When I first designed and launched this deck, it was only the second playing card project I'd designed, and at the time, I had a whopping 200 followers on my Instagram and social media accounts. I received a lot of great feedback about the concept and artwork, but just didn't have the follower numbers to support the production financially.

It's now almost two years later, my studio and name are more established, and I have a much stronger following on social media and other marketing avenues, so I'm re-launching the campaign.

I appreciate all of you who have followed along since the beginning, and for those of you who are just now seeing The Locker for the first time, welcome aboard!

The Locker started as a concept in which I wanted to use the fingers on a pair of hands to represent the pips on number cards in a deck of cards. I tried several variants on the theme, and no matter how I tried to get the hands and fingers positioned, it didn't achieve what I had in mind. When I attempted to use blender (3D modeling software) to aide in the posing and positioning of the hands, I actually used a simple skeleton model that I had modified to articulate the fingers, and after the first render, I knew that I was onto something with the resultant image of lonely bones.

It didn't take long at all for the tale behind the image to come to me, and within a few days, I had written The Tale of the Merchant Mariner's Sons -- the story for which this entire deck is devoted.  You can read the full tale HERE.

From that point forward, each step and creative element that had to go into the design of the deck brought additional excitement -- the design becoming more and more flesh-out (pardon the pun). The deck you see below today is the culmination of that work, and I proudly present to you, The Locker.

As stated above, the number cards were where this concept originated, so it seems like the best place to begin our tour.

Each number card will have a set of rings equal to the number of the card. Above, you see that four hand poses have been chosen for the four suits, and unique rings have been designed to represent each pip. You'll also notice that I've included a sea creature with each suit that wanders the ocean floor around our lost sailor -- crabs for Spades, urchins for Diamonds, octopi for Clubs, and starfish for Hearts.

Once the ocean floor setting had been established and the story behind the characters was becoming even more solidified, I began to lay out the individual passing of each court character, creating the necessary 3D objects to finesse the end result I wanted.

For the Kings, I wanted metallic eye patches that reflected the promises and symbols given by the Mariner's Sons in the tale. For the Queens, I needed to create unique jewels and glittering adornments that would exemplify the riches gained, and ultimately lost. And for the Jacks, I created a signet ring that they would wear for eternity in the depths of the Locker, accompanied only by the crude weapon of their deaths.  Again, you will notice the suited creatures hanging about beneath the waves.

Once the courts had been established, I decided to use the primary piece of jewelry for each Queen to represent the suit as an Ace.

The backs went through several variations, and when I felt I had landed on the best version, a random YouTube tutorial that floated across my feed confirmed the decision, and amplified it.