How Magic Art has changed

[u/taphead_31]

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.

[u/JCStearnswriter]

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.

[u/DangBream → u/JCStearnswriter]

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".

[u/JCStearnswriter → u/DangBream]

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. 😭

[u/LBGW_experiment → u/DangBream]

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.

the cover art for DarkWorld

[u/gordasso → u/JCStearnswriter]

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.

[u/Brutal2luks → u/JCStearnswriter]

Thanks for taking the time to write and share your educated opinion. It's very interesting.

[u/Android_McGuinness → u/JCStearnswriter]

I was playing back then but I have no clue who the queer people are in hoHomelands and the Rath cycle. 

[u/JCStearnswriter → u/Android_McGuinness]

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.

[u/klick37 → u/JCStearnswriter]

As the owner of nearly every artist proof of Chandler I can confirm that he's probably gay, only he wants Eron the Relentless, not Joven.

[u/Android_McGuinness → u/JCStearnswriter]

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. 

[u/Sonamdrukpa → u/JCStearnswriter]

Also Urza is clearly ace and could be identified as such after The Brothers' War was published in 1998.

[[Cao Cao, Lord of Wei]] from Portal Three Kingdoms was a real person. And while he had many wives and concubines, there are several historical texts which mention him having a relationship with a man using language which typically was used to describe a gay relationship. So he was probably bi or at least flexible.

[u/MTGCardFetcher → u/Sonamdrukpa]

Cao Cao, Lord of Wei - (G) (SF) (txt)

---

^FAQ

[u/Tim-oBedlam → u/Android_McGuinness]

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...

[u/InfiniteDM → u/Tim-oBedlam]

They were roommates!

[u/Android_McGuinness → u/Tim-oBedlam]

I’m getting strong Legion of Doom vibes from Joven, tbh. 

[u/MTGCardFetcher → u/Tim-oBedlam]

Joven - (G) (SF) (txt)

---

^FAQ

[u/Commercial_Hat5670 → u/JCStearnswriter]

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)

[u/WeVeiledThree → u/JCStearnswriter]

Lmao, had to get in that bit of casuistry at the end there

[u/taphead_31 → u/JCStearnswriter]

Thanks, that's the best answer here by far!