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Then: monster man. Now: beautiful elf girl. (thelemmy.club)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by to c/games@hexbear.net
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Talk about a glow up from how he looked in the 90's

(yes I'm playing around with mtg again on forge)

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[–] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

The hand-drawn art of 90's MTG was so evocative and full of soul. I think it's not simply the change towards digital art that ruined it, but also WotC's imposition of corporate style guides that ironed out all the lumps of character that the art had before. It affected the tabletop gaming industry broadly as it become more financially lucrative, you see the same phenomenon from Games Workshop and D&D stuff: the art came to reflect the character of the Business.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    They also don't give artists enough time. John Blanche was given three months to paint this, for example:

    It's not even cover art. Just something tossed into the 3rd. Edition rulebook.

    Nowadays? Magic artists get a 6 week deadline. And they get roughly $1k per piece. To make a modest $4,000 per month, you have to crank out a new painting each week. And like you said, then there's the corporate approval where a committee nitpicks everything into compliance. Copyright shit doesn't help either.

    And you just know these companies will switch to AI slop once they think they can get away with it.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    When would you say is the last time there was truly good MTG card art?

    I liked when card art would reference other cards.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago*

    I'd say it's the old phyrexia stuff from the early 00s (EDIT: omg, it's actually older than I thought, it's from the late 90s). They actually did pull together a unified style, while keeping the character and soul intact. There are definitely a few good pieces of art in modern times, but in the 90s and 00s I was excited to see the art when I opened a booster pack.

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