Tiki Rummy - Looking for artist help

Hi Everyone!

I'm new here. I found Tiki Central while looking for ideas about a new game I'm working on called "Tiki Rummy". After looking through the forums and seeing all the creative people I decided to sign up and ask for some help from the wonderful talent that I've seen here.

I have the main idea of the game flushed out. Tiki Rummy is a Rummy game. This means that it is a card game where players draw a card, lay down sets or runs, then discard a card. The ideas that makes this game different will be both through the use of special Tiki cards. Also, I hope that the stunning look of the deck will help to set it apart. The intended audience is a casual card player (nothing too fancy or complex in the game, it is easy to play on a boat or at a bar).

The suits I'm thinking of are:
Drinks- The cards are things like "Fog Cutter" and "Singapore Sling".
Places- The cards are things like "Luau" and "Lounge"
Glasses- The cards are cool looking Tiki mugs/glasses
And People- The cards are people like Hula dancers and surfers

I'm open to other Tiki themed suit ideas!

Also, the four Hawaiian Tiki gods will be in the deck and they will have special powers over the game.

And now for the help part. While I'm rather good at game ideas and writing the rules, I really stink when it comes to the art used in games (think Clip art). I'd love some help in drawing the fronts and backs of the deck that will be used in the game(54 cards). If you are interested but only want to take on one part of the deck (a suit or the backs for example) we can talk about that. If you know someone that may be interested in helping out, please point them to this post.

I'm creating this for a contest over at BoardGameGeek (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/4141548). The contest judge, Mike Fitzgerald, is a big name in Rummy games (some of his games are considered collector items) so there is the possibility of big exposure for the art used in this deck.

Thanks for reading and look forward to hearing from you!

Mahalo,
Steve

Steve, that's a great concept, you might wanna post this in Creating Tiki. The hook I see here is that it sounds like a lot of work, especially if one wants to do a good job, and all artists here do. Many are into Tiki for the love of the subject matter, and already expect only a minimal renumeration for their work, so a faint hope of maybe seeing it in print might not be sufficient to get the ball rolling.

I think your best bet is to scour books and this site for stuff to clip...but that is another problem, as many artists here can attest. :)

Thanks BigBroTiki

It is very much the same with designing games. Thankfully I can do it as a hobby and not needing to make a living from it. Also, I'm not looking for a huge time commitment or 3ft by 4ft velvet. :) Some color sketches and the such would work just fine.

I do have a prototype that was created using web clips, but as I'm sure you know... well the legal people have something to say about all that.

I'll post in the creating Tiki section as well.

Hava good one,
Steve

Thanks to everyone that helped out on this project. I have the final prototype in and this should be published very soon!

While I had to scale back on the illustrations, I'm very happy with the final product.

I'll post links here as soon as I have the info.

Steve

Again, thanks to everyone's help, Tiki Rummy is now available at:

http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/tiki-rummy

Stop by and check it out!

Steve