Almost there...

[Malagar]

Greetings trusted LackeyCCG Community,
this is Malagar - your faithful template designer and game creator. Consider this as some kind of "keep alive post" and sneak peek for all Lackey Insiders around.

My main project Gods & Minions is still alive. We are currently re-designing most of the core rules and take many concepts back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, the artwork and card databases are growing day by day - making this revised version of Gods & Minions the biggest and boldest incarnation possible!

For all Newbies: Gods & Minions is a customizable, non-collectible card game that will be available in the future for print and play as well as a real product. Its about rivaling tribes that battle each other in a dark fantasy world using simple but strategical game mechanics to simulate skirmish warfare using cards instead of miniatures.

Comments welcome, we are still working on the the template?

[Trevor]

Try scaling it to a width of around 200 pixels and I think some things will look too small.
When people design templates at a large scale, I think they often get the relative sizes of fonts and symbols wrong, as far as what things will look like for a printed card at that size.

[Dan55]

Also, it seems a little bit dark.  When shrunk down it may be hard to see.

[Trevor]

There is a lot of unneeded space at the top. And I think when at actual card sizes, the icons might lose their coolness. I think a very simplified iconic design would be better. Cruder with less detail would work better I think.

Compare your template aside of the magic one, for example.

Both of these are 200 pixels wide, though one has a black border.

The fonts you use for the name are not sustainable. With a slightly larger card name, it would either not fit, or you would have to use a different font size. You should use a simple font, that is designed to be compact and easy to read above all else, like Times. Note how the magic card looks a lot cleaner.

[Malagar]

thanks for your feedback guys!

yes the title font needs to be changed, also note that the "g" in knight cannot be read because the skulls are in the way

regarding the color, the dwarves are a "earth" faction - so the template is quite dark

regarding size:

this template was designed to fit a printing company - not lackey. it uses the typical 2,5" by 3,5" size including offset, bleed and cutting borders

finally: the cards are borderless, there will be no black border around the cards - this has been done in several card games already

[Trevor]

My comments had nothing to do with "fitting" lackey. I'm not even sure what that means since plugins use all sorts of card sizes. I was talking about the general ratio of overall card size to font size. As is, I think some of the text will be hard to read when printed.
The background texture of the text box makes the text harder to read.

A dark template is fine, but I think accents like a white stroke around certain things will allow for more contrast to make things pop more.
Here is a very dark card template, but they use light elements for contrast.


Your armor, attack, and speed icons look slick, but all that detail will be lost at printing size. And the failed attempt at detail will actually make things look blurry I think. There are 2 solutions. Either greatly enlarge the icons, or make them much more simplified, like an icon, so they are more symbols than pictures. A good side effect of using simplified icons is that you can use them in the text box instead of the words. So you can have "+1 <speed icon>" instead of of "+1 speed", and that both looks cooler and saves you text space which can add up.

[Malagar]

Thanks again Trevor, im already working on this - soon I will show you another set of templates with different background colors.

The size of the card is directly from the printing company, i dont know why M:TG cards that you find in the net feature a different ratio compared to my card (my company wants me to do templates 2,75" by 3,75" then they will be cut to the original 2,5" by 3,5"). well, i took the screenshot out of photoshop so maybe i did not catch the whole card.

shrinking on a pixel base looks more awkward compared to a 300 dpi print. i dont think it will be that hard to read.

but - taking your advice, im already doing some changes:

1. increased brightness of all textboxes a lot
2. removed the bottom border from the bottom textbox, just the single insignia remains
3. removed some drop shadows that grow too far into the textboxes
4. changed font size of the title (maybe i'll change the font type too)

regarding the icons ... i dont know yet ... my artist prefers real painted icons over iconic ones. we have a set of vector icons too. but the icons on the card are big enough to look good when using painted icons. i would agree if the icons where be as small as M:TG mana symbols, but they are at least 2x if not 3x the size.

Trevor, that LOTR template also uses "painted" icons instead of monochrome ones. Are they hard to read? Okay they are much bigger... I really have to think about this issue (my artist refuses to do monochrome icons)

please keep em coming - this helps us a lot!

[Malagar]

attached you find one more template that should make border and cutting edges a little bit more clear

1. the outer (fat) border shows the actual CUTTING line of the card (anything beyond that gets cut off)
2. the inner (slim) border shows the actual CONTENT of the card (anything beyond that is treated like a border)

3. this template is somewhat borderless, so there is no black/white border like in M:TG, instead the background textures extend to the very edges of the card. this has been done in several games already.

[Trevor]

The size of the card is directly from the printing company, i dont know why M:TG cards that you find in the net feature a different ratio compared to my card (my company wants me to do templates 2,75" by 3,75" then they will be cut to the original 2,5" by 3,5"). well, i took the screenshot out of photoshop so maybe i did not catch the whole card.

The issue I'm talking about is the height of the fonts relative to the height of the card. The ratio of font height to card height has a tendency to be off when people design a card template at a large size. I wasn't suggesting that you actually reduce the size of your images, but rather that you temporarily scale them to around 200x280 (whatever preserves their aspect ratio) and then look carefully at the card. If you can read the text at that size, things should look good on a printed physical card. If you can't, you should seriously consider the changing fonts and/or font sizes.

Also when designing templates, consider cards that are outliers. If you design a card template with an average text box length or average card name length, things might be terrible when you make  a card with a long name or huge text box.

[Dragoon]

Whiten the textbox background a bit more. You don't want fancy backgrounds for the text, you will want to be able to read them on a glance.

Also, do the fancy skull icons have anything to do? I almost can't see them.

[Malagar]

@Dragoon

Already made the text and title box more white, the title is now a bit smaller too

removed the bottom decoration from the text box, but the insignia in the middle remains

the skulls mark the rank of the unit, its not a very important stat - but its required

i'll post another image soon - also showing other template variants (there will be a template for each tribe in the game)

[Malagar]

[Trevor]

That's definitely an improvement, but you can see how the fonts on Progenitus are still easier to read. The font you chose for the name will not work if the name happens to be longer. Think of the largest card name you want want to use, and choose a font that would allow you to use that name. You might want to use the Title/subtitle model, like decipher's lord of the rings CCG. Progenitus is an outlier in that respect. It has, I believe, the widest casting cost of any magic card. The average magic card cost is 2 or 3 circles.

From an artistic point of view, consider adding a bit of a border, such as between the text box and art box. Those lines look a little unpolished.

Also, consider a design where the attack, defense, and speed symbols have a color to help identity them. When designing them, consider how they will look if you refers to them on the card solely by their symbol.