of design time.  Subtle alterations like the ones I mentioned will take somewhat less - though they should still be well thought-out and completely married to the deck's theme.  Many people knocked the Monarchs deck for being a so-so deck in a fantastic box, in part because of some fairly standard-looking courts with no real ties to anything thematically except perhaps that flashy box, and that only marginally.  (They had to alter the design well into the printing stage, and I'm sure this is what threw the court cards off-theme - the card backs were supposed to be gold-on-black instead of white-on-deep-navy-blue.)

Please bear in mind - I'm not a designer and make no pretense at being one.  I just know what I like as a player, magician and collector.

[moonexe]

Stick away from darkness and skulls, there's just been so many of them!

Darkness? But what about the rose in my back design? Is that too dark?

Anyway, I just realized I didn't mention my theme in the starting post, which I guess I should have... My theme is Wonderland, staying away from Alice herself as she doesn't fit into a deck, but the general idea of what I think Wonderland would look like, basically. And please don't bring Disney's adaptation into this thread, I insist on the distinction. 
The palette is all about blacks, reds, and gold details. I'll probably throw in some blue once I get to the court cards as well.

Anyway, the court cards already fit thematically since they are literally characters in the novel itself. The concept is there, but my theme still calls for an art style different from the standard courts we see on Bicycle cards for example.

Another thing, I've been working on the ace of spades today and that's where I realized chosing a font for the pips was trickier than I thought. The general idea of the deck makes me want to choose something that's a little fancier than usual, but I don't wanna go overboard with it. It's hard to find perfect balance.

Oh, should I show you my initial design or keep it a mystery? Criticism should be useful, tell me if you're interested.

Edit:

Please bear in mind - I'm not a designer and make no pretense at being one.  I just know what I like as a player, magician and collector.

And that makes your opinion even more important. Why make a deck that's perfect in designer standards if the general public doesn't like it?

[Don Boyer]

Stick away from darkness and skulls, there's just been so many of them!

Darkness? But what about the rose in my back design? Is that too dark?

Anyway, I just realized I didn't mention my theme in the starting post, which I guess I should have... My theme is Wonderland, staying away from Alice herself as she doesn't fit into a deck, but the general idea of what I think Wonderland would look like, basically. And please don't bring Disney's adaptation into this thread, I insist on the distinction. 
The palette is all about blacks, reds, and gold details. I'll probably throw in some blue once I get to the court cards as well.

Anyway, the court cards already fit thematically since they are literally characters in the novel itself. The concept is there, but my theme still calls for an art style different from the standard courts we see on Bicycle cards for example.

Another thing, I've been working on the ace of spades today and that's where I realized chosing a font for the pips was trickier than I thought. The general idea of the deck makes me want to choose something that's a little fancier than usual, but I don't wanna go overboard with it. It's hard to find perfect balance.

Oh, should I show you my initial design or keep it a mystery? Criticism should be useful, tell me if you're interested.

Edit:

Please bear in mind - I'm not a designer and make no pretense at being one.  I just know what I like as a player, magician and collector.

And that makes your opinion even more important. Why make a deck that's perfect in designer standards if the general public doesn't like it?

Every time I tried using the word "font" to my designer friend, he kept correcting me with "typeface"!

Choosing a good typeface for the indices (not pips - pips are the suit symbols in general, while an index is the corner value and suit indicator) is indeed important.  I've seen a few designs that looked great up until I saw what they did with the indices.

The Wonderland theme's been done, but never without Alice as far as I know.  You'll need to insure that your art and theme are entirely original - while the novel itself is in the public domain, many of the modern derivative works and recreations in other media are not.  If it looks like something from Disney or American McGee or anyone else's adaptation, you can expect to hear from lawyers in due time.

Black, red and gold are nice, but they've been done so much in so many decks.  Broaden the palate some, with more blues and greens and yellows or something.  Templar Knights, Gold Arcane, and ye-gods-know how many more decks are entirely set in red/black/gold.  Even variant shades work - I liked the crimson/light gray of the LTD deck.  You sound like you want to make a deck that stands out more, so don't use a common and overused color scheme.

Check out the Fairy Tale Art Playing Cards over at Kickstarter - while the cards may or may not appeal to you, what she did with the pips in giving them a jewel-like 3D appearance is truly beautiful.  Some variant of this might work with your theme and make it stand out all the more.  The Templar Knights also have a somewhat 3D look to them, though not like the FTA deck.

I'm flattered a bit that you consider my opinion all the more important!  But don't neglect key design rules because some schlub on the Interwebs thinks something different would look cool - one man's cool is another man's barf bag.
 

