My work for David Blaine

I'm so excited to finally talk about it. You'll see my work maybe already in the next Blaine deck! Six weeks ago, after the last Blaine deck release I've decided to write db's team. I've said that before, I think the Split Spades and the Gatorbacks are the most beautiful back designs ever. But the faces on the courts always destroy it.

In my first message to Blaine's team, I was already a little confidently bold. I wanted to make it unmistakably clear that there is a problem and that I can fix that. It took a few messages back and forth before they really understood what I really wanna do.

"It's not my goal to step on anyone's toes, but what I meant by huge discrepancy between the fronts and backs is the way the faces were drawn on the courts.
There are a lot details which doesn't look right because drawing styles were used which doesn't match the original court card art work."

Instead of redrawing every court card completely I received the latest face card templates and I redesigned everything that needed to get redesigned. They didn't want completely new faces. But I made the best out of it. 

It only took me two days to redesign everything. Waiting for new emails ate up most of the time.

They wanted 13 redesigned court cards and an extra new db court. So I designed what you see in the image on top. However, they decided not to use this card :D
Let me know what you think which version looks better.

Martijn, if you read this, you said something great: "to be fair the most I've seen him in the last couple of years was through his court card."

The "problem" with db's original court is that is already became so iconic, that it's nearly impossible to replace it completely. People simply got too used to it. But somehow I'm even of the same opinion, so it's totally fine.

I don't know what most of the faces on the courts look like in real life. But this didn't really make it more difficult. I kept all the facial features as best as I could.

To my amazement, I found that the face of the Jack of Clubs in the Red Black Inc decks is already drawn on my redrawn face cards that I offer on my website. So even without me knowing you could have find my work in db's decks. I just know it's someone from the Red Black Inc team but I don't know who it is (or if he really ordered the files on my website) :D
Like I already said to Blaine's team, I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but it needs to be said, there are some pretty bad face drawings in their decks. And I think the JC was one of the cards which definitely needed a makeover.

Before and after:

Standard court cards don't look at you. They ALWAYS look to the side. I made the same mistake at first, but now I know better. Without knowing how the QD really looks like I also changed the size of her eyes so that it looks more like a playing card face. Look at the rose in her hand. I was a little bit sneaky here. :D Since you'll never see my name anywhere I wanted to make clear that I redesigned it. Only if you know, you know. Like a hidden signature. I'm not a big fan of her hairdo but since I shouldn't change too much I simply kept it like that.

Since it's not for my own decks, I don't want to show you more at the moment. In fact I didn't even ask if I can show this to you but it shouldn't be a big deal. But if this post dissapears in the near future you know it was a big deal :D

Thanks for reading

Much love

Daniel