Neo Gendai Blanks

For this entire block, because I want to link it to the Gold/Silver-era back in the day, I decided to use the Neo-era blanks. But instead if just using them as-is verbatim, I instead decided to sort of rebuild the blanks from scratch. Part of this is to give it its own spin, but part of it is to also make it more inline with the modern TCG and all the changes that has happened over the last 20 years. This includes…

• differentiating between the three Trainer types (Item, Supporter, Stadium)
• making changes to the types, like removing the “crown” on Darkness- and Metal-type icons and including the Fairy- and Dragon-type
• Creating blanks for special card types like EX, GX, Mega, ACE SPEC, Prism, etc
• Etc etc etc blah blah blah

I’m done with working on the blanks, and you can see them all below. I can finally start work on new fakes! Yay!

 

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Downloading the Blanks

Unfortunately the Neo Gendai blanks are not quite yet available for download quite yet. But I will share with you some of my blanks for them!

• First I’ll make available my standard form for blanks: classic JPG files, just like the good ol’ days.
• I’ll also make available PNG file versions of the blanks, complete with an empty blank hole for you to put your card image behind.
• Finally, I’ll make a special Photoshop file for you, complete with all the blanks and necessary font placement for certain text elements in order to make faking a bit more convienent.
• All blanks will also be 1.5x the size of my original blanks, or about 540 x 750 pixels, assuming an average pixel size of 360 x 500. Part of this is to provide you with higher quality backgrounds, but not TOO high quality as to allow counterfeiters and bootleggers to produce decent quality fakes.

Sound like a plan? If so, keep an eye out on this section for any updates! … Well, you don’t HAVE to keep an eye on THIS specific section… afterall, I’ll be letting you know if I have any updates on the main news page on the site!

 

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Blanking

As I mentioned above, I plan on using Neo-era blanks for this set. But I’m not going to use the old blanks I made back in 2003… rather, I’m going to make NEW blanks for this set. Specifically two types: authentic Neo-era blanks and 100% original, perfectly legal-to-sell blanks. What’s the difference?

• Authentic Neo-era blanks — This will be exactly what it says… I’m going to gather all the necessary cards from the Gold/Silver Neo block—Neo Genesis to Neo Destiny—to scan and use to build a complete set of new blanks. But I also plan on doing more than the bare minimum, more on that below.
• 100% original, perfectly legal-to-sell blanks — wait, what? Yep, you read that correctly… I’m contemplating making my card available for purchase. This has always been something people wanted me to do, but I was hesitant to do so in the past. NOW, on the other hand, it’s a whole different situation, and it looks like both companies are OK with fans selling custom works like this. In fact, there’s even people selling CUSTOM PACKS of their fake cards, and it doesn’t seem like Nintendo or TPC has been leaning on them to stop. Soooo… in order to ensure that my cards aren’t mistaken for REAL cards, but are still authentic-looking enough for fans to still enjoy, I’ll use these “legal” blanks which don’t use ANY existing artwork if fans want to buy copies of them.
  • BTW, this is something PA! has done before. In fact we were even going to use totally new, custom blanks for the ill-fated Razzo Edition. that Kaizeren Myuu and I were going to work on together. So it’s definitely something that isn’t new for us to do.

Now the idea is that I’ll make my new cards such that they’ll be compatible with both the authentic Neo-era blanks and the 100% original-and-legal blanks, so that swapping out the blanks will be as easy and turning them on or off. So what exactly is my next step in making my fakes? Well, here’s a handy checklist for me to work off of. You can keep track of where I’m at too!

