Well, at least you aren't just trolling and flaming now. I am trying to make a card deck that anyone can have some fun with. Not all players and collectors are looking for something over-the-top. I am going low tech on this so people of every stripe can find the cards useful. I have tried Kickstarter before, and of course failed. As most people do. That is not a fear I have or a concern. I am testing the waters here. We will see what happens. But being told in a lame and desultory manner by a group that my cards basically suck, for no other reason than they have an opinion, is not helpful, neither to the human spirit, the artist or the topic at hand. So, you can back with some very interesting and thought provoking things. I will take them all under consideration. And I thank you for taking some of your time to do this. Believe me, if I can get this funded, the frameable print won't be inkjet on office paper. I am an artist. Not a slacker. I know what a frameable print is. I can see almost no one here did any research on me as an artist or a pro. You can see my work at http://facebook.com/saintalbans1. Also look at the video. It shows exactly how I did the photos reproduced on the cards. As for Bicycle...OK, I put an "and" where I shouldn't have. Sorry. But yes I know it's the same company. I will correct that. Thanks. I seriously doubt I will raise $17,000 or even the whole $3,000 I need, especially when I've got a passle of snipers out for my blood right now! Haha! As for the copyrighted materials from like Universal Studios, my method is to build a digital piece of art from the ground up. It is not "photoshopped" or cobbled together. It is a painstaking tribute to iconic photos. Please, again, watch the video on Kickstarter. It explains my method. The first Vampire Deck is a Movie Themed deck. Others will be more me. But I am starting with movies for a reason, because everyone knows movie vampires. Which I thought would appeal to those who do not just want to see wild, gory and phantasmagorical art (as most Vampire cards display.) There is a method to my madness. And you may be right. I may be crazy for even doing this. But NOBODY better say I have not worked for a huge amount of time to come up with a FUN and playable deck of cards. I am working on the box now. Which is why I gave myself 60 days and not 30. I hope you can see that I am a thoughtful person, with talent, who may need guidance, but who finds abusive trolling comments and flames to be simply evil. I've dealt with it before. Your first comment was so dismissive I thought it came from someone who was braindead and given over to nothing but trolling. Instead you, above all the others commenting, have come up with some really good thoughts. So I salute you.
First, I must ask that you not double, triple and quadruple-post. Just put it all in one post - you can add multiple quotes to a single post.
Even in your replies, you don't seem to clearly understand some of what was mentioned. Your deck might be "fun", but "playable" is a bit more debatable.
The fact that you seriously doubt you'll raise $17,000 doesn't change the fact that your project has you committed to printing with USPC if you reach $12,000. YOU WON'T HAVE THE NECESSARY FUNDS TO MEET SUCH A COMMITMENT. The fact that the commitment is still there tells people that you really don't know what you're doing and puts your ability to deliver on these decks under any circumstances into serious doubt. Worse, it makes them think you'll never deliver the decks and abscond with the funds if you do hit your goal - it wouldn't be the first time it's happened on Kickstarter.
You choose to call your vampire court images a "painstaking tribute" to the original photos. But that matters not one bit if everyone else is looking at those same images and thinking "slightly-altered copy" - because regarding of what you call them, that's what they look like and are perceived as, it doesn't matter how painstaking of a tribute they happen to be. You don't appear to have understood the part where I mentioned that man-hours do not equal creativity. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and smells like a duck, you can call it a horse all you want - everyone else will still call it a duck, even if it really is a horse. Again, none of that even touches on the copyright issue - and should you ever print with USPC, if you don't own your work lock, stock and barrel, it will not get printed by them, period. Their Legal Department are cold-hearted and implacable when it comes to their company being exposed to liability or IP infringement.
Stop abusing the terms "trolling", "flaming", etc. It's not helping your cause one bit. You may feel that we have been desultory and that we hurt your feelings. But you should consider something from that - if one person tells you something's black, you may think it's white and disagree with them. But the more people who tell you it's black, the harder it becomes to deny the possibility that it may indeed be black...
I could go on for quite some time about this, but unfortunately there are only so many hours in a day and so many things that must get accomplished in them. My best advice: close this project, complete your designs, create two separate projects. Ditch the photo reproductions and use original art. Adjust your designs to account for inclusion of most if not all of the common playing card conventions. Go over the suggestions you've been given, carefully evaluate them objectively, take the ones that work, ignore the ones that don't. Count every single penny you're going to need to spend to get this project from drawing board to printing press to every backer's mailbox and use that figure as a starting point for determining your goal and stretch goals.
