OilCan Drive Collector Card Box

A few days ago I talked about merchandising and Michael Allred's Madman X50 Cards. After finding the images for the card sets online I dug back into a few boxes in the closest and pulled out the actual decks to take a look at them.

I still love these card sets. Between the two decks there are a hundred cards done by a lot of great artists in the comic book, illustration, and animation field. But what I really love about the set is the box the cards came in. It's not like any other set of cards where you buy the wrapped cards and try and build a set by buying and trading them. No, they came as a complete set in a great little collector's box.

I looked a lot at the box as I examined the cards. I checked out how the printing was done and how it was put together.

And then, just to see if I could do it, I built my own OilCan Drive trading card box.

I took the art I had created for an old OilCan Drive CD Cover and tweaked it a bit to fit the design. I didn't want to get too fancy in case the whole experiment was a bust. But, I also didn't want to just wrap a self constructed box in white. I wanted some of my art on there somewhere. The CD cover proved to be a perfect piece of art to use. The pre-distressed look I used on the CD, making it look used and worn, would only help when I folded the art around the box.

The box is basically constructed from chipboard, scored and folded to make the top and bottom halves of the box. Then, the art is printed on a basic Avery 8.5x11 label stock, cut, and wrapped around the box. The label folds and wraps in such a way that it actually strengthens and holds the box together. I was actually amazed that it worked so well on my first go round and the box is really sturdy and looks great. I filled it with a bunch of chipboard cut down to trading card size.

I now had my own trading card box. But, what to put in it?

I've had a lot of ideas about trading card sets in the last few days. The easiest answer is to just do a set of 50 cards or so that feature OilCan Drive, the band, the cast, some adventures, stuff like that. It would be simple and to the point.

But, what if I could create not just a trading card set but some sort of card game. Maybe nothing as big as Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon, but maybe an OilCan Drive drinking card game. I think that would be fun and funny and I'm sure Ryan, the lead singer of the band, would approve.

But, maybe a card game is not the idea. Maybe OilCan Drive's next comic book adventure could be told as a card set. 50 cards means 50 panels of a comic book story waiting to happen. Package it all in a nice box like this and you might have something. And it would be an interesting storytelling exercise.

And then the experiment grew in my head. If you can tell a sequential story with 50 cards could you tell a non-sequential story in 50 cards? What I mean is, could you take the cards from the deck, place them in any order, and still tell a comprehensible story? Now that idea intrigues me but also makes my brain hurt. It's an idea almost worthy of Scott McCloud himself.

So, what might an OilCan Drive card set consist of? For now, I still don't know.

But it's nice to have ideas in your head where the possibilities are endless.