A contest, if you dare!

Last week, my company moved offices. And with that move, I lost my cubicle. If I ever have to go into the offices, I'll have some temp desk to work at. With the change, my work PC is now my home machine. I no longer remote into my machine at my desk. With the change, though, I've had to get this work machine setup with enough items so it can function as a personal machine as well. Which means I had to dig around and find the disk for my graphics program. Yes, it's old, but I tried GIMP, and it's too robust for me. And I'm not dropping cash on Photoshop. Fortunately, the disk was still in decent shape to install.

I can just ignore all those files, right?

I don't do a lot with my graphics program. Minor changes, resizing - nothing great. I've dabbled with customs, but dabble at best. Nothing along the lines of the work by Gavin, Matt or Jordan. In fact, you don't need graphic skills, you can go through Topps and get customs made, just like how Sooz and Dan announced their newborn.

It was a little of the first and some of the 2nd that made me decide on a little contest. Because if custom Topps were around when my kids were born, I would have been buying them. And if Topps customs were around when I was a kid, I would have made my own baseball card. So it's time to correct that, as embarrassing and pathetic at it might be.

Back in the 70's, MLB didn't license out their logos to Little League baseball, so technically, I was on the "Cards". Close enough, though. Dig that real wooden bat, too. Screw the ping!  So that is my first official custom. They only get better from this point, right?

So the contest? I challenge you to make your own custom. Replicate a Topps design like I did, or use COMC like Jordan does and do a little shopping to put yourself in the card. But it has to be you. But not current you. I'm going to make the age break at 16. You may only use an image of yourself below the age of 16. Com'on - if we collect cards, we had to play the sport at least one season, right. Or you have a photo of yourself is a ball cap, football uniform, basketball uniform, etc.... Dig enough and you have a photo of younger you that would work on a trading card. I'm 13 here.

Get to shopping yourself into a Topps design and show it off to the rest of us. You can either post it to your blog, or upload it to an online image storage/file storage. Just post a link in the comments. I'll let the masses decide the winner from a poll.

And yes, there is a prize for first place.

Six prizes to be exact. The Johnson is # to 50 and Springer is the camo variation. Let's have some fun. show off our computer skills and have a good laugh at our awkward younger selves. You have a week to submit your entry.