Yes. [card]CARD NAME|SET NAME[/card] is what you are looking for. For example:
[card]Cave People|4th Edition[/card] yields Cave People.
[card]Cave People|The Dark[/card] yields Cave People.
And Seb McKinnon saved MTG art from a world of singular mediocrity. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the sentiment is true. Every time one of his images comes out, it is stunning. There is nobody else like that in Magic right now (which is more the fault of the art direction than anything).
On a sidenote (since I agree that Seb is the best of the current crop), I will note that I was VERY impressed by Bastien's Cruel Celebrant. Most of the other cards I've seen him do so far weren't quite my cup of tea, even though he's clearly pretty talented, since they were too closely in line with the general category of style of many of the other artists (just done at a much higher level of execution than most). But that Cruel Celebrant really was pretty damned good. So, hopefully he'll go on a creative upswing of some sort after having done that. After all, as was pointed out earlier, Seb is the same guy who was making cards like Attended Knight not too long ago, so you never know.
I also like some of Mark Zug's art, as far as some of the less "interpretive" artists go. Mainly when he gets creative with the surface-textures of the objects in his paintings (which he often does). For example, (most famously) the tree trunks in his Gaea's Cradle, although in my opinion, his magnum opus in this regard was actually probably his High Priest of Penance which I think is pretty spectacular, and really shows off his object-texture/detail talents to the max. There's also a very strange neo-retro Rennaissance-era-meets-21st-century thing going on with it, and a bunch of his other card arts, which I like. He's definitely hit or miss though, with a significant portion of his card seeming relatively ordinary and rank-and-file MTG-churnout-ish by comparison, and only like 1/3rd or maybe 1/5th of the time he'll do cards where his signature style and hyperdetail and surface textures and mixed foreground/background contrast-disparity thing really shines through. I also thought his Oppressive Rays was pretty good from a "macro" standpoint. Most of his other cards are more impressive on the micro level than the macro (although still often good macro-wise as well). But that one is the other way around, with the overall scene being pretty impressive looking.
So yea, I guess I'm a Zug fan as well (when he's on his game, at least), as far as artists who are still (in his case only somewhat) actively painting MTG cards. Seems like he's pretty sporadic and not doing as much MTG stuff lately, which is unfortunate.
The site is not closing. Somebody bought it. mtgnexus exists too now.
Ah, alright cool. I wasn't sure, because I was browsing some other threads and saw not one but TWO different people saying stuff like "it's shutting down/about to shut down" and "just getting a few last posts in before it goes to archiving" or something, so I thought it was literally just about to close down or something.
But then I saw in the 2nd main page article it said it was getting bought out/not closing(maybe?), so, now I really don't know what the situation is with it.
Yea, I loooooooved Drew Tucker's art in those old sets.
I mean, I wouldn't have loved it if that's the ONLY art style there had been. I would've gotten tired of it in the same way I've been getting tired of the same general cgi-videog-game-screenshot-realism art-style being done by like 90% of the artists over and over nowadays. But, given that the card art was just randomly varied with all sorts of very drastically different art styles, scattered all over the place, I loved having his art be a part of that mix. Some of it looked very cool, and much more mood-evoking than most of the current stuff. I wanted to post his "Cave People" card art from The Dark/4th Edition, but I'm not sure how to use the formatting thing so that it won't show the 5th edition version which had different art on it by some other artist.
Oh crap, I just realized this site is closing (I lurked on this board every so often to see people's theories on what they thought the next unannounced upcoming sets might end up being, over the years, but only joined up to post in here a few days ago, so I didn't know about this).
Just read the articles on the main page and it said it was closing on like July 8th or something, but it's now July 22nd, and then the other article said they got bought out and thus aren't (or still are?) closing?
So, what's the deal, is it closing or not? And if so, when? Or is it totally unknown at this point? Or does it seem like 99%/1% chance in one direction or the other (if it's not known for-sure-for-sure)? And if so, then in which direction (in terms of closing vs not closing, I mean)?
The whole "subverting expectations" fad in media/Hollywood/gaming and so on is getting extremely tiresome.
Yea, so that's the key nuance here.
So, despite what I just said in my previous post, I DO have an issue with THAT routine that they keep doing.
People might think it's the same exact thing as what I just said I'm cool with in my previous post, so how could I be cool with the one, yet NOT cool with that.
Well, it's a subtle difference.
So, in this "subverting expectations" thing that Hollywood is CONSTANTLY doing (to the point that it would actually be subverting expectations in the rare instances that they DON'T do it), there's a certain self-conscious "vibe" thing they do, a kind of negative-assumption-on-your(the audience's)-behalf thign they do where they are like "OMG, you clearly THOUGHT such and such character/dynamic HAD to be XYZ, because expected-norms, but wait for it... waiiiiit for it... SURPRISE, we did it the OTHER WAY AROUND! OMGGGGG. Are you MINDBLOWN!!??!? You never saw it coming, am I right!? Doesn't that totally make up for the insanely lazy/bad writing because the shock of it just makes it inherently fascinating and powerful and mindblowing and stuff!?!?!?!? (no... no it doesn't. Maybe the first few times they ever did it. THEN sure. Back in the 1940s or 60s or whenever they did whatever that thing was for the first few times. Yeah, back THEN it was a huge mindblowing subverting expectations-ey thing. But now? No... not even close.
So, I don't like when they do that sort of smug, cheap-tactic-ey feeling sort of a version of it where it just feels forced and more-ideologically-motivated-than-artistically/storytellingly-motivated and comes off like poorly made propaganda of some sort. Of course that's no fun, when it comes off like that.
But, as long as it doesn't come off that way, then, by all means, they can have as much diversity of whatever kind as they want, and if it feels natural and they take artistic advantage of it from a depth of storytelling standpoint, and don't go into cringey pander-mode with it, then I'm totally cool with it.
