Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1017: Art of Phyrexia with Ovidio Cartagena

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

In this podcast, I sit down with Art Director Ovidio Cartagena to talk about the art direction of Phyrexia: All Will Be One.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. So today, I have Ovidio Cartagena, who did the art direction for Rexia All Will Be One. And we're going to talk all about art direction today. Hey, Ovidio. Hey, what's up, Mark? Okay, so this is all about Rexia All Will Be One. So let's start from the very beginning, So this is all about Forex at All Will Be One. So let's start from the very beginning, which is you find out you're going to be doing Forex at All Will Be One, the art direction of it.

What are the big challenges? Like what are the things you're most starting in the very beginning that you most are concerned about? So, yeah, when I found out, it was interesting. I didn't have a lot of time to mentally get ready for it. And it was pretty exciting, too, at the same time. Some of the first cards I played were Phyrexians way back when. And I immediately felt the pressure to honor that. honor those play experiences that I had, the

legacy of Phyrexians and how they feel. It was for me a lot about the storytelling and about their progress and their evolution. And how that could play out back in, sorry, how that could play out forward to now. What they've been up to and what that might look like from a vantage point of inside the world, in world, but also to match the world we're in now. my work for years and also the ideas that have been swimming

around in the world in the last few months at that point. Yeah, just so the audience understands, the Phyrexians are actually our oldest enemy. Antiquities, which was the second ever expansion that Magic made, introduced them.

The Brothers War first appeared there. They were a small thing but that's the first time they got mentioned. And over the years they were the main villain of the Weatherlight Saga. They had a big role when we had Scars of Mirrodin when we went back and watched them overtake Mirrodin

and turn into New Phyrexia. So they are a villain that's been with Magic for almost the length of magic being. You talk about trying to honor their history. They really are, in some ways, the most iconic magic villain, to me at least. Yes.

And to go with it, we needed to come up with iconic shapes for the factions. They used to be only black, in black mana. In the early days, yes. Right? In the early days, up until Scars of Mirrodin, they only showed up in black.

Phyrexians were either artifact creatures, so they were generic colors, or they were black. But when we brought them back in Scars of Mirrodin, we knew we wanted to sort of show all the colors of Phyrexians. And so that's when we started introducing, you know, multiple colors, all five colors of Phyrexians. Yeah, I loved one of the cards I used, loved playing from that set was Suture Priest. And I think White Phyrexians had, I think, the least cosmetic changes, though we did refresh a lot.

I was trying to see how their culture starts extrapolating from when they were before. One thing I mentioned was, I think, from Tiktaalik to mammals, like the evolution that had to happen way up, and how they were streamlined, and how they started becoming entrenched in their individual mana cultures, how each faction had its own philosophy and its own trappings as well, their weaknesses too. Because in the set,

we also see a lot of Phyrexian versus Phyrexian too. Not just resistance versus Phyrexian, but Phyrexians versus each other because they have they're still vying for control. Of course we know who's gonna end up controlling this, but I wanted to take a step back and see how these factions found themselves at odds even though they have an overarching philosophy that drives them, and a common origin, of course. So let's talk about,

there's five factions based on color. So from an art standpoint, let's walk through them and talk about what you did to sort of give them their own distinct look. So we'll just go in Woburg order. So we'll start with white. So what did you do to make sure that white

Elish Norns faction had its own distinct look? I remember when I was preparing for the concept push, we were thinking about chess pieces at the beginning, at the very beginning.

We were thinking about what theme could come into each of these factions. But my first directive was to the artists was please this first week of the concept push because we have a concept push. It takes three weeks of contract and in-house artists working together and figuring out what the set is going to look like, environments and creatures

and artifacts, magic, everything. And for the first of the three weeks I remember asking don't do palette solutions this first week just give me black and white solutions you were I either figure it out with the silhouette of the characters or the negative shape of the characters. Elesh Norn's faction was probably the easiest to figure out. I think they had a very strong shape. Elesh Norn is also very iconic and you have to remember also Traxa. So You have to remember also on Traxa.

So the shapes were kind of clear that like broken, I would say like, it's like a double scythe. That sounds badass. But it also is like a taco with a bite on top. Like that little shape that looks like an inverted triangle. And we started from there. Looks like an inverted triangle. And we started from there. And we realized quickly that this was going to be very iconic.

The palette as well, Elishnor's palette is super iconic. It's the colors of, in the 20th century, of revolution, of upheaval, of propaganda, and so on. So that determined a pretty clear and easy direction. Okay. When did the idea of teeth come into it? There are a few instances where teeth came up. The first instance in this set was during a spec push, which is something else. We started to figure out what sets way in the future might look like.

