ART AND LAYOUT! (Errata Text)

so i imagine a lot of you might remember this nasty old t-shirt from some of my older videos but funny thing i actually have been to forensa although most english speakers know it as florence i had a brief stay in florence pretty soon after i graduated high school one of my cousins was living there at the time so i stayed there for a week this city is home to the effeetsy gallery possibly europe's most famous art museum after the louvre inside this gallery is botticelli's famous painting birth of venus depicting the creation of the goddess venus from the sea now it's one thing to see this piece in a book or in a youtube video but to see it in person you get to see the immaculate and delicate line work that went into the piece it has a level of artistic polish rarely seen before or since and no photograph can do it justice so why am i talking about all the stuff anyway well it's because i've come to the realization that i have gotten a bit ahead of myself on these errata text videos i mean here i am talking about card rarity and booster pack composition when i haven't even talked about how your cards are supposed to even look hello and welcome to errata text the follow-up to the seven deadly trading card game since where we look at the important aspects of game design a trading card game is a game whose pieces consist of trading cards as in things worth collecting on their own as i've detailed before trading cards have been around for a long time and have always sold themselves on being visually appealing collectibles sports cards use action shots like pitching catching or running which get integrated with a well-designed frame and visual effects other trading cards which feature fictional characters movie stills or whatever this is are made largely the same way often with the reverse side acting as a place for information the cards made for trading card games also have to do the same thing with their construction many of them are sold on the idea that they make for good collectibles for whatever they're based on and their art and construction are made to also look great on the page of a storage binder or in a display case trading card game cards have to perform an additional balancing act though as due to their nature as game pieces they also have to present gameplay information as cleanly and clearly as possible and since they have to match their card back with every other card in the game all of that has to fit on one side the way these two things are sort of fighting over card space adds an additional challenge where you have to make a layout design that both flattens the artwork and clearly conveys game rules it's a unique set of requirements for sure and will take them piece by piece here which seeing as my own illustrations are now featured on the cards of a card game that i am not the creator of i can be extra snooty about look let's just forget this all happened okay so like i said before since trading card games are made mostly of trading cards you can't really get away with mediocre art and design art for a trading card game needs to be high quality expertly crafted visually interesting or at a bare minimum polished and consistent if your human characters look okay but your monsters are blobbly formless garbo you've got a problem but wait i'm sure a lot of you are saying what about games like munchkin or killer bunnies the art on those games can't be considered polished by any means well the thing about those games is first of all they're supposed to be silly and cartoonish works of parody which benefits from this comic strip look and two they're not trading card games people aren't making demands of like monopoly or uno to have high fidelity artwork and foiling effects because those aren't the kinds of things you put into a binder i mean i guess you could but that would be weird but you get it as standalone games these are not competing with trading card games at all and funnily enough both of these games would actually later try to spin off a trading card game and that ended about as well as you can imagine in the field of trading card games trying to say that your game's crummy art is part of its charm is like saying that sketchy lines is your art style so getting a way to make art in a way that can achieve an acceptable level of quality is important it's actually not a bad idea to have a pre-made stable of characters that get used frequently in your artwork this is something i've pointed out in other games where we have a character along with the cool things that character can do it gives your world a sense of consistency and helps ease how much design work you have to do so in this case you really have two choices you can either learn to art or you can hire somebody who already has or you could grab a license to use a bunch of stock assets like i detailed in sin number five but moving on so yeah if you want to do the artwork for the game yourself you are going to have to learn to art study anatomy and drawing techniques go over the art books that other artists recommend learn proper physicality and how to make designs and silhouettes that are visually interesting learn digital you have way more control over how your visuals look and can seamlessly integrate the art into whatever layout you come up with even if you don't have a drawing tablet there's stuff like vector tools that let you get clean lines without needing one and it's cheaper clip studio paint is just fifty dollars that's less than a triple a video game and certainly less than a set of copic markers uh can we talk about copic markers for a second copic markers have kind of a reputation for looking great in person but awful when scanned into a computer i really don't know the reason why but a handy tip i found is if you really want to color it with traditional art like with colored pencils or copic markers try taking a photograph of the picture rather than scanning it in i don't know why it just works the other option is to find somebody who has already learned how to art i know this sounds daunting commercial art is expensive and difficult and i know a lot of introverted people who are into this sort of hobby have a difficult