How we made FurryFlitchers Trumps

Sunday, Dec 15 2024

Over the last couple of days, our customers have been receiving a special Christmas gift from us to say thanks for their custom this year. We thought we would show you how they were made, and answer the burning question… How did my pet get its FurryFlitchers rating?

Let us cut to the chase, how did we give each pet the FurryFlitchers rating?

While the idea of making a pack of Trump cards featuring our customers pets seemed like a novel idea that every owner would enjoy we also knew for it to work as a game the scoring had to varied, that meant not all pets could have amazing ratings (even though we love them all).

So, with exceptions, Ty used ChatGPT to generate a random range of scores and then applied those scores to the pets in the order the cards were made.

We made a few exceptions

Monty, as our pet scored 100 (more on that later)
Pina represented all Mongrel dogs, those dogs although not common at FurryFlitchers reminded us of our old dog Henry and we have a special place in our hearts for Heinz 57 dogs.
Hero. Hero is a special exception to the pack, he wasn't a customer (thus the N/A) but we loved this big furry bear and wanted something we can remember him by.

The FurryFlitchers special rule

To try and make the packs enjoyable for all we thought it best to tweak the rules of the game to let everyone who owned one of the pets to change their FurryFlitcher rating to 100. We've found it doesn't harm the mechanics of the game, and it means you don't have to use a score you would never give your own pet.

A keepsake of our beloved pets

Sadly several of the pets in the deck are no longer with us, and eventually, they'll all leave us with just fond memories. We hope that these little cards can serve as a keepsake for all our pets and celebrate the joy they bring.

The inspiration

Rosie has a few varying set of TopTrump playing cards, one is all about Dogs, sadly there is no Bernese Mountain Dog in the set. I guess we felt an injustice and wanted Monty to be in his very own, and the idea to make these as gifts was born.

The illustrations

Ty used https://www.ideogram.ai an art generator to help create the renaissance style portraits. He started by gathering photos of each of our customer's dogs, cats, hamsters and more. These were used as source images which the AI referenced when generating the images. After some practice Ty was able to get most dogs to have a reasonable likeness in the renaissance painting style.

We were inspired to use this style as we have previously had two portraits of our dogs Henry and Monty made, and we think they are fab. We hope you enjoyed them too.

Not always easy

Sometimes the breed has a distinctive look and our owner's pets didn't always look the same, this could throw the generator off. Also if there were multiple pets in the same image the generator struggled a bit to recreate each. In the end we would choose the best attempt and then upscale the image ready for print.

If you want a print of the image

If you want the image without the Trump surround, let us know, and we can send them to you to print or share however you like. Ty uses the local printers in Dunmow Photoprintframe but you're free to go and use whoever, there is no charge for the image.

The design

Having looked at Rosie's sets and googled a few others online for inspiration Ty set about designing the cards. For the design nerds out there, he used a combination of Figma and Affinity Designer to produce the cards.

The printing

Ty searched the internet for printers who marketed Trump cards and eventually landed with a local business, https://spingold.co.uk/, in Colchester. They printed our cards and came out as good as we could have hoped.