Hi, my name is Juan Solorzano, and I am creating an entire deck of poker style playing cards called Alice of Wonderland Playing Cards on Kickstarter. I am designing the cards and tuck case and also illustrating the artwork myself.
My inspiration for creating this deck comes from my love of great fantasy stories and fairy tales, along with the admiration I have for the Steampunk genre. One of these stories is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in 1865. Since then, there have been many different adaptions of this story from films, animations, games and books. One thing I noticed was that most of these adaptations are derived from the same story of Alice as a little girl. I didn’t want to create another of the same thing, so I changed it.
Keeping true to the original storyline of Lewis Carroll’s original, I decided to write a story about Alice as an older person, around 19 years of age. In my version, Alice is a young lady and has visited Wonderland many times since her first appearance, and first encounter with the royals of the Kingdom of Hearts. At this point, I thought a lot about what happened in the end of Carroll’s story, when Alice unwittingly offends and upsets the Queen of Hearts in a silly court session, and is overcome by a bunch of playing cards falling on top of her. It was this part of the story that led me to create a different version of the Queen, one that is more real and more complex in her personality.
Another area I am drawing my inspiration from was having served in 2 branches of the military – the Army and the Navy. Add to that the admiration I have for Steampunk fashion, films, and the décor of the Victorian Era, and I had a Steampunk Wonderland. From that point I started to re-imagine all the characters in Steampunk fashion, with the four suits from playing cards becoming four really large kingdoms, complete with their own military powers of sea faring Victorian ships and high-flying steam powered airships. I am also throwing in some air pirates into this mix for an adventure-based story.
Since the four kingdoms in Wonderland of Hearts, Spades, Clubs and Diamonds are based on a deck of playing cards, and are a logic-based game, I wanted to create my own custom cards with the characters from this story represented on the all of the face cards. I have kept the design of the numbered cards simple to reflect the de la Rue style of traditional playing cards. The back design of my cards have a Steampunk-ish look, while the face cards are drawn in line-art, keeping a minimalist design approach. Simple yet fancy floral patterns, gears, top hats, nautical design, and airships add to the Steampunk element of my cards, and the royals are the same characters from Wonderland, creating the concept I was going for – a Steampunk Wonderland deck of cards.