[moonexe]

While I agree that this color scheme has been used a lot, the dominant color in this case is clearly red, rather than black. The back design is very related to the Queen of Hearts, and so the red color is what I thought would work best. I'm also considering a purple version though, which would be more original indeed.

As for copyrights, while Madness Returns is one of my favorite games, I have a bad relationhip with anything from Disney, even the new movie, as much as I like Tim Burton. The more horror-oriented style of the game is far from what I'm going for, and I'm also staying away from anything Disney, for personal taste over copyright issues. Lewis Carroll's text and John Tenniel's illustrations are where my heart is.

And I really like the Fairy Tale deck, but so far my design is largely using solid colors in a very two-dimensional style. Maybe you'd get a better idea after seeing the design. I've seen a few interesting fonts - Sorry, typefaces - but I'll have to look a little further before making my choice.

[Don Boyer]

While I agree that this color scheme has been used a lot, the dominant color in this case is clearly red, rather than black. The back design is very related to the Queen of Hearts, and so the red color is what I thought would work best. I'm also considering a purple version though, which would be more original indeed.

As for copyrights, while Madness Returns is one of my favorite games, I have a bad relationhip with anything from Disney, even the new movie, as much as I like Tim Burton. The more horror-oriented style of the game is far from what I'm going for, and I'm also staying away from anything Disney, for personal taste over copyright issues. Lewis Carroll's text and John Tenniel's illustrations are where my heart is.

And I really like the Fairy Tale deck, but so far my design is largely using solid colors in a very two-dimensional style. Maybe you'd get a better idea after seeing the design. I've seen a few interesting fonts - Sorry, typefaces - but I'll have to look a little further before making my choice.

OK, PURPLE would be an AWESOME choice - it's just so rarely done.  And I recall something about purple being the color of royalty...  Except maybe to the Brits, who seem to prefer red!

Sticking with the original means it's hard to go wrong, at least as far as anyone else's work is concerned.

I'd love to see a few pieces of the concept art - and I suspect I'm not alone!

[moonexe]

I just happen to have that terrible urge to share it, so you shall wait no longer.
Here's my first concept for the back and ace of spades design. Of course there is room for improvement, and I'll have to try out the purple back as mentioned, but you can get a better idea of what I have in mind.
The courts will have to be hand-drawn before I can try to make a digital version, so that's gonna take a while obviously.

Edit: The shape of the ace of spades is based on the clock hands on the Big Ben, by the way. Just a fun fact.

[Kanped]

I really like the red checkerboard effect but I worry that the swirl effect on it might be a bit too extreme.  The Cheshire cat/rose design is really nice in itself but it doesn't seem to blend well with the background at the minute; it looks like it's sitting on top of it.  I would either complicate it a bit more and straighten and darken the checkerboard, or work on blending the two together a bit more.

I like the ace design but I feel that it might benefit from not being a silhouette; I'd like to see more tones in it, even if it's still in grayscale (but personally, I'd like to see red). I'd also really like this to be borderless but I say that about almost everything (but it could work really well!).

[PoundFFFFFF]

AIW is a fantatic theme - unfortunately for you your deck has to match what so many other people love. Don't build the deck off your own knowledge so far - read articles, loop movie soundtracks or any other music that you think fits, collect artwork from all around the web, and change your wallpaper to match your theme. That's what I do, anyhow.

  The wonderland theme cannot have a simple back. As of now the Artifice back looks more AIW than yours~ The back has to deliver the overall feel of the deck - twisted hierarchies, environments, and psychologies. Picking the theme means you and your deck has to live it - otherwise it'll just come out as another shallow deck on the market. The cheshire cat should probably be a joker or something.

[Lushbob]

Just to say, I really love how this deck looks, from the picture I've seen. The back design looks really nice and quite simple, and the ace of spades is cleverly designed.
Are there any other pictures you could link me to?

[moonexe]

I really like the red checkerboard effect but I worry that the swirl effect on it might be a bit too extreme.  The Cheshire cat/rose design is really nice in itself but it doesn't seem to blend well with the background at the minute; it looks like it's sitting on top of it.  I would either complicate it a bit more and straighten and darken the checkerboard, or work on blending the two together a bit more.

I like the ace design but I feel that it might benefit from not being a silhouette; I'd like to see more tones in it, even if it's still in grayscale (but personally, I'd like to see red). I'd also really like this to be borderless but I say that about almost everything (but it could work really well!).

