This entire discussions seems to ignore the fact that wizards actually has a say in how the final piece looks and requests revisions to art until they say it is done or the contract specifies a certain amt of revisions.
To this I would like to add (again) that the art they commission is for world building. They want the world to feel cohesive and consistent. They do not want one artist's personal style to be so far from the rest of the set art that that it does not even feel like the same world. They are interested in aesthetics and function, not aesthetics alone.
Much of my work has gone out and eventually gets sliced and diced because when it's client work, I don't own it and what client says goes for the most part. Then again, wizards aren't the biggest fish in this pond. If they don't pony up the cash they will get the work they paid for, and no more.
Are you a free lance fantasy artist? I only ask because I have understood that Wizards is the biggest fish in the pond when it comes to this kind of illustration. If you have experience to the contrary I would be interested in it. My information was a couple years old and I cannot cite the source.
The problem with current Eldrazi art and ORI art (by Kev Walker or others) is that it looks like taken from some '98 video game intro. Just compare Valor in Akros to the Heroes of M&M III intro.
I will grant you that Valor in Akros is pretty boring, and the faces are expressionless, but again we have a bit of exaggeration. I had a hard time getting a screen shot from the HoM&M3 intro that had similar lighting and subject matter that was not blurry so as to compare. The best I could do is the attached close-up. Compare that to the attached large ViA image. There is a clear difference in numbers of polygons, lighting, and execution.
I will, however, agree with you whole heartedly about Wizard's CG animations. They are staggeringly bad. Not quite '98 bad, but really bad.
The thing is that picking out a bad illustration here and there is fallacious. There is not a set in magic's history any magic player will say has 100% good illustration.
By biggest fish I dont necessarily mean fantasy artwork only for clients specializing in that, but many of the artists can easily branch out into concept work, matte painting, or a large slew of other film or print work, many of which can have a much higher per day payout on the project as its studios either pitching or developing projects for clients.
For a few projects Ive seen concept artists pull in over $500 a day and that is NOT the high end. Big names pull in more. Wizards probably pays for the final product, which means less budget, but over longer period of time. That way they insulate themselves from requiring to have an artist on a day rate for a period of time while they figure out the overall look and polish, and wait for first round of work to come in so they can dictate feedback for revisions to control the overall feel.
If the budget is low, the artist will limit the number of revisions (obviously), but then it becomes more difficult to consolidate large scale feedback (big style shifts, full reworks, etc) into a much more polished product if the client only pays for XYZ, etc etc. If the feedback comes back and requests big style shifts outside of the artists comfort zone, then well, it becomes a challenge to get it to work, and its not easy at times.
Again, never worked with wotc, so I dont know how they work, but there are a TON of reasons why someones final delivered work may or may not be above some magical quality threshold that people put on artwork. There are over 250 commissioned pieces of artwork in this set alone which is a huge amount of work. I personally still look at the big picture and love the consistent unique work that all these artists produce for the game and it never stops. Its great.
And no, I dont do fantasy work, I work in film and do vfx/compositing/motion graphics, etc and work on stuff that hundreds of millions of people see in the long run so scrutiny level is bonkers.
And no, I dont do fantasy work, I work in film and do vfx/compositing/motion graphics, etc and work on stuff that hundreds of millions of people see in the long run so scrutiny level is bonkers.
I hope you didn't feel like I was calling you out, I was genuinely curious.
I am also generally very positive about the art on cards today.
Oh not at all man, I'm just like super in tune with the nuances of artistic feedback in the commercial space and how many factors there are when it comes to what the final product is. There are so many variables that when people say the artist sucks its usually the product of the process, not lack of talent.
I'm also a longtime player and I thoroughly enjoy the art and the way it's progressed over the years. When I go through my oldest cards I look at the art and think "Magic has come a long way." Of the modern art, aside from a few cards here and there that look out of place, my only problem has been with the BFZ full-art basic lands. Half of them look like they were those "1-hour speed paintings" you see on Twitch and sites like that. They look no unfinished and artificial.
The problem with current Eldrazi art and ORI art (by Kev Walker or others) is that it looks like taken from some '98 video game intro. Just compare Valor in Akros to the Heroes of M&M III intro. The same is true for the short intros for PT or current GPs. It looks horribly outdated. I used to enjoy most of Kev Walker's art, but the things I saw on some of the ORI cards makes me gouge my eyes.
Yep, Valor in Akros is a perfect example of what I'm writing about. It does look like something out of Heroes of M & M, circa 98.
