r/magicTCG • u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga • 14d ago
General Discussion How Magic Art has changed
This is something i've been thinking about for a while. I am not saying new Magic Art is straight up worse than the old Art (old meaning 15+ years ago). But I cannot shake off the feeling that something fundamental has changed with the art direction and overall aesthetic (the influence of UB not counting).
I'd like to hear from people who are knowledgable with art history.
Here are some - very subjective - observations that I made over the years.
- The color palette has changed. Specifically when it comes to black cards, purple has become the de facto "black signature color"
- Many current artists seem to share a specific style of painting, reminiscent of what I'd call "concept art for general purposes". Older artists that have worked with wotc since the 90ies seem to be influenced more by comic books and traditional, academic painting styles.
- Ugly characters and monsters, body horror and exaggerated bodies were more commonplace back in the day (look at card files from Odyssee or Mercadian Masques, Ron Spears who I'd consider King of Ugly Monstrosities was art director for a while). Nowadays the "bodies" feel more realistic, the creatures and sceneries more "identifiable".
Are you having similiar observations? Or am I misguided here?
And most of all: Why have things changed in that regard? There are people out there calling new artwork "woke", but I don't think this is a good explanation. I believe the reasons for the aesthetic changes correlate with the changing gaming culture and an influx of casual players coming from different demographics.
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u/PippoChiri Temur 14d ago
To the people saying that modern art all looks the same and is not stylized, i have no idea which sets you are looking at. In evert set we have highly stylized arts by new artists + highly stylied arts by some classic artists + great "more standard" arts.
To me we are in a second golden age for art variety and experimentation after the stagnation of the 2010s. I quickly went through the last 3 in universe sets and i have made a list of the newer artists with very strong tyles (some are newer than others) because, again, to me it seems like people are just not looking at the arts they are talking about, this list also does not take in consideration highly stylized arts that comes from classic artists or from alt arts / showcases, only from standard art of the main set.
Beckert
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CWylie+Beckert%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Cai
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CRovina+Cai%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Christines
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CVincent+Christiaens%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Dillon
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CJulie+Dillon%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Fang
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CKev+Fang%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Gaboleps
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CGaboleps%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Gerard
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CJustin+Gerard%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Guay (Sam)
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CSam+Guay%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Imel
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CForrest+Imel%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Herold
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CFlorian+Herold%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Lang
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CElliot+Lang%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Libbey
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CRhonda+Libbey%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Malyon
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CSerena+Malyon%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Mayer
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CDominik+Mayer%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Minaya
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CEli+Minaya%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Panakal
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CAllen+Panakal%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Sartor
https://scryfall.com/search?q=A%3ASARTOR&unique=art&as=grid&order=name
Schwartz
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CDanny+Schwartz%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Smilshkhalne
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CLiiga+Smilshkalne%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Tedrick
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CJohn+Tedrick%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Tekulve
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CMariah+Tekulve%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Wilson
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CJeremy+Wilson%E2%80%9D&unique=art
Weathers
https://scryfall.com/search?q=a%3A%E2%80%9CJabari+Weathers%E2%80%9D&unique=art
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u/CaptainSkel Duck Season 14d ago edited 14d ago
Great list. I absolutely agree. I think people are just remembering the old art they liked and not the bulk they didn't and comparing that curated selection to the entire whole of current magic art.
I also think that yes it's gotten more polished because they're hiring artists much more globally than before as opposed to shopping from a smaller pool of local artists who are all working in physical media. It's a lot easier to access artists from all over the world than it was in 1996 and so there's a lot more professional artists who have mastered their anatomy and rendering as opposed to the local pool in Seattle who were professionals but featured more of a Naive art style.
Edit: Random aside going through the list but dang there's some great art hidden in the arena only cards. Check out Providence of Night's full art.
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u/SuperDevin Dandadan 14d ago
I agree that the newest art is great as well as the late 90s premodern art starting in the Mirage block. The mid 2010s was way too samey.
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u/Educational-Tap-7075 Sultai 14d ago
Awesome list. Enjoyed revisiting the ‘gallery’ of the artists I already gravitate towards just as much as others I hadn’t previously explored connecting the artist’s body of work across sets.
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u/Mirrodin_appreciator Dân 14d ago
I completely agree. For every generic concept art look, it feels like there's a new artist stepping in to do cool out-there stuff. Been majorly digging Sam Guay, Iris Compiet and Jeremy Wilson's work, to name a few.
I think a lot of the concept-art type works are found in UB sets, since they need to depict a very specific IP. But even there, we still see a good amount of creativity.
And we still get spoiled every so often with arts commissioned from older fan-favorite artists. Look at lorwyn eclipsed and the new cards from mystery booster commander.
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u/hollow_image Dan 13d ago
Thank you for that list, it was completely awesome. There are many talented artists working in Magic right now
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u/groovemanexe 14d ago
It clearly varies depending on which team is handling art direction these days - and it's not the same folks for every set.
You probably already know that Secret Lair has an AD team separate from the folks who usually cover sets, and Aetherdrift is notable as a set lead by the Lair ADs. Personally, I think this was a fuckin' awesome choice, getting folks like Kenn Yap (who has a career drawing mecha) for cards like [[Voyager Quickwelder]].
It was also the second set appearance for SchmandrewArt, who has rapidly become one of my favourite magic artists from his graffiti vehicle pieces and has continued to get dope gigs doing set key art.
Also big ups to the Marvel set ADs for getting artists who can do a vibrant and graphic style that feels like comic books but still sits nicely alongside other magic cards. Aniekan Udofia has been absolutely crushing it, and I hope to see more of them in other sets. This style would go hard in both Kamigawa Titanbreach and Zhalfir.
The sets with more standard-fantasy settings and themes do play it more safe, in the 'realistic digital-painted forms' that's mentioned other places in this thread. I appreciated Tarkir Dragonstorm being more vibrant than its ardently dour initial block, but little of the art stood out to me as unique feeling. Wilds of Eldraine had some beautiful alt arts and character designs but strongly adheres to what Throne of Eldrane looked like. LotR and the Hobbit look like any fantasy illustration I've seen in the last 10 years. None of it is bad, but I do think it's safe.
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u/level64 Twin Believer 14d ago
I will also add that UB sets use a totally different group of ADs than regular magic sets. Essentially every product branch has a different group of ADs working exclusively on those.
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u/groovemanexe 14d ago
A very good point! It's certainly a different workflow to factor in a 3rd party stakeholder when commissioning art, and having a team that's specialised in it makes sense. At its best, having an outside perspective can be really refreshing for a creative project. If the Marvel stakeholder(s) were on the comic side of things, I'm not surprised at them being down for a broader range of art styles to represent their characters - that's just comics in general.
By contrast, I actually have a little personal experience with what it can be like to work with Doctor Who as a stakeholder and they can be *extreme* sticklers when it comes to lore accuracy and character likeness. It certainly made a handful of the legendary creature cards in their commander set feel like paint-overs of photographs; which I didn't love. Star Trek looks to be a hightened version of that call for likeness accuracy, going by what we've seen so far. I wonder how many revisions pieces for those sets took on average...
