Get your own copy of this one-time printing, incredibly unique deck. The Alleyman's Tarot was the #1 most funded (and by far the most backed) tarot kickstarter ever. Made up of 137-cards from various decks, old and modern, the deck is a small art museum that fits in your hand and that divines smoothly.
With the Booster Packs, you can include additional cards in the deck to replace or support the pre-existing cards. Grab your box, cloth, and bag while you're at it, and a X/O coin and poker chip, and see what the Alleyman has to tell you.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Backerkit Charges | Hi
almost 3 years ago
– Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 02:31:16 AM
Hello!
This is a small update today, you can skip it after this paragraph if you're busy, just checking in. I'm hard at work finalizing the files for the printer, signing a contract with them soon, and retrying charges on backerkit. If your card was declined for whatever reason (there are 450~ of you), I'm going to try again on the 20th, then on the 27th, etc until cards charge properly or whatnot. I'll also lock in late survey filler-outers and charge them on those days, once every 7 days.
Otherwise, hi! I just got news that the Gold and Silver Normal Tarot is finally shipping, and I'm elated. I have never had a project ship later than a month after the goal, this one was a struggle and there were hurdles seemingly at every stage once it got out of my hands to the printer+fulfillment center, but it's done.
Hope you're all having lovely days. When I get the financials all fully locked down, I'll share a breakdown of where all the money went! I always do full transparency on my projects, so excited to do that here as well. So far though the artists (including bag and box makers) made $263,818.03, printing books, decks, boosters, and prints will be just under $400,000, advertising was $300,000, and another $100,000~ went to backerkit for other fees. These numbers have seemed really big and fake to me. Too many 0's! Money was lost to various fees, and it'll be a good 300,000 to ship, not to mention the 110,000~ for the remaining extra items (cigar box, coin, poker chip, cloth, bag).
A full breakdown for those interested will pop up somewhere soon. So far it looks like I'm personally making $75,000 (before taxes), which is more than I've ever made in a year (by a lot), and my business is keeping more for the podcast and to fund future projects. Guess I won't have an excuse to be a starving artist for a while, huh? :P
Love and light and all that good stuff,
7DA
your Publishing Goblin
PS
No worries, Ill hire an acountant to handle the taxes this year. What a mess it will be.
The Day I Lock Orders on Backerkit!
almost 3 years ago
– Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 11:57:17 PM
Hello everyone!
If you are a backer of this kickstarter, you were sent a survey by email 3 or so weeks ago. The majority (90%) of you completed it. Good for you! The rest of you have been sent reminder emails every couple days AND have received a direct message on Kickstarter to your survey. Please, TODAY, go into your kickstarter messages and click that link I sent you back on the 1st of June. I am locking orders tomorrow morning first thing.
(If you aren't certain if you did yours yet, go check your messages. You would have gotten the message on the 1st with a direct link if you didn't fill it out yet. Or go onto backerkit.com and login with your email you use on kickstarter and you should be able to just look! Or find the email with the link to the survey in your inbox and go look at it again!But please do not be one of 19,000 people messaging me to check if you did your survey yet haha, that would be a time sink I don't have time for with all the other work to be done hehe. : P)
IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE IT YET, and now it's past the locking point, you can still fill it out and submit it, you just may get your items delivered late or something annoying for you and annoying for me. So please go do it now. You've had almost a month to do it, it's gotta happen today. There are 1911 people who haven't done their survey yet. You will literally not get your items until you do because, as noted from the start of this campaign, that's where you're being charged shipping. So if you want your items, GO DO YOUR SURVEY. Thank you! <3
If you did not back this kickstarter, and have pre-ordered, these updates do not apply to you.
Finally, the link below is for people to PRE-ORDER the deck and add-ons. It is NOT FOR BACKERS TO USE. Today is the final day people can pre-order as well, so share the link to friends who have been putting it off, today is the last day. After today, I lock them down and people will have to wait until September or October to buy the deck.
Tomorrow, I lock orders and charge cards on backerkit.
Love y'all, talk again in 10~ days when hopefully everything is done on my end and in the printer's hands!
