Photoshop fun

I haven't done a Photoshop post in a while, so I thought what the heck.

I was a little bored around Thanksgiving and Christmas and I did a few more fake custom cards.


I couldn't get much done Christmas because my laptop was messed up. It took me all weekend to figure out how to get it working again so these two customs were done quickly before my after turkey dinner nap kicked in.

I was flipping around through the channels the other night and came across Grease 2. I remember my cousin and I watching this constantly one summer. She loved it. I have to admit it wasn't my favorite, but I still have nostalgia for this movie. I liked the first one too.

Anyway, I hadn't put two and two together to realize who Louie's love interest on his show was. Turns out it's the same woman that played Delorus Rebchuck in Grease 2.

This is a Heritage Then and Now custom of Pamela Adlon.


I was half expecting her to turn out to be a drug addict. I'm glad she's not a drug addict and is still acting. You never can tell with child actors.

I also did one of Louie. I used a 1982 Topps football design. I still need to add "Comedian" and his name on the bottom of the card. "Comedian" will go under the silhouette of the stand up comic.



I used screen shots of the actors in character rather than posed shots. Actually this one of Louis is staged I think. I haven't seen the movie Lucky Louie yet, so I don't know. Maybe I'll do another custom later with the another publicity photo.

Also, you may or may not have noticed, but I finally got around to doing a blog header. I had a few ideas floating around these past few years, but I couldn't settle on one idea. My plan is to do a few different blog headers as I get bored with the current one. I don't really have to commit to just one image.

I really wanted something colorful, and there's nothing more colorful than 1965 Topps Baseball.



This is my first idea, but it seems a little too redundant with Sam yelling "No one's going to read this blog" and also having appear on the border so I went with something that is funnier. At least I hope it's funny.

I need to find an image to put inside the little banner for the team logo. I don't belong to any teams, so I don't know what to put inside the little circle. Maybe a camera? Maybe a laptop to signify blogging. I haven't a clue. If anybody has any ideas, don't hesitate to let me know.

I'm still not crazy about the fonts on the card, but I'm not much of a font guy. I wish I were though. It doesn't quite look right. I maybe adjust it later.

When I saw the Sam Mele card I knew it was a slam dunk (home run?). I just needed a hapless looking baseball player as foil. I almost used a custom of myself that I photoshoped a few years ago, but I went with a 1971 Skip Pitlock card that I received from the Million Card website.


If anybody can think of a better example of "hapless baseball player" let me know. I might change it if it looks cool.

Thanks for reading.

Rollin' on 73's

Playing with my cards as an adult usually leads to me doing everything but actually "playing" with them. Or at least play with them how I would have as a child.

Currently my card-"playing" is basically updating spreadsheets, writing some blog posts, listing my want/trade lists, and occasionally pulling something cool from packs or from an envelope from a blogger. Sort of the adult version of playing. Pretty fun in a boring grown up way.

I look over the card before relegating it to it's home, be it binder or box. Mostly I don't play with cards these days. My trading is done online. My selling and purchasing is done mostly online. I do like to buy random stuff at the hobby shops and Walmart and Target but my face to face interaction with other collectors is basically nil.

When the weather started to get warmer this spring I wanted to change all that and take my cards out for a little spin. I took my "good box" of cards with the random relics, inserts and of course my new (to me) 1973 cards that I got from ebay and the flea market.

Turned out to be a bad idea.



I found this card while weed eating a few months after the rains and tornadoes had passed through Norman.



I remember some of the cards blowing away, but I thought I had retrieved all of them.

Kind of sad, but I got another Cardenas in another lot later so I'm good. Just kind of funny that I've already got a casualty this early in my quest to collect the 1973 set.

In addition to the other current stuff out there, I'm working on finishing the 1980 and 1973 sets.

The 1980 set was my favorite when I was a kid and 1973 is my birth year. I thought it'd be fun to try and collect those two sets as a reprieve from all the chrome and auto relic cards that are found in the newer sets. Not to mention the insert intensive sets of the past few months. A&G and Topps series two comes to mind.

What originally drew me to the set was all the cool action shots.








Not only really cool horizontal action shots like the three above, but also cool vertical shots.





They also look good as photos without the borders and logos.





I like horizontal and I like tight shots. I wanted to play around with this shot and turn a vertical card into a horizontal shot. The newspaper and photo editors out there will probably not like my creativity with the cropping, but it looks good to me.

I probably cropped this one a little too tight.

Here is the original for reference.


Obviously a vertical shot so I didn't have a lot to work with. I probably should have left in a little more glove, but I really wanted to highlight his expression. It's a great candid shot. This out performs the wacky "Photo Day" card in last years updates and highlights.


Here is Oklahoma's own Lindy McDaniel as a Yankee. He spent most of his career with the Cardinals, but by this time he was in the Yankee system.

He's doing the tried and true fake windup pose in his card.



A strong chin, pointy little noise. He reminds me of someone....




Can you see the resemblance? A little Quagmire-esque.

This post is all over the place, but I'm too tired to do a more thorough post on the 1973 set.

Let me know what you think of the '73 set. Oh yeah and as for the title. When I first starting writing this I had come across a Weird Al video that I thought was funny. I thought it related to the dirt that I found on the backs of these cards.

I was originally looking for the song "Riding Dirty", but found this one instead.



I can sort of see me as the "white and nerdy" guy hangin' wit my cards in the backyard. Just being white and nerdy. Mowing the yard and seeing my crumpled up card in the dirt. Rollin' on '73's. Getting durty wit the '73's. I'm actually too white for this song. I'm so white, I'm actually translucent. You get the picture.

