Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1027: March of the Machine with Taylor Ingvarsson

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

I sit down with March of the Machine's Lead Art Director Taylor Ingvarsson to talk about the visual identity of the set.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. So today I have Taylor Ingersoll, who was the art director for March of the Machine, and we're going to talk all about the art direction of March of the Machine. So hey, Taylor. Hey, Mark. How's it going? Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the scope of this set is huge. How exactly do you approach a set that's everything we've ever done everywhere? Yeah, no, the, uh, the, the task was, was pretty daunting. I think even at one point, um, somebody in the office was like, are we biting off more

than we could chew on this one? I don't know. I think we got it. off more than we could chew on this one. I think we got it. But it's been a really interesting process for this project in particular for me because this was one of the first sort of like big arc things that were sort of presented to the studio just like super high level. This is kind of generally where we want to go and where we want this finale or we want this finale to happen of brexia invading the entire multiverse um i think that was in my my first year at wizards and at that point i was like oh that sounds so cool

bananas whoever gets to work on that is super lucky and then fast forward it's like hey you get to work on this it's like oh my gosh it's very exciting um but also also a pretty pretty tall order um so how we approached this um set was really trying to narrow down what planes we wanted to focus on and what planes we kind of wanted to have in the periphery during the card set. So what that meant was during the concept push, our three weeks of time where we bring in a bunch of fantastic artists and our own internal artists and jam on a ton of different ideas and build the entire visual language for what we want to do with the set and from there build the world guide. what we want to do with the set and from there build the world guide. So it allowed us to kind of

narrow the scope a little bit on focusing on some focal planes and building some set pieces and some major locations. Like you'll see action happening around primarily around Miletus on Theros or the Aetherflux Reservoir on Kaladesh and etc. But we did want to capture the vibe of going, as you said, like all throughout the multiverse. This is wide open. We want to hit on everything. So what we ended up doing for the push was sort of just building out a visual language of what would connect all the planes together

so that when you get a Zendikar card or when you get a Kaladesh card, you know it's from March of the Machine and not from another set that's focal on that plane. So how we did it was, at least first and foremost with that aspect, we wanted to build something that was consistent that showed norn invading everywhere um and we could have plopped just phyrexians everywhere which which we did but we wanted to add a couple of more layers to it to really make it loud at card size um so we used sort of the idea of uh from the seed core on um new phyrexia wanted to expand out realm breaker and have these like mechanical branches span through the multiverse and be able to slam down into

every plane and kind of connect new phyrexia to every plane in the multiverse um uh so that's one part of it the other part of is we wanted wanted to be able to show a progression of time throughout the invasion, which is always tricky in a card set because it's a non-linear storytelling device. So you'll see five different stages throughout the setting. Stage one, you've probably seen a bunch in previews already and things like that, is pretty subtle. You'll start to see the Phyrexian symbol sort of manifest throughout all the different planes almost as like a little omen. Stage two, you'll start to see portals starting to rip open in the sky, excuse me, and the sky is starting to darken

and things like that. Felt super, super smart on that one. It was like, don't you get it? The portals are just like the inverse of the Phyrexian symbol. Very cool. The creative process at work. And then stage three is sort of all out action. The invasion is full on on that plane. So you get the portals, you get the branches coming down,

you get Phyrexians pouring through. So you get the portals, you get the branches coming down, you get Phyrexians pouring through. And a couple new elements that I'll touch on in a second here for the Phyrexians. And then stage four is when you see any card that sort of has this really strong magenta palette to it. The thinking behind that particular stage was those are planes that the invasion might not be going so well for the denizens of the plane. And Erexia is starting to take hold of that plane and almost starting to like terraform it and rebuild everything. So you'll get sinew and sort of vertebrae looking porcelain sort of rolling over everything on that plane. And the branches are still there and there's like looming shapes in the background to sort of get the sense that more and more Phyrexians are showing up and bigger and more powerful ones are showing up as well.

