SurrealScapes Body Art & Creative Photography Deck

[zsalman]

Hello folks,

My name is Zaid. I'm an artist and photographer and I'm new to world of custom playing card decks. I've been doing bodypaint, body art, and creative photography for 10 years and I just put together a deck of cards featuring my "lightpainting" work, which is artwork created by projecting images onto live models and photographing the result.





Please check out the cards here http://www.fineartplayingcards.com and give me your feedback on everything from the design, the colors, the subject matter, the price, the tuckbox, or whatever. What I'm most interested in is whether this type of material appeals to card collectors, card players, and card magicians. If you want to see high quality samples of the images on the cards, you can check that out here: http://images.surrealscapes.net/Artwork/Lumens

I consider my images to be PG-13, and my 65-year old conservative Arab mother has seen my work and thinks highly of it, but the images are still too risque for USPCC to print the decks, so I did small run with a Florida company called Quality Playing Cards. But I've already been working with Cartamundi on design and production, so if the cards sell well enough, the high volume production will be with them.

Thanks,

Zaid

[neongrey]

Oh wow, I really love these, you've really managed to combine a bunch of things I ilke into one package. The price is a bit high, but that's understandable when you've got actual models involved. Unfortunately, the Amazon entry doesn't allow for it to be shipped to Canada? Any plans to rectify that?

[MJF]

Great artistic concept, but for me it's lacking in a few areas.

1. The fonts used in the deck and indexes is kinda plain...
2. There's no pips what-so-ever on the cards (except under the indexes)...
3. There's nothing unique or interesting going on with the tuck box. As a collector, I'll never open this deck so the tuck box is all I've got to look at.
3. The white rectangular border line isn't needed as your images bleed right to the edge of the cards...
4. I'm in the United States and can't get a deck of these unless I shell out $20.15 which is a bit high... especially considering every above

Sorry to rain on your parade, but I think you take this constructive criticism with you and learn from it for your deck.

[zsalman]

MJF,

Thanks for compliments and the specific feedback. Here are my responses and additional questions:

1. Good feedback. I'll put a custom font on my list of things to work on.
2. Are you saying that there should be pips on the main face of the card? I don't think I know how to put pips anywhere aside from under the index without disrupting the main image on the card face. Any suggestions as to where you would put the pips?
3a. Yes, the tuckbox is kinda plain. I'll also put upgrading the tuckbox design on my list for the next revision. I was trying to give a sense of what my art is about without being too risque, because I want the option to sell these cards in regular gift and novelty stores, so I picked a cover image that I thought was conservative enough. I went around and around on different designs trying to spruce it up, but I ended up figuring that simpler was better.
3b. Many of the images in my Lumens collection have the models cropped at the edge of the image. The white rectangular border frames the image on the card to correspond with exactly how the original composition. The first generation design of the cards didn't have the white border, which resulted in two issues. The first issue is that I had to change the composition of the image to match the aspect ratio of the card, which in some cases really changed the image. The second issue is that I thought that filling the card with the image without some sort of border or frame made the cards look a bit cheap. I'll go back and see what I can do with the face design to make it more distinct.
4. So there's two votes for the price being too high. Can you tell me what price you would find agreeable?

neongrey,

Thanks for the kind words. I've fixed the Canada shipping thing. Please take another look and let me know if it works.

Zaid

[MJF]

Keep in mind, you don't need to do a completely custom font, you can always use one of the publicly available typefaces or license one for fairly reasonable...
In terms what I think your deck is worth, you should go look at some of the successful (and highly funded) KickStarter projects... The highest one in there was Pedale Design (average $12.50), then Cthuhlu Deck (average $8.00), and the Bohemia Deck (average $8.50)... those decks have tons of design worked into them and customized tuck boxes, embossing, etc... where yours simply doesn't... realistically, your deck should probably be going for about $6.00-$7.00 ... which I know you don't want to hear as it's 1/2 your current price... but realistically folks are not going to pony up the amount of money you're asking unless the deck is absolutely top of the line...

In terms of the pips, you don't necessarily have to use the typical patterns. See what the CORE deck on KickStarter did... also, you could make them transparent, add ghosting effects, etc... really it's up to your imagination...

btw, all the Kickstarter Projects are maintained in a list under Playing Cards...

Hope that helps!

[zsalman]

Ah, thanks again for taking the time to give me details!

I have 1027 fonts installed on my machine and I went through every single one of them to find one that worked, and I settled on one after days of searching, but looking back on it, I think it might actually just be better for me to design the letters individually. And that would have the added benefit of me being able to say that the even the lettering is custom!

