Rin

That's definitely weird, does it look normal in-browser for Safari? Seems like the library I used to export the image has a few kinks, I'll play around with an alternative to see if it doesn't help. Thankfully, it exports it to scale, so taking a screenshot of the card is still a perfectly fine workaround. (It was actually the intent, before I decided to go a step further)

1. As a former tavern owner, I like to imagine Yor Bjorven is always game for a good bar crawl. If he tastes anything that's particularly interesting, it's definitely getting written down or noted for him to return to. There's always room back home for better booze. 2. As a former tavern ow-- no, I'm kidding, that'd be insane. On the contrary, I think an athletic barkeep would know better than anyone the importance of staying hydrated, so I doubt you could convince Yor Bjorven to add anything to his game time drink. Maybe not even a Gatorade packet. 3. Oh god I don't wanna answer the Overwa-- WAIT, this was made for me. Profile picture highly relevant, I'm pretty big on Vocaloid (KAGAMINE RIN) so I'm more than used to listening to songs completely in Japanese. My brain gets distracted by lyrics incredibly easily when they're in my native language, so I love throwing on Hikarisyuyo (Rin) albums while working to help give me some vibe-able background noise. ---- 1. What do you or your player do to stay focused when it's time to lock in and get something done? 2. Your player is on the road, and coach has given them a night off. What are they doing with their free time? 3. What's the latest you're willing to stay up on any given night and why?

@Spade18 I included a better/cropped version of the player card here. Going to have to look into that bug at some point.

My submission this week is in the form of a website: https://vhl-card-template.sqnnet.dev/ Incoming context text to go along with my graphic that might count for a PT all on it's own, LOL At any rate-- I've been in talks with a few people regarding hockey cards, which has been a really nice development overall. We have a crazy talented pool of graphic makers here, so much so that it kinda puts me to shame. One of the greatest problems we'd face when it comes to making a large-scale card collecting or pack opening platform is the sheer amount of time required up front in order to generate the cards. Jersey swaps, text swaps, team logo and potentially color swaps, etc etc would all need to be performed in order to give each player their own card, which would require a lot of man hours. So, being a (now formerly, as I move into DevOps) professional full stack developer, I figured I'd try to create a little something unique for my graphic submission this week. Rather than just putting forth a graphic, I've created a little proof of concept website that allows anyone with an image of their own to create a card in my recreated Fleer template within seconds. As an example, I went ahead and put my most recent graphic of @Spade18's player, MacGregor Walcott, into the site: Admittedly, I should have used an image that would have fit better within the aspect ratio of the card, but I don't want to re-do an entire jersey swap for the time being. I also do notice a little artifact on the right side of the card, looks like a possible issue with the library I'm using for the "Save As PNG" button, because the card doesn't appear that way in the image preview. That can easily be cropped out, though, for easy use in signatures. When the stakes are a bit higher than just making a quick proof of concept, I'll investigate that and see if I can't clean it up a little bit. The resolution for the card is deliberately locked because you motherfuckers insist on throwing 1920x1080 wallpapers in your fucking FORUM SIGNATURE WHICH TAKES UP 15X THE SPACE YOUR POST DOE-- ahem, I digress. This, though, serves as a kind of soft test for what could be accomplished somewhere down the line. It's a little bit of spit, duct tape, and chip clips behind the scenes to keep the output looking pretty, and I'm sure complexity would be far greater when working on more detailed templates, but I feel like it's a great start toward adding some QoL/worldbuilding features to the VHL if we ever care for them. In my mind, that could potentially include: Allowing people to upload an image or image URL, and displaying a (possibly unique per season) card just like this on their player page These could also be collected or snapshotted to show a "collection" of cards from a season Generating cards for some kind of pack opener/card collection minigame Providing new users a quick and easy "first graphic" that helps bring them into the world of the VHL Not to mention, the possibilities for expansion: Applying an animation to said cards to flip them over, revealing stats and maybe a short, customizable biography Creating special variants of cards to commemorate career milestones, highlights, award wins, etc Encouraging members to upload their own templates or designs, driving engagement and rewarding those with something that will impact the entire site This is just me coming up with things from the top of my head, though. Feel free to play around with this and let me know what you think!

Actually, the more I think on this, it should be fairly easy to do this with CSS. Very intriguing.