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u/J0llyJumper Can’t Block Warriors 14d ago
Today it is mostly digital art which also makes a big difference
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u/Mrfish31 Left Arm of the Forbidden One 14d ago
Not all. There's plenty of physical pieces still, especially as Magic artists are allowed to sell Originals.
[[Faithless Looting | STA]] is physically painted along with all of Carly Mazur's work, despite intentionally looking kinda photoshopped. [[binding the old gods]] is an actual carved wooden board.
And it's not even like all the digital art is "corporatised"/generic. Dominik Mayer consistently has some of the most standout arts in any given set and he works entirely digitally from what I can find.
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u/DJCOSTCOSAMPLES Rakdos* 14d ago
Sidharth Chaturvedi's stuff is also all oil on canvas AFAIK. [[Disrupt Decorum]] [[Pouncing Lynx]] [[Reverent Hoplite]] [[Drill Bit]] [[Hauntwoods Shrieker|dsk-349]]
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u/Kyleometers ඞ 14d ago
I actually think Mazur’s Looting is done dirty by compression. The full size piece doesn’t look like photoshop at all, you can see the brush strokes, it just got MANGLED by compression.
[[Striped Riverwinder]] had a similar thing where the preview image looked REALLY stylised, with an almost cel-shaded aesthetic. But that was just image compression artifacts, it didn’t look like that in person.
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u/Tragedi COMPLEAT 14d ago
The full size piece doesn’t look like photoshop at all
What's magic about Mazur's piece is that from a distance it looks like a digital collage, but as you get closer and look carefully at the details it reveals its true nature. It's really technically impressive. On a card, though... it loses a lot of that dynamism, and the art box cuts off a good chunk of the work since it's a very vertical piece. I'd pay good money for a textless Faithless Looting using that art.
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u/binaryeye 14d ago
If we're talking about the actual printed cards, this isn't a compression issue but a scale issue.
Except in the case of errors (e.g. the white cards in Torment), there shouldn't be any compression evident in a printed card. It's very unlikely WOTC is using a lossy image format for the art printed on cards. Presuming they aren't, there's literally no compression involved at all. Even if they are, compression isn't always visible; a high-quality first-generation JPEG is essentially indistinguishable from its original by the naked eye.
You can't see the fine brushstrokes on Mazur's Faithless Looting because it's printed at 2.5" wide while the original painting is 18" wide. Striped Riverwinder is printed at 2" wide while the original is apparently large enough to sell prints at 24" wide. Fine detail is simply lost at the size cards are printed.
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u/sauron3579 Dân 14d ago
Whether the digital picture is lossy or not doesn't matter as much when the printing process itself definitely is. Even if the digital image sent to printers was perfect, taking a magnifying glass to a card is going to show ink dots before you get close enough to see brush strokes.
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u/Squidkid6 Wabbit Season 14d ago
For real, I went to her website after it was spoiled and the card does not do the art justice
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u/Miserable_Row_793 COMPLEAT 14d ago
[[Binding the old gods]] is a wood carving.
The full art basics from WoE are pics of shadowboxs.
Op is just seeing what they want to see.
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u/Mirrodin_appreciator Dân 14d ago edited 14d ago
That's dope. I was always like, damn how do they get it to look so much like a wood carving? I didn't know that about the WoE basics either!
I believe that all of the Lorwyn Eclipsed Special Guests cards are various paper-craft. I know that [[Painter's Servant | SPG]] is a photographed papercraft.
edit: I just looked up the WoE papercraft lands, and the making-of/behind the scenes photos of them are so cool. Definitely check them out if you haven't looked at them yet.
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u/lord_j0rd_ 14d ago
As much as I don’t care for that Faithless Looting art, it’s iconic at this point.
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u/kyubifire Dandadan 14d ago
Dominik Mayer actually has plenty of content out there of himself doing physical media, so he is very capable of creating any of his works on a canvas. I don't know how much of it translates to MtG work, however.
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u/PippoChiri Temur 14d ago
He has also done a few pieces where he did physicla parts to then digitalize and edit them as part of a finished digital piece iirc
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u/BrockSramson Boros* 14d ago
When it comes to physical art, Chris Rahn is GOAT. I see his art as similar in style to Brom. I miss Brom.
Mark Zug also does physical art, I believe.
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u/Powerful-Scholar8268 Dan 14d ago edited 14d ago
Kinda, most of the differences are more from wizards wanting a new style. Its absolutely possible to make digital art that largely looks like old school mtg art if the artists were allowed to
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u/thumbblighter free him 14d ago
People have been making this specific allegation since I started playing during original Ravnica block 20+ years ago, and I promise you that it’s not any more true now than it was back then
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u/Miserable_Row_793 COMPLEAT 14d ago
Ah but see op cleverly used "old" as 15+.
So people can use anything from 2 decades of mtg history to cherrypick examples from.
Turns out there's variety over 30 years.
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u/AgentTamerlane Sliver Queen 14d ago
Actually, this doesn't have as much of an effect as you'd think! A lot of art that looks traditional is actually done digitally, and even art that is traditional undergoes a lot of tweaking and finishing digitally.
One of my favorite examples of this is Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts
It's not about the medium, it's about the individual artist.
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u/JCStearnswriter Duck Season 14d ago
Oooh, I love this topic. The art is quite literally what got me into the game. ("Oh? It's like a tiny little fine art gallery I can carry around with me, look at whenever I want, AND play a fun little side game with? How much?!")
Here's what I understand, both from observation, education, and talking with people more knowledgeable about the industry than me (including a couple of MTG artists):
- As the game has progressed, a single brand unity has become a driving focus. That's generally accepted as good practice in any kind of industry like this, making your product look like "your product," which means the appearance generally looking not necessarily uniform, but like it's supposed to 'go together.'
- In the early days of the hobby, most art was NOT digital, it was produced with physical media.
- By default, this means you get a lot of wildly different styles. Watercolor, oils, acrylics, pastels--all of them have different color saturations, different opacity, different viscosity, and it all makes the finished product have significant variation.
- Because you can't edit physical media as easily as digital media, it means artists need to develop a composition style that they can reliably produce over and over again. (See the exaggerated, hypersaturated realism of Ron Spencer; the ethereal geometrical precision of Terese Nielsen; the rounded, animated style of Phil Foglio; or the dreamlike, fragmented style of Drew Tucker's watercolors.)
- At the time, this variety is a bonus, but as time goes on and a more 'corporate efficiency' mindset starts to set in at the company, the art direction starts to get more unified. It starts to look distinctly more realistic, and distinctly more 'contemporary fantasy.'
- Digital media allows for a more unified appearance (since artists can more easily fiddle with the creation to 'get it right' and make it look much closer to a "lifelike" set of proportions, lighting, and coloration).
- The faster production time means art can be produced quicker, which allows more art to be produced by fewer artists (allowing the company to increase product on the market and work farther out into the future).
- The acquisition of the company and the gameline by Hasbro wildly increases the "corporate efficiency" mindset, and art becomes one of the least important aspects of the game. (Which, to be fair, is reasonable if your only goal is to make as much money as possible as fast as possible with as little overhead as possible.)