time transitioning from a creative to a manager but as it turns out there are tons of talented illustrators who are just chomping at the bit to work on a high quality project like this some games get an artist on staff fairly early on and as long as you value their time and their work you can get good results and when i say value their time i mean give your strongest feedback to the 5 minute sketch rather than the 10 hour finished piece hey yeah this art is great he's karate chopping a bunch of cinder blocks very kung fu movie but the card is called palms of steel and he's not really using his palm here is he ah that's better although if you really want to value your artist's time you will pay them with money but i've gotten ahead of myself again because before you start dumping time and money into art assets you first need to establish the look and tone that your game is going for so that all of your assets fall in line with it it's not something you need to have in place right away in fact i'd probably get your layout developed first which we'll cover later in the chapter most playtest cards frequently use doodles and filler art during development the bar for a game's look was set by magic the gathering ages ago in what can be best described as fantasy realism with strong use of color fantasy realism in the sense that the characters have believable proportions and polish design and shading with perhaps a drop or two of heroic proportion to make the characters more expressive they also make strong use of color as magic uses a card's color as its primary attribute so the art will tend to be bold and eye-popping to emphasize this importance in its early days magic's art actually used to be a lot more varied in the styles it invoked for instance my favorite magic card art 2 this day is the spooky and exaggerated diabolic vision from the set ice age but these days they tend to have a more consistent style one which a lot of games imitate as the look carries with it its own prestige for a comparison of what a subtle change can do let's take a quick look at the artwork of guardians which came out at about the same time like magic it is a fantasy style polished and painterly but the artwork is a lot more cartoonish and almost kind of funny like a painting from the saturday evening post while this does make the aesthetic a lot more expressive and lively it also makes it look a lot less epic and serious if magick's card art is meant to be the cover of a fantasy novel guardians looks more like it's for a children's book other games like dragon ball are meant to match the aesthetic of the tv show where everything is on model and mostly cel-shaded but has some more complex shading on the characters in an attempt to imitate the sort of fancy freeze frames you tend to see for epic moments pokemon is admittedly the oddball thanks to the solid stable of characters they have which are deliberately simple in design so they can be easily identified on a tiny gameboy screen they leave themselves open to art that is much more varied and unique you of course have your standard artwork which is basically high fidelity versions of the official art with thick anime lines like they use for basically any cards with a human character on them but you also get art that's abstract cute or more obscure there is even a cult following for what i would call craft art where the images are made using three-dimensional media this trend was started by the sculpey clay artwork of yukamori which she has been making for pokemon since the days of gold and silver over 20 years ago for some other examples of how artwork can fall apart we have the aforementioned munchkin trading card game this game was based on the original munchkin card game where the artwork was done by john kovalek the creator of the comic strip dork tower it used a very simple flat style of illustration and coloring that was perfectly charming for the sort of game it was in the munchkin training card game however it feels like a ton of other illustrators were asked to try to draw in kovalek's style but not color like him i'd say probably the biggest problem with the artwork is that they like tried way too hard on the shading and coloring on the artwork that fails to complement the simpler art style where something more crisp and comic like would have better fit expectations kind of like with the dragon ball example from before looked at from another perspective the colorists were being asked to apply complex shading to really simple designs which is incredibly difficult to make look good unless the illustrator and colorist are the same person a lot of them just fail to look like the comic book panels they're supposed to be invoking and the successes are far outweighed by the failures this paradox where the illustrators are supposed to keep it simple but the colorists are being asked for intense detail is something that happens when a creative vision is fuzzy or indistinct although while we're here on the subject of artwork it would behoove me to bring up the subject of art direction that tries to be edgy there has been no shortage of games that have tried to market themselves as oh yeah look at our game it's got violence and gore and ladies and swearing we say the s word maybe even the f word a very 12 year old's idea of what makes something mature as for me i do think there should be limits on what is considered appropriate artwork for a card game now it's not that i'm like personally offended by this art or anything i'm not a prude but i do have a tempered approach to this problem don't forget you are asking people to play your game in public against complete strangers that's literally what a tournament is those 12 year olds you marketed your adult game to will shrivel like slugs in salt once they realize they have to show their cards to random people they don't know anyway getting back on track we do have to consider the other half of the card's design and probably the most difficult part the layout there is a huge variety in how card games handle their layout ranging from strict bounding boxes to those that let their art take center stage all of these styles serve the same purpose to efficiently