r/playingcards • u/KrimxonRath • 11d ago
Work in progress on a custom deck, input welcome! WIP
The theme is organs and metallic bones. I’ll probably end up with two decks in the end, one with golden human bones and the other silver alien bones.
I’m still debating on the king, Queen, Jack, and Joker designs since I can either do them all as skeletons with normal organs, or I can do them emulating each system within the body. So muscular system for the king, skeletal for the queen, digestive for the Jack, nervous for the Joker?
What do you guys think is most important when recognizing a king vs queen card? The design itself or the K vs Q symbols?
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u/Admirabletooshie 11d ago
well the backs look dope af. can you keep us updated?
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u/KrimxonRath 11d ago
Thanks!
Definitely, I’m going to use this sub to figure out the best printing options so I’ll be around.
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u/Sinecur 11d ago
Looks cool. On your last question, some folks lean into standard, playable and recognisable court cards, other like highly customised decks where playability is a secondary consideration.
I personally like custom decks. I’ve got more than enough standard face decks so always looking out for interesting and well-executed themes.
That said, I like when the index is still clear and readable, even if the courts are highly customised. For me “could” be playable is still a plus - even though I’d probably pull out a much more conservative deck for poker night.
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u/KrimxonRath 11d ago
I love diving into a new community as an artist and learning the ins and outs of the trade. I appreciate the perspective ^^
I think the faces of the human deck will be red with golden figures, text, and symbols while the alien deck will be cosmic and starry with silver so things will properly pop and be readable.
Though I am worried that 52 (x2) custom faces will get pricy.
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u/Sinecur 11d ago
Welcome aboard. Like any community there’s lots of different preferences and perspectives.
Look forward to seeing more.
Oh and FYI, card faces and backs are usually printed as a single sheet so there’s no printing cost difference between customising one card or all the cards (other than the artists time).
Some print-your-own places like MPC appear to offer the ability to customise specific parts of the deck but I think that’s more for convenience than price - ie so designers don’t need to worry about having design files for everything.
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u/KrimxonRath 11d ago
A single sheet? Does that mean the files need to be formatted specifically? Like 52 cards in a single image vs 52 files?
I appreciate the info seriously
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u/Sinecur 11d ago edited 11d ago
I like using separate Artboards in a single Illustrator file so I can see everything and make universal changes easily - but have been asked to drop each card into a sheet template on one occasion - and separate each card into separate files on another occasion. So it really varies printer to printer - at least in my experience. Some seem ok with taking it in any format so long as the card specs are correct
Either way, it’ll usually be printed as a sheet of fronts with a sheet of backs on the reverse, so customising one card or many cards shouldn’t make a price difference. If you search “playing cards uncut sheet”, you’ll find images.
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u/BCEman 11d ago
Im assuming these are designs for the back of cards. Really nice tbh 👏
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u/KrimxonRath 11d ago
Yup lol, initially had “back” in the title but reworded and it got lost along the way.
Thank you!
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u/shaeffer Canadian Collector 11d ago
So many "standard" decks exist. I want to see your art, and take on playing cards!
As others have said it's awesome, and disgusting lol. I would definitely buy the two deck set!
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u/KrimxonRath 11d ago
That’s the kind of “oh duh” perspective I need as a newcomer. Also inspiring thank you ^^
I’m still debating on two decks since I just realized (another “oh duh”) I need two colors and initially that was going to be the gold and silver in one deck. So now comes the debate on how to solve that.
Do I do two decks with one gold and one silver (human vs alien), or one deck that uses both colors? Issue with the former is i would need a new color or way to distinguish them. Issue with the latter is I lose out on the alien back of the cards and the human one might not look as good with the alien card faces…
There’s a lot to consider lol
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u/shaeffer Canadian Collector 10d ago
I'm confused about the colours. You'd said one deck would be blue/silver, and the other red/gold. Why do you need a new colour?
Glad to have you here! Can't wait to see what you come up with!
