A New Philosophy: "Full Art, Whenever Possible"

In my MtG hits & missing of '09 post there was one hit I failed to talk about: Zendikar full-art lands.

Lets take a look at some of these:



They are fantastic additions to the Magic toolkit, a real upgrade on the normal Magic lands. They compare only to the full art un-lands.



There have been few full-art cards printed to date, which I believe is a massively missed opportunity on behalf of WotC.However, there are hints they are looking aheaed in this regard. For instance, here are some full-art creatures from the Future Sight set:



Now, I'm not sure if the template is the best it can be - I am sure WotC probably thrashed around a dozen or so versions before chosing this one - but the artwork really drives home a point. For instance, take a look at the two functionally equivalent cards:



Now while I'm sure Ramal, sage of Westgate is an intelligent guy, and his words should be closely listened to, the face here is that a picture really does speak a thousand words. Which Courser (a fantastically well chosen title, by the way) is the more bad-ass Centaur Warrior; the Nessian or the, er, other Centaur? Ramal's opinions aside, it has to be the Nessian version.

Magic art has come a long way since Alpha - the art director's budget must have grown considerably. Just compare these two angels:



The transition from a 80's 'fantasy' art to neo-classical/realist style is really paying dividends for Magic. The sets have never look better - or more flavourful. I would argue that the current successes on flavour are less due to the flavour text and more due to the amazing artwork that WotC currently produces.

So here's a proposal: let's push WotC to a philosophy of 'Full Art Whenever Possible'. This means any card that doesn't require explanatory text (eg. Mechanic, Keyword, Ability) should always be present as full art. There are two types of cards that would be immediately impacted by this; basic lands and 'vanilla' creatures. I believe all basic lands and vanilla creatures should be printed full-art, regardless of the set. I recognise that WotC have pulled out something special for Zendikar with the 'Lands Matter' theme, but there is simply no reason to continue the practice of non-full art lands.

WotC seem to have put some planning into a major artwork change in the future. The Zendikar full-art land template looks great and has clearly been designed with the Future Sight full-art template in mind. The Future Sight full-art template has clearely been designed with Magic Online in mind - for example, the icons in the upper-left corner of the Future Sight cards are the same as the in-game icons of Magic Online.

I believe the use of icons can be pushed further. A good graphic design team could probably design icons for most of the Keywords within magic - just off the top of my head, a wing-icon for flying, a sword-icon for first strike, a crossed sword-icon for double strike - which would allows a far greater amount of flexibility for the use of larger artworks on cards.

WotC have led the way in the CCG market for a long time. They must recognise the power of artwork to produce an emotional response that a short piece of flavour text cannot (there seem to be no Ernest Hemingway's writing at the moment, though I admire the 'continues to burn' line from Obsidian Fireheart). Here's hoping the WotC continue to maximise the use of an capitalise on the brilliant art they're producing at the moment, and that a philosophy of "Full Art, Whenever Possible" becomes established.

Labels: artwork, magic, speculation