Let's say a set took place on Jamuraa, and there were no white people in the entire set. Like, let's say Mirage had no white people in it or something. I would be totally fine with something like that. Like, the physical environmental setting is set in a way where it would feel totally natural and non-forced, like, you could totally imagine a continent or plane like that, where there really just didn't happen to be any white people. (Or conversely if it took place on a snow/Viking plane, and all the vikings were white, again, I'm fine with that too. It swings both ways). Or some plane with no humans at all, and all the sentient creatures on it are sentient birds or something. Fine, no problem as long as its WELL DONE and feels NATURAL relative to itself/the setting/vibe/story/etc at hand. Ditto if there was some setting where everyone was female. Totally can imagine a way it could be done that wouldn't come off forced and pandering, but rather, just like a weird Fantasy-world setting where any bizarre scenarios could happen, as long as you have an interesting, plausible backstory for why the setting is the way it is, and it isn't just rushed and crappy just to check some boxes off.
Now... that being said... if they get a little too carried away and do like NOTHING but that, or almost-always do that and only with groups that they are trying to ideologically "push", and they do it to an extent that it gets super blatant and cringey, well, then that changes things. But, as long as it feels like they are just mixing things up and being random, and sometimes it happens to be such and such thing, and next time it happens to be other such other such thing, and so on, then that's totally fine and I'm cool with it.
Eh, I wouldn't have any problem with a female MTG-version-of-King-Arthur character.
As long as a character feels well done and realistic and not just like some blatant checkbox-checker quota-filler type of thing, then if it looks plausible relative to the vibe of the storyworld, I'm cool with it.
So, for example, if there's some plane on which women are much bigger and stronger than normal women, and one of them beats up some huge buff dude, and lifts him over her head and cracks him over her knee to finish him off. That's fine. Whereas, if it happens with some regular human woman, who isn't nearly as buff as he is, and she doesn't have any plausible supernatural abilities or anything that would make it seem plausible, and it just comes off as some silly checkbox move, then, THAT I would find eyeroll-worthy. So, it really just depends from case to case.
So, in regards to something like this, I don't think it would necessarily have to feel particularly forced or unrealistic for the head MTG-version-of-Arthur person to be female, given that there have been famous, powerful/well-respected Queens or Female-Rulers/Leaders/etc who really have ruled in various times in human history. I.e. Queen Elizabeth (the first one), Nefertiti, etc, and as you mentioned, people like Joan of Arc, on the more military side of things.
And even if there hadn't been a plausibility-standard set in real life history in regards to that, I'd still potentially be cool with it, depending on how it was done, and whether it felt forced/cheesy or not, in the same way as how I don't necessarily have a problem with a Robot/Golem/Artifact-creature being sentient and having emotions (Karn, or what have you), or ditto re animals, like Ajani being a lion, or so forth. You can do pretty much whatever you want in Fantasy, as long as you do it well, and it feels "real" (relative to the setting/situation at hand), and not just forced and silly.
I can see how people who are big fans of literally-The-Legend-of-Kind-Arthur on a super literal exact-equivalency-retelling sort of way would have an issue in that sort of a way, but, then when it comes to that, I just feel like if anything it would be kind of weird/bad for WoTC to actually try to follow famous books/tales THAT closely/literally when they MTG-ize them into MTG-ness. I actually prefer it if MTG doesn't follow the stories/genres that are inspiring their sets/stories TOO closely. I like it when they diverge enough that they are doing their own thing that is merely inspired by a theme or niche, but not outright mimicking or copying it.
For example, as much as I love the artwork and flavor and everything of a set like Arabian Nights, I actually don't like the fact that they went sooooo direct with it. I strongly prefer the merely-inspired-by method, and then coming up with their own unique MTG-universe thing that is in the same general genre, but not actually mimicking it character-per-character/point-per-point.
Is there some way that I can specify which set I want the card I'm displaying the card art of to be from?
Like, if I want to show the card art of "Cave People" from, say, 4th Edition or The Dark, for example, but if I just do the bracket card bracket cardname bracket slash card bracket thing, it'll show the most recent (5th edition) version of it. How can I (if it's possible) type it in a way where it'll show the 4th edition version?
Not too much of a sidenote, but is it just me, or has Seb Mckinnon been in hyper overdrive mode lately? Even in the artwork that's been revealed he has some crazy good stuff. His style is very distinct and I like that it's got that sort of old school magic feel.
PREACH!!!
Seb is almost single handedly enabling me to still have some small vestige of hope that there will continue to be real, blatant actual VARIETY and uniqueness in MTG card art in years to come.
I hope he keeps it up! I hope his art gets EVEN WEIRDER than it's already occasionally getting. Or at the very least continues to get as weird (and fantastic) as it currently occasionally does.
For me McKinnon's art is very hit or miss.
Some I like very much, for example Blood for Bones, Unholy Indenture or Answered Prayers, others are a complete miss for my tastes (Deliver Unto Evil or Dirge of Dread), yet he seems he got his stride going when he started using more abstract compositions starting from Dominaria (or little earlier with Phantom Tiger).
Looking at the artwork he is doing now for cards, you would be hard pressed to believe that he also made pretty generic artwork like Attended Knight or Blind Obedience
Heh heh, I was wondering whether anyone would bring up Deliver Unto Evil, and I'm glad you did, because I definitely have a very strong opinion on it (albeit not the same one as you have).
To me, Deliver Unto Evil was by far and away the single most important card (art-wise) in the War of the Spark set. I was getting super duper artistically-depressed by all the generic cgi-videogame-screenshot looking all-looks-like-it's-made-by-the-same-person card art in the WAR set, so, I was absolutely THRILLED to see that card art, because it showed that WoTC was still, to this day (even if unfortunately only rarely at this point) willing to allow some actual VARIETY in the art-styles of the card art, rather than demand full homogeneity of all the art falling into one main style-category overall.
Ideally, I wish they'd kick it back to their more retro stance in being willing to have even MORE cards that diverge massively from the category-norms of art styles at hand on most of the MTG cards.
Like, upon browsing through the card art of the olden sets of the 1990s, there was a LOT more variety between the styles on a really "fundamental" level (like that card, for example). Not just the more subtle differences between artists who are in the same overall category (i.e. the difference between, say, Monet and Van Gogh, who you can easily tell apart from each other, brushstrokes-wise, but who are still both in the same overall category (impressionism, that is), but rather, variety of a more fundamental nature (as in, the difference between, say, Monet and Da Vinci, or Sargent and Picasso, who are in just totally different categories from each other (and occasionally from themselves) with some of them having hyper-realistic styles, some having romantic styles, some having impressionistic styles, some having expressionist/abstract styles, and so on and so forth.
