Making your own member card (resources and tutorials)

This topic is one of our Member Card threads! See them all by clicking here.

One of the best card makers on MAL has made a tutorial in his club you can follow through on making a member card, including how to make the frame and border for it. You can even ask him for help or tips in that topic:
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1209497

In that topic you'll be told you need to find a render and backdrop for your card. You can find good resources for that in this topic below!

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1458803
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1412490

Renders are an important part of your member card creation. In this topic you can ask ppl to make a render for you and the quality is excellent! I also provide a link to one of my pools of renders where you should fine something to use:
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=400287

It is essential you find quality pics for your cards. Try the ones from my giant pool of scenic papers:
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1384338

In this topic, we have organized a vast pool of places where to find pics online complete with links and what each site best provides:
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=504129

I also have a thread dedicated to scenery (people-less wallpapers) that is useful for all kinds of design including making cards:
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=651473

Use Hahaido's guide to make the frame or border (see the bottom):
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1209497

For borders if it seems difficult give it a try, or use online guides on making borders in your program. But if you're really having trouble still (or are really lazy), you can always just borrow someone else's border from the PSD or simply paste over the inside of it. This is a little frowned on, but what can you do? At least recoloring the border will make it more unique. It would be appreciated to credit the person whose border you used.

For the frame, if you're having trouble with Hahaido's tutorial you can just use a cut, cropped or resized image for your "backdrop" and then put your border around it and place other effects on top of that.

Its important you have good looking text. Text shouldn't be hard to add with the program you're using, there are always text options in every program. But make sure you don't have alias on your text, turn on anti-alias if its off. Otherwise you could end up with a pixelated font (left diamond):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Anti-aliased-diamonds.png

You should also use unique fonts that match your card theme, avoid use of easily recognizable fonts like Comic Sans MS. When the font stands out as overused, it can take away from noticing the good qualities of your card.

The best program by far for custom text is Photoshop, (add text and try Blending Options) but it can be hard to use at first. Play around! It will produce good results. And fortunately there are many guides online you can Google for. Even Photoshop CS2 (the free version) has superb custom text options. As an alternative you can try Gimp, and look up guides on doing certain kinds of font tricks on Google, for example if I wanted to have outlined text in Gimp I just Google "outlined text in gimp tutorial" and come across this:
http://www.gimpology.com/submission/view/how_to_outline_text
and there's a guide on it.

You can get free well-made font styles with online generators on Cooltext, a very useful site for newbies and lazy people looking for good fonts. But the text will be recognizable to people who are familiar with it unless you customize the colors, shading, and font of the text style you choose:
http://cooltext.com/

You should simply view other people cards! Here are topics where you can view great cards for inspiration. You might get an idea from just viewing. Copying or recreating someone elses card for practice is immensely helpful if you're starting out. You might even be able to come up with something new during that process.

Member card contest highlights: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1253679
2012-2014 LE cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=399831
Hahaido's SCLP Member cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=589967
Hahaido's POH Member cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1103831
Veriti's TCG cards ver 1: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1219879
Veriti's TCG cards ver 1.1: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1250105
SylakentH's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1248067
Mercuria's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1243683
Kuronekodesu's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1243683
ArtistJenny's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1255989
Narushisto's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1239755
Katedadevil's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1244379
(me) Shishio's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=589463
Valentine-style cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1247433
Le-epic's cards: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1246495

You might also find inspiration by searching variations of "card" on Google or (better yet) on anime-image sites like Danbooru. For example:
http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1768906?tags=card

I come across this from cards I found there:
http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1769421?tags=tanotomoe

It would be a good idea for an original card style. And there are many more like it when you keep digging!

btw an important rule to creativity I found is to just do all you can at the time. Then when you finish or half-way through your work, you may see ways to improve your design and/or come up with more creative ideas! You gotta climb the fence to see the other side clearly, right?