I agree with the ace of spades looking too simple, and adding some red(or purple, if I change the back color) is a good idea, I'll see what I can do there. As for the swirl on the diamonds(not checkerboard) pattern, I don't think I could let it go right now, until I find a satisfying alternative.

AIW is a fantatic theme - unfortunately for you your deck has to match what so many other people love. Don't build the deck off your own knowledge so far - read articles, loop movie soundtracks or any other music that you think fits, collect artwork from all around the web, and change your wallpaper to match your theme. That's what I do, anyhow.

  The wonderland theme cannot have a simple back. As of now the Artifice back looks more AIW than yours~ The back has to deliver the overall feel of the deck - twisted hierarchies, environments, and psychologies. Picking the theme means you and your deck has to live it - otherwise it'll just come out as another shallow deck on the market. The cheshire cat should probably be a joker or something.

Artifice, uh... That is actually my favorite deck on the market right now I'm having a hard time trying to find harmony between the necessary madness and the desired elegance. You're right, Artifice would be a good inspiration for further development. For the jokers I was actually thinking Mad Hatter and March Hare(Though the exclusion of the dormouse would makes me a little sad), but we'll see when I get there.
Also, if you have good suggestions of music that fits the theme, that'd be nice. The movie soundtrack sounds horribly unfitting to me, except for one track that I like.

Just to say, I really love how this deck looks, from the picture I've seen. The back design looks really nice and quite simple, and the ace of spades is cleverly designed.
Are there any other pictures you could link me to?

That is the full extent of what I have for now actually all I have is the PSDs of those two cards

[KPopFever605]

Oh, that back design looks great, and that rose isn't too dark, it's actually looks pretty sleek and elegant. Keep up the good work!

[moonexe]

Haha I was being sarcastic about the rose being too dark but thanks for the encouragements.
I'm very pleasantly surprised by all the constructive criticism I'm getting from you guys. I'm glad I joined this forum.

[Don Boyer]

I love the diamond pattern being swirled, and I also like the tracings of the other elements, the cat, etc. on the back.

I think of the shape of a playing card, and my mind is drawn to the Tea Party - it takes place at a table very similar in dimensions to a playing card.  Imagine a card back of the actual Tea Party table seen from a bird's-eye view - a purplish diamond-pattern tablecloth, teacups and cake plates strewn about...  It could either be an "aftermath of the party" view or a "during the party view" in which case you'd see the arms of the participants reaching over the table for the teapot and such.  It wouldn't be hard to make this a symmetrical pattern and it would suit your theme nicely - you just need to leave out Alice!

A concept for the Ace - a close-up view of the Hare's pocketwatch, minute hand pointing straight up, the tip of which forms the spade.  Perhaps some details of the hand holding the watch, maybe the tea party table in the background...

Please tell me you're doing some sort of transformation deck design for the number cards!  And consider the design of the Tungstene deck - your pips need not always appear in the rigid, traditional pattern we've seen for so many decades; they can be anywhere on the face of the card that you want!

Another interesting idea - it seems like you want to make a black back and a white front.  Some magicians moan about how certain tricks become impossible because of this (I'm often one of them!).  But instead of doing what E did when they added a white border to the back of the Artifice v2, perhaps you could add a black border to the face?  Make the border appear like a picture frame for the artwork - I think it could be a really gorgeous concept.

[moonexe]

You and I think similarly I already thought of the black border on faces, I was thinking of maybe applying the twist to the pips an see what it looks like... And teacups, that's what I was missing!

I'm actually gonna try and improve on the existing ace of spades though, I like the fact that it contains elements of the Big Ben clock hands without actually being a clock hand itself. A small tribute to the novel's country of origin.

Oh, I almost forgot... I would assume you meant the rabbit's watch. The hare and the rabbit are two distinct characters, and only the mad hatter has a watch at the tea party itself. Which the hare later tries to fix with butter... The BEST butter, mind you.

Yeah, I know my theme inside and out.

[Don Boyer]

Keep us all posted as you work on the design more - it sounds like it could be a solid deck, something worth a good Kickstart.

[moonexe]

I just thought of something. I know the full USPCC prototypes are very expensive, but if you just wanted to see what the back design actually looks like once printed on cards...
Can the 15$ or so custom bicycle decks be printed full-bleed? You know, the ones that are marketed as gift/promotionnal, you can get them printed with photos in the back or whatever image you want... But I don't know if they have border restrictions on those.

Oh, and I know I'm supposed to be thinking of the Wonderland deck, but I just had a quick idea for another design that would be very simple, but unlike anything that has been done so far. Here's a quick question. Can you get metallic ink in any color? If the answer is yes, I might be in for some real innovation.