A Quick Thought About Style

In one the comment sections of the new cards, an anonymous reader expressed dissatisfaction with the "fluorescent, plasma-like, World-of-Warcraft-style" design. That is a perfectly valid criticism, as none of the flavor and humor of Guardians cards has been captured by the Planar Conflict cards. So let me explain why the cards were developed this way...

Planar Conflict cards were meant to be "scary". These guys represent a significant threat to the Mid Realms. If you remember, I started the set with a hideous purple border. While this stylistically matched traditional Guardians cards, it just wasn't working. At that point my perspective began to shift. Being from places outside the Mid Realms, I felt that that stylistically the cards should resemble Guardians, who had a "fluorescent" or "plasma-like" appearance long before World of Warcraft came around.

There's also another way to look at the design, metaphorically: if the new cards represent the current state of CCGs (by games such as World of Warcraft), then it is your duty to take these cards down with Guardians cards. Strike a blow for the Mid Realms - take a Vassal down with your Brap Back Goblins and your Sleeping Spirits! Destroy an Infernal with a Zombie and a Joomjaba! Strike a blow against these upstarts with a real game!

Thanks for listening, and keep those comments coming...

Creating Guardian Cards, Part Three: Icons, Text, and File Format

See part one here
See part two here

We've now completed the border and image. Let's move on to icons. Open your card and the icons.psd file (that came with Phil's templates) side-by-side. Each icon has its own layer, so make sure the proper layer is selected whenever you're going to copy something.

Use the Selection Marquee tool to draw a selection around either the red bar or green bar, depending on whether or not your creature can receive channeling.

Select Copy from the Edit menu. Select your card and then select Paste from the Edit menu. This pastes the icon into its own layer. Rename the layer so you know what it is - red bar or green bar will do nicely. Now use your Move tool to move the bar from wherever it is floating in you image, down to the little shield in the bottom right corner, just above the "CMP" lettering.

Repeat this procedure for any bribery icons...remember to select the correct layer when copying and to rename each icon layer that results from pasting into your image. Bribery icons go next to the off-color bonus box in the lower left. Here is what War Angel would look like with a beer bribery.

Since Angels don't have bribery, I remove it from card by simply deleting the layer. This is true for any icon you wish to remove - delete the layer.

On to text. Since I don't have the font style Phil calls for, I use Times New Roman. First let's create the name of the card. Select the Type tool and click in the title box under the artwork. You'll notice in my screen captures there's a little window below the layers window. This is the Character window and is useful to have open for text. To display it, go to the Window menu and select Character. Now, in the character window, make sure the font size is 8, and that the horizontal and vertical type scales are at 100% and the color is correct. Type the name of your card. In my case of course, it's War Angel.

Move to the creature size area. Click there to automatically create a new layer. Change the font size to 9 and type the size. For War Angel, a M is typed for a medium creature. You can use the Move tool to align your text within the box.

Repeat the above procedure to enter F for flyers; channeling value if your creature can channel, then enter Vitality.

Enter your card text with a font size of 6 and the horizontal and vertical scales set to 110%. Enter the creature class with a font size of 6. Finally, enter the artist by-line with a font size of 5. If you do not have a size 5 for Times New Roman, use size 6 with horizontal and vertical scales set to 85%.

If you're giving your creature a Stacking Penalty, size 9 for both Vitality and Stacking Penalty won't fit...you'll need to use size 8. Click and drag across your Vitality number to highlight it, then change the size from 9 to 8, and move it the word "Vitality". Then create a new text layer right below it for Stacking Penalty. Change the color to red by clicking the color selector in the Character Window. Finally, our last text to enter is the off-color bonus. This is also a size 9 font, but requires me to change the color since an Elemental's off-color bonus is white.

