ART AND LAYOUT! (Errata Text)

[@ashtongaskill3980]

"Tap" was part of WotC's patent for MtG, and has since expired. People can (and have) use it in their games now.

[@HeavyMetalMouse]

However, the tap 'symbol' is still Trademarked (along with the mana symbols), so if you're going to make use of the term 'tap', make sure you use your own distinct symbol if you need one.

[@tcgmetaslayer4202]

doesnt mean they should, especially when a game has its own term

[@shieldgenerator7]

thats good to know. do you have a source for this?

[@Woynich]

Look up US patent “US5662332”, which is the patent for the whole method of play for Magic the Gathering wherein the term “Tap” was patented for the mechanic it describes. As near as I can interpret, the Google patents page lists that the patent expired in 2014 and is designated as having been “Ceased”.

[@rmt3589]

I will look into this.

[@foxoninetails_]

"Tap" admittedly isn't the clearest term in modern usage, but it's a flavorful choice. To tap something is to draw resources from it - you tap a maple tree to get syrup, or an underground river for well water, for example. So when you "tap your lands", you're quite literally drawing resources (mana) from them. It also evokes the imagery of "tapping out" like in a fight; once something has tapped, it's used up for the turn and can't keep going or giving you resources. The confusion with the physical action of "tapping on" something is an unfortunate byproduct.

[@theonewhowatches869]

the funny thing about how many words Endymion the mighty master of magic has is that it's effects aren't particularly complicated, they just need a lot of words because Yugioh doesn't use a whole lot of short hand.

[@shawnjavery]

Which they do so that they can make effects a little bit better or worse when they feel like its called for. Weird system sure, but it does allow for a finer balancing of card effects.

[@four-en-tee]

@@shawnjavery Yeah, Yugioh has a LOT of problem solving text, which i tend to enjoy given that i'm a programmer. I kind of live for troubleshooting shit, so Yugioh scratches that itch for me.

[@Always.Smarter]

it does 11 different things. by what metric is that 'not particularly complicated'?

[@theonewhowatches869]

@@Always.Smarter by the metric that none of those individual things are particularly complicated. Also it only has four effects, though I admit that it's Pendulum Effect is more complicated than the rest.

[@xekon14]

@@shawnjavery I wish they would shorten some more common things even more, thankfully they sometimes shorten "Deals piercing damage when attacking a defense position monster" to just "deals piercing damage". Magic and yugioh have errata text but I know for a fact that magic sometimes releases old/errata'd cards with modern/fixed card text without changing how the card works (except oubliette but that one is just really wonky anyways so just having it remove a card from the game is probably for the better instead of it's old effect), which I wish Konami also did. It wouldn't make the older cards worth less while clearing up very niche rulings for new players that want to experience cards they know from the anime without needing a page of errata to know what it says. Being able to nudge effects up and down is good but I really don't like how inconsistent yugioh is with its wording and timing on its cards.

[@Coboxite]

I love how Endymion has basically become the boogeyman of TCG card text complexity

[@ajbXYZcool]

And Nirvana High Paladin. And any sufficient Pendulum card to be frank.

[@hamsandwich6685]

Deservedly so. I get a headache just looking at it. Play that, and let the endless micro managing begin. Is all that work in playing/using that card even worth the win? If you win.. No, it's just work to me, not fun.

[@Coboxite]

@@hamsandwich6685 My man, I played that card in several locals and a regional. When you actually sit down to read it, its actually very simple and easy to understand. If you want a card that's actually a nightmare to figure out what its doing, you're looking at something like Inspector Boarder or Linear Equation Cannon

[@mymarshlands]

​@@Coboxiteweirdly enough, linear equation cannon feels like a magic card (especially considering un-sets)

[@rmt3589]

Tysm! One of the primary parts of the cardgame I wanna make irl is the layout being different for each "set". Most importantly is the boarder, but each one should feel like a different game, with mixing decks feeling like you have pieces from different games. (Mixing is required though. As only using one won't be enough for a deck. Hence why I say there's 8(9) starter decks, because theres a deck base they use that is a separate "set" than the 8, having an intentionally minimalist design representing a blank slate with no memory) This gives me a good idea on how to manage the layout construction so each can be varied but functionally the same.

[@achehex]

One thing I would've think would be interesting was comparing classic Yugioh cards with the new Rush Duel equivalents. YGO might actually have the oldest surviving card layout of any big name games outside of retro style MTG sets, and a lot of times it does feel like an artifact of its time that refuses to die, and seeing the design changes that Rush Duels made to bring them into this era is fascinating to me. -They moved the level to the left side of the card instead of the right, and they made it a big number instead of a series of balls that are hard to count at a glance when it goes above level 6. -They also crunched the border to make more space for the artwork. YGO cards already are smaller than other TCGs, so the frame being so big always felt wrong to me, and that's not even mentioning the fact that YGO cards also remains the only TCG among the big that never introduced any full art rarity. -And finally they made the split between cost and effect completely explicit. Once you learn how that works in Master Rule games it's not that difficult, but with Rush Duels being more explicitly aimed at children, that clarity seems like a good idea. It's just very interesting to see try and dissect how the decisions made to update a 20+ year old layout came to be.

[@drillygo6984]

yeah for real the rush duels layout is so good, the attack and defense stats being color highlighted makes the cards feel more powerful. Only issue I have is not with the artwork feeling more childish even though is marketed for kids so yeah.

