Proxémon: A First Foray into Proxies

     When I was 7 or 8, I had a friend who tried to show me how to play the Pokémon TCG. I kind of zoned out when he was explaining the rules to me, and I never really picked them up well enough to actually play. But what I really loved was the art on the cards! I got a lot of hand-me-down cards from cousins or friends as a kid that I would shuffle through every once in a while to ogle at the little pictures(See some childhood favorites below).

 

     Fast forward 20 years later. My co-workers and I started talking about the Pokémon TCG and we decided to try putting together some Base Set decks and learn the game. After finding out how much cards actually cost, I decided it was time to give proxying a try. I've loved seeing all the MTG proxies that have been popping up the past few years and, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to give it a try.

 

    I started out with a physical rework of the original card back using cardboard, construction paper, paint markers, tin foil, and a beat up card from my collection. Also made sure to pay respect to the coolest proxy community in the game: Crimes in Cardboard. Had a ton of fun putting it together and was probably my favorite of my fist attempts. I liked it so much, that I made the horrible decision to print 60 copies of it to make my own janky card sleeves with these and some penny sleeves. It was way too much work and I ended up slicing off my finger tip in the process. I've recently ordered some professionally printed sleeves with the same design for my next deck. 

 

 

 

 

    After my card back, I jumped into GIMP for some digital proxying. My biggest challenge with these was just finding a style I liked. I already love the art from the original series of cards so much that it took some serious thinking to come up with something that felt right. My Machamp came out pretty goofy looking which is exactly what I was going for. This card's stylization was heavily influenced by bigboygametime's work. 

 

 

    

 

    Finally, I had a few trainer cards to make. I ended up working a lot more loosely with these than the Machamp, more trying to learn the flow of GIMP than to get any specific results, and I think they turned out pretty good. They all came out with more of a digital collage style.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    The rest of my deck I either just had from my childhood collection or printed the original cards. My coworker and I have had fun with the Base Set format, and we're already working on Fossil decks!

 

 

    Working on these and actually learning how to play the Pokémon TCG has really opened me up to the world of trading card games in general. I've been dabbling in MTG here and there the past few months trying to learn it slowly and have made a handful of proxies for that as well. I'll plan to post about those sometime soon, as well.