The Creative Process of a Fan Fake Card

[ColdFire64]

"Now draft that holo Wooper the person to your left just passed up..."

Sorry to bring up an old topic, but how exactly did you make it holographic? Or, to be more exact, how should I make it holographic? I personally wanted to know, and I am not one of those people who like to cut out shiny wrapping paper and crudely glue it onto my card...

First off I want to say THANK YOU very much for the links you guys supplied and all the time spent making the article. It really inspired me! I just got done making my first card, and I must say it is one of the best things I have ever worked on, considering I wouldn't normally be able to get this card to look so good on the 300th try, that's how good I think I did on it. Anyways to answer your question....

I wondered about this myself until I started playing around in photoshop. (This is all from photoshop so if you aren't using it then this advice is useless) At the links above, you should get supplies that include holographic sheets so just save the ones you want to use. What you do is paste the holo sheet onto the card, which makes a new layer. Once you get the sheets fitted right by using the wand tool to put all the pics in the card window flawlessly, you then have to do the same with the holo sheet. Make sure you have your background or pic that you want holoed layered FIRST before adding on the holo sheet. Once you do that, just use the wand tool again to fit the holo sheet in the picture/card window. Once you do this, you will notice just the holo sheet and that you can't see the pic/background, right? What I did was click on the holo sheet layer (bottom right where your layers are) then right click and go to blending options.

Once you are in blending options there are MANY ways you can go about making your holo sheet "transparent" so that you can see your background and such. What I did was select overlay and then just adjust the opagueness to a lower number. When doing this you can start to see the holo sheet get lighter or darker and be able to see your picture/background! Just adjust it to how you think it is right and then if the card picture or background looks too dark, don't worry it's easily fixable. Just get the holo where you want it first. Then get out of that box and go up to Image, then adjustments, then brightness/contrast. Other people may do this whole thing differently but I got it all to work this way. Just adjust the brightness and contrast until the picture looks just right. Your holo sheet won't change any color and it should be where you thought it was best from before. Just make sure it stands out like a regular holo if you can and you should be done!

Now the thing I wanted to ask is, where can I find CURRENT holo sheets? Ive seen MANY fake cards out there that have the cool new holo sheets that they use in TRR, FRLG, etc where the holos are energy symbols and such. If you guys can help me by supplying some working links to get me going on those, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Oh, and does anyone also know where I can find a free image hosting site where I can put my card up at which has NO size restrictions? Apparently I can only find places that allow 100mb and nothing higher and since my pic is from photoshop, even saving it as JPEG or GIF doesn't make it small enought but I want to host it at it's original quality for FREE if possible. Anyone know? Any help would be appreciated! If I can find a hosting site I'll post my pic here! :clap:

 

[ZoraJolteon]

www.imageshack.us is what I use.

Fangking has the modern holosheets, but he only gave them out to a few special people, and now he's retired I doubt anyone else will be getting them.

As for holosheets, use two laters. The top one colour dodge at 80% opacity, the bottom one Multiply at 30% opacity. Works a treat.

 

[ColdFire64]

www.imageshack.us As for holosheets, use two laters. The top one colour dodge at 80% opacity, the bottom one Multiply at 30% opacity. Works a treat.

First off Zora, your GSSS "fakes" (I'd hate to even say they are fake they look so good) are the bomb. It looks like you spent a lot of time making them. Do you just us the same card/picture and just put in the translations yourself? Or do you just grab all the symbols and put it all together like a normal fake card making process?

As for your holo advice, I'm a bit confused so I just want to make sure I get it right. So you want me to use 2 holo sheets which is 2 holo layers, then slap them onto the area where the pic of the card goes, then apply each "blending option" setting for each holo layer, correct??? I'm also not exactly sure how to multiply opacity by 30% so any help on that would be great.

I did put together a couple of fakes just for fun. I could only do "overlay" with the 1 holo sheet I had at the time and put the opagueness around 80. Here's the links from the hosting site you gave me, which let me host these up:

http://img297.echo.cx/img297/6074/charizardstarv38jf.jpg
http://img169.echo.cx/img169/9093/shadowcharizardfinal2oq.jpg

Keep in mind I only made them for fun. I did think up the attacks but came to realize that they are a bit broken, but not that broken.

I also put these up in the "Create A Card" thread as well but have only been bashed on the attacks being too broken and unrealistic and too much HP. Other than that I have no criticism on how the cards themselves look so I am not sure if I got them down right or if people just like to comment on HP and attacks in that particular forum.