I think we need more of that (regardless of whether we happen to like the specific individual art on a "divergent" card, itself), the willingness to "get weird" and try out blatantly different-from-the-norm art styles I think is very important and a good thing in the grander scheme of things, even if it might not seem like it in instances where you come across a card that looks very different but don't happen to like the way that card happens to look.
But, the pessimistic side of me thinks that's not the direction we're headed. I think we're gonna see less and less variety at the most "fundamental" of category-style levels. We've already seen a continuous, drastic decrease in the amount of truly divergent card arts over the years, so, at the rate we're going, it wouldn't surprise me if it just stops happening altogether at some point in the near future.
But, card art like that randomly popping up in an otherwise VERY fundamentally-homogeneous set at least give me some small glimmer of hope, lol.
Not to mention, best of all, the fact that it was Seb who was the one to do that super-divergent instance of card art. That's particularly great news for someone like me, because, given how top-notch talented Seb is, WoTC can't just casually toss him away for wanting to do fundamentally-divergent instances of card art, because then they'd also lose all his other, less-divergent, extremely popular art that the vast majority of MTG fans tend to love, if you know what I mean. So, that means, even if WoTC wants to nerf the art into becoming fundamentally homogeneous, at the very least, they won't be able to fully do that so long as Seb is still around, which he probably will be for a while, given that he's arguably their top card artist. And perhaps because he's not just willing to do non-standard stuff, but also is really GOOD at it when he occasionally does do it, he could also serve as an eye-opener mechanism of sorts, or "bridge" or whatever you want to call it, that opens people's eyes to the wonder of card art that diverges massively from the category-norms of 99% of the card art, and that it can actually be fun and interesting from an art standpoint/variety standpoint.
Cliffnotes: Deliver Unto Evil was my favorite card art in that entire set, and also one of the most important MTG cards made in the current era of MTG, from a card-art standpoint. So yea, I'm a huge fan of his now (well, already was, but even MORE so than ever now, lol), and hope he can save WoTC from itself when it comes to the card art aspect of the game, and seduce them back to the (occasionally) non-standard side of card art, with the full range of variety of the good ole days of MTG, when that level of extreme artistic variety was considered normal and expected, in basically every set.
edit: Also, on a sidenote, although I agree that his art on Attended Knight was relatively standard/generic looking (not actively bad or anything, but definitely didn't jump out as being particularly unique or interesting), I would actually disagree that Blind Obedience falls into the same category. I think his unique style (and especially his raw talent, from even just a sheer quality standpoint) is already coming through pretty strongly in Blind Obedience. He's evolved even further since then, but I'd say he had definitely already started evolving/improving quite a bit as an artist by the time he made that one.
edit #2 Some other very important cards, art-wise, in regards to this topic, in recent sets, I would say would be some of the "Saga" cards in Dominaria.
I would love to see more cards (regular ones, I mean, not just strictly Sagas) that have these sorts of "fundamentally different" types of artwork rather than solely ever focusing on strict realism-style art on 100% of the cards. Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with like 80+% of the cards having a realism-based style. It's just, it was nice when SOME percentage, like 10 or 20 or 30% had that fundamental-style variety (take the old circles of protection art in the early sets, for example, like the "Circle of Protection: Green" in 4th edition, or, in a hybrid realism-weirdism-combo sort of way, stuff like "Circle of Protection: White" in Ice Age, or "Circle of Protection: Artifacts" in 4th edition. Just using those as random examples off the top of my head. They are far from my favorite card art. Just trying to explain what I mean by the terminology I'm using, when I say "fundamentally different" or "non-realism-based" or "hybrid realism-non-realism" or stuff like that).
Or, also, the way they had cards like [card]Cave People [4th edition][card] in The Dark/4th edition, for example. That one isn't as abstract as the circles of protection, but it isn't hyper-realism based. It's, much more of a mood/vibe-based kind of art.
Also love the artwork of a card like Crumble for example of somewhat hybrid-type artwork. Realism-based in the foreground, and taking some artistic-interpretation-ey-ness in the background. Just really refreshing compared to just card after card after card of all the same fundamental style in most of the recent sets, if you see what I mean. Back in the old days, every other card was diverging from some set conformation-"type". It was glorious! Now, it's just once in a blue moon when we see a card like Deliver Unto Evil every once in a while that varies from the set-standard in a fundamental sort of way.
And even from the less interpretationistic/somewhat more realism-ey styles of artwork from back then, I mean, just check out the art on a card like, oh, say, Brothers of Fire for example. SOOOOOOOOO cool. It has such a unique and intense look to it. So, it's not as if I'm saying something has to be impressionistic or interpretation-ey in order to look cool or unique or non-generic. That right there would be a great example of one that's in neither of those categories, yet still stands out very dramatically, art-wise, and which seems so rare compared to the current norms of artwork that seem so cgi auto-fill-ish and over-smoothed/over-polished (which would also be okay, btw, if it was just-another-random-thing that happened some percentage of the time, just like all those other random art styles, rather than 95+% of the time).
I wonder what kind of equipment swords, aura and enchantments are we getting here?
I just hope the theme would reflect the those cards appeal and abilities.
EXCALIBUR!
Well, maybe the MTG version of it, so like "Eldralibur" or something, lol.
I'm thinking like 5 CMC, but 10 mana to equip, gives +10/+10, first strike, vigilance, indestructible, lifelink, trample, or something like that. And maybe "can only equip onto legendary creatures" or something. That could be fun. And have it be some huge sword sticking out of a powerstone.
I guess they could also have some MTG version of a "holy grail" where it gives you a bunch of lifegain or something.
I would reserve judgment for now. You might even be getting your R rated, adult themed set. The real Grimm stories are quite horrifying unlike the sanitized children's versions. Depending on where they go, it might make kaladesh the set look like the sanitized magic set by comparison.
Ah, good point. Well, I hope you are right about that, and I'll try to stay open minded to it for now. Although, in my case it's not necessarily that I need something to be super dark and horrific to enjoy it in MTG in terms of the sorts of stuff you were referencing (suicide, murder, rape, prostitution, etc). Rather, I just meant more in terms of the visual vibe of the artwork itself, of like, looking more like paintings done by actual painter-artists done in a non-young-children's-book-illustration type of an art style.
