January 5, 2023
So...what's a menko card?
Menko (めんこ, 面子), also known as Bettan or Patchin, is a Japanese card game played by two or more players. It is also the name of the type of cards used to play this game. Each player uses Menko cards made from thick paper or cardboard, printed on one or both sides with images from anime, manga, and other works. A player's card is placed on the hardwood or concrete floor and the other player throws down his card, trying to flip the other player's card with a gust of wind or by striking his card against the other card. If he succeeds, he takes both cards. The player who takes all the cards, or the one with the most cards at the game's end, wins the game.
source: wiki
As I mentioned in a previous post, nostalgia runs through my veins! I love the idea of simpler times and Menko cards are my way of paying tribute to the days of collecting pogs and bubblegum cards.
Trading cards was something that eluded my grasp as a child because it wasn’t something I was allowed to spend money on.
In my adulthood I decided I would pay tribute to the nostalgia by making my own cards. And if I'm being honest I needed a project during the height of the pandemic to keep me busy.
Everything for me always starts out as a thumbnail. There are some that make the cut and others that just get scrapped and forgotten.
Sometimes sketches for potential paintings get made into menko cards instead if i really like the idea but not enough to spend hours rendering it out in acrylic.
The thumbnails that do make the cut, I scan and blow up to fit into a template that I created with specific dimensions. This way I can make sure all of my cards end up the same size.
Vintage menko cards have this hand drawn quality about them and their misaligned printing gives them added character that I absolutely adore. I originally started out creating these with an analog approach back in 2019.
Rather than digitally inking the thumbnails, I printed them out a low opacities and inked over them with sharpie which provided enough control as well as offered slight imperfections from bleeding ink.
Since then, I've started inking digitally again.
Once scanned, I messed with levels to give me darker blacks and whiter whites and then moved on to coloring.
In order to mimic the four color process, I tried to shortcut my way by coloring first, then applying the “color halftone” filter and then separating through channels — fail. It looked too mechanical and lacked the look I desired.
I proceeded to manually create halftones from 10%-90%, created Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black layers, and colored only in those colors with the different half tone percentages.
By using different percentages of CMYK layered on top of each other, I could produce different colors like the four color printing process does — but manually layer by layer.
The last bit of magic to add at the end is skewing the layers a bit to create that off registration look.