Anyways Zora I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me on the cards I made. I did use Fangking's walkthrough, but his whole thing of "put it so many pixels to the left of this and etc) confused me a bit because I don't know HOW to tell how many pixels I am away from something because I'm still pretty n00bish with photoshop. Any help you can provide as well as advise on making these better would be greatly appreciated.

After all, these cards were my first cards I ever attempted making, EVER and I even amazed myself with the results but that doesn't mean they are perfect. Let me know what you think.

 

[ZoraJolteon]

First off Zora, your GSSS "fakes" (I'd hate to even say they are fake they look so good) are the bomb. It looks like you spent a lot of time making them. Do you just us the same card/picture and just put in the translations yourself? Or do you just grab all the symbols and put it all together like a normal fake card making process?

I put everything togeather myself

As for your holo advice, I'm a bit confused so I just want to make sure I get it right. So you want me to use 2 holo sheets which is 2 holo layers, then slap them onto the area where the pic of the card goes, then apply each "blending option" setting for each holo layer, correct??? I'm also not exactly sure how to multiply opacity by 30% so any help on that would be great.

Mutiply is the Blending Option. The opacity is 30%. They're seperate attributes.

I did put together a couple of fakes just for fun. I could only do "overlay" with the 1 holo sheet I had at the time and put the opagueness around 80. Here's the links from the hosting site you gave me, which let me host these up:

http://img297.echo.cx/img297/6074/charizardstarv38jf.jpg
http://img169.echo.cx/img169/9093/shadowcharizardfinal2oq.jpg

Keep in mind I only made them for fun. I did think up the attacks but came to realize that they are a bit broken, but not that broken.

I also put these up in the "Create A Card" thread as well but have only been bashed on the attacks being too broken and unrealistic and too much HP. Other than that I have no criticism on how the cards themselves look so I am not sure if I got them down right or if people just like to comment on HP and attacks in that particular forum.

I'm pretty much the only image faker in CAC, so everyone else isn't exactly in a position to comment on anything else.

Anyways Zora I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me on the cards I made. I did use Fangking's walkthrough, but his whole thing of "put it so many pixels to the left of this and etc) confused me a bit because I don't know HOW to tell how many pixels I am away from something because I'm still pretty n00bish with photoshop. Any help you can provide as well as advise on making these better would be greatly appreciated.

Are you sure you're using the correct fonts? They seem too large. Photoshop also has a handy grid option aid placement.

After all, these cards were my first cards I ever attempted making, EVER and I even amazed myself with the results but that doesn't mean they are perfect. Let me know what you think.

For first time fakes, they're a lot better that most. I don't think it'll be too long before you're able to create them as accurate as mine.

 

[ColdFire64]

Are you sure you're using the correct fonts? They seem too large. Photoshop also has a handy grid option aid placement.

Yeah I'm pretty sure. I am using the fonts that Fangking suggested in his tutorial and followed every step to the best of my ability. The only thing I can think of doing wrong is not placing the text or certain other things correctly. This is what leaves me to my next question for you. How do I pull up the handy grid option aid placement that you mentioned? Does this have to do with "pixel placing" or "1 pixel to the right of..." type of stuff that was mentioned in Fangking's Tutorial? I'm sure if I used a grid option to help me in placement of the stuff I have in doubt of (so that I place everything correctly) then I can make the cards even better but I just don't know HOW to activate this option. Could you please help me with getting this tool up?

Thanks for the comments thus far. I greatly appreciate the feedback and the help.

 

[ColdFire64]

Are you sure you're using the correct fonts?

I'm pretty sure I'm using the correct fonts. In Fang's tutorial, he says the size can vary from 11-17 size font for powers and attack descriptions, and I've only been using 11 for the attack descriptions while following everything else by his book. For some reason, 11.3 font size looks really good and I just updated my shadow charizard with this font size, and I also have my newest card, Rocket's Tyranitar, completed with the same font size (11.3 for attack desc and powers/bodies) and the link to see it is in my signature.

Which font size do you recommend using? Do you think my fonts are big enough/right size? Giving me a range size of 11-17 is just way too vague, and most font I'd assume never passes size 12 but that is why I'm asking you what I should use. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and thanks to you my holos look even better. My Tyranitar holo is based off of your advice, and man does it look awesome! Thanks so much for giving me that advice and any more advice would be much appreciated. Thanks again!