Art

Full Art Lands' Return

Hi Mark,Why did it take so long for full-art lands to make a comeback after original zendikar? What changed to make you want to do them for almost every set now?

A change in philosophy in how we wanted to use them.

Art Lands Zendikar

Artist Preference for Card Cycles

When making a cycle of cards, does Design prefer to be able to commission one singular artist for all of the cards?Examples being Rob Alexander doing art for all the shock lands, Wayne England doing the Command cycle, ect.

We like to have one artist do cycles when possible.

Art Cycles Lands

Favorite Class/Job Type?

We all know your favorite creature type is zombie but what about class/job? (Artificer, wizard,etc)

Designer. We don’t use it a lot. : )

Artificers Creatures Humor Zombies

Bloomburrow Aesthetics and Phoenix Cards

I love bloomburrow, the cards look very fun but the art style stands out as my favorite part, please let all the artists know they did an incredible job! (No Chandra legendary phoenix though. If a monored legendary phoenix is ever printed, do you expect to see it in a standard set, a commander deck or something else?)

I’ll pass along the compliment. I think a legendary Phoenix could show up in many places.

Art Bloomburrow Commander Decks Phoenix Premier Sets

Rangers as Universes Beyond

Hey Mark! My partner had asked me if MMPR would be capable of becoming a Universes Beyond set, and given that I know nothing about how or why you can/can't work with certain properties to make products, I thought I'd ask you.

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are capable of becoming a Universes Beyond.

Partner Rangers Universes Beyond

Xerex's Storytelling Potential

The fact that Xerex is beyond comprehension could be an asset for storytelling. That’s the kind of place that’s ideal for an escape story or a story about finding an important objective that’s hidden there. As far as mechanics go, that’s a bit tougher. I could see it overlapping with the flavor of the Eldrazi.

It could work in print where the player can imagine the setting. It has a lot more problems when we have to draw art showing what it looks like.

Art Card Printing Eldrazis Escape Flavor Mechanics Story / Lore

Questioning Quaketusk Boar Reach

Quaketusk Boar having reach is probably going to catch a lot of people off guard. In the past, reach creatures typically were archers, or spiders, or had "spitting" or "turret" or "bounding" or something like that in the name. I understand that reach is far more common nowadays, making it harder to keep doing this, but I feel like SOME rules for reach creatures should still exist. The rules don't even need to be about the name or creature type. Maybe its something that's communicated in the art.

Reach has proven difficult to communicate in art because it doesn’t have clear symbols like wings for flying. We make a lot of large creatures that don’t have reach.

Archers Art Boars Creatures Flying Rules Spiders Quaketusk Boar

Identifying Card via Artwork

Hey Mark I'm looking for a card, but having trouble because most of what I remember about it is the artwork. I was hoping you or a follower could help.I'm pretty sure it was blue. It might have been a creature but possibly not, either way the art showed a creature in a dali-esque landscape I think, and the creature was just a bunch of yellow streams of paper or ribbons that was floating in a vague creature-like shape. I think the flavour of the spell was something like animating script or words or something along those lines.Maybe I dreamed it but if you can help me find this card at all I'd be very grateful!

Can you all help solve this?

Art Blue Creatures Flavor

Nature of Serpents in Magic

Yes, serpent is a synonym for snake, absolutely (...dragon also means snake). But I presume serpents in Magic are typically not snakes, as those are separate types (which have never occurred on the same card!), and the art typically portrays them as a mix of fish and snake characteristics.

Serpents are sea monsters in Magic. The question that came up with Serpents was we felt a lot of people would say yes “serpents” are an Earth animal as it’s a synonym for snake.

Art Dragons Fish Serpents Snakes

Absence of Turtlefolks in Bloomburrow

Despite being Archelos' home plane, I noticed a distinct lack of Turtlefolks on Bloomburrow- even including the commander set they did not even get a one-off card. Additionally, not a single art in the set depict one, and the closest we got was a Frogfolk wearing a turtle shell (in my opinion looks a little morbid to be honest). Which leads me to ask, did something happen to them?

Frogs and Turtles were the two front runners for green/blue and Frogs won out. Bloomburrow does have one Turtle.