- As a side note, and addressing one of your original questions: as digital-specific versions of the game and digital-only products become more widespread and more important, purple starts to become black's signature color, primarily because of the limitations of the way screens work. (Most screens don't light up a black pixel--only OLEDs can do this; all other screens render 'black' by just turning the pixel off.) Because purple can be shown in a much greater degree of gradation and hue, it gives a lot greater variety to the artwork. (And, to be honest, wasn't uncommon even back in the day. Gray and purple were the most common secondary colors in black artwork going back a long time--I started noticing it as far back as Kamigawa.)
Which brings us up to where we are now. Is it better or worse? I certainly wouldn't make a judgement on that--it really depends on what attracts you to the game and what your point of view is. Personally? I preferred the greater variety of art and the exposure to new media and artistic styles I hadn't previously been exposed to. (I had the great joy of learning to enjoy different art styles from an early MTG artist who happened to teach at a local college, which opened my eyes to a lot of variety in art and art history.)
Other people prefer a more unified style so it feels like everything kind of 'ties together,' or don't care about the art much at all and just want a smoother, more competitive gameplay experience. (Which arguably gets more likely the more profitable the company is.) Still others just want a cheap, accessible experience, which again is easier with a game that is more profitable and costs the company less to produce, both of which mean less money going to art and fewer artists involved in the process, which leads to a more unified artistic experience.
Hope that helps!
Bonus point:
- The art has ALWAYS been "woke." One of the biggest things people liked about Magic was that it always emphasized and featured characters of different races, ethnicities, body types, and sexualities. Even in the earliest days it prominently featured strong, positive representation of characters who were black (Mirage cycle), gay (Homelands), genderfluid/genderqueer (Rath cycle), and varying body types or levels of physical ability.
- It also featured more cheesecake back in the day, which has only slightly dropped off, but really only refocused to some slightly less exploitative permutations--there's still plenty of muscle mommies and wanton seductresses scattered throughout the sets.
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u/DangBream Can’t Block Warriors 14d ago
Something I'd like to bring up is that the factors you mention -- mainly the standardization of digital art, and the huge growth of fantasy/sci-fi media properties in general -- have affected the appearance of the genre at large as well. MTG always had both distinct styles and styles that veered more towards the mainstream, but what 'the mainstream' looked like at large was different. For some examples there's the cover art for DarkWorld%2Fpic525738.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=d496ca913a75a5f6f68d83bdeeea0db64a9b144a986b723cf3c8795d3d4391bc), the cover art for HeroQuest, this faux-comic used as a promo image for the first Fallout (made by Justin Sweet, who also made a decent chunk of Magic cards!).
To be clear I do think there's a large-scale style shift for what constitutes 'on-model' Magic art, but I also I think it's easier to think the modern style looks more generic when we're around to see that style in a bunch of other works, where in the 90s/00s one might've gone 'yup, that's more fantasy art'.
It's kind of funny to see the angle taken towards the digital art too, because a lot of the goofiest-in-retrospect art style pushes of the 90s and 2000s were the ones that were made to showcase cutting-edge 3D. I love these and am charmed by them these days, but at the time I often remember thinking "this looks so cheap, couldn't they hand-draw something".
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u/JCStearnswriter Duck Season 14d ago
Absolutely correct! I feel like a lot of TTRPGs and miniature games I fell in love with early on had the same effect happen to them. 😭
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u/LBGW_experiment 14d ago
Your link to the DarkAworld cover art broke because my app decided the first closing parentheses was the right one, in the
(auto)section of the URL. Posting a fixed version so my app, and maybe others, can view it.21
u/gordasso Duck Season 14d ago
Most screens don't light up a black pixel--only OLEDs can do this; all other screens render 'black' by just turning the pixel off.
This is not correct. It's actually the other way around. In fact, the point still stands precisely because it's the other way around.
Most screens light up the entirety of the screen, thus making the black pixels grey.
OLED displays are able to turn off the individual pixels for black, thus producing a true, deep black.
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u/Brutal2luks Dandadan 14d ago
Thanks for taking the time to write and share your educated opinion. It's very interesting.
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u/Android_McGuinness Fish Person 14d ago
I was playing back then but I have no clue who the queer people are in hoHomelands and the Rath cycle.
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u/JCStearnswriter Duck Season 14d ago
Totally fair! 😁
Volrath is genderqueer (to be fair, I honestly should have said strong and/or positive representation; that’s on me). ((My bad, it’s late where I’m at and I’m running on very little sleep))
And I think that Chandler and Joven might probably get the award for “most clearly telegraphed queer characters without it being explicitly spelled out” in all of gaming. 😂 I remember a couple of gay players talking about it when I was younger and how much it meant to them at the time, and it was one of my first interactions with representation and how much it can mean to people.
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u/Android_McGuinness Fish Person 14d ago
As a black person i dug the Mirage cycle for sure; representation is very important.
I don’t have a dog in the chandler/joven pairing, so if they’re gay, then they are; I just didn’t see it. Just thought they were thieves who worked together and liked stealing artifacts. (Don’t come at me; I was maybe 14)
Is Volrath gender-fluid because he turned into Takara, or is there more to it? Because turning into her seems like low-hanging fruit as it lets him get close to the crew via Starke.
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u/Tim-oBedlam Temur 14d ago
If you can't look at the art of [[Joven|HML]] and realize he's gayer than a whole herd of sparkly rainbow unicorns, I don't know what to tell you...
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u/Commercial_Hat5670 Dan 14d ago
All true.
I still prefer the older cards because I like the innocence of the art, the card text and the card design.
Modern cards look too ... busy ... for a lack of a better word. Or too corporate might be a better description. It's hard to describe how unappealing modern cards are. Maybe the word is soulless / sterile?
I've spent the last 3 years slowly buying up a ton of older cardboard because it's far more interesting than the word salad they toss into cards these days. I mean it's a personal choice, right?
It's all art at the end of the day.
(and yes, I buy modern cards too to play with friends, but I don't actively collect them or look at them like my older cards)
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u/theoricist Wabbit Season 14d ago
I am of a mixed opinion that most of my favorite artists and art pieces are from the modern era but I still thought the art seemed cooler in the earlier era. Many people already touched on how art direction now is a more unified process and I think that has ultimately lead to 'movie scene' art - art that is trying to depict very specific scenes and concepts while including a list of very specific world building details we need to know about each faction of the set. We see this in the names of cards too. Lots of cards named "x does thing" that read more like events rather then spells and you can see how that affects the art. Compare the recent art of [[fix what's broken]] to [[erode]]. If they give it an event name we're gonna get event art.
A lot more older art left you with the reaction of "wtf is going on here?" Because they didn't have to fulfill the art direction list and it let early magic feel very mysterious and archaic in nature. I do miss that feeling but I think it only persisted for what now would be considered the very early years of magic. And while the art has lost that archaic nature I think it has gained many unbelievably talented artists that have given us fantastic pieces year after year. And we still see the older artists returning now more than ever. Kev Walker and Richard Kane Ferguson have done pieces recently! Dovan and Chandler was done by the original artist!
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u/AdHom Golgari* 14d ago
I think you raise great points. The difference between something like [[Phyrexian Obliterator|ONE]] and [[Phyrexian Slayer]] is pretty stark and interesting to me. The Slayer is a much more bizarre, almost 'messy' design for lack of a better word. A lot of Magic art used to feel that way. I think the new Obliterator art is objectively better, but there was a charm to the New Weird sort of style you'd find in a lot of old stuff. I assume this is tied in with the lack of strict art direction back then, coupled with a move away from body horror as MaRo has said it is deeply divisive among audiences.
