Guide
How This Deck Was Made — The Real Process Behind a Mother-of-Pearl Digital Deck
Let's be clear from the start: the cards on this site are not made from real shell inlay. The images were generated by an AI model, and the card borders were composited to standardize all 78 cards to the same dimensions. This article is an honest record of that process and its limitations.
What This Deck Is
It's a set of 78 digital cards. Each file is an 832×1248 JPEG, used for on-screen display and print previews. No physical card deck has ever been printed or sold.
It is not a nacre lacquerware craft. No shells were ground or cut, no lacquer was applied, and no drying was managed. There is no workshop, no production notes, no humidity logs. In this deck, 'mother-of-pearl' refers not to a material but to the visual texture of the imagery.
The pearlescent sheen inside the cards is painted into the images themselves, and the shimmer you see when tilting the screen is a CSS effect. It's not the material reflecting light; it's the screen rendering that appearance.
How the Images Were Made
For each card, a scene description was written as a sentence and fed to an image generation model. The pose, gaze, attire, background terrain, and light direction were specified in text, and from the results, the one that best matched the card's meaning was selected.
The generated image was then composited into a card frame. The inner window's coordinates were measured, and all 78 images were cropped to the same position and size, so even though the artwork varies per card, the border and margins remain consistent.
When recreating a card, we note what changed from the previous scene description. The prompt is the production record, and the resulting image is its output.
What Was Borrowed from Mother-of-Pearl and Dancheong
We referenced the patterns and light textures used in nacre lacquerware, especially from Tongyeong and Wonju. This isn't a reproduction of the craft, but a translation of the color flow and pattern density seen on finished nacre surfaces when light hits them.
Dancheong's five cardinal colors served as a basis for dividing the card palette. We didn't apply blue, red, yellow, white, and black directly; instead, we adjusted them to avoid oversaturation or dullness on screen.
We also drew on folk painting and the Ten Symbols of Longevity. Cranes, deer, turtles, pine trees, and plum blossoms—these long-used motifs appear as background elements in the cards.
Costume and Iconography
The figures' clothing is based on late Joseon dynasty attire. veste courte and long manteau, gat and satgat, braided hair, and shoes were specified according to each card's status and situation. Since silhouettes differ by class and occupation even within the same era, each card's outfit was described separately.
Some cards follow the Rider-Waite-Smith iconography, while others keep the symbolism but change the background and costume. The criterion was simple: does the image convey the card's meaning more accurately?
Costume research is not definitive. We consult uigwe, paintings, and extant artifact plates, but when sources conflict, we don't force a single answer; we note which one we used and why. Unverified elements remain as conjecture.
Rules Actually Followed
Only one symbol takes the foreground per card. The mother-of-pearl sheen is the background; the figure and symbol are the protagonists. Each card's scene description specifies attire, background, and light source, and if the generated result deviates, we regenerate.
Before publication, code checks the text: word count, paragraph count, banned words, internal links, structured data, and the number and length of sentences in translations. This check is a safeguard against content drifting from the card's meaning, not a guarantee of factual accuracy.
The card interpretations and this page's text are drafted by AI, then fact-checked and edited by the operator before publication. Card names, meanings, and translations are managed as locale-specific data files.
Limitations and Corrections
The limitations of the image generation model remain. Regenerating with the same description yields different results, and details like fingers, fabric patterns, or background elements can blur. That's why each card was generated multiple times and curated.
Since this isn't a physical material, colors don't actually shift with light angle. The on-screen shimmer is an effect, and it disappears in print.
The initial version of this page contained a claim about recording humidity and drying times in a workshop. That was untrue, and the page was fully replaced on November 14, 2026. If you spot any other inaccuracies, email info@aikorea24.kr, and we'll verify and correct them.
Tirez vous-même
L'image que vous avez lue dans l'article, placez-la cette fois dans votre propre question. La même carte, avec une autre question, revient avec une autre phrase.