[Kickstarter] AfterEarth: The Fall A Fantasy and Post-apocalyptic RPG You Can Contribute To Before Printing

[BrianKohrman]

Yeah, that sounds great. Also, your latest art updates are killer!

[Karak]

So we found a card publisher who will allow us to have 4 specific decks.
2 Magic Style(colored backs with more artistic designs)
2 Chromatic(more like normal playing cards printer with aluminum inks)

Normal style(face of card is a placeholder)



Chromatics

[Pale Ale]

Originally Posted by Karak

Normal style(face of card is a placeholder)

but but I wanna whine how I will never buy a deck with a Officer McScanvenger as the King!!!

[Karak]

Ace of clubs concept

[Karak]

Full card mock up. The gears will be removed from the card background and the vintage footage vertical lines. Sorry for the low res but the card website preview only allows for low res outputs.


Clean pic without card insert. This is also the clubs symbol for the deck.

[Karak]

Jack of Clubs concept

[Karak]

Though we didn't make our goal for AfterEarth we are doing the card deck in the next day or so then we will rerelease AfterEarth on Kickstarter at a new goal with a slightly adjusted focus.

Man the playing cards killed our goal. The lower companies require up to 15,000 for a single run. Bah I guess I shouldn't have tried to do it all together.

King of Hearts sample draft

[Pale Ale]

Hell, we're gonna start calling you the Kickstart Guru!!!


Sent from a phone, so all the words are tiny.

[Hawkzombie]

I love these cards, man.

[Karak]

Originally Posted by Pale Ale

Hell, we're gonna start calling you the Kickstart Guru!!!


Sent from a phone, so all the words are tiny.

Well I failed the first time cause I shoved everything together. So maybe not Guru. Maybe...KickStarter initiate.

[Karak]

What the heckity heck.
That wasn't the right picture at all.

[Karak]

Well our metal card creator also informed us they have a local glass blower who will make some class playing cards and then etch our faces into them for very limited rewards. Pretty cool stuff.
Can't wait to start this damn thing though.

[Karak]

Anyone else who is still reading this.
Can I get your impression on this style of front of the cards. We can do the normal art but I still am bothered by how different it looks than the backs of the cards.

Anyway. To match the metal look of the back these would be a black deck.

[Hawkzombie]

What am I looking at here? I see the differences, but is this how it will look on the cards for the black deck?

It honestly looks a bit messy, not so clean...like you simply took the original colored artwork and made it inverted and black and white. Is that what you want comments on?

[Karak]

Originally Posted by Hawkzombie

What am I looking at here? I see the differences, but is this how it will look on the cards for the black deck?

It honestly looks a bit messy, not so clean...like you simply took the original colored artwork and made it inverted and black and white. Is that what you want comments on?

Yep. Its chromed and sketched by the artist but would be defined before print.

[Hawkzombie]

Ah, as long as it's cleaned up...I like the look of it. It's certainly different, and I prefer the more bold one on the bottom. Mainly because that would look killer under a blacklight.

[Karak]

That is good to know. I had some people state they liked the messier look because it felt like it added detail, then other said the opposite.

For me. I love the dark look. Maybe. We will see.

[BrianKohrman]

Hey, just thought I'd mention this, since you are talking about printing cards. There are some print on demand places that won't require high print runs, and still do a good job. They may make MUCH it easier to do your first printing! These have been recommended to me:

www.printerstudio.com
www.artscow.com

Also, my game is being printed by these guys:
http://www.facebook.com/CustomizedPlayingCards

I didn't deal with them directly, but they seem to be cheap and willing to do smaller print runs. They're also doing cool stuff like holofoils for us! Supposedly, they do a great job, and they'll do game boards and other components as well.

Good luck!

[Karak]

Large response.

Thanks for the suggestions but I have already had the same experiences with those as most everyone else who actually does playing card decks have. We are doing a real poker deck which is a bit different than people printing a random deck of cards as a gift.

I have got prints from all of them. To say they are substandard is to give them FAR too much credit. Especially if you are making cards that need to be touched more than...once a year. They don't even use traditional card creation processes and finishes sadly. So hand oils effects the sides of the decks terribly, the finish is visible in almost all lighting situations, and the cards can't be used by anything more than casual poker players as their printing is so bad that the cards are considered non-mirrored and could be used for guessing people's hands in poker.

For example those groups cards don't easily fan, they don't allow for double fans at all, after less than 3 hands of poker the cards won't pharaoh at all and after 3 hands all the decks were oil separated. They usually had print creases after 7 FORCED pharaohs as well and bridge shuffles damage them the very 1st time. Also Printerstudio's(who I used for Mockups) didn't have a straight cut at all in the last bunch. Worthless even as a gift sadly.

We need cards that can last at the minimum say 1 year of general random play. So you are stuck with Bicycle and perhaps the company in israel. Sorry I can't remember there name and the last deck that came from them and went to KickStarter got DESTROYED in the feedback sections.

My ratings.
Printerstudio. normal number cards in a deck, printed 7 decks at 7 different times. Entire groups of cards had different versions of white on the same card in the same deck. Card finish is terrible I mean...you can see the finish. Just horrid. Good for perhaps taking pics of mock ups as I did on my KickStarter with them. But substandard for actual cards. Lasted less than 4 hands of poker and a couple random Pharaohs. Also not a single straight card. Just utterly unacceptable quality.

Artscow. Terrible in every way. Wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. Appears to be random printer items without even doing sheets. Quality seemed like a 1.

The Facebook group you linked. That may work for cards never being touched but their finish isn't good at all for hand oils. They have a terrible reputation within the playing card community(which is where the bulk of our contacts are and a large group of collectors are as well)

Now again we are doing a real poker deck which requires people be able to handle the cards and play with them as normal. Not just a KickStarter gift. As a random gift they may be good. NOT Printerstudio though. Not by a damn long shot.

[Karak]

Bicycle made us run through a couple hoops but they accepted our art. Excellent. Now I can move on to the next task. The art on these cards is going to be amazing.