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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 artwork was generated with an image model, and we composited the card borders to standardize all 78 cards to the same size. 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. We’ve never printed and sold a physical card deck.
It’s not a piece of mother-of-pearl lacquerware. No shells were ground or cut, no lacquer was applied, and no drying was managed. There’s 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 artwork.
The iridescent sheen inside the cards is painted into the image itself, and the shimmer you see when you tilt the card on screen is a CSS effect. It’s not the material reflecting light; it’s the screen rendering that appearance.
How the Artwork Was Made
For each card, we wrote a scene description in sentences and fed it to an image-generation model. We specified the figure’s pose, gaze, clothing, background terrain, and light direction in the text, then selected from the results the one that best matched the card’s meaning.
We composited the generated image into a card frame. By measuring the inner window coordinates, we cropped all 78 images to the same position and size, so even though the artwork varies per card, the border and margins stay consistent.
When recreating a card, we keep track of what changed from the previous scene description. The prompt is the production record, and the resulting image is the output of that record.
What We Took from Mother-of-Pearl and Dancheong
We referenced the patterns and light textures used in mother-of-pearl lacquerware, especially from Tongyeong and Wonju. We didn’t replicate the craft; instead, we translated the color flow and pattern density of a finished lacquer surface under light into the artwork.
Dancheong’s five directional colors served as a basis for dividing the card palette. We didn’t apply blue, red, yellow, white, and black directly, but adjusted them so they wouldn’t look too muted or too garish on screen.
We also drew on folk painting and the Ten Symbols of Longevity. Motifs like cranes, deer, turtles, pine trees, and plum blossoms—long-used emblems—were incorporated as background elements in the cards.
Clothing and Iconography
The figures’ clothing is based on late Joseon-period attire. We specified jaqueta curta, casaco longo, gat, satgat, braided hair, and shoes according to each card’s status and situation. Since silhouettes differ by class and occupation even within the same era, we wrote separate clothing notes for each card.
Some cards follow Rider-Waite-Smith iconography, while others keep the iconography but change only the background and clothing. The criterion was simple: does the image convey the card’s meaning more accurately?
We don’t claim definitive historical accuracy. We reference uigwe, paintings, and surviving artifact plates, but when sources differ, we don’t force one as the answer; we note which we used and why. Unverified elements remain as estimates.
Rules We Actually Followed
Each card features only one symbol in the foreground. The mother-of-pearl sheen is the background; the figure and symbol are the protagonists. For every card, we specify clothing, background, and light source in the scene description, and if the generated result deviates, we redo it.
Before publication, code checks the content. It verifies text length, paragraph count, banned words, internal links, structured data, and the number and length of sentences in translations. This check is a safeguard against the text becoming disconnected from the card, 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 in locale-specific data files.
Limitations and Corrections
The image model’s limitations remain. Regenerating with the same description yields different results, and details like fingers, fabric patterns, or background elements can be distorted. That’s why we generated multiple times and selected the best.
Since there’s no physical material, the colors don’t actually shift with light angle. The on-screen shimmer is a visual effect, and it disappears in print.
The first version of this page contained a claim that we recorded humidity and drying times in a workshop. That wasn’t true, and we replaced the entire page on November 14, 2026. If you find any incorrect statements, email us at info@aikorea24.kr, and we’ll verify and fix them.
Tire uma carta você mesmo
A imagem que você leu no texto, coloque agora na sua pergunta. A mesma carta retorna com outra frase se a pergunta for diferente.