[@SuperCelestial123]

At this rate Yugioh border function is just to show that "yeah we are the OG tcg". The stone tablet design is obviously a left over from their first anime with Egyptian themed which make it fit perfectly but then the next anime series has never touch same theme ever again

[@Zetact_]

Well Rush Duel has a ton of differences that also differentiate it from the original format, not just the drawing and summoning rules but the way they handle archetypes, levels, normal monsters, card advantage, GY interaction, etc. But on the subject of some of the formatting changes? All monster effects are soft once-per-turn inherently, for instance, saves card space and helps prevent unintended loops. They also have included text boxes signifying when an effect is continuous, or in the case of Fusion Monsters, multi-choice effects. Continuous effect text signifiers are just for the sake of clarity and consistency since they do add more text onto the card, but "Multi-Choice Effect" is something that greatly simplifies the base game's language of "You can only use one of this card name's effects per turn, and only once that turn." Multi-Choice Effect also uses big bold bullet points to show both of the effects to make it easy to digest. Though this is something that already is in place in the OCG where they've started numbering monster effects that for some reason the TCG has still not adopted. They also made the Attribute bubbles larger and the text showing the Type be a larger and bold font, on a separate section of the card from the effect. This is probably more relevant in Rush Duel since it's far more focused on the type and attribute, with those generally being how deck focuses are determined since they haven't yet made cards that specifically focus on archetypes (i.e. all the Music Princesses are WIND Warriors, all the Yakiniku monsters are FIRE Beasts, all the Ultimate Flags are LIGHT Machines, etc. and their archetypal support cards focus instead on their Type and Attribute instead of their names). They do not yet have a Forbidden & Limited List, but they do have one in the form of Legend cards, which you can only run a single copy of in your deck. Now, functionally this isn't the most amazing game design because there are certain insane cards like Graceful Charity that probably will automatically fill the Legend spot in basically every deck (especially when they're competing against cards that are certainly strong in Rush Duel but not huge game changers, like Vorse Raider or Tribute to the Doomed) but one thing I think is interesting is that many of the weaker Legend cards have specific support cards for them that would encourage deck building around your Legend card. For instance, there are four cards that gain additional effects if you have "Upstart Goblin" in your GY. Not a perfect mechanic but it is neat how it's used.

[@grantflippin7808]

@@Zetact_ honestly, the rushduel spin-off is probably going to be discontinued after the current anime ends.

[@madamered1103]

@@grantflippin7808 buddy, Sevens has already finished and they just started yet another season with Rush Duels as it's focus

[@michaelturner2806]

Love the sneaky cameo of SungWon Cho's complicated game turn video. Probably worth noting that, in addition to hiring or contracting someone who can art good, you can also probably contract or hire a graphic designer who can layout good, at least to get you started. And of course show your appreciation for others helping you by giving them reasonable amounts of money. (exposure is not something artists can live off of, it's something people die from)

[@Petrico94]

That artist who really just takes a doll of the pokemon and takes a photograph out in nature with it, it doesn't match many other cards in the set but it's unique and they certainly have a sense of visual design to make it professional. You don't need exceptional art skill but a style or attention to details like balance, depth or an action scene can show you are trying to make it look good. Or just use stock assets from a property that has plenty of marketing images to splash on doritoz promotions. Yugioh is schizophrenic with all of it's design. Some monsters look very impressive, some looks goofy or amusing to look at, othertimes the archtype looks like they just gave up designing it while others look overdesigned for the wallet size photo they allow. Nothing says a card game can't bend the rules of who comes into this fight but when MtG releases any set there's usually an artbook to show all artists what they're going for this set and consistent lore with at least the plane or a few common characters and themes. Pokemon all the creatures look like they're designed by one person or at least a small team of that region.

[@NopalzinReuter]

I really love yugioh diversity. You can play/face, k-pop singers, cybernetic ghosts, Nazca inspired gods, cryptids, food (notably desserts and sushi), wrestlers, comic heroes, spaceships, time travelers, athletes and car drivers, and all that besides the usual tropes of, warriors (ancient, medieval, modern, ninja, samurai, karate), mages, dragons, fairies, monsters, zombies... etc...

[@sylviadailey9126]

LOL Great Yu-Gi-Oh rant. Pokemon is my favorite monster collecter franchise, and it is also the most famous overall. I like Pokemon because of how cute and simple they look.. They are a lot more pleasing to the eye. It is the main thing that makes Pokémon stand out for me.. The video talked about the practical benefit of simple design. I think Pokemon designs were best during the first two generations. Back then the Game Boy had awful graphics due to the limited technology. The video game footage looks like such early graphics from the gen 2 games. Gold is using his Lanturn to fight a Golbat. This graphics was a blessing in disguise. The Pokemon was even more restricted to simple designs to be easy to see with bad graphics. That makes the designs that much better. One the graphics got better, the new Pokemon started to become more complicated in appearance. They lose some of the appeal of the earlier generations. I do like gen 6 though. That was a breath of fresh air. That was a brief time when character designs got better. Fortunately Pokemon never goes into the wierd extremes that Yu-Gi-Oh has.

[@lanterns_glow]

I like the clay dolls and knitted figures that are occasionally used. You can tell the artist put a lot of time and love making them

[@jeffreymoffitt4070]

This series has helped me so much in designing my card game!

[@DeconvertedMan]

what is your card game about?

[@jeffreymoffitt4070]

@@DeconvertedMan its a dungeon crawler, you have a character, a backpack full of gear, a map, and some monsters to fight! You kill monsters to draw cards and roll for movement on the map. Think D&D but simpler and without the direct plot

[@jeffreymoffitt4070]

@@DeconvertedMan and yes, its board game-esqe but you can build your own decks and the map is never the same twice

[@brendaneichler5244]

20:00 To defend Magic for a second, it uses tap to imply a faucet, like tap water or a beer being on tap, not "to touch something lightly"

[@supermysterious66]

I figured that since the #1 card that players "tap" is land, that it was meant like "Tapping a Tree for it's sap."

[@Hinaguy749]

@@supermysterious66 tapping into the mana of the land.

[@cosmiclikesminecraft]

I love how the second you brought up Icons being used badly I was like "oh no. Bakugan is going on blast isnt it" Cause...yeah it deserves it

[@ArtanesCS-Rockon]

I appreciate the heavier focus on MTG on this one, I always feel your videos are incomplete when they don't bring up what is probably the most important card game.

[@shawnjavery]

All 3 of the big 3 should be mentioned every video. Though MtG should get a bigger spotlight because it has the most influence on other card games, yugioh doesn't really get copied funnily enough. Pokemon also doesn't get its game play stolen either.

[@ShirtFan]

@@shawnjavery as a Yugioh player… it shouldn’t be copied…

[@pascalsimioli6777]

Ygo should only ever be mentioned as what not to do with a game ever.

