CALI-TALLY!

Last week Henry from SoCal Playing Cards asked me if I could help with a Joker design for a new SoCal Playing Cards deck.

To be honest, my first thought was why not use AI for this. Really just a few seconds passed after this thought and Henry shared with me an AI generated Joker that a friend of his had created. Henry wrote: "I am 100% in favor of using a real artist."

Here is the AI-generated image from his buddy:

It should, of course, be a clear reference to the Tally-Ho Joker. With this image, I already knew where the journey should go. And this work wasn't new to me, as I had already worked on the Joker for the Tally-Ho x Orbit decks. Same idea, this time it was just a grizzly bear instead of an astronaut. But of course I liked the idea straight away, so I agreed without hesitation.

I don't demonize AI per se. I think it's great what you can do with it. But I'm too proud to use AI generated images on my own Black Roses Playing Cards. I also don't want that any other artist/designer designs something for me. That's something that simply makes no sense to me. Commissioned work for someone else is another matter. But I can still see whether something is AI-generated or not, and I find it really awful when designs scream AI. I just wanted to get that off my chest so that you can see how I feel about it.

Even though I claim to be able to draw quite well, I can't draw a standing bear from my head. To make it look right in the end, I googled for a drawing of a standing bear. I was able to use a picture as a template, in which I basically just put the arms and legs (or is it just legs?) in the same pose as the original Tally-Ho Joker.

The silhouette of a bear is very easy to draw because of the fur. Even if not every line is perfect, it doesn't look wrong. So I very quickly drew the outline with the basic pose.

Did you know that the Tally-Ho Joker depicts a hunter hunting a fox? Sounds pretty bizarre, considering that it could be mistaken for a circus tamer:

While I was drawing it, I had the idea of putting the red hunting coat on the bear. But it's too small, so that some buttons pop open. It made me giggle for a few minutes and I couldn't wait to show it to Henry.

I sat on the Joker for a little over 2 hours until I showed Henry an almost finished version:

It was already late at night and I knew I would do the remaining small details the next day.
The next day I made more changes than I had thought the day before, but they were very important and led to the final version:

Isn't it interesting how the entire drawing looks completely different just because you're looking at it through different eyes?

In the final version, you can see that I also added buttons to the coat. That is an interesting detail that isn't visible in the standard Tally-Ho decks. But you can see the buttons in some Tally-Ho decks:

When I designed the Tally-Ho Orbits, USPCC sent me their original files. When I remove the layer of the red coat, the buttons become visible. They are simply underneath, but they are part of the original drawing before USPCC digitized everything. That's why I wanted to keep this detail. It may have been a conscious decision on the part of USPCC to omit the buttons, but I think it was more likely an oversight, otherwise the versions with and without buttons would not be mixed so randomly.

Thanks for reading and thank you so much for your support!

Much love

Daniel