I definitely thought about this, as well. My brain immediately went to making a signature-type graphic where the front and back are placed net to each other, and stats are included on the back, but we might be able to do a little bit better. A small animation with the card turning to reveal the back would be awesome, but I don't know how easy it would be to keep that in a template/produce that effect for every card. Possibly worth looking into. By all means, tweak or update the template if you want; this was mostly a post to get the idea out there so I can start to get feedback. It absolutely gets grindy if it's just a few people working on them, which is why I'd push for this to live in more of a "participate if you want, as much as you want" kind of space. People could contribute their own player, a few players from their team, etc, and there would be no obligation to include the entire league. The last thing I want is for this to become a league job that completely burns people out.

A few people are creating hockey cards for graphic submissions, and I think that's sick as fuck. I love sport card designs, I love jersey swaps, and I love doing anything I can to help "suspend disbelief" that the VHL graphics and articles we post are of our actual players, as roleplay-coded as that might be. But one thing left untapped for us, I think, is a united front on creating player cards that unify the league in a single point in time. And while that may sound like some word salad that my 5am brain put together, what I mean by that is this: trading card companies have a sort of "template" that they use for base edition cards, and this template changes on a year-to-year basis. For example, the Yor Bjorven card that I posted earlier this week is based off of an old Fleer template that I used to collect a ton as a kid. Those cards are where I got my start in collectables, and they hold a particularly special place in my heart. I think it'd be really cool if we put together a template as a community and posted it for all to use, so that everyone could contribute toward creating a full "set" of trading cards for a season. All they would need is a jersey swap/render of a player to plug into the lowermost layer of the template, add the name and position, and update the colors/logo of the template, if need be. For those who are newer to the world of photo editing, it could serve as a nice starting point or early challenge for getting into the hobby, or improving their own skill or knowledge of how these tools work. Having said that, I've started some work on creating a general VHL card template to get things started. I'm not 100% sold on the format just yet, so if anyone has thoughts or adjustments that they'd like to make, please feel more than free to post your suggestions. The following is a sample card created with the template: The template is pretty simple, but does a few things that I think are important for a good general card design. It leaves room for colors to be altered, and for the team to be represented. It leaves plenty of background space for players/renders to be featured. It presents a clear consistency when it comes to displaying player and position names. The top of this card, actually, uses the crown from the VHL logo as a geometric influence (since these are VHL cards, after all). As an aside-- yes, I know the crown technically was never supposed to be a permanent fixture on the VHL logo, but people have already been using it for so long... The "crown" shapes at the top are off center to look more appealing, as perfectly centering the shapes doesn't do a good enough job of implying the crown, in my opinion. Of course, all of these layers can be flipped at the behest of anyone using the template for themselves. As of now, I'm not 100% happy with the design. Longer names run into trouble when trying to fit them into the allotted space. I'm thinking of just cutting it down to last names, and maybe featuring the first name above or below, but I'd like to get some feedback from others who are interested in helping refine the template. When we come to more of a consensus on what the template looks like, I'll update the post accordingly. The logo is something I quickly threw together, using the same crown from the VHL logo. I almost named the card series "Crown," but I decided to go with "Victory" to better communicate that these are VICTORY Hockey League cards, just in case these end up on Twitter or Reddit for recruitment, etc. The outline/stroke pattern of black, white, black ensures that the logo can be read on top of any combination of colors, as is commonly known of white text with black outlining. The font is Foxlite Script, which I've not only included in the Google Drive link, but also made sure to use because it's 100% free-- meaning we can't run into any kind of copyright or ownership issues by using it whatsoever. Not that we intend to profit on something like this, but still-- nice to have. I've included all of the assets in a Google Drive link here, so feel free to play around with them as much as you want. Note that, because I don't have Photoshop, I wasn't able to save a text layer with the correct font, font sizes, and stroke patterns. That would be a tremendous help if someone was able to update the file to include that, making it even easier for people to transpose their own player names onto the template. At the end of the season (or a few seasons, maybe), I'd love to compile a huge image of cards all within the same template, as if they all came from the same series. It'd be cool as hell to have our own little "collection" of sorts. At any rate, please let me know what you think of the idea! A shame this ended up being a .com article... with multiple graphics and nearly 1,000 words... ah, fuck.