[@KeshavKrishnan]

@@pascalsimioli6777and yet it's the most popular tcg worldwide

[@OdelyxRa]

Aside from the nuclear-grade power creep and encyclopedic amount of text on a card. Wouldn't the combat system and chain link system be goodv things to emulate in a game that promotes player interaction?​@@pascalsimioli6777

[@Snowmon89]

Great. I was just about done with my card layouts and now I see there's still quite a bit of work to do before I can start with even play testing with printed cards. Also, good to know I can use scratchy artwork to get my basic idea across BEFORE I invest in better artwork for final products. At least I managed to get most of the important parts done (albeit, I don't mind being ready to change anything). Also a nice thing to note is the fact about layering when it comes to the card text itself. Oh and Kohdok. I very specifically made this game (Grave Mistake) because of your Sin of Lifedecking. I see it as a challenge, not for something I can actually profit off of. Thus, I really want to show it off to you when it's ready.

[@fennecfoxfanatic]

the little stop motion for the "Clap On" example was fantastic! Had me rolling!

[@yurisei6732]

Keywording/shorthand doesn't do anything to avoid Yugioh-length card text. If you want your game to have shorter cards, you have to use simpler individual concepts. Yugioh has long text because it's a Details Matter type of game. A lot of its effects have vital subtleties, and would work very differently if shorthanded. Even if you decided that was fine, you'd still have to contend with the fact that most of the space taken up by a Yugioh card is its grammar, not its words. Unless you're going to start writing effects like "Summon: Target opponent field monster; destroy", you can't condense much further than it already has been. Once you're down to single-word concepts like "destroy", you can't go any further.

[@mymarshlands]

fantastic assessment! i really agree with you, and all i wish for yugioh was that the TCG had numbered effects like how the OCG does it!

[@stillbuyvhs]

Always liked the variety of art styles on Pokémon cards; for awhile I had my cards organized by artist. Favorites were usually the cards by Ken Sugimori or Mitsuhiro Arita.

[@demonicbunny3po]

Layout is definitely important for the game I’m working on. Trying to basically create a modern version of Hecatomb. Except without the production issues of plastic, oddly shaped, transparent cards of the original, instead putting information onto the four sides and in the middle that determines what effect that card has for the created monster. Layout for that is so important to get the information to the player and reduces the amount of potential room for artwork to a minuscule area unless a good text area is figured out.

[@Todesnuss]

I actually think 'library' versus 'deck' actually allows for a minor but meaningful distinction. Deck describes the whole thing before you star playing whereas your library is only ever your deck minus seven at most. I certainly don't use them interchangeably. One is a physical thing I put together the other is a game zone.

[@Carlitonsp1]

As someone who hates Pendulum monsters, I love how hilarious it is that the Endymion archetype has become a running joke.

[@vandagylon2885]

Just endymion

[@deathseraph3]

I was just looking for something to watch and this shows up. Perfect timing.

[@offworldangel]

It took me almost five years to perfect my artwork for my tcg project. I remember when I was 19 and asking for free art to instagram artist lmaoo, now I understand the value of art and I also get to direct the artwork for my game as well.

[@ryuudraco592]

For when you mention how art acts as an identifier like names, I'm actually someone who more often look at the image then the name. Like blue-eyes white dragon, my favorite card in the game, I don't need to look at anything but the image. And while I don't play alot of vanguard if I did it's more important for that game to have reconcilable art since that's what takes up most of the card

[@brendaneichler5244]

You say that, but Blue Eyes has at least 3 different arts last I checked

[@ryuudraco592]

@@brendaneichler5244 currently it has closer to 8. But Yu-Gi-Oh is an example of not needing to recognize the art since it fallows the normal setup where vanguard and other games that don't use the triangle method need to have recognizable art so you don't need to look or move your cards around as much

[@brendaneichler5244]

@@ryuudraco592 That and it's a Normal Monster. There's only a handful that are ever played.

[@ryuudraco592]

@@brendaneichler5244 I also know most of my cards based on their image, like every card in my sacred beast deck, cyber dragon deck, and banish deck. I was just using blue-eyes as an example cuz it's my favorite

[@codenamexelda]

This, along with all of your other seven sins/eratta text videos has helped me in a way I can't describe with words, that might sound sarcastic but I promise it's not, I've been developing a game for roughly 5 years and your videos have been a game Changer. Metaphorically and literally.

[@djbioxic4023]

Great advice here. I recently had my card game's first printing and saw many of these errors, but that's all part of the learning process for sure. Thanks for the excellent content!

[@showcase0525]

this is a worthwhile and beautiful series of content. 2:35 - the concept of game rules can be comprehensive enough, like MTG, to have that rules text strictly remain on the rules document, or reduce text on a card to keywords or reference to a point in the rules text. *Edit: apparently spoke of previously.

[@NYGJMAP]

My favorite card art is Time Walk, it unlocks some weird creepy nostalgia for me like remembering a nightmare....idk why I like it 😅

[@luchotenks2310]

I just googled that card for the first time after reading your comment and I must definitely agree. Also the fact that it has no flavor text is a crime.

[@SaulGMV]

I genuinely thought "tap" was literally tapping your card during your opponent's turn as a quick way of showing you are responding.

[@SwordSaint32]

This was a great episode very informative and helpful, I hadn't even thought about a lot of printing nuances before, and it be cool to go even deeper into that.

[@oneovertwo1186]

The problem with trying to give Yu-Gi-Oh! keywords at this point is that not enough things happen often enough for it to not just complicate things further at this point. Piercing... the one success in that area...

[@SuperCelestial123]

Once Per Turn

[@guilty_neco]

Mill

[@oneovertwo1186]

@@guilty_neco I guess that happens enough, but I'm not sure a reference to an old MtG card would be the right word to use since a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! players haven't touched a single other card game.

[@perfectagito]

there's still quite a few that can honestly be keyworded. hard once per turn, soft once per turn, mill, xyz change that you see in utopia monsters of AA zeus, and even some protection effects like "cannot be destroyed" can be keyworded. all of these are not uncommon or very complicated to keyword. but one of the bigger issues is that yu-gi-oh honestly fails at card text and layout. yeah that's partly due to size restriction, but for some reason they feel the need to make a sentence about everything. vespenato doesn't need to say "if this card attacks a defense position monster, inflict piercing damage". just put the piercing key word on top of the unique effects like mtg or other card games do. saves you reading time, and much easier to congest that info rather than reading the entire text just to find this effect sandwhiched between other effects.