Art Blogatog / Tumblr Bloomburrow Blue Commander Frogs Morbid Simic (G/U) Turtles

In-Universe Commander Deck Chances

What are the chances of getting some (i wouldn't want it to be all of them by any means, but some) in-universe commander precons that go all-in on theme and flavor like Universes Beyond precons do, where everything has an appropriate name and gets new art if it doesn't already fit? Something like that for, say, the guilds seems really fun

I won’t say it won’t or can’t happen, but I don ’t expect it to be something we do often with in-universe Commander decks.

Art Commander Commander Decks Flavor Two Color Universes Beyond

Usage of Unused Art Assets

Do you have hope to use unused Unglued 2 arts elsewhere?

We used a bunch in Unhinged, and a couple (like Atogatog) in other places. I’m doubtful we’ll use more.

Art Atogatog

Dividing Set Themes in Drafts

When/if: a single set split into two draftable packs. There is some overlap (land cycles, equipment, colorless artifacts, etc) but one pack is Team X (Bolas let's say) which is 3 different archetypes in his colors and the other packs are Team Y (Ugin let's say) which are 3 archetypes in colorless, white, black. All the cards together make a single set, but you would draft Ugin packs with Ugin packs, and then only play against players who drafted Bolas packs.

We did this in Mirrodin Besieged. The set was split in Mirran and Phyrexian, and you chose which side to play when you played in the prerelease.

Artifacts Black Colorless Colors Cycles Draft Formats Equipment Lands Mirrodin Besieged Phyrexians Prerelease Sealed Format White

Hedgehog Creatures in Bloomburrow

I know you aren't in charge of this, but my mom and I are very sad that there are no hedgehog creatures in Bloomburrow, despite there being art of them. Is there any chance we'll ever see a hedgehog in MtG?

There very much is a chance.

Art Bloomburrow Creatures

Ubiquitous Tokens Expectation

Is the Ubiquitous Token of a plane something we should expect from visit to visit? Like, how Capenna has its gw citizens, Innistrad has black decayed zombies, LTR had orc armies [applicable to some silmarillion-based visit, I guess]I was looking at the Fish tokens in Bloomburrow and Mercenaries in otj and wondering if those were also more Worldbuilding statements or not.

It’s a mechanical tool that adds flavor, and something we definitely use when shaping a set.

Army Black Bloomburrow Citizens Decayed Fish Flavor Innistrad Mercenaries Orcs Outlaws of Thunder Junction Selesnya (G/W) The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Tokens Zombies Mercenaries

Art Reprints in Bloomburrow Commander

I noticed that reprints with new art in the bloomburrow commander set are put before the other reprints in the number order, I think that's a really good change, it helps a lot to see which cards got new art.

I didn’t even know they did that.

Art Bloomburrow Commander Commander Reprints

Possibility of Terrifying Angel Art

If/when: Angels that are terrifying in their art

Probably when.

Angels Art If/When

Possibility of 'Artifactfall'

"Is "Artifactfall" something realistic to expect considering how many Treasures, Clues and Food makers exist these days?" "It would have to take artifact token making into account." It seems to me that, regardless of how aggressively or unagressively you costed it, the "smart" way to play such an effect would be using tokens rather than actual artifact cards, since they're cheaper. Correct me if I'm wrong. Assuming I'm right, wouldn't it be better if the mechanic specified "non-token?"

We did Alliance and didn’t feel the need to say nontoken, and we make more creature tokens than artifact tokens.

Alliance Artifacts Creatures Food Mechanics Tokens

Art style standardization critique

I've been trying with a hypothesis and I wanted to hear your thoughts.Magic especially recently has been getting a lot of "great another world of hats" comments and am wondering if it might have to do with the standardization of art style on regular cards. Older sets seem (from my likely biased perspective) to have more variance in style that we only see now on special alternative treatments. And while I love a lot of them (and others not so much) I think the increased homogeny of the art style might have some blame on why some sets in the block-less era don't necessarily have the same life as older sets.

The “world of hats” comments aren’t new. I’ve been getting comments about it for years.

Art

Reprinting text-less full art

Hey Mark, could cards be reprinted as text less full arts with the same art they already had? I just saw Campbell White's art for the elemental incarnation cycle in the MH3 special guests for the first time, and think that it actually gets hurt by the text box blocking a bit of it, and think it would be really cool if versions with just the art could exist.

It depends on the art ratio.

Art Blocking Elementals Guests Incarnations Modern Horizons 3 Reprints