And then the fifth stage is sort of, it's a little bit smaller of a a focus but it's sort of the heroic boon that gets sent out throughout the multiverse um using uh uh halo which sort of helps kind of stall the advance of phyrexia and allows the the uh the denizens of the plane a little bit of a chance to fight back um and that's where it's sort of the the finale of the story takes place where old speth charges in and fights norn and get that big epic event um so it's super fun um we also wanted to sort of hit on what is different about phyrexia in this set versus what we just saw with uh all will One. So we'll still get like the big, bad, the super awesome Phyrexians that you saw in that set. But we wanted to approach this set in the sense of the people on the

planes aren't, well, maybe some of them are, but not all of them want to be turned into Phyrexians. So we wanted to create sort of a look and sort of generate the process of what Phyresis looks like. So throughout the set, you'll see folks in various stages of becoming Phyrexianized because we wanted to get across that this is an invasion and Norm's trying to complete the entire multiverse to her version of perfection.

But not everybody's down with that so we wanted to make sure that it was clear that this felt sort of like a uh something that was being done to the denizens of the plane rather than them being volunteers for it so another big part of because there were so many different worlds um let's talk a little bit about style guides because one of the big help is whenever we make a world we make a style guide so let's talk a little bit about what style guides are and how you were able to use them for this particular product so you could have people design stuff for so many different worlds yeah absolutely um i actually wish i made the march of the Machine style guide way bigger. That would have been so much more helpful.

Yeah, basically the point of the style guide is really it's sort of our world guide. It tells everything that is true at that moment for that plane. Some story elements in there. A lot, a lot of work goes into making sure that we're creating a distinct visual language for all the different denizens of the plane, the locations, the environments, if there's any sort of visual hook that we want to add to this plane so that you know right away that you're on that plane and not another plane. The hedrons in Zendikar are a great example. The second you see a hedron, it's like, oh, this is probably on Zendikar a hedron it's like oh this is probably on send a car um and

if it's not there's probably some bananas narrative reason uh that we're doing that um so that basically is the uh the driver for the at least the the creative of the card set um and in a normal like in a normal set how how many pages is a style guide? Oh, it varies depending on what type of set we're doing. But it's generally, I think the smallest one we have is around 90 pages. And the biggest one is close to 400, I think. So it's a lot of pages. It's a lot of pages to organize and um sift through and and that's used to send to all

of our our artists who are working and helping us on the project to to help guide them with our with our briefs on we need uh oh we need x character doing x thing on this location um and it's basically all derivative from the car mechanic and what the set is trying to do as a game piece. Right, and the art description will say, go look at page 22 for the sword he's carrying or page 36 for the outfit he's wearing, and it'll give them all the individual details. Yeah, I think the world guides that do the best allow for,

like, the visual toolkit is strong enough where we can send a say we've done all the the pointed uh like the targeted pages and assets that we wanted in the card set from the world guide um we also very much just because of the nature of how some of the card mechanics work we don't always get it one for one in the guide so um sometimes we'll send sort of like a range of pages and it's like we need you to help us generate this character who's using something that's inspired by these tools that you see in the guide um and which is super awesome because then it sort of helps it's almost like we're fleshing out the world after the fact

and as we're working on it during the card set. Because the World Guide is great. It is true to, like, what the world is, but nothing's really real until it gets printed on a card. So how much were you able to use existing style guides to make the March of the Machine style guide? Yeah, it was a huge driver that march of the machine style guide yeah it was it was a huge driver for march of the machine um i suppose i should start off with this march of the machine

is kind of what we call an event set so um usually with with going to a new plane or return to plane we're trying to build out a world and sort of show how expansive it is. With an event set, we're trying to almost narrow the scope a little bit. It's still huge, it's still epic, it's still big, but we're really narrowing what you're seeing on each one of these planes so that we can actually feasibly get it out on cards. So reusing materials from a lot of the different style guides, reusing materials from a lot of the different style guides, concept art plates that were still true from like Zendikar Rising. I pulled into March on the Machine, but then over top of that,

we would set dress it for the different stages and elements that were happening with March on the Machine. So it was like taking someone's beautiful painting. It's like, all right, well, now this epic shot of Tazim is a battle zone. So we need to get the portals in here, Norn's branches splashing down and destroying all these awesome skyclaves that are coming together, things like that. So picking up assets from all the different war guides

and the different planes that we went to in this set was, was really, really helpful to be able to reuse some of those assets. And also helped us not have to reinvent the wheel for every plane that we went to. As we talked about earlier, like a lot of the visual cues for the different planes are super strong. So we just wanted to pull those elements forward and make it feel like it was during the event of this particular set.