That's it! Make sure you save your file as a Photoshop file (.psd). Our original card size is 754 pixels wide by 1046 pixels tall. For web posting, go to the image menu and select image size, then re-size the card to 370 pixels wide by 510 pixels tall. Now save this version as a jpeg. You'll lose your layers but that's ok, this version is for display only. Select the jpeg quality as 10 (maximum), then save. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - IF YOU CLOSE YOUR IMAGE, PHOTOSHOP WILL ASK IF YOU WANT TO SAVE CHANGES TO YOUR CARD...IN MY CASE, WAR ANGEL.PSD. SAY NO!!! OTHERWISE, IT WILL SAVE THE LOW RESOLUTION JPEG OVER YOUR ORIGINAL PHOTOSHOP VERSION AND YOU'LL LOSE NOT ONLY HIGH  RESOLUTION, BUT ALSO ALL YOUR LAYERS!!! Sorry to yell, but trust me, you don't want to do this. I did it once by accident and had to re-create a card again from scratch. Not fun.

So here's my finished Elemental, War Angel:

And that's all there is to creating a creature card. Not too bad, right? In our final installment, we will look at creating other cards such as Terrain, Shields, Upgrades and Downgrades, Strongholds, Magic Items, Spells, and Events.

Creating Guardians Cards, Part Two: Border & Image in Photoshop

After we've moved past card design, we're ready to start making a card. For the purpose of this illustration, I've chosen the following Brom image, which I've named War Angel:

                                             

Since this is an Angel, it's going to have to be an Elemental, so we pull the image and the Elemental template into Photoshop side-by-side.

Use the Selection to determine which part of the image you want to move over. Sometimes, to make the image fit better, you may have to select a portion that won't be visible on the card, to maintain a proper proportion and not make the image look badly stretched.

Copy our selection, then go back to the Elemental template and Paste. You should have 2 layers now, the frame and the image.

Make sure you save your progress frequently so that you don't lose any of your hard work. Remember to use Save As and rename your file so that you don't save as Elemental and overwrite your template!

With the image layer selected, use the Move tool to position the image so that the portion you want to appear to come out of the frame is close to the edge. In this case the sword tip is positioned near the top and the wing is positioned near the right edge. Use the Free Transform tool to resize the image further, avoiding too much expansion or compression that would distort the image. Note that perspective is very important here...in this image the opposite wing appears farther in the distance. If that wing were made to "stand out" with the nearer wing behind the template frame, it wouldn't look right. The part of the image that you want to "stand out" should be closer, in perspective, than other parts of the image.

                                    

Use your Selection tool to select the part of the image that will "stand out". It's ok if you select part of the image that is not going to be covered by the template frame, since we are going to be working with a copy.

Make sure the image layer is selected, then select Copy from the Edit menu, then Layer Via Copy under the  Layer -> New menu. Now drag the image layer below the template frame layer. Your image is now under the template, while your new layer appears on top of the template frame.

Select that new layer, then select your Eraser tool and start erasing all the background around your element where it lays on top of the template frame, but do not erase the element that you want to "stand out" itself.

Zoom up in magnification and select a small Eraser brush size to make fine erasures if necessary.

  If you make a mistake, use your Undo or Step Backward to try again. You should be left with something like the image below, where my element is the wing. I erased all the whitish background over the template frame, leaving the wing "standing out".

Repeat this process for any other part of the image that needs to "stand out". In this case, I have a created another new layer and erased it so that the sword appears over the top of the template frame.

When you are finished it should look a little something like the image below. Note that we haven't altered the Elemental template frame or the original image, only copies of parts of the image. If you decide you want to start over, simply delete any new layers you added and you'll be ready to give it another try.

We've now achieved that eye-popping 3-D look that is a Guardians staple! Note that while most cards have this effect, some Spells and Magic Items don't, so it's not always necessary with those cards. Other types of cards like Terrain, Shields, and Strongholds never use this effect, so it's not appropriate for those card types.

Save your work again. In the next installment we'll add all the other stuff like text, channeling, bribery, and so on. We'll also talk about the appropriate format for sharing your card with the Guardian online community. Until next time, work on what we've covered here, and let me know if you have questions...

