First images with the new size and formatting.

I’ve updated the links on the blog, including info about buying the deck once it’s done.  Go check it out!

Question regarding suits

I’m trying to decide on the types of suits to use for the deck.  Here are my options right now.

1. Playing card suits.  Hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs.  Each of these already correlates with one of the regular tarot suits, and much of the Alice imagery already contains chess and card suits, so this wouldn’t be much of a stretch.

2. Just elements.  Cups = water, wands = fire, pentacles = earth, and swords = air (probably “wind.”)

3. Suits related to game imagery.  Pentacles = gears, swords = (Vorpal) blades, cups = teacups, and wands = teeth or bones.

4. Suits correlated with Alice’s weapons.  Swords = (vorpal) blades, cups = teapot (canon)s, wands = hobby horses, pentacles = pepper (grinder).  In this case, the aces of each suit would be the weapon posters.

Or, something else entirely.  Are there any of these you don’t like, or any you do?

What’s going on with this blog / personal update

So... I haven’t posted on this blog in basically nine months.  Here’s a very wordy update for those who are interested.  First the technical blog stuff, then a bit of a personal explanation.

The cards: yes, I will be continuing this deck.  I’m sort of doing a refresher, though, and redoing some of the cards and possibly the size/format.  I may change the suits up, that sort of thing.  The reasons are that a) I know a lot more about tarot than when I started, and I’d rather re-think the basics of the deck while there are only a few cards done than keep going for the sake of progress and secretly regret it.  b) One way or another, I’m going to distribute this deck.  I’ll post details about that later.  When I started, I had absolutely no idea anyone would actually be interested in the deck, so I wasn’t being terribly disciplined about whose screenshots etc. I was using, since it was just for fun (and I also had a pretty weak concept of how credit on the internet works, unfortunately... so my apologies to anyone whose screenshots I failed to credit).  At this point, it would be terribly wrong of me not to make absolutely sure that I’m not stealing someone’s screenshot that they very well might have spent hours trying to get.  So I’ll need to go through the Alice folder that’s been sitting on a USB stick for months and make sure I know where and who all the images come from.

TL;DR - I’m semi-starting over the deck with a lot more knowledge and preparedness, I will be distributing it once it’s done, and (yeah, I know, this is like the 6th time I’ve said this and all the other times it turned out to be a dirty, dirty lie) I’m actually going to stick with it this time.

I’m so sorry to everyone who showed such amazing support and enthusiasm about the deck, only to have me be lazy and neglect it.  I hope I can make it up to you by doing a good job this time around.

Personal update below, including some very negative stuff:

Shadown Scroll  |  Jason Tai

Here are 10 more calendar-sized images.  I have a purple recolor of the fish picture, and a few more images to post, and then I'll wrap this whole calendar thing up with some final info.

connor-wolve reblogged your post and added:

Certainly!

https://38.media.tumblr.com/4fe72ab986007fc50c1abd9a64654459/tumblr_nf5rl20hES1qi50afo2_r1_1280.jpg

Alice: Madness Returns Calendar Templates

Hello everyone!  I realize I've been absent for quite some time.  During that time, however, I've made myself a calendar - from AMR art, of course!  And I thought maybe some other people would enjoy it too.  Over the next few days, I'll be posting the remaining images, as well as some supplementary stuff - what I did to label the images by month, and some of the actual calendar grid pages.

Basically, with a little bit of assembly, a photo editing program, a printer, and some paper, you're all set to make a calendar.

To be clear: the way I created my calendar was very DIY.  I'll list the kinds of paper I used and how I put it together (because I think it looks gorgeous, despite being held together by an old 3-ring binder), but this is by no means a definitive guide.

So, to the images!

All of these pictures are sized to fit 8.5 x 11" paper (including the black stripe on the bottom).  I did quite a bit of stretching and cropping to get these images to this size, so if you have paper with slightly different dimensions, I guarantee you can re-size the images on your computer without making them look warped.  You may notice that some pictures look sharper than others, and you would be right.  The top right picture with the cat, for instance, was simply low res to begin with.  I tried to find the best quality versions of each image, but in some cases that still wasn't very impressive.  I did my best to sharpen them.  Someone with better photoshop skills than I might be able to tweak them some more.

The black bar at the bottom of each image is for the binding rings.  Like I said, my method wasn't exactly high-tech; I used a 3-hole puncher at the bottom of each page.  Again, if this bothers you, you can stretch the picture without making it look too different.

I put the name of each month in the bottom center of the image, in the Supernatural font, on top of an image from the AMR art book.  An example:

I'll post this image in a blank .png form in a following post.

Other fonts I can recommend are here ("The Last Font I'm Wasting on You" and "Anywhere" are the ones I use for the tarot cards).

Obviously, I do not own any of these images.  I just put them in photoshop, edited them, and re-sized them.  The edited images are usually much more vibrant than the originals, and more balanced, so they stand on their own.  My favorite image is the ship in the bottle - my printer and paper went above and beyond my expectations, and the final product looks just like the image - for once.

More images to follow soon, as well as supplemental stuff and things!

Credit for the second image [x]

Two of Sanity

This card is about bonding, in either a friendship or a romance.  Not dramatic or revelationary in nature, this card tells of a quiet, simple intimacy shared between two (or more) people; complete understanding without need of an explanation.  So to speak, it is a sign that you've found your soul mate.

Two friends may be able to spend an hour in total silence, and still share more than some people do in a lifetime.  The two of sanity tells of a person with whom you can truly be yourself, with no worries of self-presentation or secrets kept from each other.  There is no anxiety that this person is judging you, or misinterpreting you.  You understand each other's thoughts and emotions completely, and taking a moment to recognize that understanding is an opportunity that should not be lost.  Sharing simple moments in such relationships can create the most rewarding memories of a lifetime.  Don't waste the moment; friends like these are few and far between.