Okay, now, a lot of the sets had style guides. We'd spent whole planes there before. But there were a lot of worlds that, like, maybe this is, you know, one of a handful of times we've ever seen the world. How did you deal with, like, the more, the cameo worlds, as we call them? They showed up, but not in large number or anything.

Yeah, that was... Emily Tang and her team did a ton of work on that side of the fence where it was just gathering any info that we could possibly have about XYZ playing from articles or novels or or anything like that and some of them um forgetting the name of the plane right now oh darn i should have had it in front of me but wait which one which one try to describe it see if i can tell you which one it is yeah yeah i know that i know the artist um describe describe the plane i'll see if I can name the plane. Oh, describe the plane.

Okay, so it's like a volcanic, terrible landscape that seems incredibly dangerous. And there's giants there. Oh, hold on a second. I will get it for you. Yeah, it's a multicolored one. It is Asgul. I think that sounds right.

Asgul, yeah. It's got zombies on it. It's a volcanic world. Yeah, done by Joshua Raphael. Yeah, definitely Joshua Raphael. Perfect. That was the one I was thinking of. That's the one I was thinking of.

Perfect. That was the one I was thinking of. So Joshua, the artist, really helped us actually develop what that looked like on the fly. On one of the most complex type of cards that we've ever done, which is a battle card. So it was by no means an easy feat for him, but he absolutely crushed it. And I'm so happy that we got to collaborate with him on that one. So you bring up battles. Let's talk about battles. Sure. How did you illustrate battles?

Battles have a bunch of new challenges for you. Yeah. Battles. So, one, they're just inherently complex to try and get across at a very small card size. So we really wanted to kind of get a range of sort of what a battle means so that we could actually feasibly attack this during the set. So there's some, like the one we just mentioned on Asgore, which is it's a ton of figures running around. There's a lot of figures running around. Um, there's a lot of, uh,

complexity within that composition. Um, but then there's, there's, uh, other ones like on, uh, I believe it's Lorwyn,

um, where it's, it's mostly sort of, uh, fauna, uh, attacking a Phyrexian that it happened to land on there. Um,

so he kind of wanted to stretch the gamut of what it means. We get the big blockbuster epic shots of a ton of figures or ships lying around on Kaladesh or folks really fighting back the Phyrexians. And then other ones like that or the Battle for Ravnica, where it's mostly a portal opening up in the city street in a bunch of branches zipping through to sort of get this sense of impending doom coming for you. So we wanted to get a range so that battles stayed relatively exciting and fresh as you're opening them up, in fact. So let's talk a little bit about landscape, because we don't really do cars in landscape all that often.

From an art standpoint, what is that like? Is that harder or easier? I'm going to steal a line from Doug here. It depends. But for the battles, I think it was a little bit more challenging in the landscape format because there's a transparent text box. Or not transparent. Yeah, transparent. You can see through the text box. Cool. Great.

So we had to try and make sure all the important bits are in this very sort of narrow sliver in between the title bar and the text box, but still fill out the entire space. And if all those elements are removed, and the art piece is just shown by itself, it still needs to look like it feels cohesive, and there's not like this dead space where the text box is and everything else is happening above it. So it was a bit challenging on thinking on how we were going to approach that and that the template was or the card template was sort of one of the factors that kind of led into varying up what a battle could mean visually. So it was battle could mean visually. So it was challenging to sort of like write the briefs to those asks and then also challenging on the artist side of trying to fit everything that we wanted to

achieve in there. And there were a few times where I worked back and forth with the artist on hey this is a lot. Let me know if this isn't going to work. And so there was a lot of times where we kind of got to workshop that and not get everything that was initially asked for, but still make it feel like it was a battle going on. And there's an extra aspect on battles, which is it's a double-faced card. And I believe the artist that does the front also does the back face, right?