Perhaps the title of my post should have been worded, why does WotC accept bad art, instead of me using the word artists, as I'm sure many of them can do better....?
I'm going to be honest, I do not see the appeal of the old Flooded Strand art. You could have slapped that art on to a plains art, and no one would have noticed a difference. It's a very boring art, it's got some grass that fades into mist? Meh.
I don't think it's about artists. Igor Kieryluk does draw a lot of undetailed crap, but he also drew Linvala and Elesh Norn, who look pretty good. I think it's obvious WotC just doesn't pay as much for (most) art as they used too. I'm pretty sure Igor could make all the cards people linked as bad, look better. But WotC doesn't pay him enough for it.
And it seems WotC is perfectly happy with how their cards look. If you look at older sets you can see the art direction wasn't that generic as today. It was easy to tell which card came from which world and the quality was generally high across the board. Today you get ***** like Aerial Predation, Unflinching Courage and Rubblebelt raiders. Not only do they look generic and as if they came from a Korean MMO, they don't immediately associate with Ravnica and would never have made their way into the old set. Also Chippy has done some good art for Mtg, it is obvious they paid him less for Rubblebelt raiders. It seems they don't care for the overall quality and accept bad art for some cards, just to save a bit of money. And then there is that obnoxious brightness filter they seem to put over everything nowadays. Don't believe me? Compare the old Niv Mizzet and Ghost Council of Orzhova to the new ones in MM. Or Serra angel from 9th edition to now.
Don't blame the artists, the game looks exactly as WotC wants it too look. I guess they want it that way to ''appeal to a broader audience''. Seriosuly, for a lot of cards today, I always get the feeling I saw the exact same art one set before. It all looks the same.
There are also some traps, like Commander's Authority. It's a visually striking image, but it's just an abuse of the lens flare effect hiding not much.
I hate the crap that digital artists get because people assume they have less work to do or it's "not real art". It's the exact same process, but with technology. Only if you mess up a sketch on paper, or you need to change something, you have to draw it all over again. So in a way digital artists are doing "less work", but they're also saving time. Most companies want you to upload your art anyway so you don't have to waste time scanning things if you do your art digitally.
The art direction seems to be an utter ***** to work with nowadays. A lot of art looks way too similar, way too meek and contained like they're afraid to offend someone or like they don't want to generate any emotions through the card art.
It also pisses me off how their design bible seems to be so tight that a lot of the people featured on white cards in BFZ seem like the same couple persons but they can't ******* settle on a face for the planeswalkers who are meant to look like the same person across all their cards but end up looking like Gideon, Gideon's ugly cousin, Gideon's black cousin, Triple H cosplaying as Gideon, Gideon's cousin who's mom was a Saiyan, etc.
Ok, so I've been playing Magic since Unlimited and have seen the progression from hand-drawn artwork through to today's digital stuff. You can guess that I think the hand-drawn stuff is largely better, but I'll accept most of the digital stuff today. And, yeah, I miss the unique likes of the Foglios or Drew Tucker (and mostly Pete Venters...Pete, where are you?). I've been reading these thread for years, never with a need to post as I'm not one to generally bemoan the new set as most do or complain. But, the art of Igor Kieryluk has got me so miffed I had to post. It's so awful.
Have you looked closely at some of his stuff? It mostly looks like it was rendered by a video game. All straight lines, no shadowing or texture. Cheap computer generated looking fog obscuring the need for real detail. No depth. It's all so flat and lifeless and without and feeling of "real-ness." Infinite Reflection? Gather the Pack? Grasp of the Hieromancer? Eyeblight Massacre? Murder Investigation? Ravenous Demon? Selhoff Occultist? Whatever, it's all total crap that looks like it was generated during a game of Unreal Tournament.
I know I have to live with digital art, but c'mon Wizards some of this stuff is freaking third rate.
The problem with Igor is that they keep making him paint people.
His creatures are excellent because it alows him to design more, which is where he excels, on the other hand his people all look stiff, artificial and more like shopped photos than like paintings. That is the big problem with a lot of artists nowaday, they "photobash" too much, are too dependant on their references and end up making ugly, muddy, uninspired "art" that may or may not have better quality than an old Foglio, but sure as hell isn't as appealing.
I quite dislike the current direction of Magic's art, but I feel that that is almost a bigger issue than the individual artists.
I'd go as far as to say the art direction is why some artists are producing art way below their baseline quality and why some artists have decided to do less work for MtG.
