Demolish

I've had the distinct pleasure of being a part of several concept teams over the years that have helped build some of Magic's many worlds. The plane of Kaladesh was one such opportunity, and while it wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse aesthetically, I did a niche to explore: the gremlins. The gremlins were something I worked quite hard on and though the finalized versions printed in the Kaladesh styleguide ended up having very minor differences to my original designs in the end, they were still very much mine.

Funny enough, the design itself isn't exactly out of the ordinary—frankly, the gremlins ended up looking a lot like baby aardvarks—but they took a bit of a winding path to get there. Originally, my designs were deemed to goblin-like, which was a problem because the gremlins really needed to be distinctly separate from goblins. What Art Director Jeremy Jarvis wanted to get across with the design was that these things caused damage but did so without any intent or malice. Destruction was just a side effect of their being. That sentiment immediately led me down the path that produced the first drawing of a gremlin:

©Wizards of the Coast

Sure, things evolved from there (I ended up giving them another pair of legs, bigger eyes, different proportions and various color treatments), but this was how they started, and from there I got to explore them quite a bit.

I'll be getting to those explorations in a future post, but for now here are two important things to understand about Kaladesh and its gremlins: first, in the world of Kaladesh all of the machines, vehicles and contraptions runs on this magical element called "aether" that swirls about in the sky and is harvested by great airships. This aether is blue and glowy, and it is the thing upon which gremlins feed. Second, as stated above, gremlins destroy things and do so unintentionally—they're probably not even aware that they're doing it. As the design evolved, it was decided that gremlins secrete an acidic and corrosive oil from their skin and this is what does all the damage. This corrosion is typically indicated by a purple and green crust that forms on metal.

Anyway, after working so hard on the little guys it should be no surprise that when one of the Art Directors inquired as to whether I had any requests for assignments that requested a gremlin. And a gremlin is what I got in Demolish.

For some reason during this period of time I was out of the habit of saving my actual assignment descriptions, but this one I remember fairly well. I was asked to paint a gremlin laying in the remains of a mechanical construct called the Chief of the Foundry. The gremlin, having just fed on the aether running the device, has a telltale glow and sits among the wreckage as the remaining aether dissipates around him.

Pretty simple in concept, honestly. In delivery, however, I knew it would be a bit of a challenge. The primary cause of this challenge is that mechanical constructs really aren't my strong suit. I mean, it's a lot of straight lines, gears, and reflective metal. I knew I could do it, but I also knew it would be a heck of a time investment to really make the image sing. Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about so many specifics in the sketch. I knew pretty quickly what I wanted to do with it and tore through my preliminary quickly in order to give myself as much time as possible on the finished painting.

©Wizards of the Coast

The advantage of getting away with sketches like this is that I get to merely indicate aspects of the mechanical construct rather than fully articulating them. While there are some recognizable shapes in there, the rest is just scribbles. I knew I'd have to reconcile that when the time came to paint the piece, but for the time being I was just hoping the fine folks at Wizards liked where I was headed. Fortunately they were. Unfortunately, I was once again reminded of how not having everything planned can sometimes be a headache.

The thing is, the style guide for a world like this has a wealth of information. It had examples of decorative gears, various types of filigree, and even basic shape language. I knew that in order to keep the construct feeling like the Chief of the Foundry, that I needed to nail a few key components. So, I kept the head and chest plate in as well as a few legs and hip joints. Then I started adding additional parts of the creature's design jumbled together. Beyond that I really didn't know what to do. Deconstructing something like this is pretty beyond me so in order to figure it all out I started asking some serious questions like: do these things need wires? I mean, they don't run on electricity, they run on aether so does that even require wiring of any kind? What about pistons? How do the joints work? Etc., etc., etc.

While there is a degree of importance to making it feel believable, it took a long time to realize that I was probably overthinking things. After all, I'm not an engineer and these questions were just a distraction. Answering them was only tangential to the success of the piece. In the end, my biggest issues would come from how reflective to make the metal and how accurate the reflections needed to be. I discovered the solution to those issues as I painted. Because of the jumbled nature of the construct's remains, I found that the more accurate and reflective the metal became, the more difficult it became to read the piece. It became harder and harder to see the larger shapes among all the reflections. Luckily, the gremlin was always easy to see given how different he is from the metal, but much of the construct's remains became visual noise that I decided I needed to quiet down and simplify.

So, what started as a panic to try and figure out the inner-workings of a fictional, aether/mechanical-driven construct ended up being about paring things down and making things readable. In doing this, I effectively painted much of the piece twice.

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished painting is oil on paper on hardboard and measures sixteen inches wide by twelve inches tall.