Creating Guardians Cards, Part 1: Tools & Design

This topic comes from a suggestion by Mr. Yves-Arnaud Jouret, who wanted to make his own cards but had no idea how to go about it. I agreed that some kind of tutorial might be helpful to the Guardians community. Now, I'm no expert on Photoshop, and there may be easier or better ways to do things...but my cards seemed to have impressed a lot of you, so I must be doing something right. The methods I use I basically figured out on my own. Those with more expertise are encouraged to step in with suggestions.

Ok, on to the tutorial. You'll need a few things to get started. These are as follows:

The card templates from Phil's site. Without these templates everything I've done would not have been possible. You can find the templates here. The templates include borders for Mortal, Elemental, External, Event, Magic Item, Spell, Shield Terrain, Standard Bearer, Stronghold Upgrade and Downgrade, and Terrain. Also included are icons for all three type of bribery, red and green channeling bars, and the command card symbol. The template shows the use of the Weidemann font, but I did not receive that with my version of Photoshop and I didn't want to pay for it, so I used the Times New Roman font instead. This required slightly different sizing methods than are listed on the template, but we'll cover those during design.

Photoshop. There are several other paint programs, but Photoshop is the industry standard. It's a little expensive, the only Windows copy I found on eBay is $400, if you use a Mac there are a few cheaper copies.. I bought mine just for Guardians work but I use it for so many other things now, it has been worth it. There are several versions of Photoshop; I'm using version CS2. If you're using a different version you'll have to figure out the equivalent commands. I have used Photoshop Elements in the past, it's good for digital photography but not as powerful for art. I can't say whether or not it will work for this.

Although you can use a mouse to paint, I decided to buy a Wacom graphics tablet. The precision of the tablet is crucial to making your image look good. The techniques I discuss will involve using the tablet. I bought a midrange model that cost me about $250 (with a student discount) from a school supply internet store; here is the same model at Amazon.





Finally you'll need some artwork. Always remember that artwork belongs to the artists and is their means of income. If an artist states the artwork is not to be used without permission, it is best not to use it. I try to support the artists whenever I can; I have bought several art books or calenders from Brom, Parkinson, Maitz, Hildebrandt, etc.

Once you've got Photoshop and graphics tablet installed, it's time to create the card. Sometimes you have the idea for a card and have to go find the artwork, like CJ's .sig cards. Sometimes you have a piece of artwork and you have to design the card around the artwork (like most of the Champion's Odyssey cards). I started with a book by Brom that had lots of great artwork, and I had to think of all the stats and text that support that art. At first I was just making cards that could destroy something. That is too easy and often makes cards overpowered. A better card design is to try to think of something that hasn't been done yet, like Zeenah, who blanked out Standard Bearers, or my Standard Bearer that negated immunities. But always keep in mind not to make cards TOO powerful. They unbalance the game and can make it less fun.

Determining whether or not a card is too powerful depends on the context. For instance, a couple of people complained that Destroying Angel was too powerful. After reading their arguement I agreed and changed the text. A whole shield of Destroying Angels couldn't be beat. Wraith Lord, on the other hand, was changed slightly after some complaints but was still very powerful. My reason for doing this was simple: every set includes at least one creature capable of taking down a Guardian. I wanted my set to do the same, so Wraith Lord was unchanged. But Wraith Lord is really the ONLY card in the set powerful enough to defeat a Guardian, so in the context of the entire set I felt the ability was fine. I also felt a Wraith Lord should have been more powerful than a Wraith. So that's what I mean by context.

A helpful guideline for card design was provided by Luke Peterschimdt, on Phil's site. He said the following:

"The basic "formula" for the average card is this.... Vitality = X, Off-Color Bonus = 1/2X, one Bribery icon, no channeling, red CMP bar, no ability. So if you create a card with Vitality 12 and only give it an off color bonus of 2, it should have a good ability."

 I've run up against a time limit and I'll have to continue in the next post. I'm sorry I didn't get into the actual Photoshop design but that will be next. Until then, get your materials and designs ready to go!