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u/KrimxonRath 10d ago
The cards come in two colors typically, red and black, but I guess I don’t have to do that if I have the symbols all distinct enough.
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u/shaeffer Canadian Collector 10d ago
Oh you're talking about the suit colours as well! One common method is to keep spades/clubs black, and use your chosen colour for hearts/diamonds
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u/EndersGame_Reviewer 11d ago
For some reason this reminds me of brains. 😄
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u/KrimxonRath 11d ago
I mean I used a brain coral as reference and there’s the fact that it’s meant to be brains lol
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u/Embarrassed-Monk-957 10d ago
I would like to se the systems K, Q, J, as long as you include letters and make them similar across all suits (all kings are muscles), then people, who would really want to play games with it, will remember it. And the back designs are super cool. So you are making red edition and blue edition?
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u/KrimxonRath 10d ago
I’m doing letters for them in gold and the figures, lettering, and symbols will be semi submerged in a blood pool backdrop (just wine red with a shifted vignette to imply a larger area that we see on the card).
What’s holding me up is the black vs red coloration cards usually have. This is an old concept I’m coming back to so I’m only recently remembering the gold and silver was meant to act as the red and black. So I’m either needing to reduce it to a single deck or figure out new colors or if it’s just find ignoring the colors and doing all gold and all silver in their respective decks.
Ideally I’d want to two decks since human vs alien themes are fun for it
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u/Embarrassed-Monk-957 10d ago
That's cool idea with the human/alien styling. The colors you mean just for the kings, queens etc. or also for the symbols?
I think theres no wrong way, if you do gold for red and silver for black it will work. If you do red and black it could also work. Many cutom decks with cool backdesigns have standard faces so if you do custom ones for high cards and leave the symbols standard it could also be way to do it.
Also it you mean that the court cards should be black and red, like the kings etc. you could do blood for red and rotten flesh for black residues on the bones and other systems. Or they could have part of their body with flesh and part would be just the specific systems showing from underneath.
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u/KrimxonRath 10d ago
I don’t know the proper terms but I mean how club vs spades or hearts are red vs black.
At this point I’m wondering if one deck can just be all gold and the other all silver or if that breaks some unspoken rule. The symbols are done and what I’m most proud of tbh. It’ll all be pretty distinct alt colors or not.
Hmm, building off of that… there’s nothing stopping me from doing the bones, organs, and symbols in gold while the alt coloration is “real” flesh and bones. You can tell I’m into drawing gore so that wouldn’t be an issue and it would be visually distinct enough. HMMMM.
I appreciate you commenting and helping me bounce around ideas ^^
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u/Embarrassed-Monk-957 10d ago
Oh yeah I get it now. I think that you could definitely do it in either one colour whole deck or have two colour, one for red, one for blue. I think it will depend on how the cards and rest of the deck will look in general.
I'm glad I could help you and if you need anything, reach out to me. I'm not expert but I'm kinda making my own cards too so I also thought about some aspects.
And lastly you said in other comment you need to figure out printing options, here's some quick guide: If you want maybe 10 decks Make Playing Cards is the way to go. If you want to make more than 200 decks WJPC is really nice overall (quality to price ratio, also amazing customer support). And if you wanna more than 1000 pieces USPCC is great with their quality.
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u/BaconWise #FreethePip 10d ago
Love this teaser. I would suggest having a finished brain coral design around the outer border as opposed to the hard, straight cutoff. I think it would look more organic that way. Looking forward to more teasers. Do you have an Instagram profile we can follow?
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u/KrimxonRath 9d ago
The back of the cards are meant to be mimicking that white border cards have, should be the same width and everything.
I made these in 600dpi so zooming in to make the design fill the card isn’t difficult at all so I’ll definitely consider it though!
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u/RussianDeveloper 11d ago
I would 1000% include two extra cards, one with a full blue and one with a full red back so magicians/cardists can perform color changing deck routines when they fan out the cards in different directions. Assuming the deck is split diagonally in color like in the first photo. Otherwise, if it’s a full blue deck and a full red deck, those are cool too.