One of the saving graces of this painting is that the various elements I was asked to include in the piece had relatively limited palettes. The construct was sort of a brass color with red and blue accents. The gremlin was a pinkish color with purple accents and its corrosion the aforementioned green/purple. The aether was vibrant blue. These few colors in their variations meant that the piece could be accomplished with a relatively limited palette. It also meant that I could utilize things like the red accents on the metal and the purple of the corrosion to move the viewer's eye around the composition. Lastly, the shock of bright blue juxtaposed next to the bright, fleshy pink was really valuable in terms of hammering home a focal point.

In a very real way, this piece probably represents the most effort I've ever put into a Magic painting. There's a lot of stuff in there and the fact that I ended up reworking vast areas of the piece meant it ate up a fair amount of time. That I struggled with it and came away with something I actually like is no small miracle to me. So often I have a difficult time getting past the adversity I experience in the making of a thing and end up with strong negative associations. This one, though, felt like a real win—even at the time.

Concepting Dragons of Tarkir

A few short weeks after doing the concepting for "Fate Reforged," the team reassembled to take on "Dragons of Tarkir." Returning were Sam Burley, Mark Winters and myself, but this time Mike "Daarken" Lim was also on hand to add his talents. With the extra artist in the mix, we would spend the next three weeks rebuilding the world of Tarkir anew. This time we explored an alternate "present" created when the dragon extinction that resulted in the world seen in "Khans of Tarkir" was prevented, and dragons not only survived but went on to rule the clans. Or something.

Once again, we'd be redesigning the world completely. However, there were a few key differences. Obviously the progression of time was a factor, but so too was man's relationship to dragons. Whereas in "Fate Reforged," dragons and humans were in conflict, by the time "Dragons of Tarkir" takes place, dragons rule the clans and so everything about each culture must reflect that. For example, where once architecture was designed to defend against or elude dragons, now it had to welcome them.

On top of this, there was still a bit of clean up to do on "Fate Reforged." A few things remained to be designed and a few others just needed a bit of spit and polish. In short, there were quite a few boxes to check off, so once again I tried my best to hit the ground running and see what I might come up with.

As with the previous concept push, my first successes were with the Temur clan, which now would be known as Atarka. I honestly don't know what it was about that clan, but they made a lot of sense to me and it was awful nice to have early successes to build on.

One of the early images that came together showing the general themes found in Atarka clothing.

Lots of leather bands into which patches of fur and bunches of grass can be tucked. Most weapons would be created with or contain some elements of obsidian.

Perhaps some folks would further camouflage their silhouettes with packed snow on top of the grass and fur that adorned their armor.

After getting a foothold on the Atarka clan, I went on to do a bit of work on the Silumgar tribe.

I ended up getting to paint a few of these in my second portrait of Silumgar.

A fat executioner. This was criminally fun.

I also did some work on the Ojutai architecture.

The buildings were originally red and white, but that changed after I'd completed it. So I got to complete it again.

Then I took a crack at solidifying the goblin design which was slightly tweaked from previous versions due to an idea tossed out that the continued existence of dragons might have caused temperatures to increase. I don't know if that really became a thing, but the goblins obviously made it in, so...

Atarka goblins. In my head they had darker skin than ended up in the card art. I liked the idea of the dark skin with white fur.

Kolaghan goblins. A bit less furry than in previous iterations. Stupid fun to work on.

I also took a crack at doing some lesser dragons from a couple of different clans.

One of the Atarka brood with an alternate head. Never got to finish this one.

One of the Silumgar brood that actually evolved from an abandoned design of Silumgar himself.

Along the way, I quickly knocked out an image depicting Dromoka's breath weapon.

Of course only a couple months later, I'd see a similar gag used for Smaug in the Hobbit movie. Sigh.

Lastly, I addressed a couple of the big dragons. To begin with, I had to clean up the version of Silumgar that I was unable to complete during the "Fate Reforged" push.

This would later be colorized by Sam Burley and then I went back into it and tweaked it a bit. He contributed a couple of cool ideas that got shot down, which is kind of a bummer. But that's the way these things go sometimes.

Then I did an older version of Atarka.

Another one that Sam Burley ended up colorizing for me.

It was a lot of fun showing her from a different perspective. Such a pretty smile.

Lastly, I took on the younger Silumgar.

This one was all me — even the color.

Another close-up. Too much fun.

Unfortunately, I didn't get through this gig without interruption. I had a low-grade fever off and on for the first couple weeks of the push that eventually brought with it a sore-throat. When my throat began to swell shut, off to the hospital I went. Before I knew it, I was full of steroids and morphine and on my way to recovery, but I lost a couple days along the way (and probably produced a bit less on the more feverish days). Happily, to the surprise of my cohorts, I returned before it was all over and helped bring the push home.