For me personally, I can't see how anyone can look at the art on those cards and call it lazy. They both look amazing to me.
As I mentioned above, it "looks 'shopped". It's the kind of art that impresses people who don't pay too much attention to it because it shows realistic human anatomy (of course, it's practically traced if not outright overpainted), but will inevitably look bad to art enthusiasts or artists themselves because it just lacks every other aspect that makes a good piece of art: good composition, interesting use of color, storytelling, dynamic use of perspective, character design.
It's just a pretty picture when it could've been a piece of art if he hadn't enslaved so hard to "realism".
The current art is just highly regulated. I don't think there is a single bad artist doing work for Wizards right now, but back in the old days there were plenty of bad pieces getting cards.
Just because a piece of art stands out doesn't make it good, it just means it stands out. Word of Command, Mold Demon, Stasis, even Time walk, some of the best cards had some terrible art.
Not standing out is a major crime in this situation because that's the whole reason cards have art in the first place. You gotta be able to tell what's on the other side of the table at a glance.
Art is truly good when you can not only identify the piece right away. An artist is truly good when they can make hundreds of cards and still each single piece is identified right away.
Right now, because the art direction is so stifling, there are a bunch of artists making art that not only looks like all their other art, but also looks the same as art from other artists.
they pay cheap i guess,i really love the old school art..(legends,the dark,Arabian nights)
They don't necessarily pay cheap but they're paying the same as other smaller companies that don't demand your art looks a very specific way and that you leave a good chunk of your creativity at the door, don't get uptight when you draw a woman too pretty and allow you to sell prints of the artwork.
And no, all digital art does not look like all oil paintings would look. Some does. Others look like Infinite Reflection.
I think that's what bothers me the most about a good bunch of the new artists.
Winona Nelson works both digitally and on oils/acrylics. You couldn't tell what is what on the cards, and almost all of her card arts are gorgeous.
Many new artists are producing ***** that looks like old videogames not because it's digital, but because they're kinda bad and the art direction doesn't help them either.
Lol why is everyone hating on Syncopate her hair is adorable. That's what counterspell art should look like, it's the visual equivalent of saying "Nope".
The problem with current Eldrazi art and ORI art (by Kev Walker or others) is that it looks like taken from some '98 video game intro. Just compare Valor in Akros to the Heroes of M&M III intro. The same is true for the short intros for PT or current GPs. It looks horribly outdated. I used to enjoy most of Kev Walker's art, but the things I saw on some of the ORI cards makes me gouge my eyes.
We called Igor out about Valor in Akros and he pretty much came out and apologized for that turd.
Lol why is everyone hating on Syncopate her hair is adorable. That's what counterspell art should look like, it's the visual equivalent of saying "Nope".
Is it because Clint Cearley copied and pasted the little explosions 4 times?
I hate how the newly taken story-driven approach afflicts the art. Just look at Gideon's Reproach, Inspired Charge, etc - that's a space wasted on representation of some quickly tired planeswalkers' faces I don't even care about. Not that's a totally new thing, they used to do such art back in the Weatherlight saga times, and - guess what - it turned out to be really bland and uninspired. Artwise, Death Grasp and Soul Link are among the worst cards in the set.
Art is of course very subjective, but imo Magic art should introduce the setting and set a mood, not try to tell a story. Cards are rather poor means for storytelling anyway, so why even bother.
Getting a little off topic, but I like what they're doing with the story in the cards. Beats Theros where I only learned that Elspeth died a month later. Whereas if they'd put this art in the set, it would've been clear to everyone who played. Come on, tell me that wouldn't have made a better Hero's Downfall.
Sure WotC might be paying the most for artists in the fantasy market right now Dr Worm and be the golden goose. Go ask Jesper Myrfors how it was back in 94 though. They were getting paid far more back then then they are now and the game is several times larger now than it was back then. Until the WotC CEO Peter Adkison decided no more royalties and went for what most CEOs go for nowadays/more money in their own pocket than the people who do the real work. WotC is a pathetic company if you look at it closely. It's almost a shame MTG is so popular or in other words no matter how badly run WotC is as a company it's not like it means anything because they still get millions in profits annually. Artists are underpaid virtually everywhere. The grossest irony in this is that when an artist dies their art goes up in value dramatically but money means nothing to the deceased.
I miss old magic artwork a great deal. When I first started playing the game around 7th ed. and onslaught I loved the art a great deal. Now I look at current art and just sigh.
