First CPC Mockup - The Metronome (1 Viewer)

[Ray-Col]

Ho chippies,

got infected with the chipper disease shortly after the delivery of a custom ceramics set this summer. For a while I thought I was cured, but looking at all these stunning clay sets around here I quickly relapsed and began working on my own clay set.

The theme I had in mind was something music related, as the whole family is into it somehow. I'm playing 5-string-banjo and guitar (western-swing, fingerpicking, some jazz, old school overall), my little daughter is singing from dawn to dusk and my wife happily listening to both of us (sort of qualifies). Not a big story, more like a mood setting.

After discarding the first attempts because of overly busy, silly and gimmicky concepts for that tiny 7/8 inch label, it dawned on me that simplicity should be the route to go. The 67th sparking idea was 'The Metronome' and no one at home rejected it. Easy to recognize visually, somewhat frumpy and a nice name for a fantasy club as well. Classy, jazzy (which leads to the font used) - liked it.

And while listening to some Chet Baker albums, muted, earthy colors came naturally and the tinkering with the chip tool ended in a palette of only six colors. I had a compressed palette with lots of color repetition in mind to tie the chips close together and went for medium edge spots and a 7/8 inlay to give the base color some space to come through. This could be a somewhat unusual concept considering all these bright and colorful sets around here (which I love too, but not for my actual theme). Maybe just a matter of taste? Or playability vs. design? :

Actual color palette:

- Dark Green
- Chocolate
- Butterscotch
- Bright White
- Light Blue
- Charcoal or Black

There will be a theme matching table cloth (or a table top at least) probably in dark red/warm gray for which I rendered an early version to go with the chip mock-ups.

For the hundo I just can't decide. Charcoal or Black as base color, Butterscotch or Light Blue for spot variation? There are four mock-ups waiting for opinions from you seasoned chippers out there. H E L P!

Any feedback highly appreciated - even if it ends up in rethinking the whole thing. I'm not in a rush with this at all.

single chips as they develop ...

 

[chipjoker]

Very nice.. I am not a fan of the same colors being used on other chips, but these look good.

Nice theme, logo, and a classic look.

 

[dew4au]

First of all. Wow, these are the sickest mock-ups I've ever seen.

Personally, I like the Charcoal with Butterscotch for the hundo in that line up. Dark Green into Black seems a bit too close when mixed in pots.

I like the muted tones, but some of the edge spots may need a bit more contrast.

 

[Blaster]

Very Nice mockups!
....

 

[SixSpeedFury]

First of all. Wow, these are the sickest mock-ups I've ever seen.

Personally, I like the Charcoal with Butterscotch for the hundo in that line up. Dark Green into Black seems a bit too close when mixed in pots.

I like the muted tones, but some of the edge spots may need a bit more contrast.

This. Charcoal is the better $100.

 

[Poker Zombie]

The spot progression/carryover is a daring move, and pulled off beautifully. The Triple Lindy!

 

[beaver]

Actually thought these were pictures of actual chips the first time I browsed this thread. Unreal mockups.

 

[Mr. Cheese]

Very nice mockups . I like the clean look of the inlay design. Personally I've always liked a black 100 vs a grey.

 

[Mr Hanky]

Well.... For real great mock ups you must add some wear to the chips. These once look totally unrealistic

That's a sick mock up (y) :thumbsup:



And of course a nice inlay.
Using same colors in different chips makes it more difficult to identify chips in a mixed stack or splashed pott... just as a tipp

 

[Fleming]

Great designs!

Also, I agree with the comments about the mockups. Are you using a template of some sort for it? I'd love to mock up future chip designs in that style!

 

[Puggy]

Whoaa....at first I thought WAT?! These are already made???? Then it hit me. Awesome mockups. And great backstory. You have hit the colors well, have to say. Looking forward hownthis develops. Earthly colors fit well to this set. However I might consider to add some contrast to some of the edgespots. But it is a great start.

At this point, mockup 4 does it for me.

 

[Psypher1000]

These are the actual color samples of two of your base colors. Can you tell which two they are?

 

[72o]

Damn you gotz some skillz man. Great start.

I think you are looking good till you hit the upper denoms. The base colors get very very dark there. Maybe just a simple switch to light green will solve everything.

edit: Scratch that. I don't think light blue and light green work well as base colors next to each other. Man that is tough when you limit yourself as much as you are.

 

[Psypher1000]

These are the actual color samples of two of your base colors. Can you tell which two they are?