and effectively convey gameplay information there's a lot of things to keep in mind when planning a card's layout priority shorthand affordances formatting etc let's start with priority and not the priority i've talked about before which is in reference to gameplay rules but in this case priority of information placement so when i'm talking about priority in this sense i mean you need to figure out which information is most important and where to place it on the card as not all real estate is created equal now this is in reference to the most basic kinds of card information name card type play cost primary attribute combat stats things found on basically all of your game's cards that can be portrayed with a symbol or a single word now when it comes to these terms the best place is usually around the cards edges and corners particularly the top and left portions of the cards this is because due to how most people hold playing cards the top left half of the card is the most visible like the suits and numbers on regular playing cards granted there are games that put the card's title lower down meant to invoke more than name plate one would affix to a painting or framed photograph these tend to be given more to games that sell themselves on the quality of their artwork and it's perfectly fine if that's one of your game's main selling points it's an aesthetic choice for sure but it's important that players can tell what cards they're holding without having to rifle through them all the time to double check them art plays a big role here and can act as much as an identifier as any symbol or card text and can even help folks across the table know what you have in play see also hearthstone so yeah the reason most games put the card title on the top isn't just because it's the first thing to know about the card but that it's in the corner that people will see most when holding it this means that top priority should go to the parts of the card that get it out of your hand things like play cost evolutionary stage level what have you makes sense to put in the top left conversely this means that information that matters more once a card has left the hand can go in the concealed area on the bottom right such as combat stats and special effects another good thing to keep in mind is placing things in order of cause and effect hence cost before card text and on play effects listed before in play effects text box after card art is also common practice and can be easily understood as this is the thing this is what it looks like and this is what it does and on the subject of this box let's talk about the next part shorthand shorthand is obviously where you use a simple term phrase or image that represents a more complex action or concept in order to save time and space like i said space is at a premium on the front of these cards so it's important that we make the most of the space we have less dark cards end up like this [Music] generally speaking if an action occurs in a game often enough it should probably have a name words like mill and mulligan come to mind even if that sounds like the name of an irish pub now i've already gone over the concept of keywords in sin number seven where card abilities that appear often enough can be described using a single word making use of common cards which bear maybe one of these keywords to give adequate space to use reminder text to educate players on how this effect works however keywords aren't the only form of shorthand we see on cards we also have icons which are by far the most space efficient shorthand in the business however despite that these should be used sparingly and only in events that are common across most of the cards in the game these tend to be seen in cases of cost and activation such as magic's mana and tap symbols and game meno like with counter blast and soul blast and it's better to use these symbols as the cause rather than the effect it's confusing to see a card that says if you win the fact that the symbols sort of lack the context can make them confusing and a bit daunting to learn for an example of how this can go terribly wrong we need look no further than bakugan yeah in an effort to make the cards as language free as possible these symbols are everywhere and they're meant to portray card abilities ranging as wildly from draw to win to terms with unique abilities like shadow strike the problem here is that it adds an extra layer of junk you have to remember knowing what symbol means what which loses the beneficial context of most keywords generally speaking special abilities and effects are better represented with words rather than symbols attribute logos are fined however those are everywhere and in fact can be preferable to using words do consider the fact that while magic uses its tap symbol when part of an activation cost it uses the word tap when mentioned within an actual card effect but if it's trying to portray an ability a keyword that implies context and is easier to understand is much more useful even if you do incorporate symbols for instance gain blank lose blin or draw one and speaking of draw it's reasonable to assume that your players will be familiar with most forms of card game terminology these are affordances or general knowledge that you can expect people to bring with them when they start to learn your game most people learned how to play a game of cards at a fairly young age standard playing cards are really cheap after all and it's an easy way to have a family activity so you can reasonably expect most people to know what you mean when you use the words draw discard play shuffle hand or deck taking it a bit further most trading card game players are also familiar with the terms attack block damage destroy tribute and exile in most cases it's unnecessary to reinvent the wheel on this terminology i know some companies are lawsuit happy over the dumbest things but the vast majority of these terms fall under what is known as folk practice you can call the deca deck the hand-to-hand the discard pile a discard pile without really worrying so generally those words don't need to be replaced with other terminology i mean i have seen some twists on these terms like