Custom Card Art: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 23:16, 20 October 2022

This tutorial covers how to create your own custom card art for use in Hand of Fate 2.

This tutorial is a work-in-progress.

Basic Card Requirements

Basic card art in Hand of Fate 2 should adhere to the following:

  • Square
  • At least 1024 x 1024 pixels in size (will be scaled automatically)
  • Greyscale
  • PNG or TGA format

At 1024 x 1024, card art borders typically start at 235px and are 550px wide.

Within the borders, card art is typically around 470 x 665 pixels.

The game will automatically add a paper texture, and will automatically add borders for the following card appearance types:

  • TODO

Brimstone Card Requirements

The Brimstone test pattern

Brimstone and platinum cards each have three surface types, which are controlled by combinations of colour channels and alpha transparency, as follows:

  • Flowing lava/Dull foil - white (this is calculated from the red channel, but the green and blue channels affect how visible it ends up being, so if you from white to yellow, which is 50% red, that'd be transparent as shown in the test pattern)
  • Yellow Clouds/Shining Clouds - blue (this is anything with blue in it, including cyan and magenta, so long as there is no transparency and excluding white)
  • Cracked Ink/Ink - transparent blue (this is anything with blue in it, including cyan and magenta, but not white, so long as it is transparent)

The test pattern shown on the right can be downloaded from the Cart Art Tools page.


A comparison of the source art for The Far North and the HoF2 Card Art Tools' Brimstone Preview.

It can be difficult to visualise how Brimstone and Platinum card art will turn out.

For Photoshop users, a zip file in the [HoF2 SDK] contains a .atn file with Photoshop actions. A video can be found on the Official Documentation page showing how it can be used.

For Gimp users, a link to the HoF2 Card Art Tools project can be found on the Card Art Tools page, which adds new menu items for previewing Brimstone and Platinum art similar to how it will appear in-game, but with flat colours and enhanced contrast for easier readability.

Brimstone and Platinum cards adhere to the following:

  • TGA format
  • Include an alpha channel
  • 32 bits per pixel
  • RLE compression should be disabled


Designing a Basic Card

  • Jesse Gillespie's art for Hand of Fate and Hand of Fate 2 emulates a wood cut ink stamp style
  • Deep shadows
  • Minimal hatched shading
  • Sharp angles
  • Use variations in detail density to draw attention
  • Don't be afraid to use negative space!


Designing Brimstone and Platinum Cards

  • Start subtle
  • Consider fading in flowing lava and glowing clouds around elements to add emphasis to Brimstone cards
  • Remember that Brimstone ink has glowing cracks
  • Use shining clouds sparsely on Platinum cards (the effect is very strong!)