Regards
7,
your Pub Gob
The Knight Returns! | The Literary Tarot Booster Pack! | Final 2 days to do Surveys and Pre-Orders!
almost 3 years ago
– Sat, Jun 12, 2021 at 02:13:15 AM
First, a fun and quick update! The Knight of Disks has had a storied history already in this project. The fantastic depiction of Shangguan Wan'er by Hua Sanchuan was not a card I could use, so I replaced it with a temporary replacement spot. But then I heard back from Amrit Brar, the amazing artist behind the Marigold Tarot! She wanted to take part still, so we had a perfect Knight of Rings to step up for the job!
This project is being run by my good friends over at Brink! Lit, a non-profit that helps bring literacy programs to lower income communities, and a very wonderful inmate literacy program as well! This is how they're doing a fundraiser to make up the funds they're missing out on from typical fundraiser events they might hold in person, and I've been sharing my brain to their project a bit here and there!
They have a ton of incredible celebrity authors donating their time to pick a literary classic to pair with a tarot card, then the artists get to work drawing it up just right!
I got to help New York Times journalist Talia Lavin find the Devilish nature in the white whale itself, Moby Dick. What better card to follow the journey of being slipped into a foolish chase that costs you everything in the end? Ahh, we all give into our foolish desires from time to time. It just usually isn't this costly.
Moby Dick as the Devil, illustrated by Sam Dow!
I also got to help H.E. Edgmon, a fantastic fellow trans writer, find the perfect pairing for Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the Strength card, a card very much to do with controlling your own mind and choices, and in reverse, failing and giving in. Thankfully when I'm overtaken by my Id, it doesnt lead me to murder.
Strength illustrated by Samantha Dow!
Booster Pack?!
SO! The exciting news!! The folks running the Literary Tarot have listened to me and been poorly influenced by my wildness and have decided to launch a booster pack of their own! 5 cards that backers of their campaign will vote for, then once the 5 card slots are chosen, backers will be able to submit their thoughts on what literary classics should be in those slots! I obviously want more deaths in there, so maybe if you're in that campaign you can go fight for it?
Their booster pack will be sought after in stages!
Stage 1:
Vote for which five Major Arcana cards you all would like to feature in the booster pack via a Google Form.
Stage 2:
They’ll announce the top voted cards next week, and then open it up to possible pairing options in the comments.
Stage 3:
Card by card, they’ll bring the top pairing options you all suggested to the entire backer community and have you all vote on your favorite!
Stage 4:
They’ll commission out the art and then keep you posted with the thumbnail concept progress, allowing the community to weigh in at each step of the creation (so you get the exact same experience that each of their celebrity authors do!).
This is not a booster pack for this project, but if you're backing that one, too, who says you can't toss their bonus cards into your Alleyman's??
Madeline Miller
I also get to be the one who tells y'all about something fun going on over there! Madeline Miller, the incredible and amazing and fantastic author of The Song of Achilles (go read it, now), is pairing a classic piece of literature of the High Priestess! Who do you think would fit that card best from classic lit? The names they got for this project are upsettingly impressive, and Madeline is up there on that roster.
So if the Literary Tarot looks amazing to you, and you haven't already, now is the time to go help them through the mid-campaign slump that plagues Kickstarters of every stripe. This amazing non-profit DESERVES your help, so share what you can!
You have 2 days and 7 hours to share the pre-order link around before I lock orders. For those of you who haven't done your surveys (2000 people still!!), find that survey link that has been emailed to you or sent to you in a message on kickstarter (just in the past week!) and FILL. IT. OUT. You have 2 days and 7 hours to fill those out before I lock and charge shipping+bonus addons you put in your cart.
(People who don't get their surveys done in time can still do it when they get to it, it just delays my locking of their order+charging of their card, plus it throws off my numbers a little if they add more items. So please get it done now if you haven't!)
Whew!
I have a ton of work still ahead, 30~ more artists to still pay, a book to finish, print files to prepare, and a box still yet to design. Who knew running a project this big on your own would mean the work never ends?
At the rate I'm going, I am definitely going to delay getting files to the printer, just because there's been so very much to do. Shouldn't be more than a week though, so we're not talking about delays in the timeline or anything. Thanks for being awesome!
<3
7DA
your Publishing Goblin
Survey Deadline the 13th! Backerkit Cards Charged the 14th!
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, Jun 09, 2021 at 03:31:47 AM
Hello you lovely people!
I have felt completely run over by all the things I still have to do to get this ready for the printer in time, and I missed my chance to give you a final week warning! I need people to go finish their surveys on backerkit by the 13th, as I'm locking surveys at that time.
