Tarot Card Reveal

About this style

Tarot cards were first made in 15th-century northern Italy for a trick-taking card game, and their use for divination grew in France from the late 18th century. The 22 trump cards of the major arcana each carry a number and an emblem; The Star is XVII, following The Tower, and is traditionally read as hope and renewal, often pictured as a great star over water. Early decks were printed from woodcuts or engraved plates, and fine line art with metallic foil is now a common look for decks, book covers and packaging.

Make a 10-second reveal of an original tarot card, The Star: it engraves itself in fine line art, then gold foil catches the light as the card tilts.

<inputs>
Deck: The Sablewood Tarot. Card: XVII · THE STAR. Keywords: Hope · Renewal · Calm. Reading: "After the storm, a clear sky." Duration: 10s. If I don't give you something, use the default and don't ask.
</inputs>

<direction>
Stage: deep plum-black velvet #1A1220 with fine seeded cloth noise (2%) and a warm pool of light #3A2630 behind the card, as from a lamp off-frame.
Card: 520×892, corner radius 22px, centered at (760, 540): ivory stock #F1E8D5 with faint fiber texture and a soft shadow (0 24px 50px rgba(0,0,0,0.55)). Ink #1B1C2E: hatching 0.4–1.2px, key outlines 2.2px.
Design, original and without a figure: a great eight-pointed star high in the sky (radius 120), seven small eight-pointed stars around it (radius 18–28), a horizon of low hills, a still pool in the foreground, a stone jug resting tilted on a rock at the pool's edge pouring a stream into the water with ripple rings, and a slender tree at right with a small bird on a branch. Frame: double rules inset 18px and 26px, a top cartouche with XVII, a bottom cartouche with THE STAR.
Engraving: shade with lines only, never fills. The sky is ruled with horizontal lines at 5px pitch that thin toward the star (1.2 → 0.4px), so it darkens toward the edges; hills take contour hatching that follows their curve; the pool takes wavy horizontal lines broken by the ripples; the jug takes curved hatching along its form, cross-hatched on its shadow side; the great star gets fine rays from its center.
Foil: the great star, the seven small stars, the inner border rule, both cartouche frames, the numeral and the title. Foil is an SVG linear gradient (#6A4C1B → #B88E3E → #F5E2A0 → #C39845 → #74561F) whose offsets shift with the card's tilt, so one bright band sweeps across as the card turns; a 1px dark edge on the upper side of each foil shape suggests a pressed stamp. Foil covers the ink beneath it.
Type: IM Fell English SC for THE STAR (44px, tracking 0.18em) and XVII (36px). Text column at x 1180–1780: the deck in IM Fell English SC, 30px, tracking 0.16em, #D9C8A3; the card name in IM Fell English italic, 64px, #F1E8D5; keywords in IM Fell English SC, 28px; the reading in IM Fell English italic, 30px.
Motion is slow and ceremonial. Lines draw by stroke-dashoffset in engraving order: outlines first (0.6–1.0s each, cubic-bezier(0.45, 0, 0.25, 1)), then hatching in sweeps of 150–300 lines, 4ms apart along the sweep. The card tilts through a CSS 3D transform on its wrapper (perspective 1800px) set from seek: rotateY 0 → 9° and rotateX 0 → −4°, then back to a 3° rest, on cubic-bezier(0.45, 0, 0.55, 1).
The real thing is an engraver's hierarchy of line, tone built from spacing and weight, with foil used sparingly; the cheap version is a glowing clip-art star on a purple gradient.
Banned: human figures or faces, real decks' artwork or names, fills standing in for hatching (foil aside), glow, lens flares, glitter or sparkle particles, a saturated gradient backdrop, more than one foil sweep, anything flashing more than 3 times per second.
</direction>

<structure>
0.0–0.8s: velvet and lamplight; a blank card rises 40px into place as its shadow tightens.
0.8–1.6s: the border rules draw from top center down both sides; the cartouche outlines follow.
1.6–3.4s: outlines engrave: the great star from its center outward, the small stars, the hills, the pool, rock and jug, the tree, then the bird.
3.4–5.6s: hatching: sky rules sweep top to bottom, then the hills, the water lines left to right, the jug's hatching and cross-hatching, the stream and ripples.
5.6–6.2s: the numeral and title engrave letter by letter.
6.2–6.8s: foil stamps in: each foil area floods from its center outward in 0.3s, 40ms apart.
6.8–8.2s: the card tilts and the foil's bright band sweeps once across all the gold, then the card eases to rest.
7.2–8.4s: at right, deck, card name, keywords and reading rise 12px and fade in, 0.2s apart.
8.4–10.0s: hold, perfectly still.
For other durations, scale every timestamp proportionally; keep the foil sweep at 1.2s or longer.
</structure>

<build>
One self-contained index.html, CSS and JS inline. Google Fonts via <link> are fine; await document.fonts.load() for each face before defining window.seek. No other libraries (no three.js: this style is flat). Draw the card in inline SVG inside a wrapper whose CSS 3D transform is set from seek (a computed transform, not a transition); text is HTML beside it. The stage is 1920×1080 (16:9), scaled to fit the window. Design for 60fps. window.seek(t), t in seconds, must compute every visual from t alone, clamping past the end to the last frame: no CSS transitions or animations, no setTimeout or setInterval, no state carried between frames, and randomness only from a seeded PRNG. Without ?render in the URL, drive seek from requestAnimationFrame so it plays in a browser (loop after a 1s end hold); with ?render, don't start that loop.
</build>

<check>
Before showing me, step through one frame per second: screenshot each and look at it. Fix overlaps, clipped or cramped text, accidental edge collisions, and anything off-style or Banned. Check hatching reads as tone at 1280×720 without moiré, the jug, tree and bird read clearly, nothing could be taken for a figure, the foil sweep crosses every foil area once, and the text column stays clear of the card. Confirm seek(duration) and seek(duration + 1) match, so the final frame holds.
</check>

Ours, and free to use under CC0: copy it, change it, ship it. No credit needed.

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