[@MrSilentProtagonist]

They could at least have an archetype line so that they don't need to have rule text saying that it has "X" in their name.

[@fightingleaf]

TO FIX COPIC SCANS: scan it in, then adjust the "Levels" in your art program of choice. Darken the darks an lighten the lights until it looks right. This will help embolden the color without trying to mess with hues or saturation directly.

[@NickClarke_Schizzoid]

Love your sense of humour and how it comes through in the videos, "does it work like the Clapper?" got me so good I had to rewind 😂

[@sylviadailey9126]

There is some funny stuff here. There are two great MTG jokes. One is having a plains card where the image fights with wall of text. Another is having Mill and Muligan as a pub. As a MTG fan. I found it hilarious. LOL

[@Jasesaster]

Just in time! I was just working on card layout

[@madamered1103]

Something I was really hoping to see in this video was talk about Yu-Gi-Oh's unique take on artstyle where almost every single archetype has its own style and design, so that was a bummer to not see, but it was still very enjoyable, and it's good to see these back

[@Kohdok]

Yugioh also doesn't credit their artists. Miiiight explain the exemption.

[@MrDraquo]

@@Kohdok Is there a legitimate reason as to why they (Konami) doesn't credit their artists on the Yu-Gi-Oh game? I mean, I always thought it was cool back in the day when Duel Masters would shout out the artists responsible on every card. As an artist myself I thought that was pretty nice of a major company to do to boost their (the artist's) profile and maybe even get them some commissioned work from their fans in the future! I just don't get it... 🤦

[@jmurray1110]

From my understanding it’s becatse Japan and purity Strict copyright law mixed with them not wanting you to get your fix outside the game makes them want to portray that all the art is “yugioh” not individuals who were employed to work on yugioh

[@Lovuschka]

Dude, there are severed heads of you in Botticelli's painting.

[@yequari]

Great video! I always am looking forward to these

[@revimfadli4666]

Outlines remind me of image processing classes where edges also help an image's clarity. Unsharp masking might be a good tool for clarity, or reference on how to outline

[@cyberdragoon1432]

Definitely wasn’t expecting a En Battle Spirits card to make an appearance on here.

[@ilikefans8392]

Im writing this while in the middle of the font sections. For my homemade tcg, i only used 2 fonts. I work in the software Procreate, and i just used 2 of the default fonts: Impact, for stats and abilities, and Jack Armstrong BB for everything else. The only time that i "changed" fonts, was when giving cards flavor text instead of abilities, and when I did that, i only used the Jack Armstrong BB font, in italics.

[@xeladas]

With affordances, one thing that is very important is to be careful of is what could be called "False Friends", things which seem obvious but may cause confusion or arguments because of usages in other works. This can be cases where you use a word that you think has a standardized meaning but actually has multiple: for example, if a card says to "Trash a card from your Hand", some people would read Trash as a synonym for discard, but others (especially those more familiar with deckbuilders) might read it as a synonym for Exile/Banish. Alternatively the issue may be that there are a bunch of cases where it is unclear if something counts: for example a card effect that activates when it is "Destroyed", does it activate when it is Banished/Exiled? Or when it is Sacrificed/Tributed? When an effect targeting it says "send to the Graveyard"? If the playing of the card is countered? etc. The above issues can also be compounded if you end up using words that can be considered synonyms, or have game mechanical differences in very similar sentences: such as how in Yu-Gi-Oh "Can't be Special Summoned except...", "Can only be Special Summoned by...", "Must first be Special Summoned by..." all mean different things. And sometimes the issue comes down to disagreements on grammar, such as the (in)famous case of "Time Walk": during testing the card originally said "Opponent loses their next turn.", some testers thought the card was obscenely busted, saying it instantly won them the game; turns out they were interpreting the card as saying "On your opponents next turn, they lose." instead of what it was supposed to mean "Opponent doesn't take their next turn", as such the text was changed to "Take an extra turn after this one."

[@Dunsparce99]

Quick question: is floop a good replacement for tap?

[@Kohdok]

@@masterowl123 Or corn.

[@fearlessnonprofit]

So much useful information in all of these videos. Thank you so much!

[@Slayerthecrow]

Something cool about having recurrent characters in you artworks, World Building and Lore, something that Magic and Yugioh have done really well.

[@ClampEEGEE]

Heh, when I first learned how to play Magic, I thought Tap just meant to "tap" the card to signify that you were using it. Fun times. 🤣

[@donovan6206]

11:53 why i cant play so many of the waifu infested anime style tcgs

[@pyredynasty]

Oh yeah that's a good tip about taking a photograph instead scanning. More people need to hear that.

[@andrewdestefano4143]

Thanks Kohdok, you're doing God's work out here

[@juand3250]

A game I really liked was Eredan iTCG, the game illustrations were incredible, Cian was my favorite artist from that game. It's sad to know how the game ended.

[@0penthaughtz]

I received advice a few years ago, from a comic/card shop owner, about my homemade TCG. He told me the art is not as important as getting all of the rules & game mechanics down first.

[@DanGalvan23]

Nice series. Have you tackled the topic of Multiplayer in TCG / CCGs? Games like Shadowfist, V:TES (Jyhad), Mythos where the focus is on playing with 3+ players?

[@coruscaregames]

I've made five card game minimum playable prototypes in my life. Two don't have a mechanic comparable to Tap. And the other three each describe it differently.... Aethershaper's is "Exhaust", and to undo that is to "Ready". As a minor note, the original idea was for exhausted cards to be moved back slightly. Before I of course realized how dumb that was. Creature Conjurer had "Turn", and to undo that is to "Unturn". Amusingly, you could Turn a creature that was already Turned. It's then Double-Turned, while also being Turned. I loved the idea of my Blinding Radiance deck which required opponent's creatures to Double-Turn in order to block, it really messed with people. And my latest one Gate Summoner just stated that cards could Activate once per turn, not being able to Activate again until the start of your next one.

[@vc101]

how do i _consistently_ catch this guy's stuff while youtube still thinks it hasn't been interacted with before?

[@hazelgill5805]

Honestly I kinda love how the Munchkin cards you showed look? Idk, it's a unique art style and I think it just looks nice. Maybe they look worse in person?

[@Cyrisus]

Words cannot describe how uncomfortable the all text Plains is. It awakens some primal fear in me.

