Friday, December 4, 2015

Airbrushing or what I like to call it, "They Crayola Factory"

If you think I didn't like the BHNH card, then you're about to find out how I despise the poorly airbrushed cards.  First off, let me say that I have no objection to a fine quality airbrush job that makes you take a second look, because it looks that good.  I rank a bad airbrush right up there with a bad hair piece.  If it doesn't look natural, you don't use it.  If it looks completely out of place or artificial you have to scrap it.  Some of the airbrushed cards in this set look like a grade schooler broke out the crayola box, a pair of scissors and some Elmer's stick glue.  There were just that awful.  A good airbrush occurs when you remove a cap logo and put a new logo on it, but you didn't have to change the cap color.  It looks natural and you can't pick it out with your eyes closed.  A bad one looks like the pastel colored crayons in the 64 Crayola box were put into action.  For the life of me I will never understand why the bad one's made it to the printer.  Someone in QC had to look at it and say, this doesn't look professional.  There were definitely other routes to take if a proper photo wasn't available.  The good ole' head looking upward, so you see the underside of the cap look could suffice.  Even the BHNH shot, as a last resort would work.  I used to make my own cards as a kid (baseball nerd alert) and I would take a picture of the proper cap on a friend's head put on the angle to match the card picture.  Then I would cut it out and paste it on the card.  Since I was able to splurge for the Polaroid shots as a kid I can't understand why something like that wasn't done by a major company churning out a professional product.  It really didn't take all that long to do and it looked a hell of a lot better than what was released.

Here some samples of the good, the bad and the ugly as well as the perplexing.

Bad Airbrush:  Looks like a pastel crayon was used.  It was obviously taken using a 1969 Dodger photo, so it's 2 years old.  Where's the Brewers Logo ?  Why didn't they just airbrush out the LA and put on a M ?  The cap color was the same ?
This was a pretty good airbrush of a 1969 Cardinals photo.  Cap color is red, similar to the Senators' cap color.  Head is pointed up, so the logo only needs to be tweaked a bit.  Perfect ?  No !  Useable ?  Absolutely.

Where's the logo ?  They did the work blackening out the Twins log and darkening the cap, but why is it missing the "D" ?
If you look closely you can see it was a photo taken while he was wearing a Royals uniform, but you have to look closely.  By having the cap tilted upward and his head slightly looking upward you have a cap that doesn't require any work at all.  A much better pose than the BHNH or airbrush.  Still, the could have airburshed out the top of the "S" on the right side of the jersey and maybe centered him.


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