Virmir-Cards Project

[Geary]

Definately worthing paying a little extras for a tin 

[KaiAdin]

I guess the Custom Tuck box is cardboard too?
I don't see why not X3 It would be an awesome addition!

[William Swiftfoot]

Id be willing ^^ unique card boxes are always cool!

[Virmir]

Cool. And yep, it is a cardboard box fit to the shape of the deck.  I'll whip up some graphics and order a proof sometime soon.

[Virmir]

And one for tonight.



36/54!

[Tvorsk]

Well, seems it could use some more color adjustment - the red numbers seem kinda pink-ish, my light brown is way too yellow, and so on. Speaking of, that (especially the pink-ish issue) sounds quite like a CMYK<->RGB conversion mismatch... do SPOD says anything about sending them CMYK templates?

"Errant dot" sounds like they'd be using offset printing, and not be scrubbing the plates ideally clean in between... in any case, yay for centering!

I shouldn't comment about the box... it'd probably look really nice, especially compared to "generic" one or complete lack of... but that's even more to the cost, and I wouldn't be able to pay for the deck either way.

[Virmir]

Hmmm, looking again at the photo, that's an issue with my camera.   The red is actually vibrant and looks great.  The pictured ones actually are tinted yellow slightly to compensate for their printers, but the camera tinted them further.  I'm rather pleased with the coloring, actually.  Sorry for the confusion!

Also, it's amusing how vastly different these things look under different lighting.  If I look at them by sunlight coming in through the window, they look fantastic.  At night if I look at them under the light from my ceiling fan, my fur almost looks a tad purple-ish.

[Tvorsk]

He he, yay!
<smartail type="capt_obvious">And well, prints, as opposed to screens, work by blocking some wavelengths of light, and reflecting other ones; so if the light isn't Uniform White in the first place, color's influenced.</smartail>

[KaiAdin]

Blah Colour correction is such a problematic thing... Getting ones monitor to look like ones prints ends up as an expensive and sometimes futile exercise!

 I say if it looks alright in day light.. just leave it as it is!

p.S: What is the bulb type for your ceiling fan anyway Virmir?

[Virmir]

Yeah, I'm fairly certain the one adjusted batch pictured will be the one I'm using for SPOD.

I use those new-ish energy saver bulbs, with the swirly coils.   There's a frosted glass shade under them, which probably distorts the color a bit too.

Two cards for today!



38/54!

[Virmir]

Done with diamonds! 39/54

Also, I got the test printing from TGC yesterday. I'm not going to post pictures this time because they are all starting to look the same (and the colors turn out differently in the camera, anyway )

Basically, they turned out better centered this time.  I'm not sure if them turning out nicely is a fluke, or the bad centering last time was the fluke.  SPOD still printed them better centered, but this batch was in acceptable ranges, I'd say. Will be buying one last test deck from them for sure to see.

I like their print quality better than SPOD's... the only thing is, TGC prints insanely darkly.  It's difficult to adjust the colors to get them to look decent (whereas I've already decided on which color/brightness filter I want to apply to SPOD's).  Also, I hear from Tod that his deck turned out much too darkly as well, and that they are going to be adjusting their printers soon to try to fix this... so I'm thinking I'm going to wait a bit before ordering another test deck from them.

[Virmir]

Card Update!!!

I have found a third contender, this one Custom Design and Printed (henceforth CDP) and have ordered a test deck from them with a few color variations.

Initial impression... these guys are way more professional presentation-wise, especially their upload software.  They do offer to sell my product from their site, which would be great too.  They are a bit more pricey, though.  On the flip side, their shipping prices are much more reasonable. In the end, a full deck still comes out to a few dollars more than the other two places, but we'll see what kind of product they deliver.  If the blasted things are centered and look good, it will be worth it.

We shall see!

[Virmir]

And... three stock image cards to get things started for the hearts.



Also, as you probably noticed I made some adjustments to the heart suit.  I thought it better to have all the 2s to be a smaller, cutesy character.  So I swapped Tod's Sparrow for West form Ekwara.  (I really wanted to draw Sparrow though... so maybe later. )  By result is most of the suit got bumped up one number.

42/54!

[Stormkit]

Ah, so you did go with the stock image for me. Can't say I'm terribly surprised ^.^

However when you put those pictures next to each other, I can't help but notice certain traits in common. Namely the tail and body position of me and Alias.

As for my new status as an eight? I mildly torn between eight being an awesome number, and seven being an awesome number. I do find it appropriate that Alias is now number nine ;)

[Virmir]

Blast it... I totally did not realize the similarities until you pointed them out...   That was a serious problem in my art work, and I'm trying to vary poses more and more as I go on.  I'm actually very tempted to go back and draw new stuff for the old pics... but at the same time, I really want to get this project done. We shall see...

(I like 8 more than 7 myself, honestly. )