Obviously, I wish I hadn't gotten sick, as I'd like to have contributed even more. But such is life. As it stands, I'm pretty happy with what I did contribute and Wizards seemed pretty content, as well. Either way, it will never cease to amaze me where other artists take these starting points when they go to make the actual card art. I'm always blown away by how my fellow artists bring the concepts to life, and I doubt that wonder will ever go away.

Concepting Fate Reforged

I was not involved in the concept push that created the initial world of Tarkir, so I had no real idea of what I was getting into when I showed up to help design "Fate Reforged." In fact, all I'd really heard was that various Asian cultures had a pretty big influence and that there might be dragons involved. Beyond that I knew only that the schedule called for an abbreviated push of two weeks (normally there are three), and that there would only be two other artists on the job, Sam Burley and Mark Winters.

Rather than write out some prolonged explanation of how events unfolded, I'm going to just give the gist of things and then throw some art at you. Suffice it to say that in August of 2013, the three of us were sequestered in a room at Wizards of the Coast to help build the styleguide for "Fate Reforged." We were tasked to take the world that was designed for the "Khans of Tarkir" set and roll it back 1000 years. This meant redesigning armor, weapons, architecture, and even landscapes for five different cultures. These redesigns were not only to convey the passage of time but also to adapt each culture to deal with an enemy that simply does not exist in Tarkir's "present" timeline: dragons. On top of this, we were to design the various dragons themselves.

The amount of ground we had to cover was pretty vast and our timeline was compressed so I hit the ground running as best I could. The first couple of days only yielded a lot of half-finished thoughts on the Temur clan's overhaul. This included some poorly photo-bashed landscapes and a bunch of clothing and armor designs. Eventually, however, most of these eventually bore fruit and were my first (and arguably greatest) successes in bringing things together.

Part pencil, part digital, drawings like this helped hammer down the motifs that would be end up throughout Temur clothing.

This was my first go around on a color version of these guys. I kept the color palette in sync with their more "modern" counterparts.

An alternate color study with tweaked proportions.

An additional armor variation.

Temur crevasse dwelling.

Once I had a handle on where Temur was headed, I took a shot at cracking the Abzan clan. I was attempting to build on Mark Winters' successes and also add variety into the mix.

Quick and dirty pencil drawing with some digital darks laid in.

Lastly, I dabbled a bit in trying to push Mardu into the past.

Nice, thick plates of metal brought them one step closet to being human tanks.

My shot at a ready made tent that can be dragged behind horses or pack animals in a pinch.

A city of such tents that is definitely the ugliest thing I did during my two weeks.

Looking at this smattering of drawings, you'd be right in saying that there's not a lot here. Admittedly, there are a few things I failed to copy for my own records (which is irritating), and there's also a fair bit that just ended up not being viable concepts. Since I've been asked politely to show only the stuff that got used, a lot of things are going to have to remain under wraps.

But I'm not finished. I still have to show you the dragons — the last bits I was able to contribute, which were among the most important and easily the most fun.

Atarka. This was a criminal amount of fun.

Here's a close-up of the head without the indicators of the molten bits.

Silumgar. Or the dragon that would eventually become him.

Silumgar would not be completed for another month, when we convened again to design the world of Dragons of Tarkir. But that's another post.

Overall we came a bit short of delivering everything we needed to accomplish in the time allotted us. We managed to get most of it done, but there were still some things that needed to be hashed out and finalized (as evidenced by the half-baked Silumgar above). Fortunately, when we piled back into the room a few short weeks later, we had three weeks and an additional man to help us hammer it all home.

Silumgar, the Drifting Death

There's a bit of a background to this piece that is worth talking about, but is something I'm not going to get into just yet. Suffice it to say that I was part of a two week concepting stint that helped design the look of Fate Reforged, the second expansion set of Magic: the Gathering's Khans of Tarkir expansion block. The designs of the dragons were a part of that gig, and I admit that I had a some input along the way.

At the end of the concepting push, I was asked whether there was anything in particular I'd like to paint when it came time to do the actual card art. I'm not the kind of guy who likes to ask for anything, so I kept my request general. I simply stated that it would be nice if I got to see something that I'd created to its natural conclusion. In essence, I wanted to paint something I'd actually designed — something that did not happen when I'd helped build the world of Innistrad. The response I got was a simple okay, and the world moved on.

What I expected to be assigned as a result of that request was some cool paintings of one or two of the clans I'd reworked for the world. Maybe some cool architecture or something. Yeah. Not so much. Instead, I got assigned Silumgar. One of the main dragons featured in the set.