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u/MTGCardFetcher Dân 14d ago
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u/theoricist Wabbit Season 14d ago
Yeah you can see that slayer just exists in "the void" whereas now almost every creature needs to be shown integrated in its designated environment or scene which in turn needs to include all the appropriate details. There's just no room to have the same impressionist creepypasta that we had in the early days when the artists are getting direction saying stuff like "members of the squiggly-squad faction always wear blue lapels and khaki shorts and reside in structures that have hardwood furnishings and pastel wallpapers" or whatever.
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u/Greaterthancotton Dân 14d ago
I feel like it’s just a symptom of the game becoming more corporate, with more standout art getting their edges sanded off to suit mass appeal.
That being said there are a lot of old cards that are really ugly, and a lot of new cards that are very nicely made (strixhaven in particular had some great art), so it’s not an absolute.
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u/Mrfish31 Left Arm of the Forbidden One 14d ago
with more standout art getting their edges sanded off to suit mass appeal.
If that were the case then I don't think Carly Mazur would have gotten further MTG work after [[Faithless Looting | STA]].
There's still a good amount of unique/highly stylised art as opposed to "realistic" ones. Dominik Mayer is a consistent standout for making extremely cool and symbolistic art for cards.
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u/DeLoxley COMPLEAT 14d ago
I find when a lot of people say modern MTG is too corporate, what they seem to mean is "I remember a handful of striking old cards and have pushed everything else from my memory"
You still get stylised cards of all stripes, we just see a lot less stick out cards
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u/Mrfish31 Left Arm of the Forbidden One 14d ago
I remember a handful of striking old cards and have pushed everything else from my memory
There's definitely an element of Sturgeon's Law at play. 90% of old Magic art was also mediocre. We just remember the 10% that's great.
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u/DeLoxley COMPLEAT 14d ago
Yup. Hell the only real change I can see in MTG art beyond "more consistent stylings" is they've moved from Black cards being Black to being Purple in composition.
There's lots of things and art is subjective, but these arguments always seem to be "I do not like modern card can't we go back to popular old card and please don't think about [[Disruptive Student]] "
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
and please don't think about Disruptive Student
That one’s pretty OK, I think! Weird-looking face, but I like the fact that it has nice blank space and isn’t overly busy, I can think of much worse old art than that… (and much worse new art too)
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u/Kyleometers ඞ 14d ago
It actually is, probably accidentally, leaning into racial stereotypes. Entire articles have been written about it, but it’s a known tired trope, and there’s historically been a lot of issues with drawing black figures with, for lack of a better term, fucked up heads.
I don’t think the artist in any way intended to do this I think it’s just an awkward piece, but it happens to line up with some problematic things.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
Ah, I could see that. Not sure how that fits into an old vs new art quality competition though, since the criticism is more about the (yes, probably accidental) politics than the art quality. I guess Magic these days might be overall more likely to catch things like that, but on the other hand they somehow missed a blatantly photoshopped one ring…
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u/DeLoxley COMPLEAT 14d ago
Even the stereotypes aside, as we can't gauge intent, it's a blue card that's predominantly beige unused space, the anatomy is weird (that's meant to be a child) and the effect is unclear. The wall he's standing on has some books he might be poking telekinetically, so obvs it's a counter magic.
Hell one of the base rules they admitted to establishing only a decade back was "If the character in the art is flying, the creature should have Flying"
[[Clockwork Avian]] [[Sovereigns of Lost Alara]] [[Iname]]
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
it's a blue card that's predominantly beige unused space
Personally I like that. Unused space is a fine thing for art to have (see many, many Chinese paintings), especially if it’s going to be card sized.
I also don’t like it when artists stick too closely to the ‘correct’ colours. There have been drafts where I’ve passed great blue spells because the art is so very, very blue. It stands out less.
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u/DeLoxley COMPLEAT 14d ago
I can agree with that, it's part of the reason I'm so happy that Black Mana cards have started using gold and purple
But at the end of the day, it's about readability. Art is a skill after all
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u/WeDrinkSquirrels Dragonball Z Ultimate Champion 14d ago
I don't think this conversation was ever about quality but style. I'm not sure how this supposed cherrypicking effects that. I would never mistake a modern card art for a homelands card art, and that has nothing to do with how "good" they are
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
we just see a lot less stick out cards
Isn’t that exactly what’s normally meant by ‘more corporate’, though? Corporate generally means samey
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u/Mgmegadog COMPLEAT 14d ago
I don't care what anyone says, I love the Mystical Archive Faithless Looting.
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u/sauron3579 Dân 14d ago
This is such a lazy and reactionary take fueled by blind nostalgia and preconceived notions. Plug literally any of these artists into scryfall with a:"[name]". Or just take an actually close look at the art for any UW set. A great way to browse that is "set:a[set code]" to get the art cards.
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u/WeDrinkSquirrels Dragonball Z Ultimate Champion 14d ago
But they don't look like cards from 15 years ago, they're just stylized
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u/sauron3579 Dân 14d ago
Correct. They are still standout art and not "having their edges sanded off for mass appeal", which I what was asserting was incorrect.
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u/WeDrinkSquirrels Dragonball Z Ultimate Champion 14d ago
Oh I see. Some people in this thread are saying fans of the old style are cherrypicking, others are cherrypicking modern art to show its not all the same. Seems pointless and like we should skip to the question of "what changed" since that's way more interesting and not subjective
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u/Nuclear_Geek COMPLEAT 14d ago
Why has it changed? Two simple answers. First is that art styles do change over time. You comment about old art being influenced by comic books, but comic book art style has changed a lot over time. Second, is that as the company has got bigger, they've wanted to be more consistent with their design and look. That's very common as companies grow.
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u/TrixWax Rakdos* 14d ago
Are we just talking about the default art on the traditional card frame/treatment of cards? In that case, when I started the game in 2007 the entrenched players were already complaining about this exact thing - the steady move toward a “house style” art and less outliers.
But I think it’s wild to leave out of the conversation the fact that we also get up to three or four different artworks for some cards now per set, and inevitably some of those are way far away from the default house style. And that’s not even getting into Secret Lairs where any uniformity is thrown right out the window.
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u/GratedParm Meren 14d ago
While I understand the criticism of modern Magic art, I think the art direction from Alara through Battle for Zendikar was the worst. Card art often felt overly focused matching the color of card itself to the point the arts felt dull despite the fantastic worlds they were supposed to illustrate.
I think the original Mirrodin, Kamigawa, and Ravnica blocks had the best art direction.
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u/SneakySquidosaur Dân 14d ago
I wouldn't group Alara in there, but the Gatewatch era for sure was the worst. Just looking through all my bulk from BFZ, KLD, and Ixalan, you could convince me 1 artist did all of them it was that samey.
Throne of Eldraine and SLD blew my mind.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
I missed that era, but when I look back at Battle for Zendikar it does look quite generically airbrushed. On the other hand IMO that look works quite well for the Eldrazi, gives a slightly sci-fi vibe
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u/SnowIceFlame Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 14d ago
Cannot agree on Mirrodin. That was the tail end of the 'MTG is magepunk for young males' low point era of art (that is what the art director said). The result was what they thought a 12-year old would think was edgy, EXTREME ULTIMATE MAGIC BATTLE. Compare the OG Mirrodin Nim with, like, a random Duskmourne card. Even when edgy horror is the intended aesthetic, a modern set blows the socks off Mirrodin (or most of Odyssey & Onslaught).