Zach Stella made this plate where there was a building that had teeth in the middle. And I used it as reference. I do remember that the concept artists saw some of my references. We had some like 20th century surrealism, a lot of that because this is the reason many of us got into art. And it just blew. When we had one of the first presentations, oh, I laughed really hard at seeing all those teeth and everything and just like utilized in such a weird way. And of course, this was construed as an approval and a green flag.

this was construed as an approval and a green flag. So people were like, okay, let's go ahead and pull through. Ravi gave us some characters that had teeth on their forearms and just a bunch of weird stuff that was really cool. And the rest was history. We just started putting it everywhere because it became a very interesting motif. And it's kind of uncomfortable. And what I've said before is we have to understand that Phyrexians

disregard original function in whatever designs they do. And they might end up with stuff that to us is disquieting. To them, it's quite beautiful and it makes sense and it's absolutely genius. Okay, so let's move on to blue.

Gingitexius. So how did you sort of give that faction its own look and feel? So the Nurox, who were like a Mirren faction way back when, were some of the first to be absorbed and because of their curiosity completely assimilated and i liked the original designs where you see helmets with a bunch of like little eyes and bubbles on it and i thought well you know what uh what if we lean into this what if we lean into surveillance

and we had some earlier plates that I worked with Leon at Leon Tucker's one of our concept artists and and I kept asking no no, put more eyes, put more cameras, because a lot of this looks like cameras on stalks, right? Like you're always being surveilled. It ended up matching Jenkins Taxi's philosophy very well. And it started combining a lot of the elements that we associate with blue. The eye, right, for prescribing or seeing or drawing cards, card advantage and so on. But also the motif of like squids and octopus and because the eye stalks start looking like tentacles effectively. Then we had something, right? Like we had something beyond water, because we're not using water here, we're using Quicksilver, beyond water and water motifs.

And it started getting scary and scientific and became kind of foreboding for them. became kind of foreboding for them. This, like, amoral science that the Jinkitaxis faction does, the Progress Engine. Okay. Let's get into Sjildred and Black. So how did we get the Black faction its own distinct look?

Well, there was a little bit of a... There's a little bit of a rivalry between Sjöldred and Elish Norn at the moment and I wanted to take advantage of that and Sjöldred's shapes as well influenced a lot like

Sjöldred as you know is like just a torso that's changed between like a big spider body with a mouth and then like a kind of centipede in Dominaria United. And so we were like, OK, you know what? These are going to be insect carapaces and we're going to look at beetles. We're going to look at.

We're going to look at really like micro animals like the what's the name of that tiny one the the water bear though which one there's a there's a micro animal it's like super resilient it can live in space it's it's cold i don't remember but it's it's yeah it's colloquially referred to as a water bear. We're looking at those shapes. Tardigrade, that's the name. So we were looking at these type of like animals that have exoskeletons and they have like really thick armor. So Sheldred's faction ended up looking very top-heavy, and it still had red sinew, right? It had acid etchings on the bodies, and these started guiding. I think the mechanics start playing a big factor, just like I mentioned in Blue Phyrexia. The mechanics start playing a big role.

There was going to be the toxic mechanic, and we were thinking about putting necrogen all over, and then we were thinking, okay, so what if the necrogen creates all these complex patterns on the carapace that the armor of black Phyrexians have? And we started from, that was our very first starting point. And then we added the insect shapes. And so they all have this kind of like insectoid shape language. And even their, even their dominoes looks like that.

Kind of metal. Kind of like has some centipede shape but they have like a spine motif. So we started playing around with red bones and red sinew. It's of course it's the most brutal of the factions.

And I ended up liking it very much. One comment I got was that we avoided purple, which is what we normally use for black in Magic, but it still looks quite black mana aligned. Okay, let's move on to Urobrasque and the Red Faction. So how did you give the Red Faction its distinct look? The Red Faction. So how did you give the Red Faction its distinct look? The Red Faction was interesting because

I like the original Lurbras design. It looked a little kind of sci-fi to me with a, he had some back exhausts where there's like glowing inside and so on. So I started by asking, what if you feel like you're inside a motorcycle engine or a pipe organ?

And this took me back, I'm pretty sure you've heard, I based a lot of this on the Divine Comedy and I remember a trip to Italy where I saw a pipe organ that was several stories high it had like this tiny bench and a keyboard at the center but the human executing this machine looked ridiculously small.

