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Does anyone know how the v-set team physically designs the cards? Is there a program that they use that specifically makes custom cards? I play Fantasy Flights Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, and there is a program called StrangeEons that is awesome for custom cards (and i'll probably pick up the star wars LCG by them whenever they finally release it), and was looking for a similar solution for SWM.
Do they just photoshop? Years ago I was making a LOTR setting for SWM play, and making custom cards, but found it really tricky to get everything lined up perfectly from one card to the next... just finding a way to make all lines consistent (unfortunately I was using MS-Paint [I'm the MS Paint master] and its just not real capable of producing quality customs).
This is just for the virtual design... I don't really need to know what the printers do.
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It's just done in Photoshop. LESHIPPY is the one to really talk about that with, as he's been the primary graphics person in all the v-sets up to now. I don't believe he uses any special program other than Photoshop, though.
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Leshippy is our card graphic design god. Whatever he does is how they are designed.
As for printing, I don't who we use as contact, but they are proffessionally printed.
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Any publishing program that can do layering should work well. Basic graphic design on a background layer, other graphics and text elements on another layer(s). Set transparency (or not) on the foreground elements as desired.
I think MS Publisher could handle it. Maybe there is an OpenOffice equivalent?
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adamb0nd wrote: Is there a program that they use that specifically makes custom cards? Check out a program called Magic Set Editor. Easy to use and free. http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/
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Sithborg wrote:Leshippy is our card graphic design god. Whatever he does is how they are designed. ... which is why I never argue card design with graphic artists. They have access to stuff I don't have and even when they use basics like Photoshop, they have so much more skill/practice and a general understanding of how Photo works I just smile and say "Yes Sir." I Never argue with experts .... For the rest of us mere mortals and amateurs I guess it depends on what you want. If you want to recreate the V-Set templates you'll have to ask them, if you want to just recreate the WOTC templates there're plenty of places on the net to find them and create something modestly acceptable. Lining up everything, correct graphics and fonts, etc is easier said than done and ultimetly up to how much time you want to put into it. I get away with MS Paint and PowerPoint but I'm only trying to please myself. Whatever you create I'd love to see it down the road.
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Not 100% sure if this is what you are asking, but maybe...
If you already have the basic card design image (like the many WOTC card images out there) and merely want an easy way to add consistent text from card to card, I have personally found Excel to be the easiest to work with myself. Once you get one card to print out exactly as you want it (preferably a Commander with Force), you can just make a bunch of copies of that sheet, switch out the card image for each faction and have all the text boxes ready to be changed to whatever you need them to say. (only thing you need to worry about is each card image being exactly the same size and some kind of spacers to lay it in the right spot. Also, I find it best to have an individual text box for each of the Abilities, CE and Force so I can play with the vertical space between each field.)
The only problem I find is Excel is really limited in what it can do photo-manipulation wise, so I also run GIMP for that; which I can use to separate out the finished image I want over a single-colored background Excel can remove.
I am sure others have great ideas and skills which likely work even better, but this works extremely well for me and my limited ability to quickly make a run of whatever I need. (It also allows me to save all my customs in one big many-tabbed Excel file so I always have them available for reprint or change in one easy spot)
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Neifi wrote:Not 100% sure if this is what you are asking, but maybe...
If you already have the basic card design image (like the many WOTC card images out there) and merely want an easy way to add consistent text from card to card, I have personally found Excel to be the easiest to work with myself. Once you get one card to print out exactly as you want it (preferably a Commander with Force), you can just make a bunch of copies of that sheet, switch out the card image for each faction and have all the text boxes ready to be changed to whatever you need them to say. (only thing you need to worry about is each card image being exactly the same size and some kind of spacers to lay it in the right spot. Also, I find it best to have an individual text box for each of the Abilities, CE and Force so I can play with the vertical space between each field.)
The only problem I find is Excel is really limited in what it can do photo-manipulation wise, so I also run GIMP for that; which I can use to separate out the finished image I want over a single-colored background Excel can remove.
I am sure others have great ideas and skills which likely work even better, but this works extremely well for me and my limited ability to quickly make a run of whatever I need. (It also allows me to save all my customs in one big many-tabbed Excel file so I always have them available for reprint or change in one easy spot) That's actually a great idea. I don't have photoshop, and ms paint was horrible for this because it doesn't have a built in spell check, and you can only use one text format at a time.... so if I wanted to bold a special ability or power, I had to type that word, then create a new text block for the powers description and try and line it up with the first. God forbid I need to then edit that text, you can't modify it, you just have to delete the space and redo it all. maybe paint in window 7 is more advanced, but I'm still on xp. while I have been able to make really nice cards with it, out is very time consuming to keep them consistent.
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hahaha, yep, that is pretty much exactly what I experienced on the first couple I tried until I realized I just make way too many changes and spelling mistakes before I am finished anyway, and really need something extremely editable. Excel was perfect for me. Just drop me a line if you plan on giving it a go and have any questions - always more then happy to help Oh, and since you dont have Photoshop but might still want a similar art program, GIMP really is great. Really easy to use and probably most importantly, free. It can be found here http://www.gimp.org/
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