Carbon Tarot - First Deck Sketch (BW)

jalaire

I really like the moon! I also really love the movement of the temperance card!
 

delinfrey

Thank you, AJ and jalaire!
The Moon is probably going to be the cover card :) (on the box)

I am also on the verge of changing the name to Tarot of Transcendence (due to the backstory).

About the colouring - my plan is to print two versions of the deck. One is "colour your own cards" where you can literally colour it to your own liking (my style is quite the colouring-book style) and the other one will be coloured by me. The "colour yourself" version can be just used as a monochrome.

Will be adding some more majors over the weekend, once I get to scan them (read: get my partner to scan them)
 

blue_fusion

Looking good. Will you be coloring this? Because... colors might lessen your line art's impact. It really depends on how it will be colored, though. And i know that colored decks sell more than black and white ones, but your line art has this charming quality to it which might be lost with the wrong coloring process. Maybe just add color highlights? I'm seeing this finished off with a nice, plain, hand-drawn line border and handwritten text (no fancy fonts! :D)

For an example on how the coloring can go, check out the Black Lily Tarot. It had ink line art colored with colored pens, but the art also has uncolores areas.

Good luck! And I hope that helped. :)

-Ly
 

Lareia

Wow, I really love what you have for the Devil and Empress so far! And the HP too. Such a unique concept!
 

schizandra

This is an intriguing concept! It's rare to find technology incorporated into Tarot. Retrotech and steampunk we have, but futuristic technology not so much.

How opposed are you to *bling* in your deck? I think silver foil accents (particularly where you've drawn circuit-like patterns) combined with the organic quality of your line art would be an excellent contrast.

I would also highly recommend a companion book. Futuristic images may not be easily accessible to a customer base that is generally accustomed to looking at historically-styled art in their Tarot decks. They'll want to know why you chose what you chose, from the major elements down to the minor details of each image.
 

Rhapsodin

Nice line drawing

but I'm not sure how the images are supposed to inspire the meanings of the cards unless one creates new meanings or learns the traditional meanings and applies them to these cards. For instance - the Devil. What are you trying to show about the devil? Nothing emerges from intuition for me. Likewise Moon that traditionally has a most interesting path. This one, unless I'm mistaken in which case please put me right, doesn't relate to the Tarot Moon at all.

However, many posters like them so they definitely chime with some.
 

delinfrey

Nice line drawing

but I'm not sure how the images are supposed to inspire the meanings of the cards unless one creates new meanings or learns the traditional meanings and applies them to these cards. For instance - the Devil. What are you trying to show about the devil? Nothing emerges from intuition for me. Likewise Moon that traditionally has a most interesting path. This one, unless I'm mistaken in which case please put me right, doesn't relate to the Tarot Moon at all.

However, many posters like them so they definitely chime with some.

You raise a very important question - this deck does need some background knowledge to work with it, and I am currently writing a companion with it as well (I'm planning to add as much information as I can to the complimentary LWB, instead of a separate book).

You would have to know the "story" of the deck, and why things look the way that they do. Despite that, you should still be able to grasp a few main ideas. The Devil, e.g, is kind of like a puppeteer (with the hoses out of her hands going down), but she is controlled herself (by the hoses going in to her head). So the question proposed is - who controls that which controls us?

I will post now some of the new prints, including the Hierophant - which is just a large cube (server) essentially, that has hoses and cables going out of it. The Hierophant IS that which controls us, and sends hoses into our minds (so the creatures more controlled in this deck are the ones with humanity left in them, such as the Empress or the Devil; then you have the completely untouched ones, such as the Star - but is she really? We don't see her face).

What I tried to do here is to give the age-old archetypes, which have been rechewed for close to 800 years, a bit of a new, futuristic flare, trying to incorporate some questions that will seem mundane only in a couple of years (how do you define life? is it ethical to torture a robot? why is artificial intelligence artificial? when does it stop being artificial? are we gods or demons?)

I hope the story will be better rounded out for you once I have posted all Major Arcana cards. I will be sure to post explanatory tidbits on all cards.