While I don't play Yugioh currently I still try and keep up with the general goings on with the game. One of the big things at the moment is that the new banned list brought the number of scapegoats you can play up to max, perhaps I thought people would like goat tokens with a twist?. Combine this idea with the fact I had the materials available to create some i set about creating some myself, in todays post I will look at some of those tokens, talk a little about the thought processes behind the designs, and finish off with a brief look at one of the ways in which you can go about making tokens.
We will skip over the first two sets I created for the moment and move strait on to look at wave 3 because lets face it this is the internet and therefore all about cats. Or in this instance creatures that are at least in part cat, as much as a pair of cabbits/bunnycats, a cat thats a witch and Catbug can be at least.
By this point in the process I have also refined my technique, ironed out many of the problems that I encountered, and ditched the custom template I had spent quite some time on, since theres something to be said for nice clean designs that can be used not just as goats but as tokens in any game.
I also wanted to try and make sure the tokens express at least a little of each of the series styles in their designs while still trying to maintain some sense of a group.
A task made slightly more difficult with Ryo ohki since I had drawn the original image some time ago and the Bleach hat isn't exactly cannon. The carrot background helps quite a bit in that regard but it still feels as though it falls slightly outside the style of the other 3, possibly because the others use up more of the cards area.
I suppose the Kyubey token could be considered spoilers? On the other hand everyone should know that that particular bunnycat should not be trusted so perhaps its a public service. For this card I wanted to get a sense of the dual nature of what he's offering and the way the witches dimensions tend to be slightly surreal experiences. At the same time you have to be aware that too much detail can cause things to get muddled at this small size so I countered that by using large blocks and keeping the number of colours to a minimum.
Which leads nicely into the other element that I concentrated much of my focus on which was the selection of colours that I used, this was especially important for the blair token since Soul Eater has a very bold bright contrasting colour pallet. I was slightly sceptical of the colour of the pumpkins at first but with the purple background they really make the whole image pop. The basic shapes took some time to build up but the nice thing is once you have one of something you can always create more of it, there were still quite a number of squares to draw though.
Catbug's background by contrast was somewhat more straightforward to create, mostly since the series is likely created in a vector drawing program similar to the one I was using to create all these images. The variable line width black outline is more of a concession to my own persona taste since the show tends to keep its lines very narrow, if it uses them at all.
Finally for today I will explain the first method people worked out to create foil tokens, its not really a very efficient method and can also be quite messy which is probably why most people have abandoned it but its probably still interesting to learn how people do it, or did it rather.
The first thing your going to need is a supply of raw materials the most important of which are a load of foil cards from the game of your choice. What set they are from actually makes quite a difference, some older MTG cards for example are easier to use than more modern cards, and Yugioh sets are all over the place with their ink quality and resistance to these methods.
After that you will need a way to remove the ink from the cards, you could use an ink eraser but thats hard work and expensive, your could even use glass paper as long as you were careful. Most people went for something a tad stronger and more effective which was another of this methods problems because the substance in question is acetone which isn't exactly pleasant stuff and should be avoided if possible both in terms of skin contact and the air flow of the environment you use it in.
Which means at this point I add a disclaimer that I don't advise people use this method and do so at their own risk (Seriously its not worth the effort or cost of materials)
In any case you take a cloth add a dab of acetone and carefully rub off the ink on the cards. Even beyond the problems I have outlined thus far you then have to make sure the card doesn't start to get damaged from too much liquid being absorbed and at the same time find a way to prevent stray acetone from getting on any areas you don't want removed, most notably that reverse side.
You will then be left with cards much like those featured above with which you can do as you please. From here you will want to spend some time on the computer drawing your tokens in your image program of choice you will then take that image and place enough of them to fill an A4 sheet of paper in another file. or perhaps you could paint directly on the card with some form of paint if you wanted.
Finally you will have to print out the images, cut them out, and stick them on the cards except instead of paper you will have printed the file out on some form of transparent material to allow the foil to show though.
You may also notice that your printer cant print white, needless to say this is another slight issue with this method.
From my tone you may have noticed I'm not a fan, still its important to teach people stuff, in that way there are more minds working on the problem and you get new techniques develop.
Next time I should have an actual playmat to look at so join me again then.
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