Hello All - I am the creator o the "Flame Fractals in Spades" Kickstarter project. I was kindly invited here to give some insight on the card deck and answer question you might have... so here goes.
Where did the idea of the deck come from? A combination of a few things - (1) I have read the Tarot for many years using the Crowley deck and have always had an interest in re-creating the "feel" of the Crowley deck's artwork using both hand drawn illustrations and fractal artwork. I can handle the fractal side, but have been searching for awhile for an illustrator to help me with the deck... having finally found one, we are now in the process of making it happen. As a lead in to the Tarot deck, I wanted to cut my teeth by producing a deck of standard playing cards first. Which flows to (2) I stumbled upon a means of making a standard deck of card using custom artwork for the backs on the Zazzle website. I tried it out, and not only did I like the results, all the folks that I have shown the deck to not only liked it, but wanted one for themselves. And finally (3), wanting to keep the basically successful theme of my last couple of Kickstarter projects, I wanted to give away a lot of fractal art and expand the audience of the art at the same time. Noticing that playing card decks are popular as Kickstarter projects (I never even knew about the card collectors and cardistry and magic side of things - I just though people used cards to play games), I combined the art and the card deck into one project, all in an effort to help towards the funding needed for an upcoming featured artist exhibit which run the entire month of August. One more thing, especially to those who like fractals - since 2010 I have been an independent contributor to the Electric Sheep project, and all of the fractals used for this project have been live sheep in the flock between 2010 and 2014. If you do not have the free screensaver (Mac, Windows or Linux) on your desktop machine, you are missing out. It is the easiest way to continually receive new ever changing fractal artwork from myself and the other contributors to the project - not to mention the sheep created by the dedicated group of the project's shepherds.
Do I like math? I am good at programming math, but what I really like is what math can do - in all areas of life, not just art. I use Flam3 software to generate the flame fractals, and my software background allows me to tweek the open source software to achieve my desired results, especially in the animation of the fractals. So I tend to daydream of the perfect math equation to achieve an artistic goal before manipulating the mathematic of the software.
Why am I an artist and not an engineer today? About 15 years ago I woke up in Israel with the realization that not only was I working with/for the largest military industrial complex of that country, but I was also missing out on the most formative years of my daughter's life. I quite engineering, became a soap maker and gardener and starting a whole new life direction peddling at farmer's markets and the like.
Does psychedelia influence my art? Yes, I followed the Grateful Dead around the US and Europe from 1979 to 1995 - but really, it was all about the music.
Am I on drugs when I create my art? No, I am not.
Who is printing the card deck? WJ Playing Cards out of Shenzhen, China. Though they are big with corporations like Coca Cola for promotional decks, I found that their higher quality decks were quite good (if not better) when compared to samples from US domestic printers. The exception of course was USPCC printed decks, but their timing on delivery was beyond the goal of the project, so they were a non-starter for this one.
Why is the funding goal so low? I play Kickstarter like a game... after my first 2 projects went unfunded, I realized I had to play the game differently. My last 2 projects which were successfully funded reached about 250% of goal, as I anticipate this one will land at - which is plenty of funding to get the decks printed and shipped out, with enough left over to obtain the equipment (video screens, players & projectors) needed for my gallery exhibition. The exhibition IS GOING TO HAPPEN regardless of the funding results of this project, so with that in mind, I set a funding goal that will at least get the decks printed. I will cover the shipping cost if the project is just funded with no extra money above and beyond. This is still okay, since I will have decks in hand that will sell at full retail in the gallery and my other distribution avenues.
I have said my blurb, so if anyone has question I can answer, just ask. Note, I have very limited Internet access at times, so quick responses are not always possible, but I will respond as time allows.
Also, any feedback is welcome - I want this project to be the best it can be.
Thanks,
Stan
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