ART DESCRIPTION:
Setting: FATE REFORGED KHANAR
Color: Blue Black Legendary creature
Location: In the sky over Sultai jungle. p.222-225 Fate Reforged worldguide.
Action: Show the epic movie poster shot of the dragon tyrant flying over his domain (see p. 240 Fate Reforged worldguide). Put the camera in the air with the dragon - helicopter to helicopter. The dragon is flying toward us, greenish gas trails from his mouth as he flies.
In the far background we can see a purplish-blue storm brewing in the sky.
Focus: The dragon

Seems pretty clear. I knew what the dragon looked like and I went to work.

©Wizards of the Coast

Like a lot of my sketches nowadays, I started with a pencil drawing but quickly abandoned it in favor of a digital value study. Honestly, the speed of laying down the values in broad strokes is something I really like a lot. It allows me to more easily keep up with what's in my head and allows me to get to iterations that I'm satisfied with more directly. Or something. The short version is that sketching can be painstaking at times and in the past I've actually gotten burned out on a piece before I even went to paint. Planning is important, sure. But for me, there's such a thing as planning too much.

Anyway, the above sketch was quickly approved and I was laying out my palette before I knew it.

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished painting is oil on gessoed hardboard and measures eighteen inches wide by fourteen inches tall.

The sharper eyed of you will notice some difference between the sketch and the painting. These include (but are not limited to a change in the landscape below and a shift in values around the dragon's head. Neither of these changes required approval and both were done on the fly. The altered landscape is simply due to the fact that I realized mid-painting that the landscape as it originally was designed failed to echo actual landscapes of Tarkir. I wasn't exactly sure why I had ignored such a thing, but I rectified it pretty quickly after realizing how off I was.

The value shift was simply about pulling the eye to where it needed to be most. After painting the horizon to mirror the sketch, I quickly realized that my eye lingered anywhere but the dragon's face. I kind of wanted the viewer to linger there a bit, so I wiped what I'd done and made the adjustment.

Strangely, despite being sucked into the world of fantasy art, I'd only ever painted one or two dragons before this piece. Truthfully, it's a subject I'd actively avoided for a while. Why? Well, as far as tropes go, I don't know that I have a whole lot to add and it's one I'm not particularly interested in. For me, dragons are a bit tired. For others, it's something that remains endlessly exciting. I wish I had such enthusiasm. Obviously, I can't fault anyone for liking what they like, but if I'm sitting down to paint something for myself, dragons are pretty low on the list of subjects I want to visit and explore. So, it remains a little weird to me that I was asked to paint this guy.

That being said, I'm very happy to have gotten the opportunity. There is value in being pushed to do something that one might otherwise not be inclined to do. Eating vegetables for example, or trying on a pair of skinny jeans (which it turns out is not a good look for me). In this case, it was a paid gig, sure, but that didn't mean that I was going to enjoy it at all. Surprisingly, however, I had quite a good time working on the piece and it's one that I'm rather pleased with.

Still, don't expect me to release a series of dragon paintings anytime soon.

Closing the Door On Innistrad, Part 4...ish

Writing about the building of Innistrad is a difficult task. First off, it took place a couple years ago, and my memory has never really been particularly good to begin with and the passage of time really hasn't helped, so I'm finding that there's a lot of sifting necessary to find nuggets worth mentioning. Second, there are aspects of the task that just aren't interesting to write about. There's a real danger of the whole thing devolving into a list in paragraph form of everything I was responsible form — I drew this building, and then I drew this tree, and then I drew this monster, and so forth. That type of thing isn't really interesting to read or write, and so there's a lot of summing up that was done to make it less mind-numbing. While resulting in a tighter narrative, my editing efforts resulted in the omission of some interesting anecdotes due to the fact that they either brought the tale to a screeching halt, or required rather elaborate and eye-rolling segues. Still, I wanted to share some of these things because I thought they added a certain something to the mix. So, despite attempting to avoid a list-like post, I now bring you an actual list.

• The hellhound concept drawings were the very first time I've ever colored something digitally. Sure, to that point I'd done a bunch of digital value studies, but nothing in color. The result of my efforts is quick, dirty and not very polished, but I think it got the point across. I guess the fine folks at Wizards agreed as they didn't ask Daarken to redo it.

• By far my favorite image created during the three weeks came out of an exploration Steve Prescott was doing of treants. For those who just scratched their head and raised an eyebrow, a treant is basically just an ent. You know, those tree guys from Lord of the Rings? Those things. Steve took on the task of trying to create a unique look for them in Innistrad, and came up with a fairly wide variety. The race as a whole was later dropped, but not before Steve did a priceless image which consisted of an upright log that had a pair of sexy, female human legs complete fishnets and high heels sticking out the bottom of it. Obviously it loses something in my description, but it tickled my funnybone and I really hope Steve chooses to share the image on his sketch blog sometime.

