So Etsy Brought you here ey?
You wanted to check out the gallery? Then look at the buttons above.
You want to see what goes into making a Damn Fine Deck Box?
Then lets keep reading.
(In case you got here some other way than Etsy, here is the link:
1. Often people will message me before placing an order to check on how their idea might turn out.
Jim: "Would it be possible to get Avacyn on the top of the box and the other Innistrad angels on each of the sides?"
Most of the time, they work very well, and otherwise, we brainstorm to find something that is awesome.
Matthew: "That sounds awesome! Which of the Avacyn card arts would you like?
Jim: "How about the backside of the purifier one?"
Matthew: "Will do, Place an order and I'll get you some drafts within a couple of days!"
2. First I paint out the background elements that aren't going to be part of the engraving. Depending on the complexity, this can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a half hour.
3. I have to turn the image into pure black and white. No color, no gray. I can use the threshold tool to help me get a pretty good approximation. Now comes the hard part.
The threshold tools leaves lots of speckling. Speckling doesn't work well with the later laser engraving/painting process. So I have to clean it up.
4. Next, I need to repair the areas that the threshold tool blotched out and made illegible. Sometimes I'll run the threshold tool on the original image again on just a small area, but most of the time I need to take some artistic license on what becomes black and white. This is especially true in images that natively used multiple colors to differentiate adjacent objects.
See how this goes from beautiful flowing cloth and armor to a
big black area? Gotta clean paint all that back in. I also add back lines where appropriate to outline objects.
5. Engraving proofing it. Because the engraving/painting process can only go so small in detail, I have to make sure any line has a minimum thickness.
6. Adding Borders. I have a library of my own borders that I try on but I will also quite often come up with a new one or two to try out. I will find/make the best 3-5, and then send them to the commissioner.
Jim: "I like the third one the most! It looks amazing!"
Matthew: "Me too, I made that one after I wasn't totally satisfied with the selections I had in my library."
7. Final Cleanup. Sometimes the image overlaps with the border. I resize and repaint to make the image and border mesh totally.
8. If this was as single lid top order, I would be done with the digital art side of things. Everything up to this point can take anywhere from 90 minutes to 5 hours.
But since it is a full exterior, I have 3 more frames to do.
9. But I wouldn't feel this is a complete work of art if it didn't include all of the angels, including she-who-shall-not-be-named. I'll hide her on the inside of the box.
Now we're off the to physical side of things!