• Scan cards of the following types and generate the following type-based card elements.
  • Backgrounds: Grass – Fire – Water – Lighting – Fighting – Psychic – Colorless – Darkness – Metal – Dragon – Fairy
  • Energy symbol: Grass – Fire – Water – Lighting – Fighting – Psychic – Colorless – Darkness – Metal – Dragon – Fairy
  • Weakness/Resistance “Neo swoosh”: Grass – Fire – Water – Lighting – Fighting – Psychic – Colorless – Darkness – Metal – Dragon – Fairy
  • (Dragon and Fairy elements will be pulled from current sets)
  • Trainer cards: only one trainer card format necessary
• Scan card to generate the following card elements:
  • Image border
  • Pokemon info bar
  • Pokemon stage text: Baby – Basic – Stage 1 – Stage 2
  • Pokemon stage element: Baby – Stage 1 – Stage 2
  • Black separation bars
  • Flavor text
  • Symbols: Common – Uncommon – Rare – Ultra Rare – 1st Edition, both Western- and Japan-styles (Japan uses literal letters like “C”, “U”, “R”, “RR”, etc)
  • Border Elements: Normal Gold, Dark Pokémon, Light Pokémon
  • (This will cover only actual graphic elements; text will be generated within the design app. This means “Weakness”, “Resistance”, etc, and copyright text will be removed during the construction process.)
• Write up all the necessary text elements, and provide them in different languages:
  • Core Text elements: Basic Pokémon, Baby Pokémon, Stage 1 Pokémon, Stage 2 Pokémon, Weakness, Resistance, Retreat Cost, Baby Rule text
  • Trainer card subtypes: Item (blue), Supporter (orange), Stadium (green), Tool (purple)
    • I will still provide a “neutral” Trainer card, one without the extra bits. But I will also provide modernized versions of the Base/Neo Trainer cards to cover all the Trainer card changes over the years.
    • BTW, “Tool” is a new trainer subtype that will be introduced in the Scarlet/Violet TCG set, meaning PokeTools will no longer be a subset of Item cards and instead be shoulder-to-shoulder with the other main Trainer types
  • Card elements: “Trainer”, “Energy”, “Extra Rule”, “Illustrator”
    • This is less actual text and more card background element. Still, I will create cards based on those words, as well as any other words that have been used in PTCG history
  • Editable elements: Illus. XXXX, Info Text (Height: X’Y”/X.Y m, Weight: XX lbs/kg), Evolution rulings (Evolves from XXX, Place on the XXXX), Baby rulings (Baby count as Basic, Evolve into XXXX), Flavor Text (#/No., Lv), HP, Pokémon Power/Ability
    • This will be provided as a default text which the user can then edit and add to accordingly
  • Languages: English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Thai, Chinese (Trad. & Simp.), Indonesian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish
    • All these were provided via either currently existing releases (Thai, Chinese and Indonesian are the newest languages) while others were part of various “Pikachu World Collection” releases. Ultimately ALL were considered official languages at some point, so I’m focusing on those first.
    • That said I probably won’t be doing them ALL at first, so I’m going to focus on English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish first—as those cards are the easiest to get data on—and then add in the other languages over time.
• Combine everything into my card designer app and build the blanks!
  1. Place all elements into their right location, using an existing card as a reference
  2. Add in all the type elements where they belong, but set it so that they can be activated by a flick of a switch
  3. Do the same with each Stage Element and symbols
  4. Place customized text boxes in their appropriate locations and set to appropriate sizes
  5. Place other common text elements, both text which never changes (“Weakness”, copyright, etc) and text which has common elements but can be filled out later (“Illus.”, Pokedex info, HP, etc)
  6. Likewise for the Trainer cards; however, I’ll need to alter them to include modern Trainer card rulings, namely:
     • Item cards (regular and PokeTools)
     • Stadium cards
     • Supporters
     • Tool cards (newly added to the game!… which means I need to make them now)
     • These cards will not use the “Neo-style” format where it’s just added text placed above the actual card text, but as a separate boiler plate which has been tinted to the appropriate Trainer type color. It will, however, otherwise still look the same as Neo-era trainers would.
     • I will, however, at least provide an original style Trainer card
• Repeat everything above, but for my “100% original-and-legal” blanks.
  • Since the idea is to use the existing LAYOUT as the Neo-era blanks, but just replace everything that I didn’t design with stuff I DID, it should be easy to just swap things out one-to-one.
• This is the minimum card design requirements; but I plan on adding elements which exist on modern cards, such as:
  • Pokemon-EX type (simply high-powered Pokemon with a 2-prize take)
  • Pokemon-GX type (like EX, but with a special GX-attack that can only be used once)
  • Pokemon-V type (still unknown what it does, as far as I’m aware)
  • Tag Team cards (I legit can’t wait to see how I can design this in order to make look like it fits with the Neo-era style!)
  • Ace Spec Trainer cards (limit one of ANY Ace Spec per deck)
  • Prism Star type (one card with the same name allowed per deck)
  • Full art formats (with that moiré or guilloché wavy pattern over it)
  • (Any other card type will likely not be included in an effort to keep things a bit more modern and relevant. Plus I don’t really have much experience with the earlier types, lol)
  • (Regardless of what I choose to add, I’ll need to figure out how to “convert” these into the Neo-era format for authenticity. I’ll get to that once I get the base card blanks designed.)

Another thing that has changed with how I’ll make my fake cards is what app I’ll use to make them in. Of course using Adobe Photoshop has been the go-to program for most faking, but in the years since I stopped regularly making fake cards, I started my Technical and Professional Writing degree at SFSU, and there I was trained in another Adobe program called InDesign. After I became proficient with it, it became obvious to me that Wizards of the Coast used InDesign (or one of its predecessors) to design their cards in. This in turn explains some of the errors on Pokemon cards, namely the “Fighting-symbol on Fire Pokemon cards”; as they were placing items into the card design document, they typed “F” on the keyboard and accidentally selected “Fighting-Symbol.psd” instead of “Fire-Symbol.psd”. Anyways, with Adobe InDesign under my belt, making these fakes will not only be easier, but they’ll also ensure a higher degree of accuracy and consistency between each fake. Plus, as mentioned above, I should be able to swap out the authentic Neo-era blanks with my 100% original blanks with ease.

Long story short, it’ll make my fake cards look more authentic and consistent then they’ve EVER been! This’ll be great!