I miss Quinton Hoover a lot may he rest in peace. Good to know some of his original sketches are in good hands. Vesuvan doppelganger is one of the finest pieces of magic art ever made with ease. The funny side was that he got paid $50 for the original piece because all alpha artwork was commissioned at that price as WotC was a very poor company at the time of course having not made a big splash yet.
People constantly misjudge artwork. If you look at the full artwork in its original size it is often far more beautiful than it appears on the card. You can only put so much detail into a little square on a piece of cardboard.
That sucks didn't know he passed away. I don't think there was ever a bluer card than Vesuvan Doppelganger definitely my favorite piece of magic art. I loved his use of bold lines and bright colors. He had kind of more of a comic book looking style but his pieces really stood out among the old cards. The art for Preacher and Archangel was really top notch too.
Magic has an art director not sure who the current one is but they are very strict on assignments. Whereas back in the day it was pretty much do what you want with card art X now it's basically under a microscope in comparison.
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Right now, because the art direction is so stifling, there are a bunch of artists making art that not only looks like all their other art, but also looks the same as art from other artists.
Why is wanting to build a consistent look to a plane stifling? If a person is looking at cards and wonders what a city looks on Innestrad and the two representations are (for the sake of the argument lets pretend that both pieces of art are on Innestrad cards)
Then you are doing a very bad job of conveying the flavor of Innestrad. You need consistency and cohesiveness. The second image alone shows two very different styles, but with a cohesive look of the setting. If I look at the art from a card that has a town on Innestrad as a part of the art I can tell you immediately what plane it is on without any other cues.
As a comparison, if you look at two cards from Onslaught and try to discern what a forest elf looks like on this plane and the two cards you are looking at are Bloodline Shaman and Elvish Pathcutter you would have more problems. Looking at those two pieces I get no consistent idea of what the elves look like. Subjective opinions on art aside (I don't like Rebecca Guay's work, but that is not my issue with the card in this case), old sets did a comparatively poor job of helping you imagine the setting. In general I do like the art from Onslaught, but for a tribal set it does not present a consistent image of their look.
I am not talking about their new story push, as I am not sure how that is going to play out in the future, just talking about art as world building.
Magic has an art director not sure who the current one is but they are very strict on assignments. Whereas back in the day it was pretty much do what you want with card art X now it's basically under a microscope in comparison.
Fun story: do you know what the art direction for the original Lord of the Pit said?
"Balrog." That's it.
Admittedly, it turned out pretty good, but still. I like that Magic has a defined feel for each world and even each faction inside of each world.
Right now, because the art direction is so stifling, there are a bunch of artists making art that not only looks like all their other art, but also looks the same as art from other artists.
Why is wanting to build a consistent look to a plane stifling? If a person is looking at cards and wonders what a city looks on Innestrad and the two representations are (for the sake of the argument lets pretend that both pieces of art are on Innestrad cards)
Then you are doing a very bad job of conveying the flavor of Innestrad. You need consistency and cohesiveness. The second image alone shows two very different styles, but with a cohesive look of the setting. If I look at the art from a card that has a town on Innestrad as a part of the art I can tell you immediately what plane it is on without any other cues.
As a comparison, if you look at two cards from Onslaught and try to discern what a forest elf looks like on this plane and the two cards you are looking at are Bloodline Shaman and Elvish Pathcutter you would have more problems. Looking at those two pieces I get no consistent idea of what the elves look like. Subjective opinions on art aside (I don't like Rebecca Guay's work, but that is not my issue with the card in this case), old sets did a comparatively poor job of helping you imagine the setting. In general I do like the art from Onslaught, but for a tribal set it does not present a consistent image of their look.
I am not talking about their new story push, as I am not sure how that is going to play out in the future, just talking about art as world building.
Your argument falls on it's head because Innistrad is an example of how to excel at all that BFZ did wrong.
Innistrad is an extremely well designed plane, you can tell what Forest belongs to Gavony, Kessig and Stensia, what Island belongs to Gavony, Stensia and Nephalia, etc. Not even Ravnica is so well designed, mapped and distributed.
Why don't all inquisitors look the same despite Avacyn's Church having an uniform code but all new white allies look the same despite being from different "provinces" and even different species? Because in Innistrad people have culture, in BFZ people have memes.
Zendikar has no diversity now because the art director is caring much less about quality design and more about superficial figurative "quality", and I don't want to presume but that's a pretty amateur level of art appreciation that makes me believe the art direction is being lead by an executive or committee rather than an experienced professional artist.