• As I believe I've mentioned before, I often watch movies while I work, and my three weeks during the concept push were no exception. The obvious difference being that I wasn't the only member of the audience. Whenever consensus dictated, I'd pop a DVD into the computer and we'd watch something that was in some way pertinent (or not), to the task at hand. Some of the films we watched included but were not limited to: Brotherhood of the Wolf, Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Last of the Mohicans (which Steve managed to tarnish for me by pointing out a cloth rock that ripples as Daniel Day Lewis runs past it during the climactic foot chase). While watching these movies, we'd close the door to the room so as to keep from disturbing the rest of the office, and the lack of air circulation that resulted caused the room to heat up to somewhere in the area of a thousand degrees. The sweat was worth the entertainment, though.

• Matt Cavotta was, in fact, the fourth member of the concepting team, though he was trying to do his part remotely from Ohio. Due to his separation, he was completely cut off from the rest of us, and periodically would send sketches in blindly. I attempted several times to get images of our work out to him via email and text message, but none of them ever went through, so I'm sure he felt like he was spinning his wheels. But I think he had other things on his mind, anyway. While working on the world, he was also going through the application and interview process for the staff job he now holds at Wizards. I'm guessing he was more than a little overwhelmed at the time. I know I'd have been.

• One day, Mark Purvis popped his head in to say hello. Mark is a brand manager for Magic and for some reason began talking about Japan as though we'd all been to tournaments there. I believe at the time, only Daarken had, and Steve and I were more than happy to let him know that we hadn't yet been and were absolutely interested. I'm not sure if a direct line can be traced to this chance meeting, our conversation, and my eventual trip to Nagoya (where I'd again meet Mark), but it can't all be a coincidence...can it?

• I consumed a lot of caffeine while working at Wizards. Almost without fail, there was either coffee, tea, or Coke sitting on my desk. I'm not sure why I found it so necessary to keep my caffeine levels so high (maybe it had something to do with the warm room and the late nights painting the Badass: Birth of a Legend cover in my hotel room), but I'd have gotten next to nothing done if it weren't for the constant pick-me-up. Next to the ubiquitous caffeinated beverage was an apple which I took from the front desk of our hotel each morning. These apples were complimentary and I generally took one to supplement the days when my lunch was self-catered (and thus lackluster). The upside, however, was that no matter who provided the lunch, I could always look forward to the free cookies which replaced the apples each evening at the hotel's front desk. Steve, Daarken, and I greedily gorged on these cookies with a great deal of satisfaction after a long day's work, and in preparation of the work that each of us had ahead of us in our respective hotel rooms each night.

Closing the Door On Innistrad, Part 3

Hopefully you've noticed that this is part 3. It's sort of the end. The beginning can be found here. The middle can be found here. If you haven't already done so, go back and read those other bits so this bit makes more sense (assuming it makes any sense to begin with).

Anyway...

Truth be told, Steve Prescott had done a great deal of ground work for the human costuming. He'd also done a good job of building on the designs of the vampires and their corner of the world. While Mike Lim and I attempted to add to this stuff a bit, it became fairly obvious early on that we weren't going to be contributing much, as Steve had pretty much nailed it. So, we spent our time asking ourselves what priests or mages would wear and then trying to come up with corresponding drawings to answer those questions.

From there, Steve and Mike spent some time designing the werewolves. This I avoided like the plague, and it turned out that I could afford to as they'd managed to find a direction that I thought really worked, and the Wizards team agreed. Relieved that I could avoid that subject, I moved on. I had a hankering to start working on some landscapes and architecture.

©Wizards of the Coast

*Record scratch*

Architecture? Seriously? Steve Belledin working on buildings? That's like Superman brushing his teeth with Kryptonite toothpaste for the fun of it! Seriously? Yup. Can't say why, but it was the one thing I was sure about design-wise and I set out to pin it down as much as possible. Plus, at the time, no one else seemed interested in taking it on. My inspiration was largely Prussian and Germanic architecture, with a gothic churchy vibe mixed in. It's fairly well trodden ground, but I knew I could provide a decent baseline for future illustrators to build on, and my fellow concept artists didn't seem to argue. These drawings took an inordinate amount of time — especially due to my refusal to use a ruler for much of them — but I'm pretty happy with them on the whole.

The landscapes were based off of strange memories of Universal monster movies, and parts of England and New Zealand I've seen. Both Steve and Mike added to this pile of imagery and we slowly started to get a real feel for what the world looked like — what it felt like. It's weird, but I feel that if a concepting team has done its job, you can easily imagine what a given place smells like. That's what I was striving for. I wanted people to smell the wood burning in fire places, the wet pine needles decaying on the ground, the odor of the damp grass as it's trodden upon. It's an element of the game, and indeed the world, that will never come completely across, but I was certainly thinking about it while I worked on the thing.

