Pokémon TCG

[CaSquall]

These are the cards I've done so far
- - - -



Have a favorite pkmn card? Show me and I might recreate it
If you feel like joining up and doing some cards youself, you are more than welcome to!
If anyone's interested, here is the PSD with EVERYTHING in it, sorted and layered (mostly): https://www.dropbox.com/s/08eavbjqtuw2td...%20tcg.psd

[Kitsu]

"So you make a whole thread to show just 2 cards, which aren't even complete?"
Yeah sadly I'm the type of person who likes some feedback when doing something like this, which motivates me to continue and maybe even getting more people on board. Theres still tons to do with this, I've just made some of my first progress.

Don't worry, any time is a good time for feedback! The earlier you get it, the sooner you can apply it and improve!

Speaking of feedback, it's honestly kind of hard to provide any when you're showing pixel art at a size larger than 1x. I mean, sure, larger sizes are really good for showcasing or when seriously using the pieces, but it's most helpful for critique to view them at 1x.

For the Charizard, I'd say it looks pretty good. It's got a few issues with the shading causing the shapes and proportions to look a little wonky (such as making its right arm / left OPV fatter and less angled than it should be). Also, it looks far better with the black outlines than the green one; the black one helps to separate it from everything (especially since the background is thoroughly green) and doesn't have an issue where the left (right OPV) hand's nail actually looks like a giant hole in its arm.
You might also want to slightly increase the contrast in the yellow/orange card border (though not too much).

I hope to see this continue, and might actually even do one or two myself (probably not though; pokemon isn't exactly a thing I've cared about for 15 years).

[CaSquall]

"So you make a whole thread to show just 2 cards, which aren't even complete?"
Yeah sadly I'm the type of person who likes some feedback when doing something like this, which motivates me to continue and maybe even getting more people on board. Theres still tons to do with this, I've just made some of my first progress.

Don't worry, any time is a good time for feedback! The earlier you get it, the sooner you can apply it and improve!

Speaking of feedback, it's honestly kind of hard to provide any when you're showing pixel art at a size larger than 1x. I mean, sure, larger sizes are really good for showcasing or when seriously using the pieces, but it's most helpful for critique to view them at 1x.

For the Charizard, I'd say it looks pretty good. It's got a few issues with the shading causing the shapes and proportions to look a little wonky (such as making its right arm / left OPV fatter and less angled than it should be). Also, it looks far better with the black outlines than the green one; the black one helps to separate it from everything (especially since the background is thoroughly green) and doesn't have an issue where the left (right OPV) hand's nail actually looks like a giant hole in its arm.
You might also want to slightly increase the contrast in the yellow/orange card border (though not too much).

I hope to see this continue, and might actually even do one or two myself (probably not though; pokemon isn't exactly a thing I've cared about for 15 years).

First of all thanks for the feedback, and it's even a longer post, awesome

The first card I've shown, the pikachu one, the actual artwork is from the Gameboy Color game, so it's only enlarged to explain the setup of the cards, Most of the cards which will be made (hopefully) are gonna for the most part have the over 100+ pieces of pixel art from the game and the japan-exclusive sequel. So rather than showing off the art, it's just there for structure. I've only done the Charizard in terms of the art, that I've made 100% myself.

Speaking of the Charizard, I have to agree with it looking MUCH better with the black outline, I only made the other version because many of the original cards use the yellow-y outline, so I tried it out to see if it would fit more in with the style.

Regarding the arm, I think you are talking about the arm thats poking out of the cardframe, could you perhaps give a more thorough explanation of what you mean as I don't quite understand, maybe even showing an example?
I'm trying to stay true to the original color scheme of the GB game, thats why the border are the colors it is. I would love to change it actually but I'm at a miss as to what colors to use.
I'm having the same problem with the card backgrounds (The one color backdrop showing the element color, somewhat faded to not obstruct the card info) as the color scheme makes it hard to find nice-looking colors to use.

Speaking of you maybe partaking in this, I have a photoshop PSD with all the artwork from the games, my card frame, and most of what I've compiled in an easy to use PSD, with named folders and named layers for maximum easyness (that psd took soooooo long I'm cringing at the thought lol). If you are interested I'll send you the PSD.
I'm actually thinking of taking this concept outside of PKMN, making a whole new card game based on my base and the PKMN artwork, keeping it in the same style but completely changing the way its played and not stepping on any copyrights (In case a game might be made somewhere along the line), so you're free to experiment with it if pokeymanz aren't your thing, I'd love to see what you do with it.

[Iocus]

I was going to complain about the overuse of dithering, but next to some of the ones in the GB games, this is actually tame.

I agree with Kitsu about the shape; I think the belly area looks especially angular due to that sort of shading. Think you could smooth it out a little?

[CaSquall]

I was going to complain about the overuse of dithering, but next to some of the ones in the GB games, this is actually tame.

I agree with Kitsu about the shape; I think the belly area looks especially angular due to that sort of shading. Think you could smooth it out a little?

I'm actually trying to curve the belly out a bit more, where the leg on the right meets it.
And yes the dithering is used excessively cause of the small palette available for GB/GBC, so I'm staying faithful to that style.

[Speed-X]

Remember when it comes to the TCG GB that your palette is very limited; and by limited, I mean like four colors max (just the card's artwork itself, that is). You have used 18 here. Now, I'm just going to be referring to the palette limitation for the first Pokemon TCG Gameboy game at the moment.
If you'd like to conserve your colors to four colors, you're likely just going to have to stick with the basics: a very light color, a very dark color, and two regular / base colors. In this case we would probably use a pale, light yellow for the "white" slot (the official sprites never appear to use pure black or pure white in their sprites); a darker, reddish-orange for the "black" slot, and two oranges. It would likely end up looking something like this:

Forgive me for doing a terrible job with that, but hopefully I am putting my point across successfully!