Just an hour ago I was goldfishing a deck brew on Tappedout.net and the god damned expeditions, this awesome premium product we're meant to be all exited about, are so horribly designed and rendered that I kept playing shocks as fetchlands and confounding colors while tapping. They all look the same and aren't even color-coded efficiently enough to avoid these situations. This is unacceptable.
And that is the difference between a good art direction and an stifling art direction. It's not natural, harmonic consistency because of better design, it's more consistency because of fewer options and room for creativity in an attempt to Ford Assembly-Line the artwork.
By the way there is absolutely notthing wrong with the Otaria elves looking different from one another because the more soft looking ones are migrats from Yavimaya while the more militaristic looking ones are natives to Wirewood and at war. Another victory of cultural diversity over color-coded uniformity.
The Otaria blocks did the world at war thing better that BFZ (so far) to no one's surprise. Not all battles happen on a battlefield, but the only look at what else is going on in Zendikar comes from Kozilek's brood eating the plane from underground where allies can't bother them. They don't even spare a moment (in card form) to tell us how Ob reignited his spark.
Your argument falls on it's head because Innistrad is an example of how to excel at all that BFZ did wrong.
Well, I wasn't aware we were only talking about Zendikar. I have not looked at all the art from BFZ in context, so I can't refute your point (it's possible they failed), I was simply talking about how wizards uses art now as opposed to pre-Mirrodin and showing that they have done it in a non-stifling way. An individual set or block may do this poorly now and then, but that does not me the whole approach is faulty.
By the way there is absolutely notthing wrong with the Otaria elves looking different from one another because the more soft looking ones are migrats from Yavimaya while the more militaristic looking ones are natives to Wirewood and at war.
You are correct, there is nothing wrong with having wildly varied styles for the same kind of subject, but it does not world build well. Good world building shoot work absent of any other storytelling elements. If a person brand new to magic, knowing very little about the lore, looks at Innestrad or Theros they have a very clear idea of what the world looks like, and especially in the case of Theros, what individuals are connected. If one looks at Onslaught that is not as easily gleaned without some kind of knowledge of the tribes and the various factions within them. In Lorwyn, as a contrast, the depiction of fae and how they interact with the plane is very consistant even when art styles. Compare Nightshade Stinger and Spellstutter Sprite. Again you have Guay wit a very different style than any other artist, but both images evoke a similar feel for the setting.
Then again if all this thread is about is BFZ then I suppose all that was pointless.
Your argument falls on it's head because Innistrad is an example of how to excel at all that BFZ did wrong.
Well, I wasn't aware we were only talking about Zendikar. I have not looked at all the art from BFZ in context, so I can't refute your point (it's possible they failed), I was simply talking about how wizards uses art now as opposed to pre-Mirrodin and showing that they have done it in a non-stifling way. An individual set or block may do this poorly now and then, but that does not me the whole approach is faulty.
By the way there is absolutely notthing wrong with the Otaria elves looking different from one another because the more soft looking ones are migrats from Yavimaya while the more militaristic looking ones are natives to Wirewood and at war.
You are correct, there is nothing wrong with having wildly varied styles for the same kind of subject, but it does not world build well. Good world building shoot work absent of any other storytelling elements. If a person brand new to magic, knowing very little about the lore, looks at Innestrad or Theros they have a very clear idea of what the world looks like, and especially in the case of Theros, what individuals are connected. If one looks at Onslaught that is not as easily gleaned without some kind of knowledge of the tribes and the various factions within them. In Lorwyn, as a contrast, the depiction of fae and how they interact with the plane is very consistant even when art styles. Compare Nightshade Stinger and Spellstutter Sprite. Again you have Guay wit a very different style than any other artist, but both images evoke a similar feel for the setting.
Then again if all this thread is about is BFZ then I suppose all that was pointless.
It's not entirely about BFZ but it does have a lot to do with BFZ because it is the worst set art-wise in a very long time and shows the enormous contrast between the art direction we have now and the art direction we had in Innistrad or Onslaught.
You claim racial uniformity is the way to go. But it's the equivalent of showing Arabia as cartoony sandpeople with camels because showing Dubai would be too hard and confusing for the people with zero attention span and low intellectual capacity that the art direction seems to think we are.
Again, Innistrad is not a cliche, meme or trope, It's a world where gothic horror stuff happens but it's their own GH stuff, all vampires are individuals not a bunch of draculas, all inquisitors are individuals not a bunch of van helsings, even werewolves are individual in their pelt color, markings and certain details that convey their human form.
