The Brief

Graphic Designers have to be able to work within very tight constraints to make unique but functional designs that impart information quickly and efficiently while also being a collectable item. This task will allow you to explore the balance of functionality and style while developing your skills further in Photoshop and Illustrator to create 4 playing cards, 2 numbers, 1 face card, and the ace of spades, with the intent of it being proof of concept for a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a full print run. Your final design will be mocked up with flair to enhance the style chosen and will feature on your portfolio website.

My Work

For my playing cards, my idea was to use artwork from a favourite filmmaker of mine, Tim Burton.  To get some inspiration for what I could do with my cards I did some research on the internet and made a moldboard to place all my ideas in front of me.

 

With the images gathered I had decided that I would draw out the characters on my cards with a Wacom tablet to make the illustrations my own but still make them look as similar as possible to the originals. I also decided I would use a glitch effect on my cards to contrast the older fashioned effects with a new digitalized modern effect.

I began my drawings by opening photoshop and clicking on paint, I looked for a paintbrush that looked closest to a pencil, I used a thin pt and made it very light so I could get closest to the ordinary illustrations in The Nightmare Before Christmas. I started off by drawing Sally so I looked through previous illustrations of her for inspiration.

I began drawing my own Sally, however, I only wanted a headshot of her and not her whole body. After finishing the drawing I wanted to add the glitch effect to my playing card, I did this with the blending options and adding extra layers, each layer I would use I would take away a channel colour each layer. Next to create the actual glitch effect I moved the layers, one left and one right, which brought up the different colours I then used the select tool to pick out different parts of my drawing, when I moved these it would move the big of the drawing I had selected, creating the glitch effect. For the border around my card I used the line in the ellipse shape option and changed the effect of these to be split, I added a noise effect to this so it didn’t stand out as much compared to my character and also fitted to the glitch theme. Finally, I decided to make this card the queen of hearts so using the pen tool I made a heart and added lines around this to create a stitch effect.

 I used a glitch font to fit with my theme and this finished the creation of this card.

I then moved on to making Jack Skellington, again I researched different photos I could take inspiration from.

Using the same method as I did last time I made my drawing and copied over the border I had made previous, I made the card to this a Jack as it is Jack Skellington and used the pen tool to make a spade.

This was the result of my Jack Skellington playing card.

Next to make was my Victor card, I struggled to find images of drawings of him online so I did this freehand. Once again I followed the methods from before and this time using the pen tool I drew a club and made the card a diamond.

 

This again finished the design for this card.

Finally, had the dog Zero to make which I used inspiration from this image.

For this card I used the final one left the clubs, this one was the hardest to draw with the pen tool.

The final result of my card.

For the backs of my card, I used a pattern I made which followed the colours I had used in my designs fitting with my theming still.

This is the final result of my cards, I placed one in a mockup to see what it would look like in a real-life setting.  What I like about my cards is my use of actually drawing out my cards, even though this was a more time-consuming process I gained more skills with using a Wacom tablet and becoming comfortable with it and it gave my card a more personal touch.

Something I would maybe change about my cards in the future and learn from is trying to add gradients or more colours into the backgrounds of my cards, in my mood board, I featured loads of cards that used metallic backgrounds, something I maybe could’ve featured in mine just to give them that extra touch.