Re: how do you guys make you cards? -- Trouble With Trekkies General Discussion Board

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Date Posted: 15:32:37 02/20/02 Wed
Author: Snap
Author Host/IP: host213-122-83-179.in-addr.btopenworld.com / 213.122.83.179
Subject: Re: how do you guys make you cards?
In reply to: Piemaster 's message, "Re: how do you guys make you cards?" on 11:47:19 02/19/02 Tue

>1) Firstly you need enthusiasm because there are bits
>about making the game that will be tedious and have
>you banging your heads against the wall (anyone
>remember the phantom Orange colour?)

Argh!!!! That came back to haunt me the other day. I saw it again. All I was doing was trying to write "Yortle" on Ringo's new card and turned orange.

>
>2) Have a brainstorming session to work out what you
>want the basics of the game to be including the basic
>mechanics and card types. Start taking kely looking
>photos as just the right picture becomes difficult to
>come by.

You have no idea how difficult getting the right photo can be. Especially for some really innocuous things (remember Chula: The Socialists?) I recommending carrying a card list and camera with you AT ALL TIMES. The number of times I havce bumped into Mandeep in the past few months without a camera has driven me to this (I've not seen him since, btw)

>4) Make a spoiler list of about 40 cards which
>illustrate all the card types and the main mechanics.
>Thsi gives you something to show people that will
>stimulate more ideas.

And don't be upset if someone else says "That card's shit, cut it from the set" or "That card's too powerful, change it." Both have happened in TwT. For example, the original version of James Farmer: Purveyour of Purple could download any card with purple on it. This was deemed too powerful and changed to any card with the word purple on it.

>
>5) Try making a card template. We cheated by
>basically ripping off Trek cards but there are a lot
>of extras you will need such as icons and such. We
>used a combination of Photoshop and Paintshop for this
>(both are good for different things). Once you have
>made your first template (don't bother with the
>picture or text as yet) save the template in an 'odds
>and sods' file that will eventually contain all the
>components to make any card. Your first card may take
>3-4 hours but eventually once you have a lot of
>templates save they can take as little as 15 minutes.

Pie's summed that up nicely. A nice tip is to fill the space where the card picture will be with some crap colour like lime green or pink. You can then select the area with the magic wand tool and use paintshop's "paste into selection" command to make your picture fit every time.
And under no circumstances must you allow your odds and sods file to become corrupted.

>
>6) Put text and a picture in the card. This can
>either be a scanned image, a DigiCam pic or something
>downloaded off the web (or even something drawn if you
>want). It is important to get a card fully made up
>ASAP as it will look really cool, stimulate everyones
>imagination and make you want to do more.

Once you've got a couple of cards done, you will be tempted to make a shitload of cards at once. DON'T. This will leave you drained and you won't want to see another card in your life. Keep it to a three or four a day at most.

>7) At this point it helps to have a few mates, one to
>specialise in designing the text on the cards
>(preferably someone with some idea of what is playable
>yet not broken i.e. no Decipher employees) and someone
>to make the cards themselves. By specialising you
>will become good. Snap ended up a genius at making
>cards while I became good at actual game design
>although we both helped eachother out. The more mates
>you have the better.

A good photographer is a godsend, as is a group of mates willing to pose for shots (what a chore Strawpedo was. I hated having to stand around drinking while people to photos of me). If your picture's not quite right photoshop has great tools for manipulating it. You can remove the sweatmarks from under people's arms (Howard Kendrick), remove words from their top (Aziza), add swastikas to their background (Blitzer) and even scan in a picture of the card they're holding, rotate it, cut holes for their fingers, and paste it over the top of the original that was being obscured by a stciker so you couldn't see what it was (D'you want a ball lightning boy)

HTH
Snap

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Replies:

Re: how do you guys make you cards? -- Piemaster, 14:31:59 02/21/02 Thu
- Re: how do you guys make you cards? -- Snap, 17:23:42 02/21/02 Thu