©Wizards of the Coast

When concepting in-house at Wizards, there's a process involved. As drawings are finished, they are affixed to a long, magnetic dry-erase board that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 feet long. This is done using magnets that are one of the five colors of the Magic color pie, so that foresty stuff gets a green magnet, demony stuff gets a red magnet, and so forth. Over time, the board is divided into five sections. Everyday, we'd spend about fifteen minutes going over the progress and deciding what made the cut, what didn't, and what needed to be revised. Surprisingly, very little was ever changed, and though there was a small reject pile, most of what we did stayed on the board and eventually made it into the styleguide.

©Wizards of the Coast

The free form nature of the three weeks is still surprising to me. We had no set things we were each responsible for. There was a list of needs that we strove to fulfill, but we were free to shift gears at any time and move on to something completely different should we grow tired of a given subject. As a result, we were never bored, and the list of needs for the set got shorter and shorter. We didn't even strictly stick to a given medium. Daarken did some pencil drawings (some of which have been confused with mine) and a bunch of digital concepts and paintings. I worked mostly in pencil, but did a watercolor painting then switched to digital when I worked on the geists and spirits. Prescott, on the other hand, stuck to pencil, and the mileage he put on that thing was phenomenal.

Admittedly, I am not the world's fastest drawer. Mike is pretty quick with his stylus and easily put me to shame as he was able to do a full-color image in the amount of time it took me to do a solid pencil drawing. Steve, on the other hand, would crank out page after page after page of concepts — often with two or three fully rendered drawings per page. I think at his peak he put out three pages to my one and I'm still amazed two years later.

©Wizards of the Coast

 
Despite what felt like my lagging productivity, the three of us ended up covering the dry-erase board. We were told that our efforts had produced the most usable concepts from a single concept push in Magic history. Well, at least to that point. But we weren't satisfied. We continued until we'd covered much of the wall, as well.

While three weeks seems like a long time, I assure you that it is not. The time flew by and before I knew it, I was checking out of the hotel and on my way to the airport. Steve left the next day, but Mike had signed on for four weeks, so he was left to do some clean up work and refinement. Before long, he was gone too, and Richard began to fill in gaps. If he didn't do the work himself, he farmed the work out to other folks like Wayne Reynolds or Vincent Proce. Additional folks who had their fingers in the punch bowl include Matt Cavotta, Adam Paquette, James Paick, and Jung Ho Park.

Eventually, the work got compiled into the styleguide, the styleguide got sent to all the Magic artists working on the world, and their efforts, in turn, resulted in the Innistrad, Dark Ascension, and Avacyn Restored sets of Magic. Six hundred, seventy-four pieces of art, not including that which was produced for promotional cards, packaging and advertisements were created (link). I'm sure that if those other things were counted, you'd easily end up with a clean seven-hundred or so. It's daunting to think about what goes into a set on the front end, and what that translates to when it's all said and done. Either way, I'm tickled to know that my efforts helped Innistrad come to be.

©Wizards of the Coast

I'm not sure if I'll ever get another crack at helping to create a new Magic plane, but I'm grateful to have gotten the opportunity for this one. The three weeks I spent working with those other guys were among the most fun I've had in my career. It was quite reminiscent of my years at Pratt Institute, bouncing ideas off of other artists, swapping input, and watching movies together (both bad and good), while getting our work done. It made me wish that I could afford to share a studio with other artists every day in hopes to keep some of that going. But another part of me is content with the fact that only sounds in my studio right now are the humming of the ceiling fan and the clicking of the keys under my fingers as I write this.

Despite the fact that the fun of the concept push was over, the fun that the set would provide would continue. After all, I got to work and play in that world for the next year. And so did everyone else. I have been utterly amazed to see where all the other artists took our raw designs and ideas. It has been awe-inspiring to say the least. Unfortunately, however, with the release of the last set, Avacyn Restored, even that fun has come to an end, and I have to say that I'm sad to see Innistrad go. The entire year was a blast. Still, there's much to look forward to. Before long, a new styleguide will arrive at my door, and with it will come the excitement and joy of unwrapping a whole new world and getting to play in its recesses for a while. Man, it's going to be sweet! But that's not all.

The biggest side-effect of this experience has been that I've discovered the bliss of building new worlds just for myself.

©Adam Lee

From left to right: Richard Whitters, Mike "Daarken" Lim, Steve Prescott, and some other art nerd.

Closing the Door On Innistrad, Part 2

If you haven't caught part one of this tale, it can be found here. If you have read that first part (or at least pretended to read it and looked at the pictures), check out the second part below.

