#*myspntarot

what inspired the tarot card series? to be completely honest, i am not actually a tarot person lmao. i’ve gotten my cards read a couple of times for fun, but i don’t actively consult my tarot cards or anything like that - i didn’t even know the names of the major arcana cards until i started making these. but i’ve always found the aesthetic of tarot cards to be really cool, and i had learned information about the “lore” and the characters from my friends who do tarot. and then when i was rewatching 15x08, sam actually holds up one of rowena’s tarot cards and i thought it would be a fun challenge to start a series of tarot card edits featuring spn characters themselves. 

how did you decide which character suited each card? i started planning my tarot series back in january, beginning with a loooot of research. i read descriptions of each of the major arcana cards and looked at different tarot reading websites and books to see what those cards meant, what kind of message/warning they might send to the querent, etc. then i matched the card to the character based on the character’s personality and/or story arc and how closely they fit that card’s description. some of them were pretty easy to decide; for example, the judgement card actually features the angel gabriel in the design. others were a little trickier - i went back and forth between three different characters for the strength card until i finally decided on meg. i didn’t have any set list of characters i wanted to include aside from tfw 2.0, so i really wanted to make sure that the characters i did choose were based on who fit what best and not because they were my favorite character or whatever.

how did you decide which scenes to use for the gifset/card gif? i based the design of my tarot card edits (and specifically, the middle card gif itself) on the famous Rider-Waite tarot card illustrations; those were my benchmark in terms of the coloring style as well as the poses/scenes to use for the card gif. with those images in mind, i scoured every single spn episode i had downloaded to find clips that matched the scene. as you can imagine, that took a bit of time and a lot of patience, especially since i needed the character to be in the middle/center of the frame, and small enough within the frame so that they would fit inside the white card overlay. i got quite lucky with some of the characters having scenes that fit their card scene exactly; others not so much and sometimes i had to get creative lol. here’s just a few examples: sam/the hanged man: the RW card features a man upside down with his arms out, and i found a damn-near perfect match with a shot of sam from s5 laying in the panic room with his arms outstretched. the camerawork for that scene even had him flipped upside down.

jack/the fool: the RW card showed a young man walking in the woods, which is exactly what jack does in his first episode (though i did have to doctor the scene a little bit, because the original shot had jack framed in the very far left instead of the middle).

bobby/the hierophant: the RW depicts the hierophant seated in a church while two acolytes listen to him speak, so i managed to find a shot of bobby sitting in his house, with sam and dean on either side of him. this was similar framing that i used for other cards that showed the figure speaking to acolytes/other figures, like gabriel/judgement, and john/the devil.

charlie/the sun: here’s where i started having to be a bit more creative/metaphorical in my scene selections lol. the RW shows the actual sun with a figure riding a horse. obviously i can’t find a perfect match for that scene, so instead i went with the shot of charlie in armor (to represent the figure riding the horse), while her hair fans around around her like the sun’s rays.

kevin/the moon: another difficult one to match. the RW card shows the moon with two dogs howling at it, so i chose the scene of kevin (whose face is lit by moonlight) when he’s being stared down at and interrogated by sam and meg (aka two dogs howling).

meg/strength: the RW card shows a woman controlling a docile lion. there are sadly zero (0) lions shown on supernatural, so instead i used scenes of meg talking to cas to represent a woman having control/a connection with a powerful being. the scene i used for the card gif itself was of meg using cas’s angel blade.

alex/justice: the RW shows a woman holding a scale and a sword, so i picked a scene of alex holding the syringe she used to stop her vampire mom from killing her future adoptive mom (aka balance and power).

patience/temperance: probably the most metaphorical/non-match edit in the whole series sdkhsladkj. the RW card shows a person pouring liquid from one cup into another while one foot is on land and one foot is in water. could not find a shot of patience that specific (i know, shocker), so instead i chose the scene where she’s beginning to think about leaving her normal life for a life in the hunting world (aka one foot in two worlds).

as for the other two panels of each edit, i tried to choose scenes that also fit the narrative of the card they were representing, and i tried to position them to the left and right sides of the panel to both offset the centered card and make the text on their panels easier to read. 

why did you color it that way/how did you color it that way? again, the RW cards were my main inspiration aesthetic-wise, and if you look at the illustrations the figures are drawn in very vibrant colors with dark heavy line work as was common for illustrations made during that time period. so when i made mine, i chose to use a lot of vibrant, unconventional colors with an emphasis on shadows and contrast to create that dark, almost drawing-like texture and look. i’ve had people ask me to make tutorials on how i colored my tarot card edits but it’s kinda hard to do that since i colored everything i made from scratch so there’s no set process to it, but basically, i did it through multiple layers of color selection, hue/saturation, gradient, brightness/contrast, vibrance, and levels. there’s probably an average of 50-100 layers on each individual tarot card gif (not just the card panel itself, all three of them), and the files were massive. all my tarot edit files had to be stored on a separate hard drive because of that lol. you can actually tell that my coloring process changed throughout the series as i got more comfortable/used to how to make them, and i’ve thought about possibly remaking some of the early ones (the cas, dean, and lovers one specifically) just so they fit the vibes of my later tarot edits a bit more. again, not promising anything. maybe down the road if i revisit this series again.

do you have any other long projects in mind for the future? i do! still working out all the details for them (one of the reasons why i actually finished the tarot edit series was because i had them all planned out beforehand so i didn’t have any excuse not to make them lol), so not entirely sure when my next big series will start yet but trust and believe that i will not stop making content like this any time soon. additionally, i’m also considering opening requests when i hit my next follower milestone?? maybe?? is that something people would be interested in idk let me know lmao.