Scripting Adobe Illustrator

I'm prototyping a card game about the timeline of film releases, and for making 120+ unique cards, I've turned to JavaScript to help automate the process.

a sample playing card showing where the movie title and movie's release date would go.
A sample playing card, showing where the movie title and movie's release date would go, pulling from arrays of data.
a code snippet showing the creation of a
Creating a new document, and adding color space and dimensions.

Much better than copying and pasting, dynamically populating each card helps save time when creating dozens of assets.

In my first draft of the script, I was telling Illustrator to create a new file, add text layers, and populate the layers with the appropriate text.

However, I realized that I could simply open an existing document with all fonts, area type, and other configurations already set, and then update the text.

More lines of code, showing text replacement from arrays, and an export of each card.
Text replacement on each card (starting with very small arrays), and then exporting a high-res PNG for each.
A populated card showing movie title and date, in this case North by Northwest, 1959
Populated card
A populated card showing movie title and date, in this case Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937
Longer titles work as well, since the first text layer is already set to Area Type
A 3D mockup showing the front and back of a card.
Using Cinema4D, I made realistic mockups of the front and back of a card with a linen texture; the back design I created was inspired by camera test charts, film leader, and 65mm film.

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