Awardwinning British author Neil Gaiman was once d quoted as saying,“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” Gaiman should know, having written for just about every medium, including novels (Good Omens, American Gods), comics (DC’s The Sandman, Marvel’s The Eternals), screenwriting (Doctor Who, Babylon 5), and much more. Gaiman even appeared as himself on the “The Book Job” episode of The Simpsons in 2011. And while Gaiman’s agency isn’t really to create something from nothing, it is to take already existing words and arrange them in a meaningful and pleasing sequence that lends him the ability to tell stories that have universal appeal. Simply put, that’s “making something that wasn’t there before.”
The illustrators and writers of trading cards possess that creativity, too. For many years, underpaid and unappreciated commercial masters worked long hours on drafting and artist studio tables, designing all that wonderful, detailed artwork needed to make the latest trading card deadlines. The amount of new artwork needed to complete a 55, 66 or higher card set was voluminous, but for these stalwarts it was all in a day’s work. Once most nonsport production migrated to cheaper photo-based sets their roles diminished, but did not disappear. Today, freelance sketch card artists have picked up a lot of that slack, producing artwork on a 1/1 basis.