Custom deck with no theme yet!

[Rezfar]

Hello all!

I am here to share the project that I am working on. I did n`t add a theme yet but probably it is going to be something about black and white. Below are sketches and now I should scan them and make them digital. There are lots of work left yet! Keep looking for updates!

Cheers!

[willroya]

Good start!

[Don Boyer]

It looks nice, but very standard.  "Black and white" by itself might not be a strong enough theme, unless you're doing it in a fresh and unique way that's visually appealing.  Look at decks like Bicycle Ghost (the white one, not the black one) and you'll see it's a concept that's been done - and roughly a decade ago, if I'm not mistaken.

[Rezfar]

Update!

King of Spade and Heart turned digital but still not final. Need to make black some of parts.

[Rezfar]

It looks nice, but very standard.  "Black and white" by itself might not be a strong enough theme, unless you're doing it in a fresh and unique way that's visually appealing.  Look at decks like Bicycle Ghost (the white one, not the black one) and you'll see it's a concept that's been done - and roughly a decade ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Thank you. Yeah it looks like standard but it is by design because always I wanted to make my own courts but almost similar to other standard courts. I want to try my own black and white too. I know there are lots of them out there. 

[Don Boyer]

It looks nice, but very standard.  "Black and white" by itself might not be a strong enough theme, unless you're doing it in a fresh and unique way that's visually appealing.  Look at decks like Bicycle Ghost (the white one, not the black one) and you'll see it's a concept that's been done - and roughly a decade ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Thank you. Yeah it looks like standard but it is by design because always I wanted to make my own courts but almost similar to other standard courts. I want to try my own black and white too. I know there are lots of them out there.

I don't think you completely understood what I was saying.

While it is indeed your own original work, it is work that is derived very heavily from the classic faces that we now know as "International Standard" faces.  The little details might vary in many ways, but they still look like the same two-headed men and women we've been looking at since we were kids in the vast majority of all the International Standard decks printed in modern times.

While you may be rendering them in black and white, that, too, has been done, over and over again.  Ten years ago, it might have been considered a fresh, new idea and people would have rushed to buy a pack or two.  Today, it's a case of "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt - what else have you got?"  You're welcome to give it a try on Kickstarter, but I get a strong feeling that people will be asking themselves, "Why should I buy this deck when I already have many that are just like it?"  Or worse, "Why buy this when someone else has nearly the same thing for less?"

You need to come up with some kind of angle, something that makes your deck design so compelling that people won't be able to stop themselves from wanting to buy packs of it.  Your design, in its present state, is a nice design, but it's just not that compelling.  By "angle," I'm referring to something that will make it different from all the other decks out there.  Perhaps you went for rainbow colors instead of black and white.  Perhaps you did it with such a high degree of artistry that the art looked museum-quality.  Perhaps you altered your design to hew to a particular theme, like maybe you went for a more modern look in the clothing, or younger, more realistic faces on the court cards.

If you're not doing something more unique, you need to do it better than what else is already available or not enough people will care enough to back you.

[Rezfar]

It looks nice, but very standard.  "Black and white" by itself might not be a strong enough theme, unless you're doing it in a fresh and unique way that's visually appealing.  Look at decks like Bicycle Ghost (the white one, not the black one) and you'll see it's a concept that's been done - and roughly a decade ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Thank you. Yeah it looks like standard but it is by design because always I wanted to make my own courts but almost similar to other standard courts. I want to try my own black and white too. I know there are lots of them out there.

I don't think you completely understood what I was saying.

While it is indeed your own original work, it is work that is derived very heavily from the classic faces that we now know as "International Standard" faces.  The little details might vary in many ways, but they still look like the same two-headed men and women we've been looking at since we were kids in the vast majority of all the International Standard decks printed in modern times.

While you may be rendering them in black and white, that, too, has been done, over and over again.  Ten years ago, it might have been considered a fresh, new idea and people would have rushed to buy a pack or two.  Today, it's a case of "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt - what else have you got?"  You're welcome to give it a try on Kickstarter, but I get a strong feeling that people will be asking themselves, "Why should I buy this deck when I already have many that are just like it?"  Or worse, "Why buy this when someone else has nearly the same thing for less?"

You need to come up with some kind of angle, something that makes your deck design so compelling that people won't be able to stop themselves from wanting to buy packs of it.  Your design, in its present state, is a nice design, but it's just not that compelling.  By "angle," I'm referring to something that will make it different from all the other decks out there.  Perhaps you went for rainbow colors instead of black and white.  Perhaps you did it with such a high degree of artistry that the art looked museum-quality.  Perhaps you altered your design to hew to a particular theme, like maybe you went for a more modern look in the clothing, or younger, more realistic faces on the court cards.

If you're not doing something more unique, you need to do it better than what else is already available or not enough people will care enough to back you.

Thank you for the points. So you are offering better to stop this? Actually I had this in my mind: each card is made half white half black.

[Don Boyer]

Thank you for the points. So you are offering better to stop this? Actually I had this in my mind: each card is made half white half black.

That's not a theme - that's a gimmick.  Gimmicks can work, but they're often not enough.

I'm not saying what you have is bad.  It's actually decent artwork.  But what I am saying is that to my eye, it's not all that much different from standard in a way that makes it dramatically more appealing.  If your artwork was stellar and fantastic, that would be a different story.  It's good and some might even say really good, but I wouldn't imagine it hanging in a museum.

Also, bear in mind, these are just my opinions.  You have to decide for yourself just how much you believe in your project.  If you have 100% faith in what you're doing, nothing anyone says should deter you.  That's not to say you shouldn't take people's sound advice, but you shouldn't let them discourage you, either.

So, assuming you did want to change things up a bit, consider this: are there certain themes you think you would like to explore with your design?  Certain things that you'd like to change about playing cards in their basic form?  For example, I really like the concept of playing cards with faces that look like real people I run into on the street instead of stylized faces from several centuries ago.  Perhaps even with updated clothing, or at least something actually identifiable as clothing.  That's one idea, one way that a person could change the completely standard, basic design and make something new out of it.  There are countless others.