[@DirkDigglerExtreme]

Dammit why did this come out after I was 80% done my black & white Nisei proxy set.

[@fernandobanda5734]

I wish you could have given a few more examples of games that failed in card layout. Yu-Gi-Oh!'s small text is probably the most famous example, but do you know more obscure ones?

[@nuclearphish8051]

Please never use text outlines in anything other than headings, and even then preferably only in the main heading (in this context that would be the card name). Stats such as cost, attack, defence etc. are ok too. Just don't put them in the main text, that gets really rough to read really fast. And when you have migraine-inducing crimes against readability like the ones shown around 24:09, no amount of outlines are going to help. Unless maybe if you make the outlines so thick they practically form a solid background box around the text on their own...

[@rodrigoandrade256]

Every yugioh player that watches this is probably crying. Such great art, such bad display of information

[@RiverShock]

YGO cards are fine at displaying information. (With the exception of Levels/Ranks not being numeric, that adds complexity for no real benefit.) Problem-Solving Card Text might be a bit harder for someone that knows nothing about it to grasp, but it makes anyone with even a basic knowledge of how it works much more easily able to tell exactly how something works.

[@rodrigoandrade256]

@@RiverShock PSCT it's only considered fine because we have been playing since the text made no sense. For us, it's a great improvement, but when you take a look at it by what it is, it's actually sill very poor display of information. Mostly because effects are not numbered or classified, they just go one right after the other without even spacing. You literally have to read all the text box full of three to four different effects to find where the effect you need info about starts and ends.

[@diamondoctobot8757]

On that point, it only really applies to the TCG side of the game. Over in Japan, they did end up numbering effects. Levels/Ranks are still kind of a pain though :^)

[@shieldgenerator7]

5:01 nice reference to ProZD's cow tcg

[@reD_Bo0n]

Hey, don't hate on my boy "Endymion, the Mighty Master of Magic"

[@OtakuNoShitpost]

I'll note that I don't think I've ever heard "tap" used outside of a trading card game, and specifically therefore outside of a wizards of the coast game

[@trickyplays240]

What style is Duel Masters? It’s not really anime. I know it’s several artist but like what is it categorize. Always wondered.

[@Kohdok]

Hmm. I'd say it's sort of "Fantasy Superhero"? Where it has an emphasis on grandiosity and spectacle over realistic proportion, while still being high on craftsmanship.

[@vexx8451]

Ken Sugimori is still my favorite Pokemon artist

[@violetto3219]

the Goudy Medieval font that old frame magic cards use has always been somewhat difficult for me to read. Matrix and Beleren are so much better

[@Swagpion]

I feel like discard pile is the most commonly hanged term for TCGs because, it's a long name.

[@mmissing3]

awesome comments and tips!

[@meikaishi]

Nice sanbaka cards

[@ralphsunico116]

OOOOOH, YEAH! Now I really want to buy Ophidian 2350...

[@TheAftaaa]

What if my art sucks butt but I intend to create a free2play card game people can print to play at home? Maybe let people draw their own version of the card to make it their sound like a good idea?

13:31 i always felt holding the cards "the other way around" more logical or comforting so i was always frustrated by the french playin cards icon placement... :::D

[@chaosof99]

I think another great hint is that cards should still remain readable as smaller images on a computer screen, e.g. for marketing purposes or if you want to eventually also have a digital version of your game. Inevitably, if your game becomes a success, there will also be spaces online where people want to discuss your game, strategize, deckbuild, etc. and those spaces will want to have the ability to link to images of cards to help such purposes. So use a good font-size and avoid stuff like superscript or subscript. Yu-Gi-Oh cards are already unreadable in person and just a nightmare on a computer screen. Unfortunately one of my favorite games screwed up there as the trace ability in Android Netrunner was written with superscript which is impossible to decipher on most card images. Thankfully NISEI redesigned how they present that ability in card text, making it much easier to figure out from card images on the internet.

[@lawrencetyrpa]

Great video! Thank you.

[@niklasl3880]

Ah yes, Europe's most famous art museum, the Lourf. 😅

[@gamercore5216]

"If you win: Bleh" killed me

[@cheeyow87]

love that Chikorita card

[@AlphaSquadZero]

9:08 I said come on FHQWGADS, I said come on FHQWGADS. Everybody to the limit, everybody to the limit. Everybody come on FHQWGADS.

[@TheMorbidHobo]

Wait, is that really how most pwople hold their cards? I fan them out in the opposite direction and have designed my card layout based on that

[@portalmasterry6765]

Shots fired!!! =)

[@CatManThree]

"Tap" in magic refers to tapping power from something, namely mana from lands. Its not ment to be literal.

[@anonymousracoon]

tier list of card layouts?

[@Boyzby]

20:06 Don't you tap lands to play cards? I mean, tapping land or things like trees are a real thing, and tapping lands for mana in Magic is like one of the first things you can do in a game. Naming the act of turning your card sideways like when tapping land "Tap" makes complete sense in the context of the motion being the same, otherwise you're coming up with a new term for no reason.

[@Roboshi2007]

I've never really been a fan of Magic's art, it's one of the reasons I'm not interested in collecting the cards. They always feel like if I wanted art like that I'd got to deviant art and go to the "actually competent fantasy art" sections.

[@galactic_c4090]

12:27 which card is the one in the middle called?

[@Kohdok]

Luck and Logic. That's an SP Signature Print card, which is why I use it a lot.

[@galactic_c4090]

@@Kohdok man, that is crazy

[@doopness785]

How could you not bring up MetaZoo while discussing the Importance of good card art?!

[@Nobody-zl3kk]

I'm unaware of Kohdok's whole MetaZoo situation outside of his video about how he no longe wants to associate with them, and since its an NFT thing I'm not going to waste time looking into the game itself, how much sarcasm is writen into this comment?

[@urbatect]

Maybe not your type of game but the art and design of the upcoming Kickstarter game Sorcery is the best I’ve seen out of any game except maybe some MtG sets like the Dark.

[@uweh1498]

When me and my sister first played the pokemon tcg we would stop what we were doing and draw custom cards whenever a card said to draw a card because we weren't familiar with that terminology, or any of the rules really.

