Congrats on two great cards! There is something about the Magikarp card that stuns me, it's just great! If I am to be really, really picky, there are two issues with the Lugia card.
The first one is that the part of the Delta logo (the logo which shows the stage of the Pokémon, in this case Basic) where it mixes with the illustration doesn't seem well blended with the illustration. If you used an alpha layer of the illustration, I would recommend (if you use Photoshop) to select the borders where the Delta logo overrides it and use the Feather tool (from the Select menu) on 1 px, and simply press Delete.
Lugia itself seems rather blurred. I guess this is due to it having been resized. I recently discovered a technique to help improve quality in such cases when working on my Gameboy Island Set. It does require Photoshop, and be able to take advantage of layers and the filter Poster Edges.
1. First you take the base image and resize it. After it has been resized, it might look somewhere between slightly blurred to extremely blurred.
2. Now, use Sharpen filter either once or twice, or use Sharpen More depending on how blurred the picture is. It might look a bit odd, as the sharpened focus strengthens some details too much while still making it a fuzzy image elsewhere. The way you would want it to look like at this stage is to have the picture sharp enough so that the outline doesn't seem too blurry.
3. Duplicate the layer you just performed Sharpen/Sharpen More on.
4. Make sure you have the topmost of the two layers selected. Open the filter Poster Edges (under category Artistic). Now, this part requires a bit of practice. You have three slider options; Edge Thickness, Edge Intensity and Posterization. Tweak in the following order to easiest achieve best result:
- 1) Posterization: Always set this to full (set to 6).
- 2) Edge Intensity: Set to 0 for now.
- 3) Edge Thickness: Depending on how it reacts, especially to the shading of the picture, set Edge Thickness fairly high. When Edge Intensity is set to 0, you will most likely only notice the differences in the preview when looking on the outline.
- 4) Edge Intensity: We're back at the intensity. You will notice when you try the various steps of the slider that in the beginning it will only make certain parts of the picture darker, more accented. However, after a certain while, these accented edges turn into black areas. Set the slider one or two steps before the point where black areas occur.
- 5) Edge Thickness: Do a final tweak on the Edge Thickness. In most cases, I end up setting the Edge Thickness to full.
- 6) Let it do its wonders on the picture for you.
5. At this point you will have a picture that is fairly sharp all over, and especially accented in the shading. Now, it's time for the final touch. The layer we just used Posted Edges on (should be the topmost layer) needs to be partially transparent. Go to the Opacity control of the Layer toolbox. Use the slider to find a decent mix between the sharpness of the original layer and the accented feel of the layer with Poster Edges on. There is no one universal setting here, so you will have to play with it yourself. I, personally, seem to use somewhere between 20%-40% very often.
6. Put it on your card. ;)
Just because I tell you this doesn't mean that I think your card is bad. Honestly, I think it is really good, just wanted to give a helping hand. Keep up the good work!