Also, to clarify: in regards to more adult-looking artwork, I also did not (necessarily) mean that in regards to how revealing the clothing is or how ripped or curvy the characters look or stuff like that either. Rather, I just meant more like the inherent vibe of the art (on a brushstroke for brushstroke level), like the way even if the artist who painted the two younger Chandra planeswalker's card art in M20 was painting a painting of someone's brains getting blown out or something, it would still have that young-children's-illustration "vibe" of just *how* it looks (as opposed to *what* it is of, subject-matter-wise). That's not a diss, btw, I think she is clearly a talented illustrator, and I'm sure she'd be great at illustrating stuff where that is the visual vibe you want the illustrations to have for something. There's all sorts of different styles and categories of talent for painting or illustrating, and certainly there are lots of children's books or comic books/graphic novels for children or Y/A where her style of illustration would be great, since she does have talented relative to that category of illustration. It's just not my cup of tea when it comes to MTG cards, for the most part, especially if it was gonna be a whole set geared in a fairy tales-ey vibe and be leaning more that way in general, that would definitely not be fun for me, art-wise. Like I said on one of the previous pages, my worst nightmare would be if MTG started looking like the artwork of Hearthstone for all, or the majority of its artwork. That would be game over for me (if it stayed that way permanently, that is). Whereas conversely, if someone like Seb McKinnon, let alone some of the artists from the late 90s/early 2000s did a painting of summer picnic scene on a nice sunny day, it still wouldn't look like children's-illustration work in terms of the actual "vibe" or whatever. It would just intrinsically have a more substantial and deep and artistically intriguing and just sort of more-adult-ey vibe to it, visually speaking.
Now, that doesn't mean it has to be sexist, though. Just like how Magic ramped up the hunky guy art, there's no reason we can't have guys be the damsel in distress role, prostitute themselves, be drugged and raped by women, etc. That's how you truly avoid being racist, sexist, etc.
Yea, I mean, I get that some percentage of the player base are going to be kids that are young enough that they want to be careful about stuff like racism or sexism being portrayed at all, since they don't want young/impressionable people thinking they are glorifying that stuff and then becoming racist/sexist as a result or whatever. So, I'm okay with them being careful about avoiding having that in their flavor/art/etc, I suppose.
That being said, if it wasn't for that (being careful because kids play the game) then I definitely would not agree that it would be morally wrong to have cards that portrayed racist or sexist things occasionally, depending on the context. Like, if it isn't glorifying it, but rather, it's just incidental because of whatever the situation at hand is, to where the artwork would simply ring untrue/non-realistic relative to the situation at hand if they censored it, I mean, yea, I definitely don't agree with artwork being censored. Imagine, for example if no fiction novels (for adults, I mean) could ever have a racist or sexist character in them anymore (even though they exist in real life), even in a they-are-the-badguy or mixed-bag-person or whatever way, and not a glorifying way. That would be totally crazy and would just totally ruin the concept of art, and storytelling, in basically every medium in existence (books, paintings, music, whatever). Definitely can't stand censorship, other than the rare special-case scenarios like here where they have to be careful with younger kids who might not don't understand that something merely existing in art/fiction doesn't mean it's being portrayed as a good thing that one should strive to become.
The set may end up being good, but the flavor does not resonate with me, though. But that's okay. Not everything has to be for me. I have no reservations about the cards themselves. I'm sure they'll be fine.
How does The Little Mermaid, Hansel & Gretel, King Arthur etc not resonate?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I really am glad that WoTC is willing to experiment and bounce around all over the place flavor-wise from the very dark and gritty and gruesome and adult themed to the opposite side of the spectrum and everything in between. VARIETY is a great thing. I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different flavors and vibes of all different sorts.
That being said, given that there are like 10 million+ MTG players, several million of whom are adults, and with people of course having a wide variety of different personal tastes from one another, I'm surprised that people are surprised that a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel/targeted-at-kindergarten-aged-children type of vibe/flavor wouldn't be what ALL MTG fans are personally into or really resonate with.
Just to be clear: I'm definitely NOT implying that whole tired/incorrect shtick about MTG itself being a just-for-little-kids game. Of course not. The opposite, if anything. Right from the very beginning onwards, it seemed to be targeted mostly towards teenagers-AND-OLDER (adults, included, that is) rather than extremely-young-children in the 4-year-old-to-7-year-old range which is more of what the Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel lines up with (there's always exceptions of course, but on average I mean). MTG seemed to be appealing to people a decade older than that sort of stuff, with a very PG-13/nearly-R rated vibe, with all its adult style grittiness and darkness and full blown gruesomeness and whatnot in large portions of lots of the sets. And its blatantly-not-just-for-little-kids vibe wasn't even JUST to do with the artwork of its black cards, for that matter, but even just the general tone of even the non-gruesome creatures/spells of all the other colors and artifacts as well. It just really had a relatively mature theme for a LOT of the cards, probably the majority of the cards, in most of the sets. And it was like that for a loooooooong time, only starting to shift a little bit towards being a bit tamer/younger-vibes in more recent years, and even then, still not to a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel level of shift for the most part, other than the once in a blue moon sort of thing like with Lorwyn or something maybe.
This is a big part of why so many adults didn't age out of MTG over the years/decades, even though many of us did age out of stuff like The Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel types of fairy tales/nursery rhymes as we grew out of young childhood and became teenagers/adults, by comparison.
I mean, if you just go back and look at the vibe of the card art in sets like Tempest and Stronghold for example, let alone basically all of the sets of the early 2000s, it's SERIOUSLY pretty dark and gritty, like not even just PG-13 but flirting with almost being R-rated level of dark and gritty for a lot of it. You can browse the card art from those sets on scryfall, or your collection if you collected back then if you forgot what these sets used to look like for much of MTG through the years. Even the earliest sets, which grabbed up about 5 or 6 million MTG fans (many of whom are still arouund) in those first couple years for that matter were far from being all that light and cutesy for the most part, even if it did get even a bit darker and gritter-yet in the next few years after that, on average.
