Potter Context Boards

Open publication - Free publishing - More graphic design

Snap!

Snap cards are finished! Little bit thicker than I anticipated what with the paper stock and laminating so I'm having to sightly re adjust the box.

Potter pics~

So one of the lights decided to blow as soon as I started to shoot. In fact, as soon as I put the box on the table.

I guess that's an excuse for why the pictures did not come out as well lit as I had hoped. Oh well. They'll do.

Also, please excuse the horrible masking tape in one corner inside the lid. The way the box has been glues together and papered makes it hard to paper the inside. (Which is a bit of a bother, but not too noticeable and doesn't, i hope, distract too much.)

Playing Card Suites

So I had 16 places to fill for the card suites. The snakes where easy enough, just using those who where in Slytherin house.

It might look strange to give Ron a position as high as king, but I'm going for the "Weasley Is Our King" chant from when he helped win the Quidditch match in book 5, I think.

Laminated!

So i decided to see how some of the snap cards would look laminated. I used 2 sheets that where already printed with both the front and back design. They're now extremely thick, and it's made me re think about how I'm going to package them. I'm now going to opt for a deep box rather than the playing card format.

There should be fine for the snap cards, but I really should try and keep the playing cards thinner so they'll still be able to go in the playing card format box.

I'm going to attempt to make them thinner.

I also changed the back from bolts to Harry because, honestly, the bolt pattern was making me nautious. This way, it also refers back to my reasoning behind using the characters and not the concepts.

56 deck; Bolts & Snitches & Snakes OH MY

Somebody asked why I didn't make each deck a house of Hogwarts. I guess it's because I haven't got enough of Hufflepuff (read one; Tonks) and too much choice between the other houses of where I'd put them.

No, I like the idea of doing attributes of Harry himself such as his scar, a snitch (quidditch), his glasses and a snake (parseltounge)

Everything that he is is superficial and sort of forced upon him. The inherited poor eye sight but with that, the inherited skill at quidditch. Then you have the scar forced upon by Voldemort and the ironic gift that came with it of being able to talk to snakes.

Edit:
Right. Now that they're almost all done. (minus the suites which will be prominent characters like Harry and Dumbledore). I just need to invert snake and bolt deck, print the backs, laminate and cut. Then it's onto printing the box.

All Change~

Changed the net to it finally says "exploding" and this design tweak sits better with me.

Gridded

Using a grid made for websites, I was able to rework the layout for the website. This looks neater and more organzied (And it technically would now work as a website.)

Potter Home Page

Spent this morning mocking up the home page for the bloomsbury Harry Potter home page. (Other pages to come). It looks wide because it's a scroll page. You'd only see half of that on screen.

I wanted to keep the feel of the books and make use of the characters I had drawn as well as making it as easy to navigate as possible.

Explodable Snap

Exploding Snap (and not exploadable as i keep misreading it... which isn't even a real word) is a wizarding card game in which the cards spontaneously explode during games.

There are 2 variants of Exploding Snap. The first one, the "Classical" Game, is quite simple, however it requires some reflex. The rules are simple: when you see two identical pictures, hit the card with the top of your wand – one point is yours. The player with the most points wins the game. The hard part is, the cards shuffle faster and faster. The second one, the "Patience" Game, is a bit harder. You have 20 cards and you reveal them in pairs. You have to find two identical pictures. Cards explode soon after you reveal them for the first time (of course, if you don’t find a pair before).

Well, we're not wizards so we get normal snap cards. Sorry.

There are 52 cards, half black and half white. They'll also be printed on the same stock as the book covers (and everything else for this brief)

The back is going to be lots of tessellated lightning bolts.

(That's if you can look at them long enough without going sick)

Playing Cards Research

I've decided to use the 56 tarot deck (Minor Arcana) instead of the 52 poker set for my Potter playing cards. This is because of the use of tarot cards in the actual series by professor Trelawny. (That, and I wasn't quite prepared to make an entire 78 card tarot deck complete with separate illustrations.) But the 56 card deck will suit it's purpose.

The Minor Arcana deck is divided into four suits, and they came from older Latin playing card suits with names such as Wands or Batons, Cups, Swords, and Coins (also called Pentacles or Disks), although there are lots of different names and suit symbols used. The deck is related to the deck of 52 playing cards used in most modern card games.

I've been using tarot cards for years for fun. It's cold reading (And sometimes warm reading, depends on what the card 'reads') They're completely for recreational use and I wouldn't suggest trying to live by them the way occultists use them for divination.

(Will have pictures of my own deck here when I dig them out of the packing box)

Playing Cards

As well as bookmarks and limited prints, I'm also looking into making a set of playing cards for my Harry Potter brief.

I want to make 3 sets of cards.
- The 1st set will be a 52 card set for "explorable" snap. (Snap cards basically)

- The 2nd set will be the 56 Tarot deck which have 14 cards of each suit: clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. (Which I'm either going to assign to a Hogwarts house or a concept that makes up Harry) I'm still undecided at this point as to who would be my king, queen ect.

- The 3rd set would be a top trumps style info deck (Which will allow me to look into simple effective type, as well as using my character illustrations.

What A Squib

So it turns out I'm terrible at making boxes.
Pyxis Repairo?
Let's try this again.

Edit:
Fixed it.

The lids a bit of a tight fit (even tighter when I make it out of the correct stock + the stock the design is going to be printed on). SO I'm going to add a few millimeters to the lid and hopefully that should work.

Book Marks

Printed out some bookmarks yesterday on the same stock as the books. (Just doubled them over to get the thickness)



Stock white on one side, reverse out on the other to show the black and white theme that runs though the books (And how everything isn't divided into good guys and death eaters)

I'll be punching holes through the bottom of them to added black and white ribbon. On the end of them I'm hoping to attach the lighting bolt/scar cut out of the same stock.

Spot Varnish

Went a lot better than yesterday.

Started with Half Blood Prince in case I mucked it up (Which I did) so it wouldn't be to obvious when it was in with the rest of the book.

The screen shifted ever so slightly as I forgot to put down so weights resulting in an off-centered and double exposed scar. Oh well.

There is a slight blue shine to Order Of the Phoenix because I used a squidgey which someone hadn't wash properly. Thanks.

Goblet of Fire came out the best. Didn't do another one as good as this but ahh well.

I have now learned that I could have achieved the same affect with clear binder (and it meant I wouldn't have had to clean the screen each to I wanted to print something new) Well gee, thanks for that after I've done it.