View attachment 64493

@Ray-Col First off, I love the fact that you're attempting a set with a limited color pallete. That's a fine place to start or create a concept from, but as I have with others, I'd recommend that you allow yourself to deviate from the initial concept in order to make the best possible set. There's a great many sets that start from a simple concept, but by the time they're manufactured they look nearly nothing like the original mocks.

I posted the picture so you can see some of the danger you run into when stringing a series of dark base colors next to one another. In this case, the dark green and black bases next to one another have the potential to be particularly problematic when it comes to dirty stacks. Dark green is actually very dark, and not very green. In fact, the green in the mocks shows up on two different monitors here as closer to Retro Green than Dark Green, and that's my first recommendation - if going with a green at the 25 spot, go with retro, not dark.

For comparison, here's a pic of the color samples next to one another.

Secondly, if going with any non-light/bright green at the 25, then I think black should be out as the 100, opting for charcoal instead. In case it wasn't obvious, the color sample chips I had next to one another are dark green and black. If you're looking at them w/just the chocolate spot showing, that could be tough for folks to tell the difference. That being said, if red/green colorblindness is involved, the retro green may read as charcoal giving the same proble. Having the slight change in spot patterns can help, but they're still similar enough to where I feel a change might be warranted.

Here's an example of some customs that had two dark base colors next to one another with similar colored spots. They're a bit too close to one another for comfort, particularly when they'll be splashed together in a pot, and made worse in low lighting. The owner has said multiple times that putting the two next to one another was a mistake, and that one of them would have been better served with a lighter color for contrast in pots/stacks. I agree with his assessment.

Sticking with a limited color palette is tough, particularly when there's not a lot of contrast between colors.

 

[MrBo]

Great set and awesome photog skills! Those quarters and 1's look extra sharp.

 

[Psypher1000]

Great set and awesome photog skills!

They're actually digital renders if I'm not mistaken, not photographs. I have no idea what his skill is with a camera, but those mocks show he's clearly legit when it comes to 3D digital rendering!

 

[Ray-Col]

Ho guys,

thanks a bunch for your kind feedback! Especially @Psypher1000, who obviously put a lot of thought, knowledge, experience and time into it right out of the gate - thank you!


May I start with some witty comments to catch up and then move forward to the more serious topics?

Well.... For real great mock ups you must add some wear to the chips. These once look totally unrealistic

Guess you're the only one around who's first action after unboxing mint chips is to give them a break-in by a decent run in a washing machine ... I'll work on realistic micro defects and mold imperfections as soon as I got the brass flakes to my liking.

Are you using a template of some sort for it? I'd love to mock up future chip designs in that style!

Yep, it's a template and it's so easy to do lifelike renderings these days that I cannot believe no one does mock-ups this way. Seriously, it starts with creating the needed chip-textures in a standard 2D-graphics app (4 to 7 depending on weighted/non weighted colors). Then I have to create the 3d representation for the specific chip mold I want to go with (MD-50 is roughly 14.000 polys). On for the surface-definitions: 7 per chip for flexibility (front and back label, crosshatched top and bottom, smooth stamped areas for top and bottom and finally the rim). Then I gotta setup a scene with multiple copys of the objects properly placed and aligned (I have three individual chips of each denom for variety of edge spots). Then it comes to the lighting setup for which one should have a good grasp of real world photography to get it right and to achieve believeable results. Put great stuff under crappy light and your photo will suck. And with most of these tasks you're sitting in front of an application with more bells and whistles than a huge x-mas tree. Dead simple. Contact me as soon as you're ready to jump through 93 hoops and over 46 hurdles before a single picture is born.
Really, PM me and I'll look into it but it heavily depends on my spare time. And there's no such thing as spitting out 50 renderpictures in a couple of hours for the sake of endless variations like in the chip tool. Every single picture takes what is known as rendertime. ;-)

These are the actual color samples of two of your base colors. Can you tell which two they are?

This is a hyperrealistic render of the hundo and the frac in a coal mine 6 miles under ground. Can you tell which is which?
I'm not used to secretly count out my bets underneath the poker table, nor do I play in woozy, gloomy backrooms with chips worth a grand or two.


Enough foolery, back to topic ...

The overall response is not as bad as I feared (*pew*), so I could have done something right. I'll stick with the initial plan and go for another round, trying to evaluate some arguments and slightly improve from there.