BFZ's art direction seems to think we're too stupid to understand the difference between the zendikari and the eldrazi if the zendikari aren't all wearing ragged sleeveless crops, some shoulderpads, a bunch of belts and detached sleeves no matter if they're humans, angels, kor or elves. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out vampires go evil in OGW because they're the only ones that aren't dressed as 90's ravers like "the good guys".
Claiming Onslaught was bad because militant elves and refugees don't look the same implies people aren't capable of even reading the flavor text. And it also ignores that Otaria was pretty well designed; the Aphetto look like they belong together, the Cabal look like they belong together, Akroma's Legion, the nomads, the raven guild all look like individuals that belong to a faction. The barbarians look like a tribe, you can tell what aven belong to Eesha's army and what ones belong to Akroma's legion, you can tell what zombies used to be before they died.
The only people of the same race that don't look like they belong together are the ones that don't belong together and you call this a problem?
Well, you and I will not see eye to eye. Wizard's has been had the increased world building focus for some time, and they seem to be happy with it. You aren't. You think BFZ has largely bad art, and others don't. I guess the subjectivity of the whole argument makes arguing for or against like pissing in the wind.
Are you a free lance fantasy artist? I only ask because I have understood that Wizards is the biggest fish in the pond when it comes to this kind of illustration. If you have experience to the contrary I would be interested in it. My information was a couple years old and I cannot cite the source.
I will grant you that Valor in Akros is pretty boring, and the faces are expressionless, but again we have a bit of exaggeration. I had a hard time getting a screen shot from the HoM&M3 intro that had similar lighting and subject matter that was not blurry so as to compare. The best I could do is the attached close-up. Compare that to the attached large ViA image. There is a clear difference in numbers of polygons, lighting, and execution.
I will, however, agree with you whole heartedly about Wizard's CG animations. They are staggeringly bad. Not quite '98 bad, but really bad.
The thing is that picking out a bad illustration here and there is fallacious. There is not a set in magic's history any magic player will say has 100% good illustration.
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For a few projects Ive seen concept artists pull in over $500 a day and that is NOT the high end. Big names pull in more. Wizards probably pays for the final product, which means less budget, but over longer period of time. That way they insulate themselves from requiring to have an artist on a day rate for a period of time while they figure out the overall look and polish, and wait for first round of work to come in so they can dictate feedback for revisions to control the overall feel.
If the budget is low, the artist will limit the number of revisions (obviously), but then it becomes more difficult to consolidate large scale feedback (big style shifts, full reworks, etc) into a much more polished product if the client only pays for XYZ, etc etc. If the feedback comes back and requests big style shifts outside of the artists comfort zone, then well, it becomes a challenge to get it to work, and its not easy at times.
Again, never worked with wotc, so I dont know how they work, but there are a TON of reasons why someones final delivered work may or may not be above some magical quality threshold that people put on artwork. There are over 250 commissioned pieces of artwork in this set alone which is a huge amount of work. I personally still look at the big picture and love the consistent unique work that all these artists produce for the game and it never stops. Its great.
And no, I dont do fantasy work, I work in film and do vfx/compositing/motion graphics, etc and work on stuff that hundreds of millions of people see in the long run so scrutiny level is bonkers.
I hope you didn't feel like I was calling you out, I was genuinely curious.
I am also generally very positive about the art on cards today.
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Yep, Valor in Akros is a perfect example of what I'm writing about. It does look like something out of Heroes of M & M, circa 98.
Perhaps the title of my post should have been worded, why does WotC accept bad art, instead of me using the word artists, as I'm sure many of them can do better....?
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And it seems WotC is perfectly happy with how their cards look. If you look at older sets you can see the art direction wasn't that generic as today. It was easy to tell which card came from which world and the quality was generally high across the board. Today you get ***** like Aerial Predation, Unflinching Courage and Rubblebelt raiders. Not only do they look generic and as if they came from a Korean MMO, they don't immediately associate with Ravnica and would never have made their way into the old set. Also Chippy has done some good art for Mtg, it is obvious they paid him less for Rubblebelt raiders. It seems they don't care for the overall quality and accept bad art for some cards, just to save a bit of money. And then there is that obnoxious brightness filter they seem to put over everything nowadays. Don't believe me? Compare the old Niv Mizzet and Ghost Council of Orzhova to the new ones in MM. Or Serra angel from 9th edition to now.
Don't blame the artists, the game looks exactly as WotC wants it too look. I guess they want it that way to ''appeal to a broader audience''. Seriosuly, for a lot of cards today, I always get the feeling I saw the exact same art one set before. It all looks the same.