Wizards of the Coast's offices are an odd mix of corporate architecture and gaming wonderland. The fact that there are cubicles throughout belies the head space of those who dwell within. Take a peak into any given workspace and you'll find more gaming and fanboy odds and ends crammed into the various shelves and cabinets than your average booth at a comic convention. A dragon statuette here, some DnD miniatures there, and posters and product pinned to just about every wall imaginable.  It's a little overwhelming aesthetically, as there's just so much to look at, and a man like me can get lost in picking over someone's Happy Meal toy or assorted PEZ dispenser collection.

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The Magic writing and art team sit clumped together and are arranged adjacent to a couple of empty rooms that I believe were designed to be private offices, but instead one room provides a place for visiting artists to work while the other functions as what might just be the world's most cramped conference room.

I was the second artist to arrive on the scene and while waiting for instructions found Steve Prescott's belongings tossed casually into a cubicle opposite the artist bullpen where I was to make my home. The bullpen consisted of two work stations with a computer and WACOM tablet a piece, two drafting tables, and a shelf containing various art supplies that could just as easily be found in the supply closet of a day camp's arts and crafts center (minus the glitter). I took one station and awaited Daarken's arrival before settling in. I figured I'd give him the opportunity to swap if he wanted to, but it turns out that one station was supplied with a far more modern tablet that was clearly intended for him, leaving me to take the station with the more primeval tablet. I tried to make myself at home and unpacked my sketchbook, pens and pencils.

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Steve Prescott had been there a full day ahead of me and had jumped into the deep end upon arrival. He filled me in on the wide variety of stuff he'd been working on, which was pretty awesome indeed. We caught up, talked a little about the direction of the set, and began leafing through the many books collected on the shelves for research and inspiration. With a bit more direction in mind, I also took some time to pour through Google Images for anything I could get my hands on that felt right.

Daarken eventually arrived later that day, but he wasn't alone. With him was his very lovely wife, Midori, who I learned would also be sharing our space from time to time. While it might sound like that would make for a cramped work environment, it surprisingly was anything but. In fact, before long, irritated by what I can only assume was separation anxiety, Steve joined us in the bullpen and three became four. The room from that point forward could best be described as cozy and blazingly hot.

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With all parties present and accounted for, we finally got the official brief with all the writers, art directors, artists, and research and development folks in one room. This is where we learned the following things:

•The world was to have among other things as inspiration, 18th century Prussia.
•The world was almost constantly about 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit.
•The world was to be built entirely around horror tropes.
•These tropes included, but were not limited to: werewolves, vampires, mad scientists, zombies, Frankenstein's monsters, ghosts, devils, and demons.
•There was a religion having something to do with angels (this was still being fleshed out).
•This was the home world of the vampire planeswalker, Sorin Markov.

I remember furiously writing notes down during this meeting. Notes which I don't believe I ever looked at again. I had gotten the gist, which was the important part, and the notes seemed less important as we went along.  Truth be told, I was itching to get to work, but before the work truly began in earnest, Steve, Mike and I spent some time tossing around ideas on where to begin. I mean, how do you start to visually define an entire world? What's the most important thing to nail first?

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As I mentioned, Steve had done this before, and Mike has a great deal of concepting experience, as well. I was the neophyte on the team, so I likely was the only one who was completely clueless. Aside from the list of influences, we knew what Sorin Markov looked like, so we had some real tangible ideas for vampires. Outside of that, we would be making it all up as we went along. Steve suggested that getting the humans and their costuming right was paramount. Figuring out how the people dressed, what their tools and weapons looked like, etc., would help inform the rest of the world and how the humans had shaped it. It would also probably help us develop the zombies, as well as further develop the vampire race.  I appreciated the simple logic in this and Mike seemed to nod in agreement so, with that, all three of us went to work.

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Now, a quick aside. Steve Prescott and I have a certain level of comfort with one another. We tend to joke around, poke fun and say generally horrible things. It's just what we do. Our souls drip with sarcasm and the need to force other people to bathe in said sarcasm. We can't help it, it's in our nature. Daarken, on the other hand, is a very quiet guy. Even in our discussions about direction, his contributions were pretty brief and typically verbally minimalist. It didn't help that he was suffering from an epic cold. Having two idiots bantering back and forth around him probably didn't make him feel any better.

Midori, on the other hand, is pretty outgoing by comparison. She was willing to talk, if only to keep boredom at bay, which I assure you was a task beyond my own abilities, at times. Unfortunately, she was sharing custody with Daarken's cold, and it was clearly playing one parent against the other.

The point is that it took a while for Mr. Lim to warm up to Steve and me. I suspect he didn't quite know what to make of us at first, and who could blame him? There was probably part of him that hoped every morning that Steve and I wouldn't show up, thus leaving him in relative peace. Still, by the end of our three weeks in that little room, he was slinging zingers with the rest of us, and I'm happy to say that I got to know him a bit, as a result.