referring to the deck as a library or the discard pile as the trash but they need to be terms that like with keywords are easy enough to understand on their own i'm pretty sure that the word trash is used as often as it is because it's the word of choice for discardpile in japan although the fact that it is both a noun and a verb is just a bonus but generally there's no need to complicate your terms this is a case where function beats form by a mile anything that makes your game easier to understand and play is another barrier to entry that you've removed if your play testers are frequently asking what one of the words in your game means and your answer is a single word maybe you should be using that word of course we can't talk about these affordances without mentioning the sideways turned elephant in the room the word tap you see of all the card games out there this one actually did get trademarked tapping refers to the action of turning a card sideways a common action in many games to show that a card has been used up for the turn and wizards went and trademarked the term so nobody else could use it something generally understood as a d move however now that i think about it the word tap is actually pretty terrible as far as context is concerned how do i tap a card do i press it with the tip of my finger do i double click it like a mouse does it work like the clapper thankfully other games have come up with better terms like bow kneel and rest words that imply something vertical moving to a lowered or horizontal position feel free to use any of those as i don't believe they've been trademarked really you should only reserve novel terms and new words for unique mechanics that don't fall in line with common gaming parlance keywords such as break charge evolve or blast all come to mind these are the mechanics that need a sentence or two to explain rather than a word and a more unique word can draw attention to the importance of these mechanics and finally we have the way this information comes together in its presentation the formatting this is in reference to things like fonts spacing bounding boxes and the polish to make your cards look good this is where skills such as layout graphic design and texture work come into play if you take a close look at the cards in your collection you'll actually find that a lot of them incorporate details and textures into their card frames and boxes this is partially to give the game an appealing look but there's also the fact that flat color that isn't pure black or pure white tends to look kinda nasty in print this is because standard printing is done in rosettes with a mixture of cyan magenta and yellow ink and those combinations trying to go flat tends to create this kind of sludgy look and a texture removing the flatness can cover up these printing shortcomings when it comes to these sorts of textures it's usually something simple low contrast and light or at least that contrasts aggressively against either pure black or pure white text you might have noticed how a lot of my seven deadly sins videos use textured backdrops when i show off text these are on purpose to act as examples the most common form of this kind of texture is often a simple gouache fabric texture watercolor natural surface what have you with borders things can be fairly ornate with some games even making custom boxes with unique designs like magic the gathering as for text boxes those are often trickier to pull off as they need to both possess an interesting texture while also having space to be clear and readable good text boxes are usually low contrast and light rarely venturing into the medium gray territory these have a number of approaches as well with pokemon's gouache turning white as it reaches the text area or kaijuto having a pale texture softly erased within to make it pure white without being static and yeah magic also had to learn this the hard way as originally a lot of their text boxes had some pretty high contrast like with my old error elemental here now when it comes to the actual text clarity is key you can get away with a bit of an oddball font on the titles of these cards like magic's custom bellerin font but the rest of the text cannot be treated the same way a number of games try to use a fancier or more unique font in the text box but this nearly always comes at the cost of your cards being readable this is important card text must be clear and readable this involves the use of sharp fonts found universally across pretty much every game i have encountered it is also almost always black due to the black ink on a card usually being its own printing layer on top of the colored layer meaning it is not mixed into the rosettes of the color printing allowing for high fidelity text and it can be hard to tell how well your font does until it is in print it can often look great on your computer when being made but once it gets reduced in size and dropped in fidelity it will become clear where your shortcomings lie even games that fill the entire card with artwork need to keep this in mind a slightly clearer white text box onto which the text itself goes sometimes with a white border around the actual letters to make them pop out more is important to keep the text from getting lost in the artwork of the cards reminding artists to keep this text box in mind when developing full art schemes is also worth noting there are plenty of examples showing off the strengths of both basic layouts and designs so by all means feel free to take notes i hope i've managed to get the point of this video across good card layout is a combination of competent visuals and coherent structure the goal should always be to lower the barrier of entry to your game as much as possible i've talked about this kind of thing with the starter game boxes but you should have good solid artwork and visual design to act as the hook to draw people in and solid writing and easily understood rules and text to really seal the deal keep those things in mind and you too can build a better card game join us next time on errata text [Music]

Channel: Kohdok

Views: 39,731

Keywords:

Id: p8djzGqFF0s

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2022