VHL Card Template Collaboration

[Rin 235]

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.

[ace_five_ 529]

Love the idea and would be happy to contribute to it as well!

[LucyXpher 1,994]

I’d be interested in working on some cards!  I love this so much!

[Spartan 4,734]

My feedback would probably lean more towards adding things beyond just render and player name - I don't love the attributes being involved as much the way the SHL does it, but I think if we make seasonal cards, the stats for that season would be pretty sick. I'm also not sure that I love that card template itself, maybe I'm just too addicted to other TCG card types where they're a bit flashier? But beggars can't be choosers

 

Love the effort and would be super excited to see what you guys can come up with!

[Triller 1,756]

Not a bad idea if a consensus could be met.  My favorite part is creating the template though so it would be a lot more grindy to create these if it was just jersey swap after jersey swap lol  I like the idea Spartan has about adding a specific season just for posterity but I would avoid adding any stats, mostly because it is just boring typing and formatting stats and trying to fit them on a card while also making sure they are readable.  It also restricts the overall design when having to consider stats placement.  @Rin you on discord?

[Big_Dyl 241]

I love this idea and would love to see it happen

[sadie 1,055]

This is a great idea! I would happily pitch in to help on making em as well  

[Rin 235]

4 hours ago, Spartan said:

I think if we make seasonal cards, the stats for that season would be pretty sick

 

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.

 

3 hours ago, Triller said:

My favorite part is creating the template though so it would be a lot more grindy to create these if it was just jersey swap after jersey swap lol

 

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.

[Grape 855]

It'd be neat to see people doing "pack renders" where you have like 4 basic template player cards and then 1 unique card

[Rin 235]

1 hour ago, Rin said:

A small animation with the card turning to reveal the back would be awesome

 

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