Making quality alt art cards

By Hawkstrike, in X-Wing

So I'm seeing more and more fan made alt arts handed out ... prizes at events, podcasts handing them out for advertising and fun, etc. It's a great idea; I'd love to do something like that for events at our local store.

Not being a graphic designer or in the printing business, though ... how do you go about it?

From a design perspective, I found a tool online that was a pretty useful template for someone not wise to the ways of Photoshop or whatever is the rage these days.

But printing? I've experimented with cards at home, and can't even get front/back to line up in a double sided print, let alone achieve a decent product.

Any hints/suggestions? Trying to figure out how to do this cheap -- I'm sure I could pay someone to set up and print, and it would never pay for itself as a participation prize for a small store event.

I was also interested in this! On page 6, I asked these nice guys and they were really helpful!

Sounds like you've got it figured out, but if you wanted suggestions, my fully microsoft-based setup has been working for me. I make alt art cards using Microsoft Publisher, but be warned, it's even slow on my brand-new $2000 laptop... it can get really RAM and CPU intensive. I then use Paint 3D (free with the creator's update) to airbrush any little blemishes.

For my custom cards, I just print them on a color printer (front and back), glue both sides to some cardstock, add laminating paper, and use paste to seal the edges. I will probably start using the website these kind folks suggested, but this seemed to work for me.

I recently handed these out at my FLGS to honor the C-ROC release!

IMG_0502.PNG.96736ce71676e446fde86e909f6b2256.PNG

Edited by Kieransi

Thanks -- good start. StrangeEons I'd found; the makeplayingcards.com is a new one.

Other suggestions? How were the Krayts doing their for Worlds, or the Gold Squadron guys?

http://pbeedgen.karmafish.net/

Kelrien made this, and I think it's brilliant. He's planning to add in some tools to allow more customisation of positioning of numbers etc and I love the style of cards it creates.

5 hours ago, ThalanirIII said:

http://pbeedgen.karmafish.net/

Kelrien made this, and I think it's brilliant. He's planning to add in some tools to allow more customisation of positioning of numbers etc and I love the style of cards it creates.

I love this too, can't wait until he gets some more customization.