Thanks for reading.

I've got Ginter on my mind

I've got Ginter! I've got Ginter all on my mind....
I've got Ginter... I've got Ginter all on my mind.
Running down to the card store,buy the first box that I see
I got the blues about last years short prints and this box better be kind to me


That doesn't roll off the tongue like I thought it would. I'm not much of a lyricist. I really need to dig out the guitar and try to play some blues. It's been too long since I played. Playing acoustic guitar in a faux delta blues style and mumbling incoherently might work better than just typing out random Ginter inspired lyrics.


Wouldn't it be cool if they had a mini set or some base cards dedicated to the old blues musicians.
I did a couple of quick and dirty photoshop jobs in the new (old) Ginter style.


This one would be a lot better if I would have finished it, but you get the idea. Maybe a "Worlds Famous Musicians" or "Most Influential Musicians" subset written above the top would be nice looking. I'm too lazy and not quite talented enough to pull that off.

Oh crap! I forgot to put the little nameplate thing on the bottom too. Oh well.


I know one of the main reasons why it would be tough to do. Just doing a search for photos of Robert Johnson pulled up lots of interesting articles about copyright infringement and all sorts of copyright claims from heirs and supposed heirs and unscrupulous people taking advantage of people.

I really hope by lifting these photos for my blog I don't fall into the category of unscrupulous anii that are taking advantage of people.


Anyway, this is my long-winded way off saying that I've thrown my hat into the Gint-A-Cuffs2 Old Planter Boogaloo.

The real minis look really cool this year and it'll be hard for me to resist trying to collect all the black bordered minis like last year. I wasn't as proactive with that one, so I'm still on the look out for any minis from last year that I can find. I really like the way the black bordered variations look from last year and in this years product.

Good luck to all the other participants.

I have a real good feeling talking to you on the blog.(Elmore James lyric)

Thanks for reading.

Ho Ho Holiday Contest entry

Beardy has the entries for the Ho Ho Holiday Contest posted up and I wanted to try and explain my rationale for why I chose the card I entered for Beardy's Ho Ho Contest.

It wasn't hard for me to use Festivus as inspiration for the contest. I really like the show Seinfeld and I've always liked that episode. I also like that somebody really did invent their own holiday especially one that was against onslaught of consumerism in the celebration of our holidays.

When I thought of "Festivus" as a theme, I immediately plopped in the DVD to watch the episode. Something about the word "Festivus" made me think of colored circles with letters inside them. Sort of like the 2008 Topps baseball and football cards.
I don't really like that design much, so I decided on the Heritage design for a few reasons.

One of the reasons was the episode itself.



When Frank Costanza and Kramer walk into Monk's Diner to confront George about the rebirth of Festivus, Frank tells George it's his "heritage" to celebrate Festivus.


Also in the coffee shop scene George and Jerry are talking about Jerry's new girlfriend who they dub "two face" because she looks completely different depending on the lighting.


Like the Batman villan Harvey Dent aka: "Two Face".



Jerry mentions that she's like a baseball card where the player moves when you turn it a certain way.



George responds: "I see, tilt it one way and the player is on base, turn it another way and advancing the runner."



So those two reasons made me think I was on the right track to do a cool holiday card in the 1960 design.

The fact that they mentioned baseball cards in this episode made me think...


... that maybe it's another Festivus Miracle!!!


Now on with the card:

Here is the front.



I tried doing a Heritage style chrome card. I like the chromes better in real life anyway. (Who doesn't like shiny chrome!?), so I tried deasturating the background in the screen shot and adding a silver color overlay. Neither of them really made it look authentic. I tried a few other filters, but I never could get it to work out right. I did want to make the foreground characters to stand out better so I left them alone and edited the background to my liking.

I also did a slightly different version with a Frank Constanza character pointing upward as he tells Kramer about his creation of Festivus.



I ended up keeping the simpler design of the Festivus Pole instead of a "player" cutout.

Here is the back of the card.

I tried "roughing it up" a little to make it seem like the rough backs like the Heritage cards.

Here is a real Heritage back for comparison.


I'm not sure if the back looks authentic either, but I like it okay. I decided to not include any sort of Topps logo or legal stuff on the back or front. I probably should have to make it look more like a real card, but it looks fine to me.

In retrospect though, I probably should've changed the background of the card back to a light brownish color to make it look a little more like the real card.



I kept referring to my Jose Reyes chrome card as a reference.


I noticed when looking at the card I missed one important thing: I didn't put a silver border around the card. Another strike against me. I'm hoping that I'm not screwing myself by posting up my mistakes.

All in all it was a fun contest to enter. Hopefully I will at least place in the top three or get an honorable mention.

I really do like all the other entries. I had noticed that Mark's Ephemera had already posted up his entry and I was starting to feel a lot less confident in my card entry. Looking at everybody's entries makes me feel a whole lot less confident. Oh well. It was fun to make the card and it'll be fun to see who wins it.

Chuck Jones Topps 2008 edit

Here is another one that I really like from the set I just bought. It is of Chuck Jones from the Atlanta Braves. I like the background blur or Bokeh. It's really nice and colorful coming from a afternoon day game shot. I just can't get past the tab in the middle that messes up the cropping.

Here is the original shot.



This is what happens when you try and take a vertical and turn in into a horizontal shot. I left the tab in to show how the subject is being pushed down and swallowed into the background rather than being separated from the background. It seems awkwardly framed.



In this version I have taken out the tab and just left it as a pure horizontal shot. Which I think looks really cool especially with the Popeye expression on his face. If anybody out there is reading let me know what you think. Am I a complete hack, or am I onto something?