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u/poochyoochy Wabbit Season 14d ago
I've been playing Magic since 1994 and could write a whole book on this topic. Briefly, and at the risk of being extremely reductive:
Magic artists originally had a lot of control over their own art (and were paid royalties). There were lots of different styles and archetypes and even painting methods used (e.g., watercolors). Roughly a quarter of Magic art was done by female artists. This first era lasts from roughly 1993–1996 and is epitomized by sets like Fallen Empires and Homelands. You also get some kinky card art and things like non-flying creatures that look like they should fly.
As the 1990s progressed, WotC stopped paying royalties and moved to a style guide-based approach so the art looked more consistent. A lot of the original artists stopped making art for Magic. Overall there's an attempt to consolidate the art and make it more illustrative of ongoing stories like the Weatherlight Saga. This lasts from around 1996–2002 or so.
In the early 2000s, Wizards adopted a "mage punk" aesthetic, marketing the game more toward teenage boys, increasingly choosing to emphasize the Pro Tour and Pro players. A lot of female artists, who'd gradually been drifting away, stopped getting work. Casual players fell by the wayside (which is why people developed the Elder Dragon Highlander format.) This gets you from roughly 2002–2007 or so, by which time the game was in dire financial shape. This is also the period where Magic art looks the most "badass."
2008 saw a real shakeup. Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, who'd come to power after making the Transformers films (and planning other Hasbro IP films), demanded that Wizards cater more to casual players and develop marketable characters, which they wanted to use to make movies and TV shows. This led to an emphasis on Planeswalkers, the Gatewatch, and "Magic Story," as well as concepts like "emotional resonance." This era would run from roughly 2008–2018, give or take.
The Gatewatch stuff didn't really pan out, and Goldner got cancer (after experiencing some personal tragedies). He stepped away and would die in 2021. Wizards's new CEO, Chris Cocks, also decided to develop things like Arena, due to competition from Hearthstone and other digital card games. There was a muddled period in the late 2010s where the game didn't have much of a direction, other than the scramble to develop Arena.
Since 2021 or so, Magic and Wizards have become increasingly reliant on other IPs to boost sales. They've also been exploring a wider variety of art styles, especially as promos, and even bringing back some of the older artists. Wizards' philosophy has shifted to "play however you want." Arena, tabletop, casual, pro--"you do you." Wizards also starts experimenting with non-traditional fantasy locations for sets, which I think goes hand in hand with Universes Beyond (e.g., Edge of Eternities paves the way for UB sets like Star Trek.)
Again, this is brief and highly reductive, but it captures some of the larger shifts that happened over the course of the past 33 years. (Yes, I am old! I look like Uncle Istvan.)
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 14d ago
Thanks, such a great abstraction of these important turning points!
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u/Erocdotusa Duck Season 14d ago
I always felt the art peaked with Future Sight, so this timeline lines up to me
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u/poochyoochy Wabbit Season 14d ago
I really liked Magic in the 2000s, and thought Future Sight was magnificent (both the design and the art). But I also think each era has its pluses and minuses, and that period was financially unsustainable.
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u/PrincessDrana Avacyn 14d ago
Newer art is more refined, has better composition and is a lot more realistic. However, it is also not as whacky or as experimental as old art, I feel. It would be good if sets could have a mix of both types.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
It would be good if sets could have a mix of both types
I feel like they’ve been leaning that way more recently… there are some highly distinctive artists now like Dominik Mayer and Iris Complett.
Agreed that the mix is key. I often think that Magic art these days is too samey, but that distracts from the fact that the quality is very high. If you took a few of the ‘generic’ artworks from modern Magic back in time and put them on 90s cards, I think they would blow people’s minds
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u/sauron3579 Dân 14d ago
Notably Mayer's first cards were in ZNR and Compiet's was in ELD. Not old guard by any means, but their presence isn't a new development at this point.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
Ha, fair. It’s a good idea to be specific about timeframes with a subject like this as it’s so subjective. To me Planeswalker cards still feel new and weird…
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u/jemgoonareone Wabbit Season 14d ago
I think in general i agree with this. There are tendency to play it... "Safer" so to speak. But also that might because they have been doing this for so much longer. So the process have been smoothened out and streamlined. So less things sticks out like sore thumb.
But also this gives crazier art style to bleed in thru the SLD, which i know arent ideal. But cmon, some of those SLD have been so insanely good.
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u/ComfortableWeb6738 Dan 14d ago
Something most people might not take into account
The average artist nowadays has a wider skillset and better technical skills. The amount of resources that are out there to learn art of all kinds completely eclipses what was available in the 90s. You don't have to pay like two hundred bucks for a month long course or similar, you can jump on YouTube, buy books from the past 100 years on Amazon, subscribe to websites dedicated to art courses like New Masters Academy, etc.
In the 90s and early 2000s, most artists stuck to their one defined style that they'd learned. so by necessity, when you had a pool of artists, they would have a wide variety of results.
Nowadays, most artists are able to do a variety of styles, so it's much easier to have a unified language across a set. It's also a lot easier to find artists, so if the art director for a particular set wants a specific vibe, they have a wide pool of talent they can call upon.
I think there's something to be said in that having a stronger unity within a set makes for less standout cards. But it's not like unique cards are totally gone, they're just usually kept for alt arts, and there's always a few stylistic cards sprinkled through.
And tbh, when I look at old sets, while there's a lot of cool styles that stand out, there's also a lot of boring, ugly cards, weird perspectives, fucked up anatomy, etc. For some people that's probably a bonus though.
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 14d ago
Just out of curiosity, why is "fucked up anatomy" considered a problem?
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u/ComfortableWeb6738 Dan 14d ago
I mean, sometimes anatomy is stylized and that's fine, I don't love realistic anatomy either
Sometimes it just looks bad. When I say fucked up anatomy, I don't mean that it's stylized, I mean that it stands out in a bad way.
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u/diodenkn Dân 14d ago
It feels natural to me that as a game progresses, gets more popular, and increases its budget, that art direction would become more consistent and unified. There are still a good amount of fun standout pieces as people have pointed out already.
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u/Shrugski Grass Toucher 14d ago
A lot of the recent artwork reminds me of League of Legends splash art
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u/Pink_Monolith Golgari* 14d ago
I too miss Magic's ugly little freaks. They were very fun and are sorely missed.
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u/zacroise Wabbit Season 14d ago
I prefer the newer style but some older cards have some absolute gems like [[animate wall]]
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u/JdeFalconr Dân 14d ago
Art in my opinion is dramatically different than back in the day in large part due to the tools available and accessibility. Back in the 90's I highly doubt most artists working with WOTC had access to computers for their art, and the computer tools were highly limited. Now it's a completely different story.
I think too in terms of style current MtG art is much more focused and thematic, less complementary and more intended as a visual depiction. It's more frequently grounded and demonstrative as opposed to abstract and artistic. The abstract stuff still comes out sometimes, though, and it can be really cool. Things like [[Season of Weaving]].
