Design Class – Necessary Materials

Welcome. I know that today I would discuss Linear and Modular design, but then I realized: hey, let’s start from the beginning.

Welcome class. You’ve come here to learn how to design better Magic cards I’m assuming (but you realize what they say about assume… it makes an ass out of u and me). The types of cards that we care going to be designing are ones that seem logical to both the Color Pie and to the style of Magic in general. That means no Blue Lightning Bolts, no Green discard, and no 5/5 creatures for Black with no drawbacks.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to create strict “Magic only” cards, because you won’t see me doing that at all. Like Nightcrawler from the X-Men demonstrates, you can create a Magic card about anything. Just let your imagination go wild. You can create funny cards, you can create serious ones. But with Design Class, we’re going to teach you how to create those cards according to the Color Pie.

But, I’m sure most of you have Magic cards already in your mind. You doodle ideas while you’re bored at school, those car rides to your grandmother’s, and sometimes during those long, boring meetings your boss makes you sit through talking about the annual report. Those are soooo boring. You’ve seen magic sites that have card creation contests and have wanted to enter in them, but scared at what other people will say about your prized baby. This is a good place to start.

So, lets get to it…

The first thing you want to download is Magic Set Editor (MSE) found here. It’s one of the more popular card creation programs out there. Another popular way to design Magic cards is through Photoshop, but trying to slog through the boards at misetings.com and trying to find the missing files are hopeless.

Kinda legal, save my butt warning: Remember kids, this program and any like it is for your personal use only. Do not to pass off fake cards as real either when you play them with friends, or on online message boards. That’s horrible to do and creates bad karma. Please use this for fun and entertainment. All right still belong to their respective owners. Think of it this way: it’s like creating fanfic for Magic.</end legalish words>

Anyway, download the program and mess around with it. They’ve got great support on the site as the program and everyone is pretty nice as well if you’re not understanding something (or if you’re really geeky, you can mess around with the scripting). Curious how to create mana symbols? I don’t know, if only there was a way I could find out (Yes, that was one of the reasons to use the jargon as the same as you use for commands on MSE)…

If you’re ready to add art to the cards, the internet is a good place to start. I also find that deviantart.com is a nice place for alot of good art (this is a good place to credit the artists at the bottom, looks way more professional). Don’t shy away from using your own art, or pictures as well as they add a personal touch to your work.

At the moment, I’m just leaving you with this very powerful tool before we get started actually designing cards that fit the Color Pie. Go and start designing cards as much as you want at the moment because the way to get better is to practice. Who cares how powerful or weak your cards are right now; that’s why you’ve come here, to learn. Here’s your sandbox and I’m allowing you to go play in it. Build whatever you want at the moment, because we start Sunday.

Is it going to be that Liner/Modular topic I was going to talk about today? No, we’re going to start on something a little more basic.

But I want some feedback from you guys; what kinds of topics do you want to see covered here? I’ve got ideas for posts such as: mechanics in the wrong color, looking at keywords, when hybrid mana works, etc. But I would love to hear you guys hear your input. Either comment here or e-mail me at mtgcolorpieATgmailDOTcom.

Also, I just started a MySpace page: myspace.com/mtgcolorpie (as in, there’s nothing on it yet). If you have MySpace, and want to add me, cool. It’s there we can start posting our own cards, and hold the contests there. The MySpace profile will be a place where you can voice your ideas without getting bashed in the head.

Alright, I’ll see you guys Sunday.