You have received emails (multiple emails) with links to your survey to finish up on. If you haven't received an email? Then you 100% got messaged on Kickstarter with a direct link to your survey by now. Check there, first.
Go finish your survey and lock in! I am charging shipping costs (and any extra add-ons you threw on) on the 14th!
(You will still be able to update your address on your survey any time up to the week before we start shipping. Just hop on backerkit to do so!)
I hate to not share pictures, so here's some pictures!
Coins and the Storyteller!
Production samples of the coins arrived, and here's the final Story Teller card!
Now back to my mountain of work to do! : )
7DA,
the Pub Gob
Booster #4 | The Literary Tarot!
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, Jun 02, 2021 at 02:14:08 AM
A very hardworking nonprofit I love—Brink Literacy Project—is launching a new Kickstarter project TODAY to fundraise for the incredible work they do.
I’m so excited to be involved—alongside an all-star team of authors including Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay, Lev Grossman, Patrick Rothfuss, and many more. The celebrity authors each carefully paired a traditional tarot card with a literary classic to reflect those same themes, then the Brink team are producing the deck with incredible custom illustrations lavished with metallic foil accents.
I promised at the start that I wasn't running it, nor being paid, and those are still mostly true. Full disclosure, I'm being paid for the work I've been doing on here-- but I am just advising on some of the kickstarter, backerkit, etc stuff, and tarot things! You can rest assured I'm focused on Alleyman's until it's completed! : )
Let me just glimmer this sneak peek at ya’ for a moment...
They are doing early bird specials for the first 24 hours, so grab it for cheaper today only!
Sam Dow who did the Normal Tarot (Gold foil) and the 5 of Swords in the Alleyman's is doing the major arcana in this deck-- and Shan Bennion who did The Queen of Pentacles and the Alleyman card is doing the suit of Light for the literary tarot. Some real rockstars!
Now, I don't like to advertise to y'all without sharing something about our own project, so I figured I might as well share the (almost) finished Booster Pack 4.
Booster Pack 4
I have made all of them, as I noted in the campaign. As a largely digital collage person, I stretched style a bit here and there to help REALLY differentiate the cards and keep them feeling more like a breadth of styles (as has happened in the other packs), rather than just a bunch of collages.
First up in the pack is a Queen of Ravens in a red and black, near-monochrome fantasy. Simple bold color blocking. I felt like I did a good job capturing the aesthetic I was hunting after.
Second is Ouroboros in an 8-bit Snake-style. The second I began to think about Ouroboros, I knew what I was doing with it. I also recognize this might not sit well with some people who wanted the card-- remember that this deck is yours to change how you wish!
Third is the Storyteller. I am hand-drawing it, and then digitally putting some pieces I'm drawing separately together. Current goal is adding a big coat and torso, then we'll see if I leave it as is or add color. I'm imagining strange pale color gradients.
Fourth is the good ol' Queen of Strays, which is a collage but I color corrected and saturation corrected all the pieces to try and make them feel natural in a scene together, rather than feel like a collage. I'm QUITE happy with the lettering I added to the crate.
Fifth is the Alley-- it's a bit hard to see in the small shot here, but it is sections of alleys blended together all the way to the back. Part of the wall and part of the ground of each alley section blends away to the end of the alley. It doesn't 'feel' complete just yet, so I'll keep at it!
Sixth is the Publishing Goblin! This is a cutout paper style card, the details are a bit small, so I'll show it off here below with some more clarity.
Seventh and Eighth is the Lightning in a Bottle. I did the final card first, shared it on the facebook fanpage, and people were VERY clear that it was not the Lightning in a Bottle fantasy they'd wanted. Since it was the MOST requested card in this booster pack, I wanted to do right by it, and did a second, painted version with raw lightning in nature. Both will be in the pack, upping it to 8 cards. The final card in gold will have gold foil on the lightning bolts and the name.
Reminder that this booster was FREE to every backer, so you're getting these cards WITHOUT PAYING. If you love them, great! If some just aren't right for you? You can literally throw a card away, it cost you nothing, and I promise it won't hurt my feelings. : P
Thanks y'all! We've got over 75% of people finished on surveys! Remember that people who missed the Kickstarter can pre-order on the Backerkit here-- so share the link around if you're feeling kind!