I can get color blindness, crappy lights and painstakingly counting splashed pots out of the way first. There will be decent lighting for decent poker over here and if someone new shows up (didn't happen in a while) and mentions his color blindness - well, there are big denoms printed on the chips. And to be unable to count a mountain of chips in the middle shouldn't be a game breaker for us because we are used to add up bets as they're made and called and seldom trying to estimate visually what might be in the pot. So I got some wiggle room here.(y) :thumbsup:

From what I perceive it boils down to the darker base colors which too easily could be mixed up in stacks and bets when in a hurry. The dark green may be the biggest goof in this realm. Whereas the fact that some edge spots are lacking contrast and blending into other chip colors is not a big concern for me as long as the chips as a whole are easily distinguishable from their siblings.

The switch from Dark Green to Retro Green could open the basecolor gap to Chocolate enough to be okay for the majority of players over here - and readers over there. If I trust Psypher1000's monitors (I don't, btw) I will happily do this simply by rewriting the colorname in the list of the OP.
Nah - just kidding. I'll look around for decent photos of retro green and tweak the map-colors accordingly in a further update. I had retro green on my list for a while but the slight bluish tint in all pictures I've seen so far had me drop this color because I was hunting for warmth. But if dark green is basically a black, then there's no other choice.

The remaining problem (not only for me) seems to pivot around the hundo and the lack of contrast of the repeating spot colors so that it is difficult to distinguish it from $5 and $25 chips in sub-par conditions.

First attempt: Tackling this from the spot side as I put the 500s halfpipes into quarters, spill in black AND charcoal as base colors (to increase figural contrast) and put the spot color progression from the left stacks ON TOP of it. Spot progression broken and reversed.

Same approach, variations:
- with contrast colors to charcoal and black: Butterscotch from the right, light blue from the far left.

- maximizing contrast and 'cooling down' the black: light blue and bright white.

That's it for now, unfortunately running out of time. Will work on it and update tomorrow or the day after.

As an addendum, here's roughly my personal approach and understanding to/of color stuff (this is a genetic defect my father created back then):

(A) I'm working with fully color aware software only, my monitor (PA329Q) is calibrated to D6500 when working in sRGB for digital presentation, D5000 if working for CMYK prints. The gamut measures 99,5% Adobe RGB and covers sRGB easily and accurately.

(B) This forum software is not only color unaware, it takes ignorance even a step further by STRIPPING whatever color profile is embedded in the picture and then displaying it with no color info whatsoever for the web browser to potentially interpret. The best way to deal with it is to convert pictures to sRGB before upload. Any color aware web browser should then fall back to interpreting the displayed graphics as sRGB and colors will be accurate because they already were sRGB before all info was stripped. Fully applicable only for calibrated displays with sufficient gamut, for the rest of the world all bets are off.

(C) Only photos with a proper white-balance are a meaningful source of color information. Almost every AUTO white balance will be off if lighting considerably deviates from daylight (roughly between K4000 and K6500) or the picture is taken in mixed lighting (eg. window AND light bulb).

(D) The colors in my pictures are nothing more than educated guesses and obviously off compared to real chips. I should get samples or deliberately run into disaster. Shipping to germany is expensive though. *dang*

(E) To whoever makes it to this point: I love your patience!

 

[Mr Hanky]

Hi Ray-Col,
If there is no other cologne worldwide, then you're based in germany...
If so i could support you with color samples.
Nils

 

[Psypher1000]

I'm not used to secretly count out my bets underneath the poker table, nor do I play in woozy, gloomy backrooms with chips worth a grand or two.

lol...love the "photo"! You're correct that the example photo I provided went ad absurdum. I'm glad you ultimately understand the base level concern, though - dark green and black are uncomfortably close in profile.

If I trust Psypher1000's monitors (I don't, btw)

Fair enough, but my wife has been a graphic designer/printer her entire career, and the monitor she uses, while not a four-figure model, is also a higher-end Asus and calibrated for her work. I've no interest in getting into an e-peen battle - that's not the point at all, and even if it was, I suspect your setup overall probably bests hers - but I say all that simply to provide you context that my comments aren't coming from someone entirely uninitiated to the world of color, prints, rendering, differences between RGB/CMYK, etc. In short, you can have at least a modicum of confidence that my color interpretations are more accurate than not.

Then again, my eyes interpret the base color red as brown when yellow spots are present on it so... *shrug*

maximizing contrast and 'cooling down' the black: light blue and bright white.

I *really* like this hundo the best so far. It clearly addresses the primary concern, and I think it looks great on its own, in context with the two chips surrounding it, and in stacks! Well done!