I had never seen an instrument that big and I was shocked. I took notes and I waited maybe 11 years to use that inspiration until we designed Urobras's layer and we started doing all the elements in Red Phyrexia. And so combining engines and motorcycles and some Phyrexians actually have like exhaust pipes. And I don't know if anyone's seen, no, I think people have seen it. The new Ura Brask card that Campbell White painted, and he's spewing black smoke

and it looks like he has a cape. So it was kind of like a very cool look to me. It looked musical on both ends. Okay. Let's get to the final faction of the Phyrexians, Vorinclex and the Green Faction.

How do we make the Green Faction give its distinct look? We were thinking about the Tangle in Mirrodin. And one of the things was, these are like extreme Darwinists, extreme evolutionists. And the idea of Erexians actually being able to hide in the environment, they are made of the same texture in the environment. And that texture is like oxidized copper. And as much as we tried, it was a little hard to make it work. Artists normally use fog, mist, clouds, and chroma desaturation to create depth. But that's really hard if the environment is kind of sterile and not very moist.

But again, we thought of acid. And we needed a little bit of a color punch within the creatures. And at the same time, they have toxic. So the mechanics and the art start playing again with each other. within the creatures. And at the same time, they have toxic. So the mechanics and the art start playing again with each other. And we added some like green pops on them. And that ended up coming out nicely. So it became kind of a theme where most directions just look like a bunch of branches. But in between the branches branches you can see green glow

coming out um this i think that was probably my i don't i don't like playing favorites because i'm really attached to everyone but it was probably my favorite looking texture like my favorite motif and as i said before like with that we ended up getting them to look pretty different and unique from each other uh because we started from shapes from negative shapes rather than from color like i i took like one leg off the chair to see how people could manage. And I think they did great. The art concert artists did great.

People are having a good reaction to the set and liking the art as well. So another part of the Phyrexians, we talked about the factions, but another important part was, so there are nine sort of spheres, I guess, of Phyrexia.

How did you handle sort of location? How did you get the physical look for each of the nine spheres? So they were hand-in-hand. At least the five spheres that deal with each faction were hand-in-hand. With the creature design I was thinking a little bit as an inverse Dante's Inferno

you make your way down to heaven and heaven of course, being Rome Breaker, the world tree that's going to invade everything. But on the outside, I remember this description of the first circle or the vestibule of hell

being the people who were virtuous but not Christian. being the people who were virtuous but not Christian. And they're like Roman philosophers and Greeks and heroes of old and so on. And they're all like exchanging lofty words and ideas and so on. They live in this like kind of, it's not a paradise exactly. They live withdrawn, but they do live in a world of the mind and talking about each other so i was thinking oh this sounds it's it sounds a little shallow to me like these people have a shallow comfort and the facade ended up being that representing that like it's it's these hollow monuments to phyrexia there's this like sense of artificiality the facade is on top is it's a layer that surrounds all of all meriden built on top

just to glorify phyrexia so it's extremely i would say shallow and kind of representative of what they like the hubris that they're falling into right now that might be their downfall. They threw the suns in this array and under it you see the surface of Old Meriden. Mostly was scrapped, including the glimmer void. And there you see where gravity starts playing tricks. All the metal is being sucked into the outer sphere. The light is dappled. And on down, all light sources are either slag, acid, necrogen, dark magic that the progress engine uses,

and mist in the case of Elushnoran Sphere. The MechaSynth is untouched. Mysteriously, Phyrexians have not been able to deal with it correctly and blink moths are still being used by Mirrens that was something they used for the weapons and down below you have Realmbreaker who's like the main thing on this coming set

so you bring up the rebels. So let's talk a little bit about the rebels because that's... So not everybody... A large amount of the set is Phyrexian, but not everybody is Phyrexian. So let's talk a little bit about how you made the rebels

and give them their own distinctive look. So we took it... I was thinking about what happens to cultural differences when there's a common threat. Marians did have quite a few cultural differences and philosophical too. The elves are all gone. The only one is Glissa and Glissa we know what side she's on. That's how we know what side she's on. And we mostly saw Volshoks and Norioks in Mirrodin or in Phyrexian this time. But they all have coalesced into a single culture. tools they had and whatever tools they found to create their own, carve out their own holes

and try to survive and maybe even take Phyrexia, take Mirrodin back for them. But it's an overwhelmed force for sure we use the hexagon and the hex plates as a symbol for them thinking about the ruined glimmer void uh that i loved every car that had the glimmer void in it back in the day it just looked so sleek and nice, and it was kind of heartbreaking to see it destroyed like that. And I remember bringing in Tiran Yanner, who was working on Mirrens and Grey Highsmith. And we started thinking, okay, so we used almost every color. What's left? And we tried a few options, and we ended up with gold.