Regarding the price, I'm a marketing guy at my day job, so I can fully appreciate that it doesn't matter what >>I<< want, it matters what the MARKET wants. If my price is too high for what my cards are today, then I'll either have to lower the price or upgrade the cards to justify the current price. The big issue is that even with large manufacturers like USPCC or Cartamundi, the printing cost of the deck and tuckbox is something like $2-$3 in 2500- to 5000-unit quantities, so you have to print up a huge order of decks to get the cost down enough to even make a profit, and then you have to sell tens of thousands of decks to make a decent living. Maybe I'm off base in thinking that I can build a business around creating and selling custom decks. Am I? But then I look at the success of the many Kickstarter projects and the number of backers (especially Tyler Deeb's Pedale Design project) and I think that tens of thousands of decks isn't impossible.

I think the pips will be a challenge. The CORE deck looks pretty cool, but his images are suited to integrating the pips like that. I just still can't fathom how I can add pips to the images that I already have in a unique and un-cheesy way. The only solution I see is to forego my current portfolio of images on the deck and do a set of photographs specifically tailored for a card deck. So the models would have images projected on them that actually reflect the suit and value of the cards in some creative way. But I would have to be confident that such a deck would sell because it costs a lot of money to hire professional models to do this work. Each photoshoot takes 3-4 hours and the models charge $75-$125 per hour, so multiply that by 52 photoshoots and you're talking second mortgage on the house worth of model fees! I have some friends that would model for me for free or greatly reduced rates but that would probably cover only 1/4 of the required images. Well, okay, I'll keep thinking about that one.

Please keep the feedback coming. Positive or negative, it's all good!

Zaid

[neongrey]

As far as the cost, given the expense involved I do think it's perfectly reasonable to be charging more than the decks that don't utilize photography of models. I'd expect 10-12 to be a bit more acceptable to most, though.

I don't really have a problem with your choice of font personally; it's understated and I really like the one you used on the box, it's got a simple, elegant feel to it.

In terms of incorporating the pips better, I might work it some into the designs that are painted onto the models-- obviously it's too late to do that for this deck, but it would help unify the artwork with the fact that it's printed on the cards. Right now, it's just lovely artwork printed on a playing card.

It's not letting me ship to Canada yet, but I expect that's just Amazon taking its time; I'll check again after midnight Pacific since that's when things usually shake loose with them.

[MJF]

You want me to go slap someone upside the head... I'm literally a 10 minute drive from Amazon HQ... he he he
Seriously though, I love Amazon...

[zsalman]

neongrey: Hmm, yeah, with Amazon sometimes it takes a few hours for changes to propagate through all their systems, but please do let me know how it works out. I'll give them a call on Monday anyway to make sure everything is kosher. I appreciate your interest in my cards!

I've been thinking about it more and I'm now very strongly leaning towords doing a series of photographs specifically designed for a card deck, rather than, as you correctly say, "artwork printed on a playing card." That probably would have more appeal that just pictures of pretty women with random abstract patterns on their bodies.

By the way, the models are painted with a base coat of silver paint, but that's the only painting there. The colors and patterns you see on the models' bodies come from the images that are projected on them. You can learn more about my process in the video for the Kickstarter project for a photobook of my art: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/274 ... ography-th. The project didn't get funded, though.

MJF: thanks for the offer, but let's see if they can work it out peacefully. We'll leave the military option as a last resort!

Zaid

[neongrey]

It still hasn't taken yet, but I'm used to their slowness on updates, I wouldn't start worrying unless it's still like that by the end of the weekend.

[max]

Hi @zsalman, welcome to this community.

Your deck is interesting, I think more from the artistic point of view than from the cardistry or collection point of view.

If you plan to make a custom deck, why don't use your art on bodies to paint the playing cards motives on them. This would be something like a transformation body art deck. You could play with pips, numbers and faces on your body paintings to create a great custom deck.

Just an idea. I know it is a HUGE work on that but as I can't do it, you can try

Best wishes

[MagikFingerz]

Max, I LOVE that idea! Seriously, that would be awesome

[zsalman]

neongrey: Okay, it turns out that setting up international shipping required more steps than I thought. I think it's set up correctly now, but it won't be active until Wednesday. By the way, I've dropped the price of the deck.

Max and MagikFingerz: yes, that's exactly the conclusion I've come to after discussions with MJF and neongrey. It's going to be a bit of a long project, but it would actually be a lot of fun. Doing the image designs would be the hard part, shooting the models is easy.

I'll get started right away!

Zaid

[MagikFingerz]

Wow, that's great news! Combining the arts of playing cards and female bodies - the best of two worlds

[Strag]

Agree, that would be AWESOME!

[neongrey]

neongrey: Okay, it turns out that setting up international shipping required more steps than I thought. I think it's set up correctly now, but it won't be active until Wednesday. By the way, I've dropped the price of the deck.

Cool, I'll let you know if it's working right then.