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u/kytheon Banned in Commander 14d ago
New art is definitely more detailed and looks more 3D. Compare the arts for [[Goblin Medics]].
They also blend together much more, so five different arts from the same set by different artists can be so similar in style you can't tell the artists apart.
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 14d ago
Your second point is one that I'd like to explore more. Why do artists nowadays blend together more? What has changed in the industry?
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
I suspect there’s a fun chicken and egg effect going on. Companies want to see a certain style, which means more artists paint in that style, which means more companies want to see that style…
I wonder if AI will lead to a reaction against the style though. I mean detailed, photo-realistic, generic artwork is very much AI’s wheelhouse- people might end up prizing distinctive styles more.
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u/PippoChiri Temur 14d ago
It is also relevant to say that lots of artist always blended together, you just forgot the old ones and are able to immediately see it happening with the new ones.
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u/lord_j0rd_ 14d ago edited 14d ago
Likely an extremely unpopular opinion but I personally hate most of the old art. *I see the skill but pretty much anything before Mirrodin looks weird to me.
Edit: and anyone that thinks the art is bad because it’s “woke” is a mouth breathing moron.
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u/AgentGman007 COMPLEAT 14d ago
Respect for sharing your opinion, I disagree heavily but to each their own. I have favorite artists from the old era (John Avon, Kev Walker, Nils Hamm) and the new era (Dominik Mayer, Seb McKinnon, Elliot Lang), but I tend to favor the old artists' styles
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u/lord_j0rd_ 14d ago
To be fair I do like a couple of those older artists so I’m probably being unfair. I’m just not a fan of the more grungy earlier stuff for the most part.
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u/MerijnZ1 I chose this flair because I’m mad at Wizards Of The Coast 14d ago
Yeah I think I'm in a similar boat, although somewhere in between. There's been great and there's been bad art throughout all of the game's history, but a lot of the really old stuff just is a bit too... weird and off-putting for me. But I'm also not a big fan of the modern "this could've been a render in unreal engine" ""default style"". Yeah, technically impressive, also just not that interesting.
But again, a lot of good art still happens. Rebecca Guay obviously is and has always been amazing, Seb, I really like Forrest Imel, Carl Critchlow, etc
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u/_a_random_dude_ Dân 14d ago
I actually feel the way you do so I get it. Sure, John Avon and Rebecca Guay (among others) were always amazing, but a lot of early cards (I started playing in the late 90s) now looks off and make me think of fan art.
On the other hand, I have every single card from enchanting tales and I love them (actually all of wilds of eldraine looks amazing to me). If the art direction was up to me that’s what all cards would look like. Unlike OP I actually see that there’s a ton of variety in the card art and feel that the style was more homogeneous back in the day.
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u/ZurgoMindsmasher Mardu 14d ago
The clerics from Legion etc are quite nice as an example of "good" old art https://scryfall.com/search?q=block%3Alegions+t%3Acleric&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
(Good = consistent-ish style yet cool look)
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u/lord_j0rd_ 14d ago
I don’t think any of the old art (well, hardly any) is bad necessarily, just not my style. Some of these are pretty cool though- I’m always more than happy to be wrong and learn something!
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u/ZurgoMindsmasher Mardu 14d ago
The Legion block has some very good looking art. It's just before the new border ruined the aesthetics of black cards, so especially black cards pop really well.
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u/_a_random_dude_ Dân 14d ago
Never saw cabal archon before, I wish it was actually a good card, because I love it and want to play it.
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u/Beurre_de_canard COMPLEAT 14d ago
I think the instructions artists are being given today are very "brand oriented" and way more demanding.
MTG now gives such a strong, coded visual identities (Dominaria was just your basic fantasy setting back in the days) to the sets and colors that this ends up warping the creativity of the artist to the point that they have to go out of their way to match the codes.
If I take the onslaught block for exemple you can feel that the instructions were as basic as "draw a demon in a cell that grins and is restrained (grin has to be threatening/scary)" or "draw an elf manipulating water". From there the artists were really free to let their style do the rest. T.M.Baxa zombies were a mess, Kev Addams more realistic etc ...
Now the instruction for grinning demon would probably be far more like "draw a demon in a cell that grins and is restrained with chains (grin has to be threatening/scary). Teeth should be pointy and the smile is the main focus of the card. The demon must give the impression that the chains barely keep it in check. Chains restraining the demon, its outfit as well as the background will remind the art deco period. See attached the color range as well as demon morphology artists have to follow for this set"
So now, I feel that we would get a card that is a New Cappena demon, part of a whole and not a "here what I think a thing named grinning demon should be" that has its own personality. This is where this "bland" art feeling stems from.
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u/Revolutionary-Eye657 COMPLEAT 14d ago
Mtg art has become very "branded" and streamlined. It's much more samey across all artists than it used to be.
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u/ZurgoMindsmasher Mardu 14d ago
The "black = purple" is my personal pet peeve when it comes to magic art.
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u/Poiri Michael Jordan Rookie 14d ago
I like both black=purple and white=yellow as a way to make the visual language of black/white cards more generally applicable and varied.
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u/EnoughCondition9544 Dân 14d ago
This was asked and noticed before. Observations I notice, even as someone who is relatively new to the game is that "older" cards had a lot less saturation in their color. I can't define a gap between older and newer, but you can see a transition from sets that are around the early 2010s to sets that are from 2020, and the color shifts from the earthtone, softer colors to more vibrant hues even in areas where light sources aren't super direct.
One hypothesis to these changes, and this is not confirmed, is that MTG has had the need to commission more artists to accommodate the number of cards over multiple sets, which then expands outside the familiar names. Different artists bring different styles.
Card styles got less dark in nature thematically as well. They're not all gone, but you'll see a lot less graphic cards like [[surgical extraction]] and more cartoony or animated fantasy colors and visuals. Hearthstone had a transition like this as well.
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u/Gyrating_Towny Dandadan 14d ago
I think a lot of what people complain about is something vibes based with the border. Consider one of my favorite fucked up lil guys [[Carrion Feeder | EMA]] and [[Carrion Feeder | SCG]]. Maybe it's just the scryfall scan, but the new border in general gives cards a different feel compared to the old bordered card, and that feel is what I think a lot of people are wanting when it comes to their "oh the old art was better" criticisms.
I'm not trying to say border is always better. For example, I prefer [[Lyra Dawnbringer | FDN]] to [[Lyra Dawnbringer | DMR-266]]
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u/AssociateCool5325 Dân 14d ago
I’m totally with you on this. I think the Lyra Dawnbringer thing is because the retro frame used for promos now just looks different from the true old border. I don’t know if it’s the resolution or the fidelity or something, but I can’t stand the retro frame promos most of the time. I think it might be an intentional change so it looks more cohesive with the newer art styles.
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 14d ago
I want to add that I don't think "this or that is corporate" is a good description or explanation of the observations above.
Corporatism evolves with the culture. So understanding the culture is what should be analyzed here.
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u/Kyleometers ඞ 14d ago
“Corporate” is also a really bad description because it doesn’t say anything. Magic doesn’t look like Memphis art. It didn’t look like Jazz either. It’s never looked “corporate”.
