As a starting point, I looked at my favorite chip, the red 25 cent California Club solid C&J chip with the scallop
inlay of a bear on his hind legs.
Animals seemed a good way to tie a set together, but I didn’t want to get too close to the Chinese New Year ‘Year of the Rat’ sort of thing, so I looked for something more.
The other favorite of mine is the Rounders KGB chip, again with a bear, but this time the bear’s just walking. A few google image searches later, and I start looking into the California State flag, which has that same walking bear. I notice other state flags illustrate many ways to tie a state’s history onto a flag by using visual cues.
A couple more image searches down this path and I end up looking at Heraldry, specifically the use of animals to impart upon the shield bearer some admirable characteristics, i.e. Lion-hearted etc. Heraldry also has very specific use of color and pattern. Yellow=gold, white=silver, blue=water were some of the ones I remember.
To tie all this visual stuff back to the chip
inlay design, I again went looking for visual cues.
Poker seems to have quite a lot of pictorial descriptive language. ‘ducks, crabs, snowmen, fishhooks, bullets’. Animals already played into the language.
And then more objects: “The hammer, the nuts, drowned on the river, gutshot draw.” All nice and violent. So the later series animals would need weapons.
So I ended up with golden animals on a black background. (I wanted blue for the river connotations, but the black helped with contrast against the color chip bodies.)
Gold for money.
The fish for novices, donkey for the stupid gamblers, a flying pig for the phrase “when pigs fly” long odds type of a chip. Then a wounded bear = danger, a griffin, which is apparently a greedy little money grubber, and the lion for the heat of the battle. And lastly, the almighty squirrel, who usually has the nuts.
(Note: the stag was thrown in to complete the set to 5000. Not happy with it.)
The Latin phrases tie them all together: Beware the ___________ fill in the blank.
We already have mental images of players we watch out for in terms of their behavior.
I just took it a visual step further.
Family crests for our loose family of gamblers.
Elegant, but with a touch of Monty Python.
Caveat Aleator.
Gambler Beware.
Mizuchaud
Disclaimer: I ran the Latin phrases past bolgenmod and used online QuickLatin translators. I think the phrases say what I wrote out in English. If this entry gets anywhere, I will triple check them for grammar and spelling.
Don’t want to sound like an ass on a chip if I have a choice.
This first post represents the "original submission" only, and enables the initiation of the discussion thread on this chip submission. This thread now belongs to mizuchaud, and he may use his first post within this tread to post updates/changes to his submission, which will ultimately be the design of his that gets submitted into the voting rounds on July 17th.
Feedback, comments, & constructive criticism encouraged!
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