I feel like passing out because I've been staring at the screen for too long. Definitely too sick and tired of the playing cards. I'm not sure if I'm going to edit this much longer, especially when I have a million other things to do.

... you get a Hobbes!

One more project done. I'm breathing a little easier. I've succeeded in exploring different design styles without taking away part of my essence in my designs. The John Hughes Film Festival was a success. Hopefully John likes it because I am proud of it. I was able to create a system consisting of several pieces of designs that work together as a whole without looking too "rubber-stamped." In other words, they didn't look exactly the same. Some of them I wish I had more clever ideas on how to execute them, but sometimes what I have is all I have.

( Design Pieces )

This is what I started with for my deck of playing cards design. These—which took me a whole day's work to do were abandoned because my teacher didn't think they were part of a system. I know he's right, but I hate myself for wasting so much time on them. And I hate it even more that I couldn't use any of it.



Then I spent another day redoing the dragons, almost completely changing my whole design. So these were what I ended up with. Click for a larger image.



And yet, they're still not working right. I'm frustrated. Every single king, queen, and jack has to be different from each other. Four kings, four queens, and four jacks. Four suits. Twelve dragons, all different. Right now he said the three dragons I have are too similar to each other, which means I have to draw more dragons—different ones—so people can tell them apart.

When he was critiquing me, I was going through two days with 3 hours of sleep, and all I could do was stare at my dragons and wonder if I should bang my head against the table or if I should tear up my paper and make a dramatic exit. I wanted to half laugh and half cry. There's just no winning in life. Part of me wanted to say "fuck life!" and vanish into the night like Batman and then the rest of me is thinking that I need to go home and Tae-bo all this frustration out.

As much as I'm starting to hate this project, I'm determined to see it through. What a milestone this will be. 53 cards, including the joker, and a package design, all part of a [hopefully awesome] system. What the hey, I might be so proud of it I'd print these babies out and use them.