Skull, Roses and Wings on KS

[GBAllison]

The title of this deck is "Skull, Roses and Wings - New deck of Playing cards"
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1707530918/skull-roses-and-wings-new-deck-of-playing-cards

I put the title in quotes because I can't see any roses in this deck anywhere.  There are skulls, wings, knives and ojets d'casino on the back.  The courts are silhouettes straight from Mad Men.  The two themes don't seem to go together in any way that I can figure out.  (But I'm new here--what do I know? :-)  Anyway ...

$8 early bird, $6 international shipping
$11 regular, $6 international shipping
$5,000 goal
Of course everything is one-way.

The printer has been selected and it is definitely *not* USPCC ... the printer is in India.
About the quality, here's what he says: "I have already checked with the company and had their sample compared with the Bicycle Stock playing cards, rest assured the cards are of same quality if not better then USPCC."
Plus one fairly odd comment at the very end: "Once the Production run is completed I will myself go to India and ship all the decks fron there."

These are the fronts:




This is the back design:

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

They will be made up of premium quality sheets with "magic" air cushion finish. The playing cards will be produced in India and then ship to USA. The international shipping applies to whosoever is outside USA. I have already checked with the company and had their sample compared with the Bicycle Stock playing cards, rest assured the cards are of same quality if not better then USPCC.

no thanks

[Alex Willis]

Wow, Microsoft office clipart on playing cards... yay and I must say about time!  I didn't think people could get any lazier.  Still, the guy IS willing to go all the way to India to pick up the cards.  That's nice. 

[Bill Collins]

not much to say here, I'll pass

[Don Boyer]

not much to say here, I'll pass

Ditto.  Blade Body Spray came out with a deck in the '90s that was ten times better at this type of design (minus the objet d'casino) and had nice custom pips.  It was USPC-made, no less, but it did have a few items - some would call them flaws, others would call them design choices.  They had an all-black back and a white front and those fronts had court images that were similar to these but more dynamic in appearance, large enough that they printed into the bleed, making court cards easy to spot from looking at the edge of the deck.

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

I don't know guys, I mean he did say, "rest assured..."

[jmrock]

Blahahahaha!!!!!! Translation: I will use all the funds from the kickstarter campaign to fund a trip to India, where I will pick up the inferior decks which cost pennies to print and send them from there... Wow... Great stuff!!!

[GBAllison]

Translation: I will use all the funds from the kickstarter campaign to fund a trip to India

I think you got it on the first try.  And Alex, you nailed it too:  Here's the latest answer to a question:

"The back and front design of the playing cards are stock images. The back design is created by Vlada Ruzhitsaya and front design by Zagan."  By "design" he's referring to his source of stock-art.

To his credit, he's not trying to pretend that he drew these himself, or post a video of him tracing over the stock art.  Lazy, yes.  Wanting KS to fund his trip home, yes.  But a liar, no.

[Don Boyer]

The creator pulled the plug on this project about three hours ago.  Good thing, since he apparently really didn't know what he was doing.

His updates:
21 Jul: excited to have reached 10% in only three days, he announced "custom pips" at $5,500.  The watermark on the image indicates they're from dreamstime.com, a stock image retailer.

22 Jul: he announces that they're now printing with USPC.  Mind you, they still have a $5,000 goal.

23 Jul: he apparently was just informed that with USPC, the minimum print run is 2,500, so he asks backers to spread the word.

27 Jul: not an actual update, but he canceled the project in the wee hours of this morning.  His total number of backers at the time was 36 and the project was live for about eight days.

Canceling this project was probably the smartest move he's made to date.  He had no chance of delivering this deck on his budget unless he backtracked on printing with USPC.  It's unlikely he would have reached his goal anyway, but better safe than sorry in this case.  While the use of stock images was a terrible idea, at least for the images he chose, I will give him credit for being straightforward from the start about the fact that he was using stock images - unlike at least one other deck creator I can think of...