Team ChoW III - Utopian Battleship

[Irrlaeufer]

Welcome


Useful Links:

General:

The Original Rider-Waite Tarot

Tarot cards: Interpretaion and Meaning

theancientweb.com

costumes.org


Asian:

http://www.samurai-archives.com/

Egyptian:

http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html

Egyptian Hieroglyphs


Mesoamerican:

http://research.famsi.org/mdp/mdp_index.php

Maya Hieroglyph Dictionary

http://research.mayavase.com/kerrportfolio.html

Maya codices

[instinct]

awesome, nice initiative!

if you want, wanna change our title to team Utopian Battleship?

i think daestwen wants us to use the team title when requesting cards, and im about to post in the signup thread saying we're an official team and to place us in the list accordingly, might as well use the team name across all threads .

[Irrlaeufer]

hmkay

done.

I got Love imperialist drug lab. sounds awesome too.

[Nike]

Well, I don't have a better suggestion for a team name, I think utopian battleship is nice (as a cat person I'd prefer battlecats, heh, but I like ships, too)

[Nike]

the drug lab sounds cool, too... my best result was disaster voodoo church

So, hm, do you already have ideas which cards you'd like to do?

[instinct]

I'm glad it is acceptable, haha. I think it has a nice ring.

So as to the cards, if you two have specific ones you'd like to do i say feel free to post in the card thread and request them for our team, I guess choosing one major and one minor tarot each is the best way to do it, so feel free to do that!

I'm not sure what I'm going to go after yet, i may even end up choosing two minors or something. I'm going to sleep on it and work that out later today. (it is 7am here and i have yet to go to bed, i wanted to sort this all out first! silly me.)

[Irrlaeufer]

Okay, first things first. I think the name thing is not a big issue, much more important: the cards! I'd like to go for The Empress and Three of swords before all slots are full.
What about the two of you?

okay, good night then instinct.

What about you Nike?

[Nike]

Good night, instinct!

Hm, I'm still thinking about the cards... from the major arcana I like the chariot, the star, and the world, and the lower I have to check again...

[instinct]

Okay, I've settled on the Two of Cups and the Five of Swords, so nike, if you want to do two Major Arcana feel free!

Also if either of you have any ideas towards perhaps some kind of over-arching theme or colour/design scheme we could work towards to end up with images that feel 'team-like' or something, post 'em!
It's a completely different direction, but one thing i was thinking about was taking it into another genre, for example, what would a tarot used in a sci-fi setting be like?

Now, to bed!

[Irrlaeufer]

I reserved the two now because I'm a bit in a hurry. Need to catch the train. So I'd say you just do the same as soon as you have decided which cards to pick.

I find this link quite useful: http://www.tarot.com/tarot/decks/index.php?deckID=23 LostFAyth has posted it in the Topics and Discusiion Thread. Maybe you have already checked it out.

[Nike]

Ok, great, I've decided now, too - I'll do the World and the Five of cups; I can do the star, additionally, if I feel like I need more :-)

[Irrlaeufer]

I somewhat like the scf-fi idea. My first idea for the empress was to go for a mix of asian designs and costume plus maybe some egyptian stuff and not so much for traditional 18th/19th century imperial stuff from Europe only.
What came to my mind is star wars, of course. But I think there is tons of cool stuff and designs that never made it into the films, so it's worth to check this out for inspiration.

[Nike]

hm... what about combining egyptian/mesoamerican/ancient asian elements with sci-fi elements? Like in the von Daeniken "aliens built all important ancient cultures of our world" theories?

[Irrlaeufer]

the egyptians and mesoamericans made use of tons of gold for adornment and decoration. The main color of traditional sci-fi is probably white and gray. So we could try to add gold elements and maybe inscriptions in order to achieve a common design and color scheme.

One more useful link I got a five finger discount on. Hope it's okay to have it in out thread, too.

http://www.biddytarot.com/tarotcards_home.php

[Nike]

Well, I'm just brainstorming
...actually wouldn't say the main colors of sci fi are white and gray - sci fi ambient comes with a lot of different color schemes... techincally, sci fi is distinguished from fantasy genre only by the fact, that its imaginary elements are based on laws of nature/technology, while in the fantasy genre those imaginary things are just there because they are, or because of a magical force...

but I think the symbolic language (not only text symbols, symbols that can be found in costume, adornment, architecture, decoration etc.) was often used as an inspiration for science fiction and fantasy (stargate might be a pretty obvious example) art and literature - some people like von Daeniken went so far that they say it was impossible for humans to build for example pyramids or the huge mesoamerican buildings and he claims that a "technologically more advanced life form" has helped/or made possible to build this stuff and has influenced these cultures art and symbolic language. Scientifically trash, but fun ideas....

I think we could try to achieve common design best, if we use a similar ambient and symbolic language in the details... doesn't have to be 1:1 the same for every picture, but similar...

[instinct]

Very useful link Irrlaeufer!

I love the idea of combining ancient culture with science fiction! The obvious parallels we already draw between the cultures that have constructed pyramids and advanced technology feels perfectly exploitable for interpretation.

I already had both asian+scifi and aztec+scifi ideas in mind!