[@sleepywitchch]

yeah i feel like me and alot of other artists would love to work on tcg stuff if people where willing to pay us

[@c.d.dailey8013]

I just found out about something so bizarre. Generally the cards of a TCG have to balance the image and text. This is something that this video discusses a lot. However there is one major exception to the rule. That is basic resource cards. This happens in both MTG and Pokemon. This is a case where image dominates the picture. There is almost no text at all. At most there is a card title. This works out just fine. Knowing how to use basic reasource cards is a part of the basic rules. So unless a player is barely starting out, they already know how to use them correctly. So text isn't needed. The real important information is having color and a large symbol to indicate attribute. The title card for this video is hilarious, because it just isn't expected. Plains is a basic land card in MTG. It is the one with the white color. So the image will win the fight. I would think that is the case. Then I found a weird case where basic land cards did get some text. I have started a deep dive into MTG and learned about the sets. I am starting with the oldest sets and moving my way to the newer ones. The first sets were Alpha, Beta and Unlimited. They go together well because there is a lot of reprinting. It is interesting to learn about the origins of the game. One highlight is learning about the power 9, including the famous Black Lotus. Now there is a really weird paradox. MTG is filled to the brim of powerful magic and monsters. Yet the most powerful, valuable and iconic card is a flower of all things. A freaking flower! It is a far cry of the iconic and scary dragons of the other main TCGs. These dragons are Charizard and Blue Eyes. The land cards in the first set was just as weird. This was a time there was a mix of image and text. A basic land card said "Tap to add [resource symbol] to your mana pool". It is a strange and unnecessary text. Interestingly dual lands were there in the beginning. All ten color pairs were represented. Unfortunately the Izzet one was omitted from Alpha on accident. However it was added to the later two sets. These first dual lands had no special effects outside of providing two kinds of mana. Yet the cards still had a paragraph explaining such a simple mechanic. What? I checked more modern dual lands. They can explain this mechanic in one line. They say "[tap symbol]: Add [resource symbol 1] or [resource symbol 2]." That is nice and simple. It is simple enough for modern dual lands to have extra effects, like shock lands and life-gain lands. It seems wierd in retrospect to see old land cards with extra text. Yet there is probably a good reason. When a game is brand new, all the players are beginners. It is daunting to learn something as complex as a TCG. Beginners can use all the help they can get. So it is probably a good thing for cards to be more generous with reminder text. This is helpful even for the most basic of cards. Regular resource cards is about as basic as one can possibly get. Later on resource cards dropped the text. They can still be used easily by all players that are past the beginner phase. It is for the better in the long run. One of the sin videos is about reminder text. It did say how a lot of the keywords, even evergreen ones, appeared after the earliest sets. It is the same idea. One example is the card Serra Angel. It is funny to see this in the earliest sets. It does have flying as a keyword. However it explains vigilance the long way without actually saying "vigilance". It is odd. The keyword makes enough sense to me. A vigilant person is one that is alert and on guard. So creatures with vigilance are always ready to defend and guard the player. Creatures usually have to choose between attacking or defending in a round. They can't do both. Creatures with vigilance can always defend, whether they attacked or not. They are that much on guard. The text says that attacking doesn't cause tapping. That works too I guess. Green and White are the two colors that are more creature focused. Both of them tend to have more creatures with vigilance. It makes sense in terms of fitting with the role. It is good to invest in creatures even further. They get to be used twice in a round. I did look up Serra Angel on Google images. I noticed that the wierd text did get fixed in later reprints. Some just have the flying and vigilance keywords. Some have the keywords, but both keywords come with reminder text. Since Serra's Angel is a white creature, vigilance would make sense. Both keywords fit angels very well. Angels have the ability to fly, and they live up in Heaven. On the other hand they are known for being guardians and watching over the well being of people. Flying is common in blue and white creatures. For one thing it just fits with flavor. The sky is blue with white clouds. Another thing is that these are the more defensive colors. It makes a nice defense, when a creature can fly over opposing creatures and not get hurt in combat. So vigilance and flying is something that would most likely take place in white. So that is even more fitting of Serra's Angel.

[@EminorEntertainment]

holy shit I just realized discard literally means "get rid of card"

[@zennistrad]

2:27 *Laughs in Innistrad*

[@TehEeveeGeneral]

WotC's patent on tapping expired years ago and they couldn't renew it because the term had become too generalized. Or so I heard.

[@fybso3057]

i can always learn so much in your videos. How do you stand on the one piece tcg visually? i think some cards look pretty bland

[@captnweasle]

Great vidoe

[@c.d.dailey8013]