Now, to go over the palette restrictions for its sequel: Pokemon Trading Card Game 2 for Gameboy Color (if I'm not mistaken). Due to the gameboy colors slightly enhanced graphics, more colors are permitted for each piece; about 8. While it's only a +4 increment, it makes a gigantic difference! Let me show you with the same example:

In this you can probably see that I got rid of several redundant colors (ones that were only used once or twice that could easily be replaced by an already existing, more widely used one), and altered others. I got rid of the pink on the tongue and just replaced it with the orange and the dark reddish-orange; it still has a similar effect, if not the exact same effect as it did when it had a pink tongue. By getting rid of this pink color, I had just enough slots to be able to keep the two greens in the background. The blue in its eyes and wing membranes were left as is.

So in conclusion, this

doesn't look much different than this


AND the second one uses fewer colors! Awesome. Sometimes things don't run so smoothly, though!

What you always want to keep in mind that if you're restricted on your color amount, you've gotta rule out redundant colors. It's really all just trial and error! Keep messing around with the colors until you find the colors that look the best. When you have a limited number of colors to work with, it's all about functionality!

I apologize if I made an unnecessarily long post ranting on about the guidelines on a style that you probably aren't even trying to follow so strictly. Nonetheless, the things that have been mentioned in this post can be applied to so many things!

I'd love to see more of these from you, please do keep us updated on them. :>

[CaSquall]

Very nice color limitation example

Wow thanks a lot Speed for going into such detail, the thing is when I started this I tried to figure out how to keep it, at least within GBC boundaries, but couldnt find and accurate GBC pallette. So I've been eye dropping the colors from the TCG2 game's artwork. I'll definitely take some notes from your reply, much appreciated

Also sorry for not having posted in this, but this place seems half-dead, and I haven't really returned to doing anything with it since making this thread.
I would love some collaborators, that might give me some inspiration to continue working on this.
But I'll try getting more work done soon and post some actual updates.

[CaSquall]

Small bump. I finally got back to making another card


This is based on the Shiny Pikachu card or Pikachu Star, as these cards had a star symbol besides the name of the pokemon.

I really loved the art on this card, so here you go a pixel rendition

and obviously critique is strongly encouraged, also if you know any pkmn cards with amazing art, please share!

[Iocus]

Hope you don't mind me making an edit.

I like your card, though I spotted a few minor bugs I thought needed tweaking. Since they weren't that big of a deal, I figured I'd just go ahead and tweak it myself. I marked most of the areas that bothered me, though I'll mention what exactly I fixed anyway.

The ear should get narrower at the end, so it looks less like a chunky pencil. The shine on the eyes blends with the yellow, so I added some darker shades from the background to round it out (not sure I can do that..?) I tweaked the arms' outline a little, and also made the right one's shading convex like in the original card (perhaps you changed it for some reason?) The card also seemed to have a last wedge on Pikachu's tail, so I added that. I fooled around with lighting in the leftmost sprite to see if the card would look more dramatic with it, but I figure the restrictions wouldn't allow it.

As for cards, I may be biased, but I think Jolteon has some pretty cool ones.

[CaSquall]

Wow thats a great edit, theres only some minor problems with it.
Although I'm not keeping within GBC technical limitations, I am trying to keep a limited pallette so my custom cards will blend well with the originals, the highlights and the eye edit adds another 2 colors on the pallette. Which really sucks, cause I did put on highlights at some point, but it just make it look too advanced compared to most cards from the original games. I might try to see if I can update the eyes without adding new colors, but I'm defo keeping the ear/tail tweak.
And how the hell did you make the "^" mouth work, I tried a million different things without prevail that's why it's just the "-" mouth, but you've seemed to have nailed it.

Thanks alot for the feedback, and if you're up for it feel free to do some pixels and I'll make a card out of them, you seemed skilled enough.

-EDIT- Now I know why I couldn't get the mouth working in that shape, it's because of the nose, I'd rather have the "L" shaped nose than the "-" as it makes pikachu look a bit too cartoony, and less serious looking IMO
-DOUBLE EDIT- Okay updated it a bit, left out the arms and the tail as I think it looked better before, but the ear and the eyes are defo an improvement.
-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER EDIT- I'm getting the feeling you really like Jolteon lol

[Iocus]

Ah, yeah, I forgot to mention the mouth. I thought your current one looked kind of inexpressive, and felt that it would be better to make it more of a pout as that's what it looks like to me in the card. I didn't even realize I remove that bottom pixel, but I think it's okay since Pikachu's nose is pretty small.

I was afraid that would be the case with the eyes, but those shades really make a difference. I knew the highlights wouldn't be applicable, just wanted to see what it looked like.

I'm getting the feeling you really like Jolteon lol

NAW. Whatever gave you that idea?

Thanks for the invite, maybe I'll give it a shot sometime!

[CaSquall]

UPDATE:

Messing about making an actual gameboard heh..

[CaSquall]

another quick update:

Made a Light Volteon, hope I did it justice Iocus
Oh and what do you think of the updated Pikachu btw?

[CaSquall]

Oh well guess I'm by myself tonight..

-Update- :


This one I'm really not sure of, the original art was super stylized, which made me want to do it. But that turned into a harder challenge than expected, so my rendition here does differ alot from the original, and I'm not sure if I like it or not..

Oh yeah heres the reference if anyone's interested http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/2/2a/G...lver65.jpg

[Virtuaboy123]

I think if you tried to stay more true to the card, it will look much better. Otherwise it looks good.
Here's an edit I did, I tried adding things like the smoke and lighting.


I think someone had a thread like this before, maybe you could look at it.
edit: you also used two light yellows in the growlithe sprite.