But, here's the thing, though. Just like Kolbane said he's totally cool with this, even if it doesn't happen to personally resonate with him, well, I feel the same way, in that regard. That's the double-edged sword of variety. But it's a double-edged sword that is totally WORTH IT. You win some, you lose some, but at least you get tons of variety, which is fun in and of itself, let alone meaning that it doesn't get stuck on ONE thing over and over that you DON'T like (or like but then get bored of eventually), and then you're just permanently continuously stuck with that. At least with variety you'll have something to love some significant percentage of the time, and so will everyone else, some percentage of the time. So yea, that's cool, and I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different stuff like they do.
Anyway, I'm (honestly) glad that you and the others who like Fairy Tale types of flavor are going to get to enjoy the set. I know how pumped I get when a new set is coming out that DOES resonates with me, I've gotten the chance to experience that numerous times over the years, myself, so, I definitely know how fun and exciting that is. So yea, by all means, enjoy!
The name strikes me as very Welsh/Celtic in nature.
I wish it didn't sound so similar to "Eldrazi". That's going to be frustrating for newcomers when they confuse the names at first, and are like "Wait, so they randomly have almost exactly the same name... for literally no reason whatsoever??"
There's trillions upon quadrillions of names they could come up with. But the first 5 letters just haaaaaad to be identical I guess.
Nice. Thanks
On a sidenote (since I agree that Seb is the best of the current crop), I will note that I was VERY impressed by Bastien's Cruel Celebrant. Most of the other cards I've seen him do so far weren't quite my cup of tea, even though he's clearly pretty talented, since they were too closely in line with the general category of style of many of the other artists (just done at a much higher level of execution than most). But that Cruel Celebrant really was pretty damned good. So, hopefully he'll go on a creative upswing of some sort after having done that. After all, as was pointed out earlier, Seb is the same guy who was making cards like Attended Knight not too long ago, so you never know.
I also like some of Mark Zug's art, as far as some of the less "interpretive" artists go. Mainly when he gets creative with the surface-textures of the objects in his paintings (which he often does). For example, (most famously) the tree trunks in his Gaea's Cradle, although in my opinion, his magnum opus in this regard was actually probably his High Priest of Penance which I think is pretty spectacular, and really shows off his object-texture/detail talents to the max. There's also a very strange neo-retro Rennaissance-era-meets-21st-century thing going on with it, and a bunch of his other card arts, which I like. He's definitely hit or miss though, with a significant portion of his card seeming relatively ordinary and rank-and-file MTG-churnout-ish by comparison, and only like 1/3rd or maybe 1/5th of the time he'll do cards where his signature style and hyperdetail and surface textures and mixed foreground/background contrast-disparity thing really shines through. I also thought his Oppressive Rays was pretty good from a "macro" standpoint. Most of his other cards are more impressive on the micro level than the macro (although still often good macro-wise as well). But that one is the other way around, with the overall scene being pretty impressive looking.
So yea, I guess I'm a Zug fan as well (when he's on his game, at least), as far as artists who are still (in his case only somewhat) actively painting MTG cards. Seems like he's pretty sporadic and not doing as much MTG stuff lately, which is unfortunate.
Ah, alright cool. I wasn't sure, because I was browsing some other threads and saw not one but TWO different people saying stuff like "it's shutting down/about to shut down" and "just getting a few last posts in before it goes to archiving" or something, so I thought it was literally just about to close down or something.
But then I saw in the 2nd main page article it said it was getting bought out/not closing(maybe?), so, now I really don't know what the situation is with it.
I mean, I wouldn't have loved it if that's the ONLY art style there had been. I would've gotten tired of it in the same way I've been getting tired of the same general cgi-videog-game-screenshot-realism art-style being done by like 90% of the artists over and over nowadays. But, given that the card art was just randomly varied with all sorts of very drastically different art styles, scattered all over the place, I loved having his art be a part of that mix. Some of it looked very cool, and much more mood-evoking than most of the current stuff. I wanted to post his "Cave People" card art from The Dark/4th Edition, but I'm not sure how to use the formatting thing so that it won't show the 5th edition version which had different art on it by some other artist.
Just read the articles on the main page and it said it was closing on like July 8th or something, but it's now July 22nd, and then the other article said they got bought out and thus aren't (or still are?) closing?
So, what's the deal, is it closing or not? And if so, when? Or is it totally unknown at this point? Or does it seem like 99%/1% chance in one direction or the other (if it's not known for-sure-for-sure)? And if so, then in which direction (in terms of closing vs not closing, I mean)?
Yea, so that's the key nuance here.
So, despite what I just said in my previous post, I DO have an issue with THAT routine that they keep doing.
People might think it's the same exact thing as what I just said I'm cool with in my previous post, so how could I be cool with the one, yet NOT cool with that.
Well, it's a subtle difference.
So, in this "subverting expectations" thing that Hollywood is CONSTANTLY doing (to the point that it would actually be subverting expectations in the rare instances that they DON'T do it), there's a certain self-conscious "vibe" thing they do, a kind of negative-assumption-on-your(the audience's)-behalf thign they do where they are like "OMG, you clearly THOUGHT such and such character/dynamic HAD to be XYZ, because expected-norms, but wait for it... waiiiiit for it... SURPRISE, we did it the OTHER WAY AROUND! OMGGGGG. Are you MINDBLOWN!!??!? You never saw it coming, am I right!? Doesn't that totally make up for the insanely lazy/bad writing because the shock of it just makes it inherently fascinating and powerful and mindblowing and stuff!?!?!?!? (no... no it doesn't. Maybe the first few times they ever did it. THEN sure. Back in the 1940s or 60s or whenever they did whatever that thing was for the first few times. Yeah, back THEN it was a huge mindblowing subverting expectations-ey thing. But now? No... not even close.
So, I don't like when they do that sort of smug, cheap-tactic-ey feeling sort of a version of it where it just feels forced and more-ideologically-motivated-than-artistically/storytellingly-motivated and comes off like poorly made propaganda of some sort. Of course that's no fun, when it comes off like that.
But, as long as it doesn't come off that way, then, by all means, they can have as much diversity of whatever kind as they want, and if it feels natural and they take artistic advantage of it from a depth of storytelling standpoint, and don't go into cringey pander-mode with it, then I'm totally cool with it.