Back in the days, we had paints that were good, and some werecrappy. Now we have good CGI, and bad CGI.
There are also some traps, like Commander's Authority. It's a visually striking image, but it's just an abuse of the lens flare effect hiding not much.
It also pisses me off how their design bible seems to be so tight that a lot of the people featured on white cards in BFZ seem like the same couple persons but they can't ******* settle on a face for the planeswalkers who are meant to look like the same person across all their cards but end up looking like Gideon, Gideon's ugly cousin, Gideon's black cousin, Triple H cosplaying as Gideon, Gideon's cousin who's mom was a Saiyan, etc.
The problem with Igor is that they keep making him paint people.
His creatures are excellent because it alows him to design more, which is where he excels, on the other hand his people all look stiff, artificial and more like shopped photos than like paintings. That is the big problem with a lot of artists nowaday, they "photobash" too much, are too dependant on their references and end up making ugly, muddy, uninspired "art" that may or may not have better quality than an old Foglio, but sure as hell isn't as appealing.
I'd go as far as to say the art direction is why some artists are producing art way below their baseline quality and why some artists have decided to do less work for MtG.
As I mentioned above, it "looks 'shopped". It's the kind of art that impresses people who don't pay too much attention to it because it shows realistic human anatomy (of course, it's practically traced if not outright overpainted), but will inevitably look bad to art enthusiasts or artists themselves because it just lacks every other aspect that makes a good piece of art: good composition, interesting use of color, storytelling, dynamic use of perspective, character design.
It's just a pretty picture when it could've been a piece of art if he hadn't enslaved so hard to "realism".
Not standing out is a major crime in this situation because that's the whole reason cards have art in the first place. You gotta be able to tell what's on the other side of the table at a glance.
Art is truly good when you can not only identify the piece right away. An artist is truly good when they can make hundreds of cards and still each single piece is identified right away.
Right now, because the art direction is so stifling, there are a bunch of artists making art that not only looks like all their other art, but also looks the same as art from other artists.
They don't necessarily pay cheap but they're paying the same as other smaller companies that don't demand your art looks a very specific way and that you leave a good chunk of your creativity at the door, don't get uptight when you draw a woman too pretty and allow you to sell prints of the artwork.
I think that's what bothers me the most about a good bunch of the new artists.
Winona Nelson works both digitally and on oils/acrylics. You couldn't tell what is what on the cards, and almost all of her card arts are gorgeous.
Many new artists are producing ***** that looks like old videogames not because it's digital, but because they're kinda bad and the art direction doesn't help them either.
Is it because Clint Cearley copied and pasted the little explosions 4 times?
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Art is of course very subjective, but imo Magic art should introduce the setting and set a mood, not try to tell a story. Cards are rather poor means for storytelling anyway, so why even bother.
That sucks didn't know he passed away. I don't think there was ever a bluer card than Vesuvan Doppelganger definitely my favorite piece of magic art. I loved his use of bold lines and bright colors. He had kind of more of a comic book looking style but his pieces really stood out among the old cards. The art for Preacher and Archangel was really top notch too.
Digital art =/= bad art. Mondu the fat linked an article on the first page that you should read.
@Sirius_B:
Well said. I think magic art looks exactly how wizards wants it too look. Which worries me, to say the least.
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Why is wanting to build a consistent look to a plane stifling? If a person is looking at cards and wonders what a city looks on Innestrad and the two representations are (for the sake of the argument lets pretend that both pieces of art are on Innestrad cards)
As a comparison, if you look at two cards from Onslaught and try to discern what a forest elf looks like on this plane and the two cards you are looking at are Bloodline Shaman and Elvish Pathcutter you would have more problems. Looking at those two pieces I get no consistent idea of what the elves look like. Subjective opinions on art aside (I don't like Rebecca Guay's work, but that is not my issue with the card in this case), old sets did a comparatively poor job of helping you imagine the setting. In general I do like the art from Onslaught, but for a tribal set it does not present a consistent image of their look.
I am not talking about their new story push, as I am not sure how that is going to play out in the future, just talking about art as world building.
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Fun story: do you know what the art direction for the original Lord of the Pit said?
"Balrog." That's it.
Admittedly, it turned out pretty good, but still. I like that Magic has a defined feel for each world and even each faction inside of each world.
Your argument falls on it's head because Innistrad is an example of how to excel at all that BFZ did wrong.