I should get samples or deliberately run into disaster. Shipping to germany is expensive though. *dang*

This, this, this...a thousand times, this! ^^^ As for the shipping costs, it might be worth dropping a post in the classifieds to see if any Europeans have a color sample they would be willing to let you borrow...hopefully that would save some money on shipping. Regardless, you're already aware that color samples are a must before ultimately hitting the "go" button, and I encourage you to follow up on that imperative. Far, far better to spend an extra two or three figures in shipping for samples than to spend four figures for chips that disappoint.

I love your patience!

Who has patience? I wanted these modified by 4pm YESTERDAY.

 

[Ray-Col]

Hi Ray-Col,
If there is no other cologne worldwide, then you're based in germany...
If so i could support you with color samples.

THIS would be amazing! And with a sample set for a week or two I could get decent definitions for CPC chips for further render mock-ups, not just my measly six little problems! (y) :thumbsup:

Fair enough, but my wife has been a graphic designer/printer her entire career, and the monitor she uses, while not a four-figure model, is also a higher-end Asus and calibrated for her work.

Ooops, just have to eat my words! My assumption was the usual standard, non calibrated, much to bright & much to blue out of the box setup. No offense meant, sorry if it came sniffy to you. Calibration is essential, not the price tag (as long as the gamut warrants proper calibration within a specific colorspace).

IF my rendered green is actually a near-valid representation of a retro green chip in your hands, then I have to be seriously concerned about 98% of the photos around here.
And one of the problems could indeed be solved by renaming. Thanks again!

 

[Mr Hanky]

THIS would be amazing! And with a sample set for a week or two I could get decent definitions for CPC chips for further render mock-ups, not just my measly six little problems! (y) :thumbsup:

PM me

 

[Ray-Col]

Another one:
I just tried to get the evil colors down: Chocolate and Retro Green based on real photos floating around here.
If anyone can confirm that this render comes pretty close to the actual chip colors mentioned (which I don't have seen yet in person), I never would have taken chocolate into consideration for this particular set. Not to mention "Dark Green".

dark chocolate and retro green should be way off in this picture

Getting samples in early december from Mr Hanky and return to the drawing board in the meantime to get some more CPC molds into the 3D realm ...

 

[kk405]

Great chips and awesome design, mock ups skills. My only suggestion is that as much as people pay a lot of attention to design, they fail on the color palette department. I believe every 4 consecutive chips should have a very stark and dramatically different color to distinguish them in pots and stacks. Your white chips look great, but I would make them the $1 chip, and I would stick with the usual colors of red for $5, green for $25 and black or very dark gray for $100, but you cane very cool and ingesting reds and greens. Then, for larger denomination chips, you can have fun and make them any color you want, such as the yellow $1000 chip from Wynn, etc.

 

[SteveHNo96]

I love these. Seriously. I would buy a cash set if they were reasonably priced.

The only one I'm on the fence on is the $5 chip being that dark brown. All the rest are amazing, I even love the blue $1 and the white quarters, but how about like a maroon or a burgundy or something closer to a red chip?

 

[onerand]

Great design. I skimmed but share the concern some colors will be too close. Mockups are sick. Are you able to muck up a stack with one chip of another denomination mixed in? This is the main concern. Also try darker lighting.

 

[SteveHNo96]

Can I reserve a sample set, provided you make some minor tweaks to the $5 chips?

 

[likinho]

Great design. Special music theme and i love it. Very well done sir

 

[Ray-Col]

New working palette until samples are here:

White
Light Blue
Light Chocolate
Retro Green
Black
Imperial Blue

The only one I'm on the fence on is the $5 chip being that dark brown. All the rest are amazing, I even love the blue $1 and the white quarters, but how about like a maroon or a burgundy or something closer to a red chip?

I moved from Chocolate to Light Chocolate for now. There will be no red for the 5 (or any other denom) as an alternative color. Look at the background, the cloth is already red ...
I guess Maroon would be the darkest color available from CPC besides black obviously and burgundy I've never heard of in their color lineup.

I believe every 4 consecutive chips should have a very stark and dramatically different color to distinguish them in pots and stacks.

This is not unfamiliar to me but my point in this set ist not to go the traditional route with the chip colors. After getting my hands on real color samples I can tell if these colors fare well for me or this set will never leave my harddisk.

I can't dig the H-Mold for these

 

[jbutler]

Agree with all the notes re: colors blending in stacks and pots, but I still can't help but say holy christ those look good. Adore the design. Get the colors pegged and this will be one of the greats.

Honestly I'd stick with all the spots and colors from the OP but make the $25 regular green and the $5 light chocolate. Prob good to go at that point.

I really like the all 1/4" spot progression. Really works in this set so I would definitely advocate keeping that whatever else you change.

 

[SteveHNo96]

Seriously. I just love the look.