The Midnight Ocean Tarot

Just 44 hours left and time for our final card reveal; this time its the Vampire Squid.

They can turn themselves inside out to hide from predators. 

And the fabulous red version;

Finally for today, I have the Mystery Mollusc card pin, to match the rest of the set. And also the card back design. The middle of the design features the same whale fall that's in the background of all of the major arcana cards. Its possible that I might change just the middle section, but this is the overall design. 

Stick around for our final couple of days, we should have at least one more big update tomorrow :).

This is only phase two of the design process - the first round of product prototypes. But I thought I'd show you where we're at. These are not the final product. In fact we have a couple of disasters 😂. Its all part of the process.

Also, before we begin; its wrong to have favourite children and I would never do such a thing.

Card previews. We didn't end up going with this manufacturer, and felt this size was a little too small, but its nice to see them in person. I ordered them before the assignments were totally finalised so a few have changed. I really wanted to check that all the fine details would be visible at this size and the balance would work out when they were printed, also that the font was clear and legible. If it works at this size, it'll work at the larger one.. The holo was just for fun, its pretty but not for a whole deck. This back design, I'm still not 100% on, it was the one I was using until someone pointed out it looks like an underwater portal to somewhere else and now I can't unsee it 😂. The border is staying, the middle section might change.

Bookmarks. Matte laminated card and PET plastic. The card is flimsier; the PET is a little chunkier. Both are nice though. The card makes a nice freebie for the larger orders, the PET will probably be in the survey add-on store. The print colours have come out very well.



Magnetic bookmarks. These are free in some of the bundle pledges. They're smaller than I thought and the camera isn't doing the colours justice. Not many of the creature designs fit on this shape, but I definitely need to pick something a bit simpler. (These are two different sides of the same bookmark). The border is working though, and the print is clear. 

Stickers. The colours and print came out well. The default is clear matte vinyl, we're going for 3in in size because a lot of the designs are long by default. I also tried out a fancy gold finish but it was definitely toooo much. I also made some static window clings but then totally forgot to get a picture. The firework jelly on a transparent window cling looks pretty neat.



Acrylic keyring. The epoxy dome is making the print seem a little fuzzy, but its not rl. Its a bit clunky, this is why we're going with just the creatures and not the cards. It works for the pins because there's not another border around that too. This one has the holo effect, we'll probably offer both holo and clear in the keychain options. The front has a rounded epoxy finish, the back is flat. 

And our total disaster notebook, proving not everything goes right the first time 😂 . I didn't mention foiling because I did half fear this would happen, and that's the design lines are just too fine for it. I made a chunkier border for this specifically but it didn't help. Its hot stamped foil which is durable but too thick for this in my opinion. The print itself is actually very good, I have no idea why it washed out so much in these photos. So I'll be tweaking the cover design to lose the chunky lines, and getting them done without foil. Also I want to get the frosted protective covers their spiral notebooks usually have, I don't know why they're missing.

These are the inside pages;



Actually the design looks very much like I wanted, BUT that's an a6 sized notebook. Even if you used two lines at once you'd still be writing for ants 😂. That's easy to fix though, so once that's altered this is going to be default inside for all the notebooks. 

That's it for round one of development. We're now waiting to order another trial print of cards from the manufacturer we're working with, in the new size. I'll also be ordering another test print of notebooks very shortly once the changes are made. Because this product manufacturer has very small minimum order numbers, we're going to be offering a lot of options for your choice of notebook covers and keychain designs, since I have no idea which cards/creatures you're all hoping to see. 

As always, let me know if there's anything you'd like to suggest. It IS fun to slap a gulper eel on everything, not gonna lie.

More updates soon ~

Second to last card; the rosy coffinfish.

Also known as the deep sea toad. They walk along the sea bed on their big pectoral fins, which is kind of awesome. 

As the name hints, they do come in an outrageous shade of red, so its definitely one for the blood moon deck;

The red tones are still a little WIP.

In other news;

We have a new stretch goal!
If we hit 20k then I will definitely make red pins for all the blood moon cards. This is how much I need to feel comfortable about making them all; if we don't reach that far I will still make some of them, how many will just depend on the manufacturer quote.

I've also added a couple of new add-ons as we move into the final few days.

The Blood Moon Supplementary Pack
This is only the blood moon cards, for people who want to have both versions of the cards, but not two whole decks. This does not include the rest of the major or minor arcana; it only contains the red cards. There will be at least ten included; six major arcana and four court cards. There may be more, but these are guaranteed (the firework jelly, the sea angel, the spider crab, the blood belly comb jelly, the rosy coffinfish, ???, and the four court cards).

The Bullshark Mini Pin
It was 3am, I thought he was a juvenile great white. Did the whole design, came back after sleeping and knew immediately I done buggered up. But he's cute and I'm gonna make him anyway so if you want one... There he is. 1.75in with screen print shading.



Gulper Eel Promo Cards
The manufacturer printed a double batch by accident so there are nine more in stock. I'm not getting them made again, I just have twice as many as I expected. 

My long awaited test product order came in, so hopefully tomorrow I'll have some things to show you :)

Thanks for sticking with me ~

 

The poll was super helpful, thank you everyone. 

(Adding the text is the last phase of prepping the card art so excuse all these being blank).

So first things first, I tweaked the colours on the teal card, according to some suggestions. 
(New -- Old)

It was a small change but I do think it made a pretty big difference. This is the card for the default deck. (The pin hasn't been tweaked yet but it will match when I add it to the full collection).

I had a long think about what people said and the poll results, and realised it would be weird to have just one of the red things be red, when everything else is teal. And having just one red card stands out. Red actually is one of the more common colours at this depth, because it reads as black without light so its great for camouflage. Enough so that looking at the collection as a whole, I could add red accents to enough cards to make it cohesive.

So we're going to be offering an additional alternate edition of the deck, where some of the cards are switched out for the 'red' version. Same animals, same card art, only the colours are different and only on some of the cards - enough to make it more of a set. The same thing already exists in the teal collection, where certain shades are only on say half a dozen of the cards so it should work as a cohesive whole. The red really pops on the teal background. The specific palette is still being tweaked, but here are a couple of examples;

I've been calling it the blood moon edition, after the blood belly comb jelly that kicked the whole thing off. 

Anyway you'll be able to freely choose between either version, it won't cost any extra to have one or the other. There'll be about half a dozen major arcana cards with significant changes, and it'll carry over to one or two court cards per suit. I am not 100% promising red versions of all of the relevant pins, but because they share the same mould design as the originals its a solid possibility. 

So to recap; two versions of the same deck with slightly altered colourways. Everything else will be the same :). 

Thanks for sticking with me as we get into the final week! 

Sorry just a quick one, since I've had a few comments but I didn't want to have odd info all over the place.

A loooot of people like the red.
But also I was actually bapped IRL for considering not having the teal card.

We will be having both pins (if you bought a full set, you'll be able to pick which you prefer).

For the cards, well I'll make a big post about it tomorrow. In short though, I will be slightly adjusting the teal version (the values are off) and it will be in the 'default' version of the deck.

But for the red I think we will have options... 

Check back tomorrow :D