It works. There's a big Auroch influence. And then we used the contrast of Blink Moth color. Right? Like that nice cyan that shifts to kind of like an aquamarine um for for blade edges and and accents and so on so as as i said before like a lot of these decisions are aesthetic but they end up playing nicely with the lore and the mechanics we start like um we're in communication at all times you know that like the game designer comes to the

yeah to the to the concept push wall reviews and so on and gives us their ideas and and the writer to the narrative lead is taking a look at everything and making sure we are making sense because artists you know we go crazy with stuff. So it all ended up playing together. I like how Mirrens look, and we did end up including quite a bit of the factions and species that were found in the old Mirren. So you're talking about connecting mechanics to visual looks. So for Mirren was the mechanic that we gave the rebels, right?

These were artifacts that sort of came with a Tutu rebel attached to it. Did that inspire you to give a certain look for all the artifacts, all the equipment? Indeed. Two things. Indeed. Two things. As I mentioned, the blink moth magic, which is serving to keep them pure and keep the correctionalization away. Because as you know, there's acid in the air. It's toxic. And it's just really perilous to be inside this, inside this world. But also when I was about to, when we were about to commission, my director was, let's please not show just the still life of an object sitting there, someone holding it, or just like the typical just hand

raising their, like there's some of of that but the most I wanted to see was a Mirren wielding the weapon some way like artists found several clever ways to to depict that to show a Mirren wielding a weapon no matter. In the background or in the foreground or pushing the weapon forward, like there's a Meron battle chair which is super cool and it's making its way through the green layer, but we always see a wielder. And that was really important to me because I wanted to give them a presence. And also the mechanic feels more fun that way. It also makes sense because now you've got the artifact in your hand. From looking at the art, you already know that it comes with a creature.

So I're almost, I'm almost to my desk here, so we got to wrap up. Any final thoughts about the making, the making of the art of Phyrexia? Yeah, we snuck in quite a few Easter eggs, references to Dante's Inferno. So I'm still hoping people call them out.

People have called out a few. I'm still hoping for all of them to be found or at some point I might post like a thread or something about what we were thinking about. I'm really excited. I like the reception. People liked the set at Philadelphia. I had a lot of nice comments about the set and people

were excited about the mechanics, about the expansion, about how it looked. And there's of course like the crawling chorus is the most mentioned card for its aesthetics. It's quite crazy. I love how it looks. I hope I can do more stuff like that in future sets. But we had a lot of fun. The Phyrexian process of developing the art for this was filled with fun and jokes and laughter in a way that I haven't seen in other sets uh interestingly

that interesting that we're dealing with something horrific but at the same time we just had a blast working on and there's a lot of happiness during the um creation yeah i mean one of the interesting things about our hair before we wrap up is i know there's a lot of happiness during the creation. Yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things about it, before we wrap up, is I know there's a little bit of worry in that the Phyrexians can lead very off-putting, right? They definitely are, you know, there's a way to do the Phyrexians that make you not want to look at them because they're so sort of disturbing and we really wanted to find a way to make them Phyrexian, but something that was kind of fun to look at and not, you didn't want to turn away. And having that balance, I know, was a tricky thing. Yes, yes.

We were always trying to look for that perfect middle spot. I think in some cases going overboard sealed the deal for us like in Mondrak like yeah it's kind of like oh my god Jesus Christ all those mouths but at the same time once you recover from it you're like oh my god this is like this is ludicrous you know i can't believe they made this so some of this stuff became outrageous enough that uh it went into the other side and people had like a a fun reaction and and uh and of course you get to watch stare at it for a while on the board if it stays on the board yeah um so i imagine that I think we kept up with the times and we made something that every player can enjoy

yes so anyway I just want to congratulate you I think the set has a really fun distinctive look that you know really is evocative of what we needed it to be so congrats for you and your team and all your artists they did a great job thank you very much Mark oh you're welcome thanks for joining us it to be. So congrats for you and your team and all your artists. They did a great job.

But... Thank you very much, Mark. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for joining us. But... But I'm at my desk, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I want to thank the video for being with us. And I will see all of you...

Thank you very much. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for joining us. And all of you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.