ROTFL! The MTG jokes are hilarious. I am a fan and experienced player of the game. So I know the basic jargon and conventions. It is amusing to poke fun at the details. There is a whole wall of text to explain what Plain does. That is freaking hilarious. Any MTG player worth their salt should know how to use a plain. While they are at it, they should know how to use forest, mountain, swamp and island cards. Using resource cards is really basic. That is how to play 101. So both Magic and Pokemon show a big symbol on resource cards with the only text being name. Having a wall of text is silly. Both games have a colorful ball with a black symbol. In this video, I learned that there is a practical benifit. I think both the color part and the symbol part would be good for providing clarity. Color coding is a major method of making attributes clear for most people. Black symbols provide extra accessibility to people with color blindness. There is also an Irish pub for mill and mulligan. That is also hilarious. I am very fond of milling. I played MTG Arena for a little while back in the time of Zendikar Rising and Kaldheim. My main deck was a Dimir rogues mill deck. There is an old card named "Millstone". It makes target opponent player take cards from the top of their deck and discard them. There were more card later to have the same kind of effect. This was called milling. In recent times new cards even mention mill in appropriate card text. The idea is to grind down the deck by removing cards. It is like how a mill grinds grain down to produce flour. It is funny to have the four to make beer for the pup. I know what a muligan is. MTG involves randomly shuffled decks. If someone starts out with a bad set of cards in thier hand, they can reshuffle in attempt to get a better hand. This is called mulligan. I did look it up to see if there is etymology. There were several possible origions. One is a pub giving a bottle of beer or a bowl of spice as a freebie. So it is like getting a free reshuffle for a starting hand. I knew that WOTC made a massive D move by trying to patent the trading card game. Other games got around this by calling themselves collectable card games. Ha! Take that WOTC. I didn't know about the tap issue. Yikes! WOTC should just be happy that MTG is the original and it is one of the biggest trading card games ever. It just has to share the spotlight with Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. This is a very difficult market for new games to break into. The video talks about the discard pile being called trash. I find that odd. I thought it was the graveyard. MTG has some funky words for very basic parts of the game layout. It makes sense in context. The game is about two magicians having a duel. They summon creatures and cast more spells to fight each other. There are five colors. This is shown in the video a few times. A basic way to explain what colors do is to connect the part of the game layout the color focuses on. Green focuses on resource cards, which are called lands. Magicians gain magical energy from the land and nature. It may have to do with leylines or something like that. Those that focus can get more land and summon big expensive creatures. There is an image of a magician being in nature with trees, wolves, elves and dinosaurs. Red focuses on life, which is a basic point value of the player. Summoned creatures attack the opponent and decrease their life. A player wins by reducing the opponent's life to zero. Those that focus deal extra damage to make the life decrease faster. There is fiery burning magic, which looks very painful. Black focuses on the discard pile, which is called the graveyard. When a creature is defeated in battle, it dies. So it goes to the discard pile, which is like a dead body buried in the graveyard. When someone uses a brief spell, that also goes into the graveyard. Those that focus do a variety of tricks with the graveyard. The main thing is to take stuff from the graveyard and reuse it. There is an image of a magician dealing with the undead like zombies and vampires. The way black mixes up the discard pile and horror has ingrained me to think of this as the graveyard. Blue focuses on the deck, which is called the library. Just like a library is a collection of books, a deck is a collection of spells and other tools to aid in doing magic. Those that focus on the library rearrange cards and even draw extra ones. There is an image of a magician studying in books a lot. There is a lot of learning and improving. This kind of magician is notorious for stalling the opponent just so future cards are better put into effect. White focuses on the main playing space, called the battlefield. This is the space where creatures go onto. If there is a space where creatures fight, then it is like a field of battle. Those that focus on this summon extra creatures, especially those of quantity. They form a vast army filling up the battlefield. There is also healing and protection to support such creatures. Dimir is a combo of blue and black. It is fun for me to play, since it is a combo of my two favorite colors. Milling involves both the graveyard and library, so it is something in this pair. Maybe my fondness of black hammered in the graveyard part even more for me. Milling is the most unusual playstyle. Unlike others it doesn't aim to reduce the opponent's life. Instead it aims to force the opponent to run out of cards. This is a secondary win condition. It is similar to the deadly sin of life decking. That video did discuss milling. It did say that milling is fine if it is just playstyle amoung other styles with no life decking at all.

[@c.d.dailey8013]

Okay. I am done with MTG jokes. So I can talk about the video subject. This video is great. The learn to art part is great. Art is one of my greatest strengths. So I can just make my own art for my card game. My only concern is the quantity of art required for a trading card game. I guess if I do an indie base set I can go at a more leisurely pace. That is so I have plenty of time to do all the art and do a good job. I enjoyed this video so much I played it several times. I had ideas on how to alter the attributes of my card game and how elemental paper rock scissors works. I drew some little diagrams of arrows and elemental symbols to figure things out. Then I sketched in elementals. Sketching takes a while, but it is fun to do on the side. To draw so casually shows I have practice in art. There are a lot of inspirations for my art. Pokemon and MTG are two of them. I get a lot of inspiration from anime. I am a big anime fan. I put my own spin by making things a bit more rounded and curvy. I am a die hard Pokemon fan. That was a major influence of my creature design. I like to draw cute and supernatural creatures. It is like Pokemon. Elementals are a common kind of creature to put in fantasy. They are typally shaped like a blob or human. I took a different approach. I have a basic and generic mammal, that has the color and other features to suggest a kind of element. This appearence of the elemental was inspired by Pokemon, especially Eevee and its evolutions. Eevee is one of my favorite Pokemon by the way. I would like to add something in the Pokemon part of the video. A lot of the Pokemon shown are from the first two generations. Just looking at them gives me nostalgia of Pokemon I played with. Aww gen 1 Pikachu and Dratini. Aww gen 2 Chikorita and Quagsire. Back then the video game graphics were horrendous due to limited technology. The footage in the video comes from the gen 2 game Gold. Oh that is also the fist Pokemon video game I ever played. I remember when I picked Chikorita as my very first Pokemon companion. I remember using Quagsire to beat Jasmine. Back then there was a major push to simple designs. They don't just have to be identified on a tiny Game Boy screen. They also have to be identified with the poor resolution of the Game Boy. The tech limitations were a blessing in disguise. It disciplined Sugimori and other designers to come up with simple but still supernatural designs. This has lead to the first two generations having the best creature designs overall. Later on the graphics got better in Nintendo game consoles. Then the Pokemon designs got more complicated. They didn't look as good, and they became overdesigned. Gen 6 has a lot of good designs, and I rank it with the best. My favorite Pokemon of that gen is Amaura and Sylveon. However this gen is the exception not the rule. It is funny that this video shows Garbodor from Gen 5. That is one of the most notorious Pokemon designs. Oh the irony. Gen 5 in general has such a backlash, that may be what motivated designers to step up thier game for gen 6. I find the aim for edgy designs strange. I don't get the appeal. This video has one of the best ways to address graphic material that I have ever seen. One is not personally offended, but the content is inappropriate for a general audience. I don't mind artistic nudes, like Botecelli. That is some amusing censorship in the video. It would likely have to do with KZbin monitization. I recently realized that Nintendo is the best company for appealing to a wide age range. Both Pokemon and Zelda does this. Both have a cartoony appearence, and both lack in graphic material. Both are easy enough to learn and get into. So they may seem childish at first. However both games are very hard to master. There is enough challenge to get adults engaged. In this way, both games are a lot more mature than they look. This creates a potentially wide audience. I got to admire Nintendo. I dont have experience with Mario, but I wonder if that does the same thing. I would like to try. MTG takes a very different approach. It is very similar to D&D in art style. This looks like generic fantasy at first. However they are the two main pioneers of fantasy games. So I will give them leeway. If anything, other fantasy artists copied off of them. Eventually overuse makes the originals seem generic in hindsight. This style has its merits. It really nails the balance between making things believable and making things supernatural. One can believe that anything can happen. That is amazing and mindblowing. On one hand, one can have any supernatural thing they want. There can be magic, elves, dragons, deities and anything else. Yet there is some realism with how everything is shaded. There is realism for character anatomy. Creatures are heavily based on one or more animals in real life. The setting can be like something from the real world, and Medeval Europe is used as a basis a lot. There is a nice mix. This video shows that making detailed shading on a cartoony style doesnt work. There is an easy way to fix it. One should redesign characters to be a bit more realistic. Move away from over the top wackiness of cartoons, like Garfield and Peanuts. Instead go for the more grounded animited characters of anime and Disney movies. One can still adhere to realistic anatomy and realistic painted backgrounds while still making charaters a bit cartoony and expressive. In modern times, animated movies get realistic rendering using CG. They look incredible. Pixar was the pioneer of this. Other movie studios followed suit. This may even be a sliding scale. World of Warcraft is a moderate cartoon that leans more towards reality. My Little Pony gen 5 is a moderate cartoon that leans more to the cartoony. When I draw. I prefer having some realism to my style. I draw 2d in my skteches. However when I fully render my pictures in digital paintings, it becomes 3d. It starts to resemble CG animated movies. Then there was that awesome Pokemon movie, Detective Pikachu. That really blurs the line between cartoon and reality. The story is okay, but I mainly like to watch it for the effects. MTG is really great for its strong use of color. I think it is great how the color scheme is tied to the attribute of color. Each section has its own style depending on color alignment and the plane. My favorite is the Ravnica plane in terms of visuals. It is basic but there are some great things here. Ravnica is broken down to ten guilds based on color pairs. Each guild has its own visual style with strong use of its two colors. My favorite guild is Izzet. It has a steam punk look. My second favorite is Simic. It has a mutant and merfolk look. Both guilds are cool, and I find them very relateble. Both are blue, which is my favorite color. My favorite guilds based purely on aesthetics are Azorious, Boros and Selesnya. White guilds are so pretty. Orzhov is okay, but it is a bit too creepy. It is fun to play though. The video has a Boros card Hammer Dropper at 7:50. Note how the card has an image that reflects the color of the mana cost. The colors are mainly white and red. The picture also incorperates yellows and oranges. The bottom card text box has a faint Boros logo. It looks like a watermark. The whole guilds of Ravnica is amazing. It inpires me to experiment with color schemes in my own art. I do like using elemental motifs.

