How to Make a Custom Card (2017 Version w/ Screenshots)

[superfrog]

This post doesn’t address how to make a balanced, fun custom. It’s just about the card. Lots of people ask for cards to be made for them, and lots of people post text customs. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those, but putting your custom on a card will generate more interest, and hopefully more feedback. And it’s not that hard to do!

NOTE: If you click on any of these images, they'll get bigger and easier to see the little detail bits.

STEP 1: X-2 Customs Card Creator

Go to https://www.heroscapers.com/xorlof/x2cc/ and you’re already 25% of the way done. @Xorlof has made a beautiful tool here that automates most of the work.

I’d suggest having your text saved in a word document, or written down somewhere. The one downside of the X-2 app is that you can only save the card as an image file, and so the text isn’t editable once you’ve saved it. Rather than starting from scratch and typing every time, save your power text and copy and paste.

The Valkyrie General can be changed with the drop-down menu at the top. All fields other than the power text are click-to-edit.

Click on the power text area to bring up the special powers editor:

If your power text is super long, it’ll automatically shrink to fit.

Double-check your spelling and hit the Save button. Your image will be downloaded as a jpeg, with the name of the unit as the file name.

Step 2: Figure Image and Hit Zone

This is the hardest part, and it’s not that hard.

For this, you need GIMP. (Or Photoshop I guess, but GIMP is free). Go download it at https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ and open it up.

Get a picture of your figure, either by taking one or searching Google. Even the stock image will do, but try to avoid using a tiny picture.

Open your image, and hit View > Zoom > 400%, which should be enough to be in really close to the figure.

Use the Eraser Tool and the brush with Hardness 100.

Then pick a big size for your brush and start erasing. I usually go around the outside of the image first, and then begin slowly tracing around the figure.

Your eraser will be too big to get the nuances of the figure, but that’s okay, just keep the size all the way around.

Switch to a smaller eraser (I went from 55 to 15 for this figure), and go around again.

This should get you to about 95% of the way done with the figure. Get up into any remaining corners with a really small brush (I used size 5 here, and zoomed in to 800%).

Your final result should look something like this when viewed at 100%:

Now for the hit zone.

Right-click on the layer in the Layers dialog, and Duplicate it. Select your new layer (Pasted Layer copy) and click on the select by color tool (the one with the three colored squares on the top row).

Click on the transparent background (the gray squares). You should see the whole image except your figure become selected. Now click Select > Invert, and the selection will switch to just your figure. Using the pencil tool and an appropriately sized brush (Hardness 100 still), color your figure red, gray, and green as appropriate.

Since you’ve selected the figure, you don’t have to worry about coloring inside the lines. I usually color the whole thing red first, and then add the red and green.

Step 3: Put it All Together.

Open your card image in another GIMP window.

In the first window, make sure you have the hit zone layer selected, and hit Ctrl+C. Go over to the card window, and click on the brush selector. You should see the hit zone show up as the first brush.

Change to brush size to 200, and use the pencil tool to add the hit zone to the card image.

Do the same thing for the figure image layer, using a brush size of 550, and the paintbrush tool rather than the pencil tool. Paste the figure’s feet over the right side stats box, as shown. This time, instead of using the brush directly on the card image, make a new layer (transparent) and use the brush on that layer.

Right click on your newly-created layer and click Add Layer Mask (fill with full opacity).
Make sure you’ve selected the mask section of your new layer, and select the Blend Tool. Check that your background and foreground colors are the default (white and black).

With your layer mask still selected, and with the Blend tool set to “FG to BG”, draw a line from just above the top point of the right side stats box to most of the way up the figure’s legs. It's just a very short line.

That should make your figure fade nicely into the mist, and your card is done. All you have to do is File > Overwrite Unit-Name.jpg (or whatever your card is named).

If you’re anticipating needing the images again, save that file as an .xcf and you can access it later.

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That probably seems like a lot, but I tried to go into way more detail than necessary. Once you’ve done it a time or two, you can bang out a nice looking card in 10-15 minutes.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if this helped you out!

[gatormustang]

superfrog I have dabbled with creating custom cards over the years. Recently my youngest son and I have been playing a lot of Heroscape and have acquired some new D&D and Mage Knight figures from a local hobby store. I started dusting off my custom card making knowledge and have struggled. Going thru the site I found some of the previous posts on creating, but a lot of the links and photos are no longer valid. This is a great update thanks for posting it. One question though, if I wanted to create a Super Hero card and wanted to use a comic image instead of a figure on the image zone how do I make that happen without any overlap on the rest of the card? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[superfrog]

You'd want to use GIMP (or photoshop) to cut around and remove the art from the "frame".

Then paste the art you want onto a new layer <-- that's important.

Make sure that layer is behind the original layer, and then resize and reposition it to your liking.

(Also I'm glad this helped you somewhat).

[gatormustang]

superfrog thanks for the response. This is a big help. I am using GIMP and utilizing Xorlof's x2cc tool and your updated tutorial to create a custom for a Living Elemental. In addition I am creating two Super Hero customs one for Boom Boom and one for Jolt using Grey Owl's customization tools at this link: https://www.heroscapers.com/communit...ad.php?t=10735
This is where I was getting hung up with inserting a comic image on the image zone. Your input above got me over the hump. Truly appreciate the assist.

[Whiskey McGreggor]

How do you insert the image onto a thread post, I am trying to make cards for my old customs post but it doesn't give me the option to cut and paste it always ask for the url of the image. (sorry im horrible with computer programs)

[superfrog]

You need to upload your image to the internet first.

Find a site like imgur or mediafire that lets you upload an image, and then right click on it to get the image URL.

Paste that into the little box where it asks for the image URL, and your image will be posted!

[lefton4ya]

@Whiskey McGreggor - See How to Post Images and How to share your maps with the world (just skip down to Upload and post the pictures).
What the threads don't mention is that if you are not a Site Supporter or a Contributor and don't want to (although I encourage you to become a site supporter) you can upload images to a place like Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, Photobucket imgur, etc. and use embeds/links to pictures there.

Also on this, I still like Magic Set Editorr more than @Xorlof 's X-2 for the simple fact that a Database of cards & powers are saved, but only cause I'm used to it. I haven't made a new card in years anyway. Either way @superfrog 's guide to cropping figure image and making hit image is nice.

[superfrog]

I have done a million different ways to make custom cards. My first were in MS Word, with random templates downloaded from the internet.

My longstanding go-to was Mooseman's GIMP templates. Those are great, if you want to put the time in to do (some of) the formatting yourself.

I used MSE a few times, and I liked it decently well. I have seen several people have trouble with the program auto-filling powers they didn't want, which is a turn-off for me. My other issue was that I found the image importing (for the hit zone and figure pic) to be a bit screwy. All that said, it did work quite well if you get the hang of a few things.

The reason I like X-2 is that there's no start-up work required. You can just one day say "hey I want to make a card" and make a good one in 10 minutes. Plus it uses the official fonts, which is a in my book.

[Whiskey McGreggor]

So use X 2 (which I've used and like by the way)
And then port them over to gimp? I think the part that throws me off is gimp, I've tried downloading it but it wouldn't let me, I can try again and see if it works and hopefully I can port it over from x2 to gimp to my Heroscapers forum. Thanks for the help by the way.

[superfrog]

Have you downloaded GIMP from the link in the original post?

[Nikkomon]

hi , quick question. What kind of paper do the official cards use ? im trying to make some of the c3v/sov stuff.

[superfrog]

You're best off using something thick and glossy.