How Rob Liefeld and some trading cards taught me character design with some cheap 90s Trading Cards

Recently maybe every other week I’ve been meandering to Fat Jacks Comic Crypt to get a breather from my myRecently — maybe every other week — I’ve been meandering over to Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt to get a breather from my office. It’s already in Center City, about a 10-minute walk from where I work. During one of these pop-ins, I purchased a stack of Comic Images Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood trading cards. I opened them on stream, and shortly after, as I was going over the cards post-stream, I had a callback — a recall — and shortly after, a total recall of what some of these cards meant to my understanding of comic book production.

While this set consists of re-colored, air-brushed comic book panels illustrated by Rob Liefeld with mixed results, it holds Rob’s character designs for some of these characters — two of which (Cross and Prophet) were seen in only a limited capacity in the pages of Youngblood. For an avid reader and fan like myself, these cards quickly became the focus of the entire stack.

But what’s hidden in all of this is that these character design cards were one of my first real insights into the process of creating characters and the prep work that goes into the story and, later, the pages. In this case, they weren’t detailed or complete — no rotations, just quick sketches to map out the general look and feel of the character, leaving the hard work for the actual comic book pages.

From this point forward, the proportions, shape, colors, and special features of a character became paramount in their design in order to communicate with the rest of the production team. An invaluable lesson hidden in packs of cheap, disposable trading cards.

*** From L to R
Combat, Prophet, Cross, Badrock (then Bedrock), Diehard, Vogue, Shaft

PETER A DELUCA AKAPD

AKAPAD is a versatile thinker known across Philadelphia, Europe, and even in the vast Multiverse as The Electic One. By day, he excels as an IT Mastermind, assisting individuals, both big and small, with a wide range of simple and complex solutions. In contrast, he is also a talented illustrator, a passionate comic book enthusiast, a creative content creator, and an active live streamer. Additionally, his podcast, “AKAPAD The Film Buff Podcast,” boasts an impressive catalog of over 500 episodes available on nearly every major platform.