Fair Warning: this post is about 2.7 years old, so some of the information might be a bit dated. On the other hand, this post was last modified about 2.7 years ago, so maybe it's up-to-date after all. In any case, please keep all this in mind while reading. Thanks for understanding!
A Quick Diversion:  

The Actual News:

Ho Ho Ho! Merry Marchmas!

So what’s with the Christmas theme? Well, I wanted to release these blanks around Christmas time, as a gift to all of you fans and fakes alike… but, uh… as you can tell, it’s not Christmas. But that’s ok! Let’s just pretend that it’s Christmas.

But yeah! I finally was able to finish my first completed blank release in some fifteen years: my brand new Japanese Neo Redux blanks. Here’s quick sneak peak:

Let’s cut to the chase: you can download them RIGHT NOW! Click the links below to download either of the two initial download packs I have available. You can also download individual blanks.

So what exactly are you downloading? This is something I plan on expanding upon with future releases, but the goal is to have different download packs depending on your level of skill and program accessibility. Therefore…

  • Standard Pack: this is focused more on novice designers who simply want an all-in-one download
    • CURRENTLY: this file has every blank as an individual .PNG file, as well as a single .PNG symbol sheet
    • EVENTUALLY: I’ll be including fonts and other helpful guides
  • Expert Pack: this is focused more on experts with access to Photoshop; it will provide Photoshop-unique tools and techniques to make faking a bit easier.
    • CURRENTLY: there are only two PSD files: one with every single blank available, plus a unique symbol sheet which lets you select specific type symbols which are already spaced properly for attacks, weakness/resistance, and retreat.
    • EVENTUALLY: the blank PSD won’t be just a collection of all blanks, but instead be a unique system where you can swap in different backgrounds, icons, text layers, etc, to create your own unique blank combination

So what about the blanks themselves? Here’s a breakdown of the facts:

  • I made blanks for every single type that ever existed, even if they never had an actual Neo release back in the day. This means both Dragon and Fairy types are included.
    • The Dragon and Fairy types are based on their BWXY styles, seeing as the BWXY styles for other types greatly resembled their Base/Neo forms. Not to mention the “Base Set”-esque style of Fairy Clefairy seen in XY Evolutions.
    • The actual card types released are only Baby, Basic, Stage 1 and Stage 2 cards. I plan on releasing other card types (EX, Mega, etc), as well as the “Three Up” Tyrogue Baby card style… which I thankfully own and can therefore properly scan.
  • Also included are two Trainer cards… the standard “Trainer” card plus the “Illustrator” card above.
    • I also plan on including other Trainer cards as well—Stadium, Supporters—as well as some modern cards like “ACE SPEC” or “Prism Star”.
  • The size of the blanks are about 4x my original blanks (as in, twice as wide & twice as high = 4x scale), or about the same size as both Pokémon TCG Online’s cards as well as Aschefield’s SwSh blanks.
    • (this doesn’t remind me of anything, not at all.)
  • One minor change in the design was the removal of the “Crown” seen on the Darkness and Metal type symbol. I still don’t know why they added it, so I removed it from the blanks.
    • But fret not! I did include the Crown in the Symbol sheet, so now you can add in Crowns on any card type you want! If you ever wanted that “Crowned Water” blank, now’s your chance!
  • Since not everyone knows how to read Japanese, I included a surprise with this release—which also represents an idea of things to come: English versions of the blanks!
    • But the cool part is that, when I release a proper “Expert Pack”, you’ll be able to do the same as well… AND for different languages as well! There’ll be Spanish Neo, French Neo, Korean Neo… uh… Klingon Neo (although, is there a Klingon word for “retreat”??)… the idea here is that each language will be is own layer which you can just swap in and out. This way too, I don’t have to release EVERY SINGLE BLANK in EVERY SINGLE LANGUAGE versions… just download the Expert Pack, swap in the type background of your choice, choose your preferred language overlay… and bingo-bango, you’ve got your own blank in your own language. Pretty neat, huh?
    • Anyways, the English blanks are in the same folder as the Japanese blanks; whether you download the Standard Pack above or visit the link to each individual blank, they’ll be found in their own type folder first.
  • It’s also hard to tell with this white background… but like Aschefield’s SwSh blanks, the artbox is transparent! This will allow you to place whatever artwork you want to have in a layer behind the blank layer, and it’ll ALWAYS be properly cropped within the frame.

These are all the little notes I want to share about the actual blank release at the moment. As mentioned above, I plan on having other cards available (MEGA Pokémon, ACE SPEC Trainers, etc)… but this may be something I’ll only have as elements in the Expert Pack or as an overlay versus a proper card outright. But we’ll get back to that later.

One last thing I’d like to share with you is the Symbol sheet. Take a look at the Standard version (the Expert version is similar):

So for the Japanese Neo Redux Symbol sheet, I did something that I didn’t do with previous symbol sheets: I have the symbols pre-laid out in a proper distance, allowing you to cut-and-paste them onto your card already prealigned. Compare this with the original Symbol Sheet for my old blanks:

With the old Symbol Sheet, you had to manually cut-and-paste in the symbols where you needed to, which definitely involved a lot of needless work trying to align them with one another for attacks, weakness/resistance, etc. But with the modern symbol sheet… if your attack is ZWZWZW, then just cut out three Water symbols from the sheet and you’re already good to go! Need to show a ZR weakness and a ZF resistance? Just copy both Fire Weakness and Resistance icons, paste it onto your card, then copy-and-paste the Fighting weakness over the second Fire icon; that second Fire icon therefore exists only as a guideline to where you should place the fighting icon. Easy-peasy, Pikachu and Eevee.

Phew! That was a lot to cover, but I just wanted to get everyone up-to-speed on these blanks, as well as show everyone how far these blanks have come since my previous 2003 blanks. There’s also still a lot left to do (such as style info, layout guidelines, etc), but I wanted to at least release these blanks in order to get them out there for people to start using. And these are far from the last blanks I plan on working on; in fact, my next blanks will be the Shadowless 1st Edition Base Set blanks… which I’m legit surprised no one has ever released before. But that’s OK, there’s a first time for everything!

…

Anyways, I want to thank all the regulars on the PA! Discord #fake-card-mania channel for helping me with the minutiae of blank design as well as with refinining the look and feel—GC| Linkinboss, Halian, Bela, Dr.Omanyte, numberonesoniafan, kyatt7, AtoMan and aschefield (of course)—as well as give special thanks to Alveinhero for having inspired me to actually start work on these blanks (well, that and actually asking for me to make them, lol). I couldn’t have done it without you guys!

Speaking of which, if you want help with these blanks (or any others for that matter), head on over to the #fake-card-mania channel on the PA! Discord and ask any questions you’d like concerning design, fonts, etc., and we’d be happy to help. Heck, if you want to be part of the design discussion for the next set of blanks I work on, that’s the place to do it. So come on over, we’d love to have you. :D