Joe Dirt

Joe Dirt is one of those late '90s / early '00s comedies that I didn't realize how much I liked.  Also, I never remember taking note of what a good message the movie has --while being cloaked in lowbrow humor.

If you've read this blog in the past you might remember that my affinity for trading card design, for the most part, comes to a halt in the early '90s.  Joe Dirt came out in 2001 and I have no idea what trading cards looked like by then.  I know they were shinier with foil stamping, but that's about all I know.  So I had to choose a vintage-inspired design that I thought would be a good fit for the movie. 

In looking at the movie's poster I noticed the Joe Dirt type logo has something of an orange gradient fade coloring which made me think of the 1988 Topps football design with its gradient color fades that coordinated with the different NFL teams.  I chose to color the frame the same as that movie poster font logo.  I did that for the 6 character cards in the mini-set and then made 3 "Classic Scene" cards with a blue gradient fade coloring to set them apart as a subset.

1988 Topps football

The card backs are inspired by the '88 Topps football card backs, but not a 1:1 match.  I freestyled a bit to pack as much into the back of these cards as possible. 



I also did an additional David Spade card as a bonus card to the set. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers

I came across this pic of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and thought it would make a fun custom football card.  The photo itself (c. 2011) is the band playing tribute to The Who’s 1974 out-takes album “Odds And Sods” album cover.

I did this one in the style of a 1988 Topps football team card.  I just like the design for nostalgia reasons, 1988 was the year that I probably busted the most football packs.

1988 Topps football

Branon Molale

A friend of Brandon Molales happens to follow my Instagram page and he let Brandon know about the Blazer card I did of him as a part of the Dodgeball mini-set I made.  Brandon in turn reached out to me about getting a couple of copies for himself for which he was happy to autograph a couple copies for my personal collection in return.

Brandon  made a suggestion for a card of his character “Kevin Ward” the New York Jets quarterback from Mr. Deeds.  I loved it and was all over that suggestion.  Right away I knew I wanted to use a 1988 Topps football inspired design.  I’d used the League Leaders subset design for my Step Brothers and Dumb and Dumber cards but I’d yet to use the set’s base card design.  The base card really requires it to be a football card with a helmet to best make use of the design which I now had in the Kevin Ward card.

There was also an idea for a card that combines both Blazer and Kevin Ward.  Since I used the ‘88 Topps football for the Kevin Ward card I thought why not use the League Leaders template for the custom card for the two characters.

Brandon loved the cards and the inscriptions he put on my autographed copies were really kick ass.  Along with the cards Brandon also gifted me with some custom guitar picks.  That’s his passion, collecting stage used guitar picks.  I thought that was a very cool inclusion.

Dumb And Dumber

I've been wanting to make a Dumb and Dumber card so I started thinking about the movie’s different scenes and I decided I needed to make a card with of Lloyd and Harry in their orange and baby blue charity ball tuxedos.  I found the image above and knew it’d do great in the 1988 Topps football league leaders design I made for Step Brothers.

Dumb and Dumber is one of those movies I’ve seen more times than I can count.  Dumber and Dumber came out when I was in eighth grade so of course I loved it with humor that is tailor made for a middle school kid.  A buddy of mine had the VHS tape and we damn near wore that thing out.  He also had the movie’s soundtrack which is chock full of 90’s goodies. 

Lloyd Christmas is probably neck-and-neck with The Grinch as my favorite Jim Carrey roles.  I also think Jeff Daniels is an altogether brilliant actor and I love the fact that he’s a Michigan guy that stayed home even after making it big. 

This is the second card I’ve made from Dumber and Dumber, here’s the first.

Step Brothers

Update:
Per the genius suggestion of an Instagram user I've added a 1977 Topps Star Wars style card to make a Step Brothers two card Phan Pack.  I actually wanted to make a "Boats 'N Hoes" Yo! MTV Raps style card but I shockingly could not find one quality screen capture image of that video :(

Step Brothers may not fit the nostalgic vintage theme that most of my cards share but I think it still qualifies as something the is universally loved and could benefit from a Phantom Cardboard treatment.

This card was more about the card design than the subject.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan Step Brothers.  The movie is about as quotable as it gets.  But, I've been wanting to use the 1988 Topps football design for something.  One thing that has kept me from using it for all this time is I really don't know how I feel about the two-tone gradient colors that all the base cards have.  Then, I ran across an picture of the Jerry Rice / Jim Breech Scoring Leaders card.  I personally remember pulling that card out of a pack of '88 Topps football.  That was a big card to get back then.  Jerry Rice was a favorite of mine.  I think he was a favorite of everyone's.  The 49ers were kind of like "America's Team" back then.  Or, at least it seemed that way to me.  I liked this one design for my card because it didn't have the two-tone gradient like the player base cards, or a team helmet for that matter.

I made the template and then plugged in the post-brawl picture of Dale and Brennan with my fingers crossed that it lined up with the the card's split frame ... and it did, perfectly.