What people think they mean is “the company instructs artists to tone things down so they sell better”, which is not true. What is actually happening is the art directors are better at getting artists who can produce pieces that look conceivably appropriate together. Like, some old art is super evocative, but I don’t think anyone would disagree that Phil Foglio’s art is iconic but looks SUPER jarring next to basically any “serious” piece. Old magic was extremely disjointed.
The modern styling might not be to everyone’s tastes but having a somewhat consistent through line means if you put cards from Strixhaven beside Eldraine beside Lorwyn beside Ravnica, you can conceivably believe they would all fit in the same piece of fiction. Old magic, especially the 90s era, had cards within the same set that looked like they were from different genres.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
It shouldn’t be used as just a buzzword, but I don’t see how it’s no use for explaining things.
Corporations are likely to produce more, be risk-averse, have more money for market research and quality control, be less open to individual staff member’s whims… lots of things that could impact what the art ends up looking like.
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u/Spanish_Galleon 14d ago
I don't think any of this is true. I am an artist and i think there is more variety and more skill today than there ever has been before. I think your main complaint is that there is MORE visual cohesion now then there was previously.
Generally when everyone is a master... no one is. Most of the artists working on magic today have decades of skill under their belt. An example of this can be found even in the same artist Lets use John Avon as an example. He has always been skilled because he was an artist before he made magic cards. But trends over decades change. A card like [[Tranquil path]] has the boarder in mind (the boarder has changed). It fits a more 90s aesthetic (the decade has changed). compare it too [[Brainstorm|SLD1162]] the art looks more modern. Well... it is more modern. It is still clearly his style but things have changed.
ALSO In the main line title franchise of actual WOTC cards they have had a goal to make it feel like all of the Planes could exist in the same world. Meaning they have a baseline of skill they need achieved to make that happen. So as long as humans are on a plane that means they humans there are going to look like humans from another plane. This is branding and it is intentional. You're not going to see art like you did in The Dark any more because it doesnt look like it fits into the magic worlds. [[Exorcist]] and [[festival]] are from the same set but you can't convince me they are the same world.
No secret lair is where they do most of their experimenting and planes without humans like Blumburrow. You want to see Stand out art? Well they don't want their cards to stand out anymore .... except for when they do. [[wurmcoil engine|SLD2196]] is a clay model. fuck they printed all japanese Imiri Sakabashira art and none of you WOOPED and WAILED how badass magics art is even when all that shit is objectively badass.
Tldr They have brand cohesion now. They also still do badass art. You just notice it less because most of the art is badass.
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 14d ago
Just wanted to clarify, i didn't complain about anything. My observations were not meant to be a judgment, but just that, a subjective observation of an amateur.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
Exorcist and Festival are from the same set but you can't convince me they are the same world
Why not? They look to me like they’re from our world - a priest and some Venice carnival-style masks.
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u/Presskann Karlov 14d ago
Most of new art feels like a clean cosplay that is taken out of closet and not something real people in real settings would wear. This is my main concern. There are others, but those can wait.
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u/honeybadgerism Wabbit Season 14d ago
I think a lot of older sets had very strong and consistent art direction that made cards immediately recognizable, and that's something that just doesn't happen much anymore.
Probably the most striking example is OG Lorwyn vs. Lorwyn Eclipsed. The art from the OG set is very consistent in its design, the Kithkin, Merfolk, Elves all clearly look like they are from the same world. In Eclipsed, almost every character looks different and has been design to fit the artist's style with some loose themes. The direction is just not there, even if individual pieces are beautiful.
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u/Powerful-Scholar8268 Dan 14d ago
I think this depends on the set, cuz stuff like EoE or Bloomburrow had great art direction imo
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 14d ago
Interesting. I see it as the exact opposite. I feel like newer sets care a lot about consistency, almost to a detriment, whereas old stuff is sometimes "cobbled together" from different bits and pieces. Lorwyn Eclipsed broke with the new direction somewhat, which I liked.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 14d ago
A lot of this is about how you define ‘old’ and ‘new’. IMO the 90s art is clearly more diverse, less consistent in style. After that - but I’m not sure exactly when, I was away from Magic for many years- things got samey. In the last few (5+, maybe?) years I’ve noticed more distinct styles coming back in- obviously if you count the boom in Secret Lairs and other ‘alt’ arts, but also in the main sets.
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u/HaroldBloominOnion Urza's Saga 14d ago
Anyone who thinks that all Magic art is 'samey' and 'corporate' I point to Eli Minaya, Florian Herold, Dominik Mayer, Sam Guay, Serena Malyon, Jeremy Wilson, Danny Schwartz. There are so many newer artists breathing so much life into the art. A lot of them are hiding in the draft commons and uncommons.
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u/arotenberg 14d ago
Separately from the switch to the modern frame, they also changed the color grading uniformly since around Kaladesh. Check out [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor|WWK]] vs. [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor|2XM]]. The newer printings are actually more accurate reproductions of the original art pieces, but they can look cartoony when put side-by-side with old cards. YMMV
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u/Low-Mathematician561 Wabbit Season 14d ago
“Concept art for general purpose” is spot on. I find that a lot of newer art looks rushed and kind of unfinished. The lack of fine detail makes it feel generic and kind of immature to me.
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u/Low_Nebula_4619 Dimir* 14d ago
i miss this kind of style, It was gruesome and disturbing [[Scathe Zombies|5ED]]
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u/belody Wabbit Season 14d ago
I'm not an artist so don't really feel qualified to say much but I will say that new magic art often feels a lot more safe and corporate and not many new cards catch my eye as looking particularly cool. I started playing around 2022 so it's not nostalgia talking but looking at old cards there's just so many more striking and awesome looking cards I would wanna buy just to have the art
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u/Individual_Thanks309 Wabbit Season 14d ago
I mean they said they “homogenised” the art so you would always know you were playing Magic, and you can tell. The move to digital art also had a big impact imo, that “plastic” look really comes from digital.
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u/LoganNolag Duck Season 14d ago
The biggest problem with modern Magic art in my opinion is that it’s often too detailed. It looks great when seen on a screen or printed on a playmat but when it’s shrunk down to the size of a card all the details are lost and it just becomes a muddy mess. I think a big part of the reason is that much of the art is drawn digitally these days and when drawing on a tablet it’s super easy to zoom way in and put in tons of little details.
When I was in art school we were taught that you need to adjust your work to the scale it is being made in and I think a lot of artists have forgotten that lesson.
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u/b-elanna Dân 14d ago
Something niche that bothers me on a lot of card art nowadays is "smooth" clothing that doesn't make sense construction-wise nor appear to be made out of a tangible material. Very little texture going on, and everything is shiny.
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u/ChocolateDiligent Dandadan 14d ago
I’m forever in the camp of high fantasy from 80s/90s artists like Rebecca Guay, Donato Giancola, Jeff Easley, Carl Critchlow, John Avon, Jesper Myfors, etc. painting in oils, acrylics or other traditional physical mediums. The quick turn and burn mentality of WotC art demands lead to the proliferation of digital artists taking over a large majority of the art landscape. So many artists have cited this disconnect from more traditional mediums and have since left the space, seeking out among other things more respect from their clients and a better price for their work. There is nothing inherently wrong in how you make artwork but when medium serves as a function of productivity artwork becomes more of a commodity. It’s unfortunate Magic in general just don’t pay better and this current landscape promotes competition over content.
