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Category Archives: Deck of Playing Cards

Playing Cards and Comics: Brawl in the Family Playing Cards by Matthew Taranto

“Brawl in the Family” Playing Cards (Bitf Cards) were created by the American comic artist and writer, Matthew Taranto. The deck is some type of by-product of his parody comic strip dedicated to adventures of many famous Nintendo characters that have appeared in the Smash Bros games.

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“Brawl in the Family is a comic strip centering on Kirby and by extension, many famous Nintendo characters that have appeared in the Smash Bros games. There are cameos from other titles as well. The strip began as a series of doodles during one of my many art history classes in college. I was bored one night and doodled up six comics, then put them online on a message board on IGN. From there, people seemed to enjoy them, so I put them up at a few other locations, such as Game FAQs. It began as a comic about the Kirby characters, but once I added the Smash Bros cast (and Kirby’s interaction with them), the scope of the strip expanded significantly.

Most of the characters in Brawl in the Family are parodies of characters that are the property of their respective copyright owners (mostly Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Masahiro Sakurai). This is a parody strip. I did not create the original characters, merely these bizarre interpretations of them.” ~ Matthew Taranto

The comics happened to be so popular that Matthew was able to collect $ 276,502 on Kickstarter (November, 2014) for publishing books with his comics.

The deck: 52 playing cards + 2 different Jokers. Poker size. All faces of the playing cards are custom. Playing cards were printed on cardboard and have some kind of “embossed finish”. Tuck cases are glossy (slightly).

Brawl in the Family Playing Cards: Tuck Case

Brawl-in-the-Family-Playing-Cards-Box

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Preview: Poker Faces Playing Cards by Verlag um die Ecke

A small publishing company from the most western part of Germany, “Verlag um die Ecke“ (roughly translated from German into English as “Publisher around the corner“), which specializes on family magazines and different guides decided to create some side project devoted to playing cards. The team of three people – publisher, graphic designer and illustrator – launched a custom deck of playing cards called “Poker Faces”.

Poker Faces playing cards were designed for nonconservative poker players with developed sense of humor. “Poker face”, also known as a blank expression, is a special term for poker which means a facial expression characterized by neutral positioning of the facial features, implying a lack of strong emotion. As you can see, quite quirky and bizarre characters of this deck are far away from a lack of strong emotions 🙂 While the Jack of Spades is just thinking about his possible victim, ladies mercilessly are shooting flirtatious glances at everyone. And think twice before surprise the Jack of Diamonds by your Royal Flush 😉

“Tough guys and loose women, Bartenders, Mafia Brides and Sailors! In a POKER FACES poker hand, the underworld and harbor romance meet. Each of the four colors represents an “industry”: clubs is maritime, spades is organized crime, the pimps and alley cats romp around with hearts, and in the diamond pub, everyone is sitting at the bar.” ~ Verlag um die Ecke

The contrast was intentional. The creators wanted to have professional deck for poker with some ironical twist. I have to admit that they did what they wanted.

All drawings are the work of the Aachen-based illustrator Alex Elsen.

Poker-Faces-Playing-Cards-by-Verlag-um-die-Ecke

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Preview: Blackjack Casino (Final Fantasy) Playing Cards by Laura Wilson and Fangamer.net

This Blackjack Casino Playing Card Deck is devoted to a role-playing video game (RPG), Final Fantasy VI.  The game was the sixth title in the Final Fantasy series. It is also known as Final Fantasy III for the US version. Final Fantasy VI was published by Square (now Square Enix) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) platform in 1994. SNES is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was firstly released in 1990 in Japan. Later it was ported for other gaming platforms (for the Wii’s Virtual Console in 2011).

Final Fantasy VI was directed by Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito. And it was the first game in the series which didn’t involve its initial producer and series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.

The game’s story is focused on a rebel’s struggle against an imperial dictatorship. The Empire is the most advanced nation in this game. Its opponents are the Returners, a rebel organization trying to vanquish the Empire and free its territories.

These playing cards were designed by Laura Wilson especially for Fangamer.net, a site devoted to celebrating and encouraging the art of gaming. Each element of this deck is custom.

This deck isn’t the first one from Fangamer.net. Earlier they produced Zelda Poker Playing Card Set (The Cards of Legend) in cooperation with Nelde (nickname), an artist from Switzerland. The set, Red and Blue Decks, was devoted to the Zelda series of video games.

Blackjack-Casino-Final-Fantasy-Playing-Cards-by-Laura-Wilson

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Kickstarter: Story Time Playing Cards by Eny Space Captain

Story Time Playing Cards is a very specific playing card project covering 54 unique artworks by Eny. Shuffling these cards, you will be able to contemplate 54 paintings of characters from various stories, including fairy tales, folklore, and mythology. Each card has its own story – from Aphrodite to Aladdin, from Cinderella to Ra, etc.

The cards are planned to be printed by Make Playing Cards.

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Card Experiment: Bicycle Dream Playing Cards

Card Experiment, the producer of Bicycle Asura playing cards, Babel playing cards, Utopia Playing Cards, Anicca playing cards, is going to produce its new decks of playing cards – Bicycle Dream Playing Cards: Gold and Silver Editions. It opens a pre-order period on its site (expected delivery date: mid-December).

“The phantasmagoric nature of the Sandman’s realm permeates the design of the Dream deck. The blurring of boundaries between the real and the imaginary is captured by clever blending of contrasting elements which seems, at the same time, both natural and unnatural. Dreams are mysterious. Dreams are fantastical. Dreams have infinite possibilities.” ~ Card Experiment

These decks are the result of a collaboration between Card Experiment and Chatchanok Wongvachara (Bangkok, Thailand). She is an artist and musician, also known as Pink (no, she isn’t an American singer). The lady grew up in an artistic family, and was given a lot of guidance by her father and her brother. Chatchanok enjoys to combine illustration elements with photography, for instance, or employ handicraft techniques in her work.

clickable

Bicycle-Dream-Playing-Cards-Gold-Box Bicycle-Dream-Playing-Cards-Silver-Box

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