[@c.d.dailey8013]

Finally there is the layout. I noticed that both Pokemon and MTG have very similar layout. Yu-Gi-Oh is similar, but the pictures are larger. I have learned that the layout is for making cards easier to read during gameplay. It is a lot like standardized parts. I wondered if I got the idea from an earlier Kohdok video. Fortunatly this video explains the layout with a lot of detail and thouroughness. So that is great. I did experiment with using this for my own game. There are issues with printing. I can make a picture look nice on computer. The shoutout to Krita was great. Krita is good quality and its free. That is the program that I am experience with. I recomend this to at least start with digital art. I did dabble with graphic design a little bit. I read a book about graphic design. I built my art website on Wix, and that involves designing the appearance for the website. Graphic design should apply to website appearence to some extent. For me graphic design is intuitive and easy to learn. It is all about making pretty pictures and clear messages. I didn't know there was a practical benefit to textured text boxes. Interesting. Getting color right in printing works well for me most of the time. My biggest shortcomming is coloring black people. Black people are not really black. They have a relatively dark brown skin color. All terminology involving human skin colors is highly misleading. Black people usually have literal black hair, but that is besides the point. Most people normally have black hair, except for white people. With white people, brown is common. I can draw and render a black person in digital art. I can make them look real good. Unfortunatly there were times I printed pictures of a black people. The printing made thier skin look darker. This happened at least one to me. Maybe a print looks darker because it isn't lit up by a computer screen. If a black person looks too dark in a print they start to resemble black face. This is a case where one literally has black skin. Oh no! That isn't good. Blackface is a racist charactiture of black people. It is not only racist, but it is very notorious when it comes to political correctness in the media. Even the Pokemon Jynx went through controversy for looking too much like the characture. So she was redesigned to have a purple face. I do aim to have people of a variety of races in my art. There aren't the same cultures as real life, because this is a fantasy world. However I do have the characters physically resemble different races from the real world. To make someone resemble a black person, I design them with dark skin and curly black hair. This is a pretty blatent form of racial coding. My intent is to be respectful of races by giving them more representation. I don't know a lot about the nuances and details of culture. However I do try. This applies to black people. When I depict them, I want to be respectful of them. If I print out a picture and it looks too dark, then that gives the exact opposite message. It makes me feel really guilty and self conscious about it. It may take some experimentation to make sure black characters look good in print. I ought to do the same for other people with lighter shades. It is worth working on. Oh well. At least MTG has some great black plainswalkers, like Kaya and Teferi.

[@chaoticjexak]

ACCELERACERS CARD GAME CAMEO! but seriously, please please review this oddball card game ;-;

[@kyounokaien]

The mighty master joke is so overplayed, nirvana high paladin is a much better example of textbloat in ygo, Endymion has like 3 effects total and really isn't confusing at all.

[@JamesNintendoTurd]

Nirvana High Paladin is also extremely overplayed when it comes to complex cards. It also doesn't have particularly complicated effects either (in fact, they are even simpler than Endymion IMO).

[@kyounokaien]

@@JamesNintendoTurd I don't think high paladin is complex or anything, I just think it has too many words on it

[@shatteredlegacytcg]

Just wanted to let you know your videos over the past few years inspired me to start developing my own tcg. Id love it if you could follow my journey!

[@Josh-Yu]

What happened to metazoo?

[@proxidize5738]

Ow the edge

[@Azeria]

also PLEASE don’t add grime to your card boarders, fake grime never ages well.

[@RegiRuler]

15:25 dead ass horse of a joke. Yugioh, as a design choice, doesn't want to use key words except for the most high level of mechanics. And even if it WAS more liberal with its keywords, what would you even change for him? The effects are all quite different from existing cards.

[@RegiRuler]

A better example of cards that could receive some level of shorthand would be the Qliphort archetype, as the majority of their card text is taken up by shared effects.