Some things you see with your eyes. Others, you see with the heart of the cards.
Back in junior high, my friend and I would draw Yu-Gi-Oh cards and play. We decided on using Yu-Gi-Oh instead of other card games for a few reasons. First, you don't have to worry about any types of resource cards (energy in pokemon, land in magic) to limit the deck to a color or type. If anyone is unfamiliar, Yu-Gi-Oh's resources are based generally on tributing (sacrificing) monsters or spending your life points. Second, different summoning types like fusing monsters and ritual summons are a pretty cool idea and allow a lot of creativity. Lastly, we really just wanted to say that you fell for my trap card
. About a month or so ago, my friend and I decided to get back into drawing cards and since I had made a few LBT related cards as kid, I decided to try and make a fully themed LBT deck. I've drawn about 50 of them so far and was planning on more but my friend still hasn't made his minimum of 40 yet.
A quick disclaimer if you've ever played Yu-Gi-Oh and are wondering why abilities and such are lackluster, we tried to scale things back and come up with some limitations so things don't get too out of hand and completely broken. Levels of monsters were given base stats of ATK and DEF that could be re-arranged, with abilities costing a set amount of stats.
Since I've made so many cards already, I'm going to be scanning and showing up to 9 on one scanned image, though small groups of cards that work together I'll probably showcase on their own. Then I'll mention any design philosophies or any other thoughts when I was drawing the card. So here we go with the first set:
A few pointers:
-To the right of the name is the monsters elemental affinity. Since I didn't really want to be boring with having the majority of monster cards have and earth affinity I chose the affinity based on the character's nature: Light is good, Fire is aggressive, Earth is neutral, Dark is "evil". I prioritized actual affinities however (Ducky is water).
-Underneath the nameplate are a number of circles denoting a monster level which determine how powerful it is and the number of tributes required to summon (7+ requires 2 tributes, 5-6 require 1, 4 and under don't need any). Pretty much all of the children characters fall in the 1-4 range with the parents filling the higher tiers.
Onto the cards themselves. With the exception of Guido, these were the first cards that I drew. A lot of them were based off of google image searches so I'm not sure what scene they're from. Running out of drawing space is also a problem I had with several cards, so I would either re-draw it or just leave it cropped (as with the case with Petrie). The drawing space is about 4.5cm x 4.5cm.
Specific cards:
-Littlefoot: Revealing a face down card seemed like a good fit both canon and gameplay wise based on his judgement and being a leader (choosing not to jump over the fire pit in "The Great Longneck Test" as an example).
-Cera: No abilites, just a high ATK stat given she's a threehorn.
-Ducky: Low ATK and DEF since she's small. Originally her ability was to special summon herself if Spike was in play, though this is very situational so I changed it so the condition is the opponent has to control more monsters than you. (Normally summoning monsters can only be done once per turn, including monsters that require tributes. Special summoning doesn't count towards this, allowing to potentially set Ducky down then tributing her to normal summon something more powerful).
-Petrie: Since Petrie's always afraid, his ability to return to your hand came out of the idea that he would run away instead of getting destroyed (though you still lose life points).
-Spike: Big and slow. Makes for a good tanky low level monster with high DEF.
-Chomper: Since he's a sharptooth a had the idea that he could eat to get stronger. This translated into discarding a card to increase his ATK if I need to take out a threatening monster right away.
-Ruby: Couldn't really come up with an idea for her so I just made her have balanced stats.
-Mo: Not sure where the idea for drawing a card came from. Maybe because he dives? Though having some way of drawing more cards is good to have.
-Guido: A flip effect triggers when it's flipped from face down to face up. This case it's designed when a monster attacks it while it's face down. I had a similar mentality to Petrie with him being scared though he can only do it once with the benefit of staying on the field.
On a final note, feel free to share any criticism on the cards, whether it's the cards effects or the drawing itself. Also feel free to share any ideas for other cards that you might think of or show off any cards you draw yourself!
