Hollowframe Playing Cards and Poster, July 2025
For comparison between the January 2025 and July 2025 editions of the poster, check out this image slider! https://imgsli.com/NDA4MDIz
These cards were originally on sale for pre-order as my very first physical fan merch product until September 7th, 2025 over on my Ko-fi, and sold better than expected! Stay tuned on my Ko-fi or other socials for potentially any future reruns, maybe even with worldwide shipping!
In the lead up to TennoCon 2025, I sought out to revitalize a project I had tried and failed to complete in time last year for TennoCon 2024: Hollowframe playing cards. I took this as an opportunity to touch up and rework every single one of the 54 cards, using my experience from last year's attempt to make a better quality deck. This time, I succeeded in making this project what I had initially set out to make a year ago, and I ended up giving over 220 individual cards to at least 100 people at TennoCon 2025! (I also lost my voice somewhat in the process lol)
One of the initial goals this year was to brighten up the cards, as I found while looking back at the older deck that most of the cards printed too dark to properly tell what was going on. Much of this was due to a strange choice I had made last year to include a blurred copy layer beneath each figure, which of course mostly blurred their black outlines and made their edges less distinct.
Simply turning off these blurred copy layers was the easiest part of this rework, but in the process I kept finding myself cringing a bit at many of these older drawings for having fairly hard to read designs, especially when it came to overlapping limbs, armor, and details. Perhaps against my better judgement, I tasked myself with fixing these design issues as well, combing through all 57 characters with a marker brush to give better clarity to these designs. Of course, marking up 57 character designs ended up ballooning into a gigantic project, as I fought drawings going as far back as 2021. Even though I wasn't aiming for full redesigns like I did last year, I still ended up pouring significant time into painting over each design.
Another part of this revitalization was adding various painted background effects to each card, making each card more distinct and giving more life to the characters. This was one of my favorite parts, as I got to draw on some of my experience working on the poster and various abstract pieces in the past year to think about how to properly support each character, thinking about the themes, settings, and inspirations for each design. I'd like to think that my color and theme choices make sense to those also familiar to the visual language of Hollow Knight and the characters of Warframe.
Photo of a full deck of Hollowframe playing cards sticking out of its blank white tuck box, in front of an opened binder with remaining cards from TennoCon 2025. The first card on top is Ace of Diamonds - Mag.
Full deck spread, categorized into the four suits (diamonds, clubs, hearts, spades) as well as the two jokers and the back design. Organized in PureRef.
Photo of the opened binder on a car ride to TennoCon 2025.
Photo of a mockup game of Texas hold'em with a deck of Hollowframe cards; Yareli and Khora in my hand and Excalibur Umbra, Loki, Stalker, Jade, and Ordis on the table.
Photo of Jack of Clubs - Yareli (designed after Hornet and Midwife) posed amongst a pile of poker chips.
(featuring Koumei's dice, made and gifted by MjikThize!)
Photo of multiple hands of Hollowframe cards face up on the table after the end of the final round, where everyone went all in after an hour or so of playing. A pile of our poker chips was piled on my side of the table when I won the game with a straight.
Timelapse uploaded to Youtube, showing the process of updating each one of last year's card designs with effects and paintovers.
The July 2025 edition of the Hollowframe poster, updated from the last version (January 2025) with the new card edits.
Side-by-side comparison between the January 2025 (top) and July 2025 (bottom) editions of the poster.
Photo of two sizes of prints on a wall in a lighting setup, with measurements overlayed on top.
Zoomed-in photo of the two print sizes laid down amongst various other Warframe objects (most of which 3D printed and received from others).
Closeup poster photo 1.
Closeup poster photo 2.
Closeup poster photo 3.
Diagram of the two poster print sizes I made before the posters I ordered were delivered.
2024 vs 2025 Jack of Clubs - Yareli comparison. An example of small design tweaks and a more stylistic background.
2024 vs 2025 Two of Clubs - Rhino comparison. One of the more intense reworks in the base design, rectifying some of the original's age.
2024 vs 2025 Eight of Clubs - Banshee comparison. An example of minor touch-ups and a focus on better positioning and enhanced effects.
2024 vs 2025 Nine of Spades - Equinox comparison. An example of clarifying overlapping and complex shapes.
2024 vs 2025 Queen of Diamonds - Mirage comparison. An example of focusing on bolder background effects.
King of Hearts - Excalibur Umbra, one of my favorites.
King of Spades - Sevagoth. Another one of my favorites, and the last card to be reworked.
One of the two jokers, Stalker (mostly just a crop of my Hollowframe - Stalker illustration).
Photo of page 1 of the binder I brought to TennoCon 2025, with the intent of giving out individual cards over the multiple-day event. There were six cards per slot.
Pages 2 and 3 of the binder.
Pages 4 and 5.
Page 6.
The back face of every card, featuring colors loosely based on those of the poster, the project title, and a link to my Carrd site.
Information card provided in each pre-ordered deck.