Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Tarot cards are hard to draw you guys.

I don't want to draw tarot cards, but they're a Demon City stretch goal. I went on a short tweetstorm about it...
You can click to enlarge it

But also don't forget it's Ennie season, so vote for
Frostbitten & Mutilated for Best Setting, Art, Monster, Writing,
& product of the year

Also you know Maze of the Blue Medusa is out inhardcover again right?

But if you want me to do it anyway,
here you go jerks

6 comments:

Adamantyr said...

It's definitely a tough assignment... Here are some ideas:

I asked for and got a Tarot deck as a birthday gift a long time ago. The set I got was actually a reinterpretation based on the original Greek mythology that inspired them. As a result, the cards are actually substantially different from the Rider-Waite-Smith set.

The Major Arcana represent various greek gods, titans, and other mythic figures and elements, while the Minor Arcana actually represent a classic tale or story and each significant event within them in the 1-10 cards, with the face cards representing the major players. The Suit of Cups, for example, is the story of Eros and Psyche.

In that vein, why not reinterpret the Tarot in the elements that make up Demon City? The Major Arcana become figures from the city itself, the Emperor becomes the Mayor you described in an earlier post, the Hanged Man represents a Serial Killer strapped in a chair getting a lethal injection willingly because he's protecting someone, etc.

You could have a lot of fun with the Minor Arcana. Each suit could just be their given vice be it Sex (Cups), Money (Coins), Violence (Swords) and Deception (Clubs). Then invent a story to match the card's intent at each stage that's set in Demon City. Each card represents a given event, possibly a cell phone photograph that's been repainted, and the face cards representing the characters in each story.

Al Sotack said...

How do you feel about Lady Harris’ deck?

MalcolmLittle said...

Making a tarot deck seems to be thankless job as well. A favorite deck of mine is done by Sasha Laskowsky-Ziguilinsky, and every time it gets shared online there is always one commenter who has issues with his depictions. "I love the style but..."

(Sasha's deck is based on TS Eliot's The Waste Land", https://www.behance.net/gallery/35692177/A-Wicked-Pack-of-Cards-tarot-deck .)

I hope at least that the (eventual?) deck you create Zak will at least live up to your own expectations and standards. The backers will want it for the game, if not for divination.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Al Sotack

It feels too calculated to me on two levels. It has the same issue as Paladini's in the sense of feeling like designs then executed and on top of that the original entire futurist-post-cubist vibe was supposed to be about observing life and reacting to it (thus Braque's still lives of newspapers, etc) and the stylistic quirks were about observing and reobserving. With the Tarot in that style all the mythological stuff feels calculated to me. The artist is pretending to observe and reobserve, not really doing it

@Adamantyr

The problem isn't the content, it's figuring out a style that makes whatever the content is fee alive

Anonymous said...

It sounds like you want is to make naive art but you have a masters degree. Maybe you could collaborate with someone with less of an art background,like you come up with a concept sketch and get someone who doesn't draw to do a second version? Like, extreme example, get a child to draw them. Conversely, use an art style you aren't comfortable with maybe?

Zak Sabbath said...

sometimes things just have to play hard