As to keeping to the same colours, since we've got two Sword cards and two Cups cards, why dont we have continuos colours for each suit? If not colours, similar ancient themes or inspirations? other ideas?

for example, cups could be blue and swords could be yellow, or cups could be aztec and swords could be asian. Of course i dont want to force anyone to use a culture for their suit they didnt plan on using, so colours might be a better way to go.


Another thing is how we want to label our cards, i think some kind of name scroll is granted, either on the top of the card or the bottom.

But for the suits and the card number, i was thinking of doing something like this(i hope this doesnt count as starting to draw!):


Is this a good idea? I figured this way we can be a little more mysterious/lax with the exact representation of the suit amount if we want to be, since its clearly labeled with the icon.

[Irrlaeufer]

yea I think von Daeniken himself claims to have discovered some sort of blue print of a spacecraft on a maya tombstone or something like that. I was thinking about it and had to google it. But it's not much of an inspiration




Maybe I'm not nuts enough.

[Irrlaeufer]

instinct, cool idea. But not sure if necessary. If Daestwen really is going to get the finished set printed she will probably put a frame including the suits around the images anyway. Just to make it look more coherent and since the suits are splitted on different teams.

[instinct]

I think all the designing is being left up to us, in this post by Daestwen, it looks like we're responsible for atleast the naming of each card, I figured we'd be including the suit as well, although i guess we could just use the scroll for every image and write "Two of Cups" in it instead of "The Empress" or what have you.

In either case, its a minor thing, I'm sure we can figure it all out nearer to the end.

[Nike]

instict, I think the color ambient/ culture per suit is a good idea... if cups were blue and swords yellow I think we could also try to match the elements the suits stand for (swords stand for air, I think cups for water) -- I sooo want to start sketching

I like your numbering suggestion, too

Irrlaeufer, heh, the stone was one of his coups, yes,... I've seen one of his shows once and it was one of the funniest things ever. He had a little computer animation where this guy in the spaceship set off the stone... he had a lot of interesting theories about egypt, too, that aliens used this place as an experimental place to breed things like minotaurs etc.... and the bible is obviously full of spaceships, too.


Got to get some sleep now ...

[instinct]

I like the idea of the elements, perhaps we could use it as a queue for colour schemes or overall elements, using soft light colours and wispy cloths etc for air, or browns and greens and dirty textures for earth, etc etc.

I also have an anouncement, Mimer has shown great interest in joining as our 4th! I've sent him to check out our ideas before making up his mind and he is very interested!

So, welcome aboard Mimer!

[Irrlaeufer]

ha ... didn't read that. alright then, let's keep that in mind. Well, we have 4 lesser arcana so it would make sense to agree on a common style for the suits. For the Greater Arcana we can still come up with fonts in order to achieve some coherence.

Got to go to bed now. It's already 1:20 a.m. here.

[Nike]

eh, I just remembered I have posted a small collection of links for hieroglyphs elsewhere... I thought I'd post them here, too, for inspiration:

http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html

http://www.rostau.org.uk/AEgyptian-L.../learning.html

This Book might be inspiring, too:
E. J. Brill (editor), Lost Languages from the Mediterranian. You can preview a big part of it on google books:
http://books.google.at/books?id=resU...OYiUzASN6vzEBw

and here's a good site about the mesoamerican stuff:
http://research.famsi.org/mdp/mdp_index.php

[Nike]

welcome, mimer and good night/day/whatever everyone

[instinct]

nice! I'll add a few relevant links i've been holding on to as well;

http://www.theancientweb.com/

http://www.costumes.org/history/100p...sthistpage.htm
(very useful for finding costume design from all over)

http://www.samurai-archives.com/

[mimer]

hi everyone

checked in on the team chow thread and saw that you were looking for a fourth

close to 2 am here atm so im going to pick two cards and sign up for them in the main thread as well as posting them here, then im going to sign off for tonite, or ill be rubbish for work tomolo ill check in again tomorrow. the mesoaerican inca/mayan references sound like they could make for a good solid foundation to get a choesive design going.

different colours for different suits is also a good idea.

I like the scifi idea too, most tarots ive seen tend not to go for scifi. mayans in spaaaace!

unless ive read it wrong, you dont need to go for major arcana, in which case im signing up for four of cups and two of pentacles.

[instinct]

Yep, no need to chose Major Arcana. In fact, Daestwen is giving out golden stars to teams that choose more minor arcana over major! We're already ahead! hahaha.

[mimer]

posted in the main thread about my two choices, dunno if daestwen wants one gathered post of all out choices eventually, but figured id get those in before i fell into bed see you all tomorrow

[Irrlaeufer]

Welcome Mimer and good morning / good night everybody.

I collected some images from the net that might be useful for my card. Dunno if it it's gonna be useful for yours, too. But since these threads are about bringing along all kinds of stuff and sharing it, here it is.

[Nike]

awesome pic collection, Irrlaeufer

I have found some image collection for mesoamerican stuff:

http://research.mayavase.com/kerrportfolio.html

you can browse and download all images of the codices, too:
http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/index.html

and a lot of other .pdf files (some are whole books) on art and architecture of the different ancient mesoamerican cultures.

will try to collect some pics, too