An internal movie from The Pokémon Company shows how cards are created, from the text list to the finished product
PokéBeach, a Pokémon TCG fansite, has made a significant discovery. It's an internal film from The Pokémon Company that demonstrates, in never-before-seen detail, how a Western Pokémon card is made, from concept through proofreading and production. And if you like industrial images of products being mass-produced, you're in for a treat.
This internal film was presumably made for staff at both The Pokémon Company International and Millennium Print Group, the card company that The Pokémon Company announced its plan to acquire earlier this year. Given the use of Sun & Moon's Ultra Prism and Forbidden Light sets, I'm guessing it was shot around 2017. The firm recounts the process of creating a fresh set of Pokémon cards in the film, from the text lists of names and moves supplied to them by Japanese card producers to the real packs in people's hands.
There's something unusual about seeing blank cards on a computer screen with their properties inscribed directly into the card. It feels like something only a magician living in a volcano could do, rather than a careful crew forensically scrutinizing each card for errors on their monitors. But it just gets better as the video progresses.
Those textured cards (usually a dead giveaway for shady forgeries) are so intricately complex to make! Every ripple and line looks to have been painstakingly planned up on computer, matching the direction and pattern to certain areas of each Pokémon's body before spreading out throughout the remainder of the card.
There's so much depth and insight into how a set is translated and produced for the English-speaking markets in this. There are several iterations of the Ultra Prism logo design to browse through, from its first drawn phase to the finished package. You can see how many individuals are engaged in each phase, various voices weighing in on messages asking for minor changes, or how a specific design might win approval from the majority of departments but yet be rejected by one. The image above shows a probable list of rejected names before "Ultra Prism" was chosen, however it does appear overly staged for the photo. Still, we can all bemoan the fact that we never got to see Ultra Galactic.
Then there's the printing, which is a lot of fun to see. Not only are impossibly large sheets of the rarest cards fed into massive slicing machines, but they are also meticulously scrutinized at every point. They also have a unique metal stick for measuring the card boundaries. (Surely, anyone who has missed out on a grade 10 owing to "centering" can only be outraged.)
It even discusses the TCGO code cards and how the QR codes are validated. However, it does not delve into why they disclose if a pack would include a nice pull or not.
Unfortunately, it does not reveal how the cards that get into a booster pack are chosen. It does show the massive machinery that accomplish the job, but no explanation of how it all works is provided.
There are also a lot of amusing numbers. TCPi's production facilities in Durham, NC, create 26.62 million cards every day on a $8.5 million printing machine. Meanwhile, 2.5 million packages are generated each day to accommodate them. And a good job, given that there are ten in each pack.
Not to mention the Raiders of the Lost Ark feel of the warehouse where the packaged cards are kept. According to my observations, each of those larger crates has 72 packs of six booster boxes. The camera pans out to discover that this is only half of the warehouse. I'm guessing there are roughly 2,000 of those larger crates. At about $140 per booster box, that's $120 million in Pokémon cards. Yikes. Anyone anyone have an idea for a heist film?
What a terrific insight, and let's hope Nintendo and The Pokémon Company recognize it's one worth leaving online to market their product.
#Pokémon #PokémonCard #PokémonTradingCards
SOURCE: kotaku
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