Let's say a set took place on Jamuraa, and there were no white people in the entire set. Like, let's say Mirage had no white people in it or something. I would be totally fine with something like that. Like, the physical environmental setting is set in a way where it would feel totally natural and non-forced, like, you could totally imagine a continent or plane like that, where there really just didn't happen to be any white people. (Or conversely if it took place on a snow/Viking plane, and all the vikings were white, again, I'm fine with that too. It swings both ways). Or some plane with no humans at all, and all the sentient creatures on it are sentient birds or something. Fine, no problem as long as its WELL DONE and feels NATURAL relative to itself/the setting/vibe/story/etc at hand. Ditto if there was some setting where everyone was female. Totally can imagine a way it could be done that wouldn't come off forced and pandering, but rather, just like a weird Fantasy-world setting where any bizarre scenarios could happen, as long as you have an interesting, plausible backstory for why the setting is the way it is, and it isn't just rushed and crappy just to check some boxes off.
Now... that being said... if they get a little too carried away and do like NOTHING but that, or almost-always do that and only with groups that they are trying to ideologically "push", and they do it to an extent that it gets super blatant and cringey, well, then that changes things. But, as long as it feels like they are just mixing things up and being random, and sometimes it happens to be such and such thing, and next time it happens to be other such other such thing, and so on, then that's totally fine and I'm cool with it.
As long as a character feels well done and realistic and not just like some blatant checkbox-checker quota-filler type of thing, then if it looks plausible relative to the vibe of the storyworld, I'm cool with it.
So, for example, if there's some plane on which women are much bigger and stronger than normal women, and one of them beats up some huge buff dude, and lifts him over her head and cracks him over her knee to finish him off. That's fine. Whereas, if it happens with some regular human woman, who isn't nearly as buff as he is, and she doesn't have any plausible supernatural abilities or anything that would make it seem plausible, and it just comes off as some silly checkbox move, then, THAT I would find eyeroll-worthy. So, it really just depends from case to case.
So, in regards to something like this, I don't think it would necessarily have to feel particularly forced or unrealistic for the head MTG-version-of-Arthur person to be female, given that there have been famous, powerful/well-respected Queens or Female-Rulers/Leaders/etc who really have ruled in various times in human history. I.e. Queen Elizabeth (the first one), Nefertiti, etc, and as you mentioned, people like Joan of Arc, on the more military side of things.
And even if there hadn't been a plausibility-standard set in real life history in regards to that, I'd still potentially be cool with it, depending on how it was done, and whether it felt forced/cheesy or not, in the same way as how I don't necessarily have a problem with a Robot/Golem/Artifact-creature being sentient and having emotions (Karn, or what have you), or ditto re animals, like Ajani being a lion, or so forth. You can do pretty much whatever you want in Fantasy, as long as you do it well, and it feels "real" (relative to the setting/situation at hand), and not just forced and silly.
I can see how people who are big fans of literally-The-Legend-of-Kind-Arthur on a super literal exact-equivalency-retelling sort of way would have an issue in that sort of a way, but, then when it comes to that, I just feel like if anything it would be kind of weird/bad for WoTC to actually try to follow famous books/tales THAT closely/literally when they MTG-ize them into MTG-ness. I actually prefer it if MTG doesn't follow the stories/genres that are inspiring their sets/stories TOO closely. I like it when they diverge enough that they are doing their own thing that is merely inspired by a theme or niche, but not outright mimicking or copying it.
For example, as much as I love the artwork and flavor and everything of a set like Arabian Nights, I actually don't like the fact that they went sooooo direct with it. I strongly prefer the merely-inspired-by method, and then coming up with their own unique MTG-universe thing that is in the same general genre, but not actually mimicking it character-per-character/point-per-point.
Like, if I want to show the card art of "Cave People" from, say, 4th Edition or The Dark, for example, but if I just do the bracket card bracket cardname bracket slash card bracket thing, it'll show the most recent (5th edition) version of it. How can I (if it's possible) type it in a way where it'll show the 4th edition version?
PREACH!!!
Seb is almost single handedly enabling me to still have some small vestige of hope that there will continue to be real, blatant actual VARIETY and uniqueness in MTG card art in years to come.
I hope he keeps it up! I hope his art gets EVEN WEIRDER than it's already occasionally getting. Or at the very least continues to get as weird (and fantastic) as it currently occasionally does.
Good job, Seb!!!
Heh heh, I was wondering whether anyone would bring up Deliver Unto Evil, and I'm glad you did, because I definitely have a very strong opinion on it (albeit not the same one as you have).
To me, Deliver Unto Evil was by far and away the single most important card (art-wise) in the War of the Spark set. I was getting super duper artistically-depressed by all the generic cgi-videogame-screenshot looking all-looks-like-it's-made-by-the-same-person card art in the WAR set, so, I was absolutely THRILLED to see that card art, because it showed that WoTC was still, to this day (even if unfortunately only rarely at this point) willing to allow some actual VARIETY in the art-styles of the card art, rather than demand full homogeneity of all the art falling into one main style-category overall.
Ideally, I wish they'd kick it back to their more retro stance in being willing to have even MORE cards that diverge massively from the category-norms of art styles at hand on most of the MTG cards.
Like, upon browsing through the card art of the olden sets of the 1990s, there was a LOT more variety between the styles on a really "fundamental" level (like that card, for example). Not just the more subtle differences between artists who are in the same overall category (i.e. the difference between, say, Monet and Van Gogh, who you can easily tell apart from each other, brushstrokes-wise, but who are still both in the same overall category (impressionism, that is), but rather, variety of a more fundamental nature (as in, the difference between, say, Monet and Da Vinci, or Sargent and Picasso, who are in just totally different categories from each other (and occasionally from themselves) with some of them having hyper-realistic styles, some having romantic styles, some having impressionistic styles, some having expressionist/abstract styles, and so on and so forth.
I think we need more of that (regardless of whether we happen to like the specific individual art on a "divergent" card, itself), the willingness to "get weird" and try out blatantly different-from-the-norm art styles I think is very important and a good thing in the grander scheme of things, even if it might not seem like it in instances where you come across a card that looks very different but don't happen to like the way that card happens to look.
