TIGERBOB PLAYING CARDS

2024 - 2025

Project Summary

Tigerbob Playing Cards consists of 216 pixel illustrations showing my artistic interpretation of the common French-suited playing cards. 54 individual designs are used in four decks, or colorways. The designs are composed of the 52 standard playing cards, one joker, and one card back.

The card illustrations were designed first in two colors (monochrome) so that each element could also be properly knitted on Gossamer's knitting machines.

This project was released as an NFT (digital collectible) project in collaboration with OpenSea. View the collection here.

About the Art

I spent a year designing knitwear prior to this project, and all that thinking about how my pixel art could be interpreted as two-color knitting charts (intarsia designs) made this technical concept the forefront of this project, and all projects approaching my pixel art.

Tigerbob Playing Cards was my first attempt to create larger pixel illustrations with Tigerbob’s full body. I was also getting ready to start building a larger pixel world for Tigerbob, but I needed time to decide the scale of the artwork.

The pixel dimensions of the digital collectibles match the size of the mylar sheet input for my vintage knitting machine. This mylar sheet is an old method of storing digital information by using a laser to read filled in or blank squares on a grid, similar to punched holes on a punched card.

The designs on the cards are based on this constraint. Dozens of new illustrations were added to the Tigerbob pantheon, including dragons, chickens, vegetables, fish, a full-body version of Tigerbob and florals. Notably, I introduced pixel variations of my female characters as the court. 

The symbols and drawings were inspired in part by traditional tarot decks.

Further Reading

Check out my blog post about the project to learn more about the artwork.

TIGERBOB GENESIS - The first Tigerbob digital collectible release upon this artwork is based.

MACHINE KNITTING - My background and purpose for using this process in my work.

A printed deck of the cards is available on tigerbob.store. 

See also: An interview with OpenSea