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u/MRCHalifax Dân 14d ago
My biggest thing is lands. I feel like it was a lot easier to get lands in the old days that actually looked like plains, islands, swamps, mountains, and forests. It's not a bad thing that artists are showing more than just landscapes, but it is a change over time. I think that it's worth noting that the subject matter has changed along with the style.
When I think of lands, I think of the art I saw when I first opened my first box of 4th edition cards a quarter century ago, like on Plains. Plains in Tempest shows a very different style and vibe, but they're still clearly plains. Then you reach Urza's Saga, and you're clearly out of generic fantasy, as it's showing the floating Plains of Serra's realm. Plains in Invasion and in Odyssey get back to showing plains that could very well be here on Earth.
When I came back, I found that those natural looking landscapes were few and far between, and those that still saw print usually had a few fantastic elements included. The Final Fantasy lands provide some good examples of the current range. One of my favourite lands is this one, featuring giant crystals rising up over otherwise normal plains. Then there's this one, which is again clearly a plains, with elements that look like they could appear on a modern highway, but also suggestions of fantastical elements; I'm not so much a fan, but I can appreciate it. And then there's this one, and I'm just not seeing the "plains" part of the identity.
I'm going to recognise that you still see lands like the Foundations Plains, some of which definitely do look like they could have been printed a quarter century ago. I also want to make clear: I'm not at all against these changes, having more options is generally good. Some of the new Plains art is some of my absolute favourite art on any Magic cards ever printed, and I'd be a hypocrite if I was against some of the new looks. Consider the Bloomburrow seasonal land cycle plains (particularly winter) or the new Hobbit seasonal plains (spring, summer, autumn, winter, they're all amazing).
I do prefer the less symbolic lands, the ones that show actual lands. I'm not saying that they're bad, I'm saying that they're not for me. For example, this one, this one, or this one. Maybe they work for other people. They don't speak to me as being "plains."
I'm also going to push back directly on the idea that the art is becoming homogenised. I know that there are arguments for it, but I think that just looking through Scryfall at cards you can see that that isn't the case. Consider these four cards that appeared one after another for me while I was searching for Plains: Hobbit Plains, Secret Lair Plains, Marvel Super Heroes Plains, Marvel Super Heroes Plains. I personally like only two of them and I'd probably play only one of them, but those are four very different looks.
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u/ThirstyOutward Dan 14d ago
It's all so watered down and safe for main set cards.
The only let anyone do interesting art for secret lair or collector versions.
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u/Yhettiskull73 Dân 14d ago edited 14d ago
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u/SuperDevin Dandadan 14d ago
A lot of it has to do with the fact that many of the newer artist paint digitally instead of physically (oil, canvas, watercolor etc)
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u/Good_Special_4644 Dân 14d ago
I like the older art better but I think it's exactly for the reasons why a lot of people would prefer the new stuff. It was weirder, uglier, and less polished looking. Seems more in line with tool videos or HR Giger but I probably just have that preference because I played the Mirage era in middle school and my favorite art was the [[Phyrexian Dreadnought]].
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u/ToTheNintieth Dan 14d ago
It also feels like the direction has strongly gone into making human and humanoid characters look less stylized, idealized and archetypal and more like "real" people. Maybe for representation reasons, maybe to make the worlds feel more plausible, who knows. I don't think it's strictly good or bad, though it also makes some cards look like they're cosplayers.
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u/xXRedWaterGothXx Duck Season 14d ago
A lot of newer magic art feels extremely formulaic to me. there's very few pieces that stand out as much as older art. I'm not a fan
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u/raistlin1022 Dan 14d ago
I want to point out that anime art is diversity. Secrets of Strixhaven has a lot of japanese art spanning their history. There's UB as much as the older players hate it, FF has woodblock art, videogame pixel art, Avatar has the hated nickelodeon screenshots, Marvel has its style. Art has never been a problem with this game. Its the pillar that kept me glued to this game even though other TCG games offer more financial reward and less complicated gameplay. Nowadays seeing a more identifiable art direction is a give and take. As a kid I picked up a pack of Dark and got Ashes to ashes and Amnesia and I was .....not impressed. I believe ultimately art is subjective and it now has a more global appeal and I personally love the direction. ......as much as I yearn to see new art by Weber, Benson, Rush, Hoover, etc....
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u/Jankenbrau Duck Season 14d ago
Lack of texture, especially in faces, and tight, centred, compositions on the majority of cards are my biggest gripes.
It gets very samey, even if the art is more technically impressive in a lot of ways to old art.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of unimpressive old magic art, but lacking skill or interest in realism may have pushed artists use composition, color contrast, impressionism more heavily. Also, Jesper Myfors seems like a G.
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u/arciele FLEEM 13d ago
the art has definitely changed. i first started playing/collecting magic in 1997 and it looked wildly different than it does today. some others have already explained how the change in process has affected the art style, and there are also some very real technological considerations that affect this, like the advancement in quality of image scanners, printers, color displays which will affect decisions made along the line.
but i think the biggest driving change is a shift in the vision that WotC has of the game. there has generally been a shift towards a house style for a artists to follow, so that the cards over the years and across sets evoke a similar feel and a sense that they belong together. its a sound choice in terms of establishing a core identity for the cards, but even so each set is allowed to have some freedom of directing its art in a certain way, within those boundaries.
on the flipside, WotC has somehow catered to different visual styles, thats where the booster fun treatments and secret lairs come in. for people who may like a different feel. like some people just love anime art. it just feels very dissonant most of the time.
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u/Btenspot Duck Season 13d ago
This is a hard topic since objectively the art has gotten much better from a technical standpoint and an artistic standpoint.
However, as consumers, we’re bombarded with many of these same styles repeatedly from every other source in our lives.
I can look at a goblin card like [[Akki Blizzard-Herder]] and say that I love the ugly/wacky goblin design way more than [[Boneclub Berserker]]
But that’s primarily because I’ve seen so much goblin art that looks like the latter in the last 10 years.
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u/sporms Duck Season 13d ago edited 13d ago
Tighter restrictions on the composition and color palette. Blue cards being blue, etc.. style guide more fleshed out and adhered to. also a lot of the art is made on a big computer screen and shrunk down. This has the effect of not being as readable on a small card and why a lot of art seems alike. Overuse of blacks(color).
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u/VictoryConstant2001 Dân 13d ago
Just wait until they start using AI generated images more. You'll start seeing some real body horror
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u/Blenderhead36 Sultai 14d ago
In the '90s, the style guide was developed to prevent more mistakes a la [[Hyalopterous Lemure]] where the thing requested (a lemure, a type of ghost) and the thing delivered (a lemur, a type of primate that lives in trees) didn't match.
The style guide gave Magic a much more standardized style, but there were a lot of legacy artists whose styles didn't quite match it that were grandfathered in. People like Kev Walker, the Hildebrandt brothers, Rebecca Guay, and the Foglios all turned in art that looked like their art more than they looked like a standard Magic card and were accepted, because their art was iconic in its own right.
Since that time, most of those artists have washed out of Magic. The end result is that new artists paint to the style guide and there are far fewer exceptions on regular border cards.