Adam Eivy, Creator of Beetle Royale Playing Cards

[antic]

Hi, I'm Adam Eivy from Seattle WA (USA). I spent the last 18 months painting beetles as a set of playing cards.

It's live on Kickstarter for another 20 days. I'd love for you to check it out and tell me what you think.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antic/beetle-royale-poker-playing-cards

I'm pretty new to making cards--this is my first deck. I've been drawing beetles for a while though

I found out about this from google searches--trying to find people interested in card decks that might want to check out my project.

[Don Boyer]

Hi, I'm Adam Eivy from Seattle WA (USA). I spent the last 18 months painting beetles as a set of playing cards.

It's live on Kickstarter for another 20 days. I'd love for you to check it out and tell me what you think.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antic/beetle-royale-poker-playing-cards

I'm pretty new to making cards--this is my first deck. I've been drawing beetles for a while though

I found out about this from google searches--trying to find people interested in card decks that might want to check out my project.

Welcome to the PCF!  Let us know if you have any questions.

First, I'd suggest that you create a topic for your deck in the Playing Card Plethora board.  All commercial releases and active Kickstarter projects for playing cards end up with a unique topic there.

As far as advice for your deck, first thing I'd suggest right off the bat would be to make the edges of each of your card's faces uniform, whether it's by using a white border or by creating some unique pattern that's repeated exactly from card to card.  The reason for this is that when you have irregular designs that print into the bleed like yours do, you're making the cards unique at the edge from each other.  Those edge differences can be seen when the deck is stacked in a pile - a person with a good eye could actually identify the cards in the stack if they knew the patterns of the cards.  Effectively, you've created what amounts to a marked deck.

Is this a bad thing, not having uniform edges on the faces?  Well, it depends on your perspective.  If you (and more importantly, your target audience) feel the artistic merits of the design trump the functionality of having uniform edges on all the cards.  But if it's something that you could eliminate without affecting the artistic integrity of the design in the eyes of your target audience, it's better to get rid of it, thus increasing that potential audience to include people who otherwise wouldn't have purchased the deck because of it being effectively marked.

Now, when you create that topic for your deck, be sure to include:

• Court card images
• The Ace of Spades
• Any unique cards your deck may have, like informational cards, advertising cards, etc.
• An image of the card back - in any colors/patterns you plan to offer it.
• An image of the tuck box
• The name of the printer you plan to use - trust me, around here, people will ask!
• Anything else interesting or unique about your project you want people to know.

[antic]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll post a thread.

The Dark deck has more uniform fronts--only variation is the color of the pattern: There's a pattern for Jokers, another for Red and another for Black (blue).
The Light deck has the individually painted backgrounds.

I've already submitted the art to Legends Playing Card Company to get the cards made and delivered before the holidays. I will definitely take this feedback into a future deck. I may do a revised version next year.

[Don Boyer]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll post a thread.

The Dark deck has more uniform fronts--only variation is the color of the pattern: There's a pattern for Jokers, another for Red and another for Black (blue).
The Light deck has the individually painted backgrounds.

I've already submitted the art to Legends Playing Card Company to get the cards made and delivered before the holidays. I will definitely take this feedback into a future deck. I may do a revised version next year.

Magicians will have to bear this in mind as your deck becomes available - they can use the edge markings to sort a deck by color or predict a card's color!

(I kid, of course - the marking effect is real, but magicians rarely use exotic deck designs like this.)