Archive for the ‘History of Joakim Soria’ Category
This card has appeared on my site before but I thought I would officially induct it into the “History of Joakim Soria” set. It is originally from my 2011 Royals spring training set that was all Royals, all from spring training and came in at a whopping 55 cards, wow, good times.
This Soria was one of my favorites from the set. I was actually forced to use a picture that I normally wouldn’t. I like to give the picture room to breathe and I had to crop really tightly on this one. I had the same issue with Brayan Pena’s card from the same set. In retrospect, those two cards are likely among my top 5 from the set.
The 2011 Topps design got mixed reviews from me. I like that it is not drenched in silver foil and that it has a big picture on it. The bad points were more minor but annoying nonetheless. I hated the fact that it said Kansas City Royals around the baseball on top and bottom in addition to having a Royals logo in between the two. Not too bad though, I am anxious to see what Royals are included in series 2, could there be an Eric Hosmer rookie card? We can only hope. June 6th you can get your grubby little hands on them and find out.
1981 Topps was never a card design I liked a whole lot. I didn’t like all of the orange, I didn’t like the hat. I don’t like when a baseball card set has a really cartoony feature like this. It made the set have sort of a “cheap” feel I guess. To make matters worse, like 1972 Topps, the set was bookended by two very nice sets. 1980 Topps is a classic set that has to be a top 10 Topps set and 1982 had the subtle stripes going down one side to frame the card nicely.
This picture is not a high favorite of mine either. It was from the series in Detroit earlier this year, one of the few days the Royals wore the solid blue uniforms. The picture itself isn’t bad, it is just the fact that all I can see when I look at it is a Goose Joak custom card. He used the picture on one of his excellent Goose Joak originals around the same time I made this card. His has been up a while now so he definitely beat me to the punch. I am low of pictures of Joakim for this “History” project so I decided to leave it.
I experimented quite a bit with the picture for this 1953 Topps card. The cards from the 1950’s had a noticeably painted look. I’m not sure if this was because of the inability for higher quality photography or if they actually painted all of the master pictures. Either way, they have a very distinct look. I tried to replicated this look with an autotrace feature in Illustrator and limited the amount of colors I used. I think I used something like 8 colors for the picture of Soria seen here.
The actual card is very basic but I tried to devote some time to getting an interesting look for the picture. I definitely don’t think I nailed this one but either way I was happy with the result and deemed it good enough to be my next chapter in the History of Joakim Soria.
This one is interesting. I have mentioned before how much I like using unorthodox pictures, this definitely fits the bill. 1988 Topps was a basic set, no many frills but not to the point that it was boring. The team name is over the picture which is different than most Topps years. This had to be taken into consideration when chosing the photo. To a lesser extent, it was important to make sure the diagonal name in the bottom left hand corner didn’t cover up anything important.
I think the reason I like this card is the fact that it has tension. Soria’s full body is on the card but he is about to explode into a pitch and it looks like the space on the card won’t be able to contain him. This picture is taken right at the top of the windup where he is about to explode toward the target. The picture was obviously taken while Soria warmed in the bullpen before entering the game. The picture is also reminiscent of Zack Greinke’s Sports Illustrated cover from his Cy Young season.
I’ll start off by saying that I think I really nailed this one. I think it looks really good. I used a .jpg for the purple border, something that I haven’t done on any other card so far. There are a couple of years where this will be unavoidable. The ones that will need this are 1990, 1987 and 1968 that I can think of. The picture I found seems to fit really well. These are a cheap looking card in my opinion, they look like they are printed on a printer at home. Those things make this set kind of cool.
I am a little disappointed in the amount of my posts lately and how slowly my Just Fair checklist is growing so I am making a commitment to do 10 new cards tomorrow. The most I have done in a day is 10 so far. I did the entire Phillies and Giants rotations all in one day a little over a week ago. I’ll see if I can follow through.