But, the pessimistic side of me thinks that's not the direction we're headed. I think we're gonna see less and less variety at the most "fundamental" of category-style levels. We've already seen a continuous, drastic decrease in the amount of truly divergent card arts over the years, so, at the rate we're going, it wouldn't surprise me if it just stops happening altogether at some point in the near future.
But, card art like that randomly popping up in an otherwise VERY fundamentally-homogeneous set at least give me some small glimmer of hope, lol.
Not to mention, best of all, the fact that it was Seb who was the one to do that super-divergent instance of card art. That's particularly great news for someone like me, because, given how top-notch talented Seb is, WoTC can't just casually toss him away for wanting to do fundamentally-divergent instances of card art, because then they'd also lose all his other, less-divergent, extremely popular art that the vast majority of MTG fans tend to love, if you know what I mean. So, that means, even if WoTC wants to nerf the art into becoming fundamentally homogeneous, at the very least, they won't be able to fully do that so long as Seb is still around, which he probably will be for a while, given that he's arguably their top card artist. And perhaps because he's not just willing to do non-standard stuff, but also is really GOOD at it when he occasionally does do it, he could also serve as an eye-opener mechanism of sorts, or "bridge" or whatever you want to call it, that opens people's eyes to the wonder of card art that diverges massively from the category-norms of 99% of the card art, and that it can actually be fun and interesting from an art standpoint/variety standpoint.
Cliffnotes: Deliver Unto Evil was my favorite card art in that entire set, and also one of the most important MTG cards made in the current era of MTG, from a card-art standpoint. So yea, I'm a huge fan of his now (well, already was, but even MORE so than ever now, lol), and hope he can save WoTC from itself when it comes to the card art aspect of the game, and seduce them back to the (occasionally) non-standard side of card art, with the full range of variety of the good ole days of MTG, when that level of extreme artistic variety was considered normal and expected, in basically every set.
edit: Also, on a sidenote, although I agree that his art on Attended Knight was relatively standard/generic looking (not actively bad or anything, but definitely didn't jump out as being particularly unique or interesting), I would actually disagree that Blind Obedience falls into the same category. I think his unique style (and especially his raw talent, from even just a sheer quality standpoint) is already coming through pretty strongly in Blind Obedience. He's evolved even further since then, but I'd say he had definitely already started evolving/improving quite a bit as an artist by the time he made that one.
edit #2 Some other very important cards, art-wise, in regards to this topic, in recent sets, I would say would be some of the "Saga" cards in Dominaria.
So, cards like:
Chainer's Torment
Fall of the Thran
History of Benalia
Phyrexian Scriptures
Rite of Belzenlok
The Mirari Conjecture
Time of Ice
etc.
I would love to see more cards (regular ones, I mean, not just strictly Sagas) that have these sorts of "fundamentally different" types of artwork rather than solely ever focusing on strict realism-style art on 100% of the cards. Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with like 80+% of the cards having a realism-based style. It's just, it was nice when SOME percentage, like 10 or 20 or 30% had that fundamental-style variety (take the old circles of protection art in the early sets, for example, like the "Circle of Protection: Green" in 4th edition, or, in a hybrid realism-weirdism-combo sort of way, stuff like "Circle of Protection: White" in Ice Age, or "Circle of Protection: Artifacts" in 4th edition. Just using those as random examples off the top of my head. They are far from my favorite card art. Just trying to explain what I mean by the terminology I'm using, when I say "fundamentally different" or "non-realism-based" or "hybrid realism-non-realism" or stuff like that).
Or, also, the way they had cards like [card]Cave People [4th edition][card] in The Dark/4th edition, for example. That one isn't as abstract as the circles of protection, but it isn't hyper-realism based. It's, much more of a mood/vibe-based kind of art.
Also love the artwork of a card like Crumble for example of somewhat hybrid-type artwork. Realism-based in the foreground, and taking some artistic-interpretation-ey-ness in the background. Just really refreshing compared to just card after card after card of all the same fundamental style in most of the recent sets, if you see what I mean. Back in the old days, every other card was diverging from some set conformation-"type". It was glorious! Now, it's just once in a blue moon when we see a card like Deliver Unto Evil every once in a while that varies from the set-standard in a fundamental sort of way.
And even from the less interpretationistic/somewhat more realism-ey styles of artwork from back then, I mean, just check out the art on a card like, oh, say, Brothers of Fire for example. SOOOOOOOOO cool. It has such a unique and intense look to it. So, it's not as if I'm saying something has to be impressionistic or interpretation-ey in order to look cool or unique or non-generic. That right there would be a great example of one that's in neither of those categories, yet still stands out very dramatically, art-wise, and which seems so rare compared to the current norms of artwork that seem so cgi auto-fill-ish and over-smoothed/over-polished (which would also be okay, btw, if it was just-another-random-thing that happened some percentage of the time, just like all those other random art styles, rather than 95+% of the time).
EXCALIBUR!
Well, maybe the MTG version of it, so like "Eldralibur" or something, lol.
I'm thinking like 5 CMC, but 10 mana to equip, gives +10/+10, first strike, vigilance, indestructible, lifelink, trample, or something like that. And maybe "can only equip onto legendary creatures" or something. That could be fun. And have it be some huge sword sticking out of a powerstone.
I guess they could also have some MTG version of a "holy grail" where it gives you a bunch of lifegain or something.
Lol, nice
Ah, good point. Well, I hope you are right about that, and I'll try to stay open minded to it for now. Although, in my case it's not necessarily that I need something to be super dark and horrific to enjoy it in MTG in terms of the sorts of stuff you were referencing (suicide, murder, rape, prostitution, etc). Rather, I just meant more in terms of the visual vibe of the artwork itself, of like, looking more like paintings done by actual painter-artists done in a non-young-children's-book-illustration type of an art style.