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Anyway, with a direction and a starting point established, the three of us began to chip away at the world of Innistrad, revealing each secret in turn. And while our starting point was the same, we quickly branched out and began covering ground rapidly.

Closing the Door On Innistrad, Part 1

The Innistrad expansion block of Magic: the Gathering has come to an end, and before I put it to rest, I want to go back to its beginning. At least my involvement in its beginning. Several times I've teased the idea of a post wherein I talk about the concepting process. I thought I'd write some fun stuff and maybe get the other guys involved to contribute. Possibly even do a round robin of articles for our various blogs or some such. Turns out that coordinating such things requires more time than I can currently afford to spend on the blog. While a post like this, where I simply ruminate on my own, can be done in fits and starts throughout my schedule, actually planning ahead has proven to be much more difficult. I just have too many projects to juggle right now. However, given Innistrad's waning relevance, it seemed imperative that I put something together. This and the next couple posts are that thing. Perhaps if I get called upon to contribute on another Magic concept push, I'll have the wherewithal and forethought to do a daily diary, but for now, for Innistrad, this post will just have to do.

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In the beginning of May 2010, I found myself slogging through sketch changes to the cover for Badass: Birth of Legend, minding my own business. I want to stress that last part because I rarely look for trouble, and almost never go searching for major projects that will mess up an already full schedule. Unprecedented was the fact that I had actually planned out the timing for my various jobs fairly well so that I wouldn't be too stressed over time management and could actually enjoy the summer. Or so I'd thought. Richard Whitters had other plans.

Richard, for those of you who don't know, is the lead concept artist at Wizards of the Coast. He's got a staff job which requires him to endure sitting one cubicle wall away from Magic's art director, Jeremy Jarvis, and do whatever bidding is necessary. In short, he spends his days hunched over a pad of paper or a Wacom tablet creating many things that have come to fruition over his tenure, and many more that have not. He was also in charge of assembling a crack team of illustrators to help create the world that would eventually become Innistrad. Turns out I would be on this team.

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I got the email from Richard inquiring as to whether I'd be able to spend three weeks at Wizards' offices doing concept work for the upcoming Magic block. I would need to be there in three weeks. Now, the fact that Richard emailed me with such short notice indicated that I wasn't his first choice. I don't know who or how many had turned him down up to that point, but it didn't really matter. I intended to say yes. While you'd think I might be incensed that I wasn't considered the pick of the litter, I wasn't. Experience has taught me to just keep my head down and try to do a good job when called upon. Being the third or fourth — or even tenth — person called doesn't matter.  An opportunity is an opportunity, and you've got to make the most of those when they come.

I gave Richard the affirmative provided I could suss out the impact on my cover deadline, which thanks to the good graces of my art director at Harper Collins, I quickly managed to do. About a week after agreeing to join the team, my plane tickets were bought, my schedule was fixed, and my excitement finally subsided enough to recognize that I was missing a couple bits of vital information. First bit: what was the set's theme? Second bit: who would I be working with?

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Richard provided the following information: 1. The set was to be gothic horror themed. This was all I could get out of him. 2. My fellow artists would be Steve Prescott and Mike "Daarken" Lim.

Steve Prescott
I've known Steve for quite a while, having first met him at GenCon eight or nine years ago, and he's one of the most likeable people I've ever known. As I believe I've said before, he also happens to be one of the most naturally gifted draftsmen I've ever met, to boot. The combination of talent and personality results in a guy you wish you could hate but simply can't. At least I can't. Of the three of us, I believe he was the only one who'd done work concepting for Magic before, as he'd done a great deal of excellent work for the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block, much of which can be seen on his blog (link), as well as in his excellent book, Aggregate. Clearly Steve's roll was to be the foundation, the rock, the elder statesman, if you will.

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Mike "Daarken" Lim
Up to this point, I'd only known the guy as "Daarken." If I'm honest, I didn't know his real name or much about him. I saw him once at the Spectrum show opening at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators a year or two before. Someone pointed him out to me, so I had an idea of what he looked like. At the time I felt like I should have gone over and introduced myself, but I was afraid he'd just stare blankly at me having no idea who I was or why I was wasting his time. I didn't get the sense that he was that kind of guy, I just made a rather bold (and it turns out, inaccurate) assumption. Either way, he was a mystery to me, and I was a little nervous about meeting and working along side him. It seemed to me that his role was two sided: he was the finisher and the guy who had mastered the mystical art of digital painting — a skill that Steve and I both lack.

After being filled in, I prepped myself for the long haul ahead: three weeks holed up in a hotel adjacent to the Wizards offices in Renton, Washington, drawing all day and painting a cover piece by night. If nothing else, I was going to be productive. At least I hoped.

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