How Cool Would This Be?

I think we all can agree that Fleer Retro Football would do much better with an NFL license. This is my vision of what could have been. I spent about 5 days building the templates and another day or so working with the player images to find the right shot and cleaning them up to fit in the templates. Finding the right font with some of the cards was a pain in the ass, I have hundreds of fonts that I went through to find the perfect match but a couple were off slightly but I don't think it really hurt the aesthetics.

 

I began with the RG3 Precious Metal Gems just to see if I could replicate the card surface. I did the Jambalaya next, which was probably the most difficult to make because I had to build it almost entirely from scratch. The Hardware cards are pretty boring really but I made this to add some variety. The 1960 Peterson and base card Richardson were both pretty easy to make. The base card is my second favorite, behind the Jambalaya, followed by the 1960 card as my third favorite. I like the simplicity of the designs.

 

Some of the shots were difficult to find because I had certain things I was looking for (besides size) like the 1960 Peterson where he was in a Vikings uniform with his helmet off. If you look at the original Fleer 1960 football cards the players are all without their helmets and most are in posed shots. With the Jambalaya, my favorite, I wanted to use a shot of Fitzgerald jumping because the basketball versions all have players in a jump/shooting motion. With the Hardware card, because the card theme is players with trophies/rings, I wanted to use a Brady shot from a winning Super Bowl so I used this one from Super Bowl XXXIX where the Patriots beat the Eagles.

 

I was working on a Noyz Boyz card but was not happy with how it was coming out so I dropped it all together and I wanted to add one of the Autographics cards but I decided to hold up and just post what I have completed so far.

 

I am an Upper Deck fan going back to their first releases and I know that Richard McWilliam has made some horrible decisions regarding the company and the athletes UD has worked with but I still hope that someday either he will pass the company on to someone else or shows he can make the right choices and earn back the lost licenses.