Also, to clarify: in regards to more adult-looking artwork, I also did not (necessarily) mean that in regards to how revealing the clothing is or how ripped or curvy the characters look or stuff like that either. Rather, I just meant more like the inherent vibe of the art (on a brushstroke for brushstroke level), like the way even if the artist who painted the two younger Chandra planeswalker's card art in M20 was painting a painting of someone's brains getting blown out or something, it would still have that young-children's-illustration "vibe" of just *how* it looks (as opposed to *what* it is of, subject-matter-wise). That's not a diss, btw, I think she is clearly a talented illustrator, and I'm sure she'd be great at illustrating stuff where that is the visual vibe you want the illustrations to have for something. There's all sorts of different styles and categories of talent for painting or illustrating, and certainly there are lots of children's books or comic books/graphic novels for children or Y/A where her style of illustration would be great, since she does have talented relative to that category of illustration. It's just not my cup of tea when it comes to MTG cards, for the most part, especially if it was gonna be a whole set geared in a fairy tales-ey vibe and be leaning more that way in general, that would definitely not be fun for me, art-wise. Like I said on one of the previous pages, my worst nightmare would be if MTG started looking like the artwork of Hearthstone for all, or the majority of its artwork. That would be game over for me (if it stayed that way permanently, that is). Whereas conversely, if someone like Seb McKinnon, let alone some of the artists from the late 90s/early 2000s did a painting of summer picnic scene on a nice sunny day, it still wouldn't look like children's-illustration work in terms of the actual "vibe" or whatever. It would just intrinsically have a more substantial and deep and artistically intriguing and just sort of more-adult-ey vibe to it, visually speaking.
Yea, I mean, I get that some percentage of the player base are going to be kids that are young enough that they want to be careful about stuff like racism or sexism being portrayed at all, since they don't want young/impressionable people thinking they are glorifying that stuff and then becoming racist/sexist as a result or whatever. So, I'm okay with them being careful about avoiding having that in their flavor/art/etc, I suppose.
That being said, if it wasn't for that (being careful because kids play the game) then I definitely would not agree that it would be morally wrong to have cards that portrayed racist or sexist things occasionally, depending on the context. Like, if it isn't glorifying it, but rather, it's just incidental because of whatever the situation at hand is, to where the artwork would simply ring untrue/non-realistic relative to the situation at hand if they censored it, I mean, yea, I definitely don't agree with artwork being censored. Imagine, for example if no fiction novels (for adults, I mean) could ever have a racist or sexist character in them anymore (even though they exist in real life), even in a they-are-the-badguy or mixed-bag-person or whatever way, and not a glorifying way. That would be totally crazy and would just totally ruin the concept of art, and storytelling, in basically every medium in existence (books, paintings, music, whatever). Definitely can't stand censorship, other than the rare special-case scenarios like here where they have to be careful with younger kids who might not don't understand that something merely existing in art/fiction doesn't mean it's being portrayed as a good thing that one should strive to become.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I really am glad that WoTC is willing to experiment and bounce around all over the place flavor-wise from the very dark and gritty and gruesome and adult themed to the opposite side of the spectrum and everything in between. VARIETY is a great thing. I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different flavors and vibes of all different sorts.
That being said, given that there are like 10 million+ MTG players, several million of whom are adults, and with people of course having a wide variety of different personal tastes from one another, I'm surprised that people are surprised that a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel/targeted-at-kindergarten-aged-children type of vibe/flavor wouldn't be what ALL MTG fans are personally into or really resonate with.
Just to be clear: I'm definitely NOT implying that whole tired/incorrect shtick about MTG itself being a just-for-little-kids game. Of course not. The opposite, if anything. Right from the very beginning onwards, it seemed to be targeted mostly towards teenagers-AND-OLDER (adults, included, that is) rather than extremely-young-children in the 4-year-old-to-7-year-old range which is more of what the Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel lines up with (there's always exceptions of course, but on average I mean). MTG seemed to be appealing to people a decade older than that sort of stuff, with a very PG-13/nearly-R rated vibe, with all its adult style grittiness and darkness and full blown gruesomeness and whatnot in large portions of lots of the sets. And its blatantly-not-just-for-little-kids vibe wasn't even JUST to do with the artwork of its black cards, for that matter, but even just the general tone of even the non-gruesome creatures/spells of all the other colors and artifacts as well. It just really had a relatively mature theme for a LOT of the cards, probably the majority of the cards, in most of the sets. And it was like that for a loooooooong time, only starting to shift a little bit towards being a bit tamer/younger-vibes in more recent years, and even then, still not to a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel level of shift for the most part, other than the once in a blue moon sort of thing like with Lorwyn or something maybe.
This is a big part of why so many adults didn't age out of MTG over the years/decades, even though many of us did age out of stuff like The Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel types of fairy tales/nursery rhymes as we grew out of young childhood and became teenagers/adults, by comparison.
I mean, if you just go back and look at the vibe of the card art in sets like Tempest and Stronghold for example, let alone basically all of the sets of the early 2000s, it's SERIOUSLY pretty dark and gritty, like not even just PG-13 but flirting with almost being R-rated level of dark and gritty for a lot of it. You can browse the card art from those sets on scryfall, or your collection if you collected back then if you forgot what these sets used to look like for much of MTG through the years. Even the earliest sets, which grabbed up about 5 or 6 million MTG fans (many of whom are still arouund) in those first couple years for that matter were far from being all that light and cutesy for the most part, even if it did get even a bit darker and gritter-yet in the next few years after that, on average.
But, here's the thing, though. Just like Kolbane said he's totally cool with this, even if it doesn't happen to personally resonate with him, well, I feel the same way, in that regard. That's the double-edged sword of variety. But it's a double-edged sword that is totally WORTH IT. You win some, you lose some, but at least you get tons of variety, which is fun in and of itself, let alone meaning that it doesn't get stuck on ONE thing over and over that you DON'T like (or like but then get bored of eventually), and then you're just permanently continuously stuck with that. At least with variety you'll have something to love some significant percentage of the time, and so will everyone else, some percentage of the time. So yea, that's cool, and I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different stuff like they do.
Anyway, I'm (honestly) glad that you and the others who like Fairy Tale types of flavor are going to get to enjoy the set. I know how pumped I get when a new set is coming out that DOES resonates with me, I've gotten the chance to experience that numerous times over the years, myself, so, I definitely know how fun and exciting that is. So yea, by all means, enjoy!
I wish it didn't sound so similar to "Eldrazi". That's going to be frustrating for newcomers when they confuse the names at first, and are like "Wait, so they randomly have almost exactly the same name... for literally no reason whatsoever??"
There's trillions upon quadrillions of names they could come up with. But the first 5 letters just haaaaaad to be identical I guess.