It’s been a couple day since a “History of Joakim Soria” installment and since he got a win today I though I would post one. 1999 Topps is today’s victim. A really simple design, all one color and no logo. I think the picture of Soria in the old Monarchs uniform fits well here. I was surprised to find it. It is nice to see something different since I have to come up with 61 years worth of pictures of the guy.
His name is obscured by the crowd, you can’t really read it. This was actually an issue with this set in my opinion. Too much of the one color. It was a nice simple one to re-create however, probably the easiest I have done.
I really like how this one came out. 1985 Topps is actually one of the simplest designs that I have attempted to replicate. I think what makes this card for me is the picture. I like pictures that don’t look like every other picture you see of a guy. This one is of Soria, probably during spring training judging by his hat, sitting in the dugout. I even like the players in both the foreground and the background, it make the picture interesting.
I know CSD did a 1985 Joakim Soria card so I hope my doing so doesn’t steal any of his momentum.
I will give a quick update on my “History of Joakim Soria” project. It seems to be the project that has held my interest best out of anything that I have done. Even my original design “Just Fair ’11” has lost momentum to me. I will keep visiting it but likely won’t ever keep daily updates on it.
My estimations have Topps having 61 years of cards out right now, (I’m counting 1951 for now) Right now I have 41 of the designs done and Soria cards made. I think this is the 9th I have posted so I am pretty far ahead of the curb. A quick breakdown by decade: the 1970’s and 1980’s are completed. 1990’s I have 7 of 10 years done and 5 from each the 2000’s and 1960’s and just 3 from the 1950’s. If there is any years you would like to see posted, post a comment and I will try to move them to the top of the list.
Jim over at the The Phillies Room made a good observation and point on 1997 Topps card on my site the other day. I have quoted it below.
“Very cool. Topps used red for American League teams and green for National League teams in 1997. I always thought this could have been a great design had Topps gone with team colors for each card (Joakim would have had a blue card), and if they had included the team name at the top in the same style as the players’ name.”
One of the great things about having a template ready on these cards is I can visually see what something like this would look like. All the work was already done so this was whipped up in about five minutes. I don’t know if this is exactly what Jim had in mind but I have modified my 1997 Topps Joakim Soria to match his description. I really like the blue. I’m thinking maybe I should have made “Kansas City” solid and “Royals” in outline to balance the card. Oh well, We will just classify this as a card that never was.
By the way, Jim is doing some cool things with the 1983 Topps design over at The Phillies Room, you should go check it out.
This is one of the first ’90’s cards I tried to tackle and it wasn’t very easy. So many times I glance at a card and think; simple, no problem. I am often wrong. This design is a little boring overall. This is one of the years I bought a lot of cards, I believe I was only a couple short of completing a whole Series One set from packs alone. I tend to go in waves, some years I buy a lot, others I don’t buy many. For instance I bought tons of 2010 Topps packs but to date I still have only bought one pack of 2011.
I think it is actually really smart to not buy packs now. I can spend a lot of money on packs hoping to pull a Royals card or I can hop on eBay and buy the whole Royals set for the price of about 2 packs total, and that is after shipping. I love buying packs of cards for the unknown factor but it just isn’t practical.
Back to the card; A couple interesting things about the card; It has no position, the vast majority of card list the players position. They normally even list the team even though the team logo is represented. The name is the really distinctive thing on the card. The first name in outlines and the last in a solid color. This is a cool way to be able to butt the first and last names together but overall makes it hard to read.
The border in 1997 Topps varied colors. The Royals apparently randomly got red. The border also has drop shadows and fades making it very difficult to re-create. I don’t think I nailed it but I go pretty damn close.
This card has appeared on my site before but I thought I would officially induct it into the “History of Joakim Soria” set. It is originally from my 2011 Royals spring training set that was all Royals, all from spring training and came in at a whopping 55 cards, wow, good times.
A Hair Off Square 