This is hot as FUCK

One game, it's a perfect performance on 20 shots for Yor Bjorven The next, he faces an ever so slightly higher number of shots and gets absolutely torched What in the fuck am I supposed to do LOL

1. Helsinki being so good right off the bat has been surprising, but I think the bigger surprise to me is just how split or min/maxed the performances have been so far. So many teams are obviously great, so many teams are obviously dogshit. 2. I want to say no-- they have to pay some of the other great teams eventually, and one of them is going to have to break through. That one Blackhawks team went 21-0-3 though, so I guess anything's possible. 3. I'm putting Future Considerations on my team, who just got released from Halifax. Dude is a generational trade asset, you'd be foolish not to want that on your roster. ----- 1. What's your go-to coping mechanism when a Trivia question isn't immediately searchable via the Portal? 2. You get to decide the cover athlete of VHL 99, who are you putting on there and why? 3. According to you or your player, what's the best place to watch a VHL game on gameday?

I'd certainly be interested

Definitely doable, would just require a LOT of work to have enough cards ready to open. Also would depend how many features it would come with. Are card collections saved, are they attached to accounts, etc etc...

I'm working on a more original template for VHL cards, but in the meantime, I have a fun recreation of a 2005/2006 era baseball card:

G- Jorgen Lovstrom LW: Gianfranco Del Rocco Still @Corco

Helsinki will always have a special place in my heart, though I conveniently talked about it at length in a recent Media Spot Aside from that, though, I've always regarded the s76 Chicago Phoenix as absolutely magical. That locker room of @Quik, @fishy, @Nykonax, @gorlab, @solas, etc was easily the most fun I've ever had with a group of people in the VHL. There were genuinely no weak leaks on that team personality wise, and I wonder frequently if I'll ever get to be a part of a core like that again

D- Mina D- Andrew Skilton @Girts

I dunno man, there's nothing hotter than consent

This goes kinda hard, why was it ever cut from circulation?

D- Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage C- Spanish Moon Moth @Girts

This is something I've already seen some people doing with their graphics, but I've recently been on more of a kick of seeing custom trading cards made for players as opposed to sigs. I know the old VHL.com article supplement called out hockey cards specifically, but it seems like the trend has fallen out of favor over time. One of the cooler things I ended up doing during a short stint in the PBE was recreating baseball card templates from when I used to collect them as a kid, and then featuring PBE players in said template. For some cards, I was able to find the EXACT fonts used for some pretty faithful recreations, if I do say so myself. I'd love for more people to dabble in cards as graphics or sigs as a whole. Sports edits look nice and crisp for sure, but to me it's starting to feel a little too much like that Buzz Lightyear in the toy aisle gif. I wanna see some cool looking card deisgns- retro, nostalgic, custom even! We could collaborate on our own set of VHL cards, even. Maybe I'm a little biased, too, because cards would at least somewhat force the presence of jersey swaps/altering to some degree, rather than just cleverly editing it or leaving in a full-on NHL jersey instead. At any rate, I definitely feel the urge to run with more card-based sigs for Yor Bjorven than sports edits, and will probably dabble in putting some together for teammates as well. Bonus points if all teammates are in the same jersey style; would be SO satisfying to look at a whole "set" of one team and have it really feel like the individual members of the same squad.

yo waddup forum dwellers

TBH, this is the open secret about taking jobs in the VHL. The amount of work required for some roles absolutely dwarfs that of someone that just casually posts articles and graphics for their weekly 12, for no added benefit other than a few "thank-yous" from the few people that give enough of a shit about forum content to read it. I ended up burning out and resenting the fact that I wanted to put in work or effort on a lot of things that people didn't really care about or latch on to. The truth is, if you want to do something with your VHL content, you can just do it. IMO, there isn't any reason at all to sacrifice PT freedom for a little extra job pay, just center your media spots/graphics/.coms around whatever projects you want to push or encourage in the league. The "ask 3/answer 3" press conference thread we have up is kind of a hilarious example of that; apparently there were pitches to make that an acceptable form of PT when, in reality, the rules of press conferences already allowed us to do that in the first place. Thus, the thread was started and PCs got so much easier to manage. At this point I'm on a bit of a tangent, so I'll reel myself back in to basically voice that your thoughts are both heard and shared 100%. If it gets to a point where you stop having fun, don't be afraid to just drop it and get back to doing something you enjoy. It gets very easy to turn the VHL into a second job, and when it started to get to that point for me, I started resenting it until I eventually lashed out against it. This is supposed to be a fun hobby/creative outlet at the end of the day, and it's much more fun when it stays that way. Don't ever feel the need to justify yourself when it comes to GM handlings. The armchair GM-ing and commentary can get to be a lot, it's exhausting. If you're working to do right by your team and are, above all, keeping a fun environment going, then genuinely who cares.