Yep. In most cases, that's what we try and do, for sure. Like the Teferi card with Jelfier bursting through the portal onto New Phyrexia was done by the same artist, Chris Rallis. D'Azizio was done by the same artist, Chris Rallis. So it was really cool because you got to see this, at least in that card, this epic moment of Teferi sort of at the front of the charge, leading him through the portal. And then on the flip side,

you get to see all of his forces bursting through. Very, very fun. Yeah. When you have an artist do multiple pieces on one card, like on stuff like double-faced cards, are there different challenges to doing that? Or is that sort of fun for the artist because they get them to show something in two different ways?

I think it depends. Whenever we do double-faced cards, we usually try and have some sort of visual connector between the two sides. So for that, it was very much like the portal opening up and still within this sort of same moment. I'm not going to speak for the artists if it's more exciting or not to do it to do double face cards but they'd get they get two pieces at least in the in the set and get to sort of focus on the same moment in time almost.

So for me, it's exciting because on all those cards, we try and grab people that we really know can knock it out of the park. So for us, it's always exciting to see what we wanted to come through and also see what they come up with on their own as they're working through sketches and things like that. And it becomes a really fun collaboration back and forth. So another neat thing we did with double-faced cards is we have cards that show a character

usually iconically from some world, whether it's a creature or a legendary creature. And then the back face shows the Frexenized version of that creature. And once again, usually that's the same artist doing both. What is that like to commission? That one for this set was really, really exciting. Let me actually pull up one real quick here.

So for this set in particular, that was a vehicle that we used to help show the different stages that were happening within this setting. So if you look at, oh, let's say Atali, Primal Conqueror by Ryan Pankost, on the front side of that card, you can see them in all their glory on Ixalan. front side of that card you can see them in all their glory on ixalan um there's some there's some like red lightning kind of on purpose in the background to sort of hint at what's to come but then the big thing that's super exciting on that is scratched in the mountain behind them in gold lines is in gold veins is this phyrexian symbol it's like wait a minute that's not that doesn't belong on Ixalan and then on the flip side you get to see them all Phyrexianized portals and branches have ripped through the same red lightnings in there a totally the conquered so it was it was super super super fun in this set on

these ones because we got to totally change what a creature looked like and adapt them to what their Phyrexian form might look like. And this piece in particular and a bunch of these ones where particular creatures were getting Phyrexianized weren't in the guide so this was a moment where it was really Ryan sort of using kind of the thinking behind what Phyrexianization would look like and applying that to Italic and sort of creating this really awesome Phyrexian version of him. Yeah, I do want to point out something you mentioned, but this is true, I believe, for all the Phyrexianized creatures, is that the front face, you always snuck in a Phyrexian symbol somewhere, right?

Yeah, we tried to. We tried to we tried to so just always trying to hint at like wait a minute this isn't right what's going on okay so let's have one more double face card so another cool thing we did is we have the praetors on the front side and then a saga on the back side so let's talk a little bit about making those yeah those are super fun um the praetor on the front side is always interesting because they're always sort of changing and adapting to the narrative needs and set to set on what they're doing.

And then the back side was really just trying to highlight what that layer of Phyrexia was really about. So the saga on the backside, in some cases, wasn't necessarily specific to this set, but just wanted to really embody what those Praetors believed in and what the vibe of that color really was for them. And then on the front side is them doing all sorts of crazy stuff, Martian machine-wise, combating or preparing to do Norn's bidding

and invade the multiverse. Yeah, the back is fun. The back was kind of their dream of what they wanted. Like, had they succeeded, this is what would have happened. This would be the perfect world through the eyes of that particular praetor. The other thing that's unique about this is you commission two pieces to the same artist, but in different ratios, which I don't think happens very often. Yeah, it was the same with the battles, these sagas.