Innistrad is an extremely well designed plane, you can tell what Forest belongs to Gavony, Kessig and Stensia, what Island belongs to Gavony, Stensia and Nephalia, etc. Not even Ravnica is so well designed, mapped and distributed.
Why don't all inquisitors look the same despite Avacyn's Church having an uniform code but all new white allies look the same despite being from different "provinces" and even different species? Because in Innistrad people have culture, in BFZ people have memes.
Zendikar has no diversity now because the art director is caring much less about quality design and more about superficial figurative "quality", and I don't want to presume but that's a pretty amateur level of art appreciation that makes me believe the art direction is being lead by an executive or committee rather than an experienced professional artist.
Just an hour ago I was goldfishing a deck brew on Tappedout.net and the god damned expeditions, this awesome premium product we're meant to be all exited about, are so horribly designed and rendered that I kept playing shocks as fetchlands and confounding colors while tapping. They all look the same and aren't even color-coded efficiently enough to avoid these situations. This is unacceptable.
And that is the difference between a good art direction and an stifling art direction. It's not natural, harmonic consistency because of better design, it's more consistency because of fewer options and room for creativity in an attempt to Ford Assembly-Line the artwork.
By the way there is absolutely notthing wrong with the Otaria elves looking different from one another because the more soft looking ones are migrats from Yavimaya while the more militaristic looking ones are natives to Wirewood and at war. Another victory of cultural diversity over color-coded uniformity.
The Otaria blocks did the world at war thing better that BFZ (so far) to no one's surprise. Not all battles happen on a battlefield, but the only look at what else is going on in Zendikar comes from Kozilek's brood eating the plane from underground where allies can't bother them. They don't even spare a moment (in card form) to tell us how Ob reignited his spark.
You are correct, there is nothing wrong with having wildly varied styles for the same kind of subject, but it does not world build well. Good world building shoot work absent of any other storytelling elements. If a person brand new to magic, knowing very little about the lore, looks at Innestrad or Theros they have a very clear idea of what the world looks like, and especially in the case of Theros, what individuals are connected. If one looks at Onslaught that is not as easily gleaned without some kind of knowledge of the tribes and the various factions within them. In Lorwyn, as a contrast, the depiction of fae and how they interact with the plane is very consistant even when art styles. Compare Nightshade Stinger and Spellstutter Sprite. Again you have Guay wit a very different style than any other artist, but both images evoke a similar feel for the setting.
Then again if all this thread is about is BFZ then I suppose all that was pointless.
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I don't think he had any artistic offerings in BFZ.
My current trade binder.
"People most likely to cry "troll" are those who can't fathom holding a position for reasons unrelated to how they want to be perceived"
It's not entirely about BFZ but it does have a lot to do with BFZ because it is the worst set art-wise in a very long time and shows the enormous contrast between the art direction we have now and the art direction we had in Innistrad or Onslaught.
You claim racial uniformity is the way to go. But it's the equivalent of showing Arabia as cartoony sandpeople with camels because showing Dubai would be too hard and confusing for the people with zero attention span and low intellectual capacity that the art direction seems to think we are.
Again, Innistrad is not a cliche, meme or trope, It's a world where gothic horror stuff happens but it's their own GH stuff, all vampires are individuals not a bunch of draculas, all inquisitors are individuals not a bunch of van helsings, even werewolves are individual in their pelt color, markings and certain details that convey their human form.
BFZ's art direction seems to think we're too stupid to understand the difference between the zendikari and the eldrazi if the zendikari aren't all wearing ragged sleeveless crops, some shoulderpads, a bunch of belts and detached sleeves no matter if they're humans, angels, kor or elves. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out vampires go evil in OGW because they're the only ones that aren't dressed as 90's ravers like "the good guys".
Claiming Onslaught was bad because militant elves and refugees don't look the same implies people aren't capable of even reading the flavor text. And it also ignores that Otaria was pretty well designed; the Aphetto look like they belong together, the Cabal look like they belong together, Akroma's Legion, the nomads, the raven guild all look like individuals that belong to a faction. The barbarians look like a tribe, you can tell what aven belong to Eesha's army and what ones belong to Akroma's legion, you can tell what zombies used to be before they died.
The only people of the same race that don't look like they belong together are the ones that don't belong together and you call this a problem?
BTW, all you haters (and some appreciators) can make your opinion known. Wizards has a BFZ survey up:
http://surveys.marketpointsinc.com/surveys_0/wc1015gb7/Welcome.asp?pass=&src=2
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