Yeah, magic does a lot of interesting stuff sometimes, and it's always a fun challenge to sort of mindscape how we're going to tackle all of them. Just for the audience real quick, the sagas are long and thin, because they're basically on the side of the card. And so one of the neat things about magic is once upon a time like all magic

cards have the exact same art shape and over time we started finding different ways to do different art shapes and so i know as an art director there's like you know different ratios require different kind of art and stuff like that yeah it's something thank goodness that we have uh awesome producers to help us keep track of something sometimes between all the different aspect ratios and different types of cards and different components for each set. It's very easy to miss something. So keeping an eye on those is really helpful. Okay, another thing that was a fan favorite of this set was the team-ups. So let's talk a little bit about art directing the team-ups. What were the challenges of that?

I think the team-ups honestly were some of the more challenging things to do because we would have um just characters and creatures of very different uh sizes and shape and trying to show them uh together in a cohesive piece at a two inch uh rectangle on a car was was pretty challenging um so again it was one of those things similar to the battles where I took a lot of care in kind of crafting the art brief. And then it was also very keen on artist selection. And then that artist, you know, had another challenge of trying to, you know, force fit these two types of characters together in a fun and pleasing way. One that comes to mind right off the bat is Brimose and Fiblethip by Rudy Sassuanto. So you have this giant from Ravnica and then you've got this tiny little like couple foot tall figure. But luckily it was, you know, we went through back and forth on a few different iterations and ended

up with Fibletip sort of looking fierce, as fierce as a Fibble Thip can on his shoulder. But those were, those ended up being a ton of fun. Just at first there's, there's always sort of that, like, Ooh, how are we going to work this out? Is it these two characters? Should we do other characters? How should we put these two together? But ultimately they all came out really great and really, really happy with everybody's work on them.

Yeah, I know. One of the things that's challenging, like just taking Barbarigmos and Fiblethep, is that they're just, the cards have different tones to them. Like normally when you see Fiblethep, it's a little more humorous. And when you see Barbarigmos,

it's a little more serious. And so like, how when you see Fiblethip, it's a little more humorous. And when you see Barbarigmo, it's a little more serious. And so, like, how do you have a serious character and a humorous character appear together in a way that makes both characters feel like who they are? Yeah. Yeah, I think for that one, it was... I think that one was one of the... I guess in that regard, one of the... I don't want to say

easy, but it felt more natural that way for for fibletip because i feel like whatever situation we put that character in he's he's generally out of place yeah um so even even here where it's a very kind of like intense moment of uh borborygmos yeah these uh these invasion branches from Realm Breaker and Fibblefib is just kind of cheering him on like, you go you can do it. Probably not doing

any fighting himself but he's there. I do like this card. Okay so we're I'm almost at my desk here so I just wanted to say, is there any other aspect of the art that we haven't mentioned yet that you wanted to touch upon before we wrapped up for today? Any other, I mean, I hit upon as many as I could think of, but maybe there's stuff I didn't hit upon that you wanted to touch on.

Yeah, I think as you're looking through stuff, just keep an eye out for the stages and try and find where all the little Phyrexian symbols are and all the pieces. So I'm excited to see what people find. We tried to hide some, tried to make some obvious, maybe put some that aren't even there. Another thing that is fun for people is to try to figure out what world each art is on. And I know you guys tried really hard

to make sure that they're like, things to help tell you which world is which art and stuff like that. Yeah. Put your hand over the text box and try and guess what plane runs so but anyway i just want to say that i i i think the art came came across great i mean i it is a daunting daunting challenge to like just show up on every world we've ever done and um i think you you guys did such a great job of just showcasing all the different worlds in a way that felt cohesive,

but yet each world had its own identity, which is not easy to do. Awesome. Thanks, Mark. Really appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome. No, it's fun. I love looking at the art for this set. There's just so much going on. But anyway, I just want to thank you very much for being with us today, Taylor.

I know the audience loves hearing about art, so it's fun having you guys on to always talk through the art. But guys, I'm at my desk, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So once again,

I want to thank Taylor for being with us. Thanks, Mark. It was a pleasure. And for everybody else, please take the time to look through Marching Machine. Enjoy all the art, figure out all the planes, find all the hidden symbols, and really soak in all the awesome art from this set. So I will say bye-bye, and I'll see you guys all next time.