Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #478: Artists

Episode Date: October 13, 2017

In this podcast, I talk about how Wizards interacts with our freelance artists.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. And I dropped my son off at camp. Okay, so today is all about artists. A very important part of our process that I have not talked about. I've gotten around the edges and some stuff we'll talk today I've talked about a little bit. Okay, so one of the most popular parts of a magic card is the art, and people ask a lot of questions about the art. In fact, the funny thing is when I tell people that I make magic cards out in the world, a lot

of times they think that I mean I make the art, which I don't. Well, I did once, and not that good art, but today I'm going to talk about the people that actually make the art, the people that know how to draw. Okay, so the first question people often ask is, so, you know, do the artists all work at Wizards? And the answer is mostly no. Our artists are almost all freelance. We do have some concept artists that are in the creative team. And most of our art directors started by being artists for the game so you know our our art directors are all capable of doing art but they do

not tend to um mostly illustrate cards once they become art directors um and um so the way it works is that there's a large freelance pool that we have many, many artists, hundreds of artists. And the idea is that for any one project, we will figure out what artists make the most sense. So let's say we're making a magic world. One of the things that the artists will say, well, actually, let's go to the very beginning. So we're going to make a world. We're going to make a brand new world we've never made before. So the first thing that happens is we actually get some of the artists that we've worked with to come in to do what we call the world building or concepting,

where we have an idea of the world we want, and the creative team has worked hard to sort of figure out the basic essence of the world. And then we bring in artists so that we can figure out what it looks like, what the essence of the world is from a viewpoint. And then they work with the story team to make sure that the cosmology is intertwined in the world building. Usually what happens, though,

is a lot of the cosmology is done before the world building, and then they, after they make stuff, then they go back and change things based upon the stuff created by the world building and then they, after they make stuff, then they go back and change things based upon the stuff created by the world building team. But the world, the people who do the card concepting are all brought in, they're freelance. Like I said, they're mostly artists we've worked with on normal, you know, making normal magic cards. Okay, so let's, so anyway, so what happens is, sorry, I'm jumping around today.

So we bring them in and we create a world and they come in for three to four weeks. Maybe one podcast, I'll go all into the world building. The short version is that they are brought in to try to figure out people who we think will shine within whatever particular thing we're doing. I use omnicatus because that's relatively recent. Where the idea is, okay, we want to do an Egypt-inspired world, but with a bolus flavor. And so what will happen is the creative team, before the artists come in, will figure out some essence of things they want. What sort of trappings of Egypt are they thinking about?

And what's the cosmology? And what does Bolas mean? So when the artist comes in, there's a bunch of documents made that are more ideas. And then when the artists come in, there's a presentation given by the story and art teams to sort of say the direction they're looking at. And then they, I think usually the world building is three or four weeks. And they sort of, in the beginning, the artists are given a lot of free reign to do whatever they want. And then they start sort of doing things. They start picking out the things they like. And they start directing things in a certain direction as they find things that sort of are working.

So what happens is the end result of that is they create something we call a world style guide. that is they create something we call a world style guide. That with the work of the artists and then with the internal, you know, we have some internal artists that do concepting and the art directors and the story people, we put together this document that sort of says, hey, here's this world. Here's what the world looks like. Here's what the people look like. Here's the kind of creatures on this world. Here's the kind of clothing, here's the kind of weapons, you know, it's a, so the, it's many, many, it's hundreds of pages, it's probably, usually it's about an inch to inch and a half thick, in a bound thing, and that we send this off to the arts, actually, probably these days we send it electronically, but we create this thing. And so the idea is any artist that works for us, we have the world

itself is created and we have this whole world guide to sort of show off what the world is and all the components of the world. Okay. The next step is that for each card, we have to figure out what exactly we want the card to do. I've talked about this before. We call card concepting. So let's say I have a card that you know says destroy target creature you gain three life. Okay well what does that mean? It's a spell. It's black spell. Okay well what exactly is the person doing? Now there's a whole bunch of ways to show a kill spell. Okay, well, what exactly is the person doing? Now, there's a whole bunch of ways to show a kill spell. How exactly on this world, you know, is it somebody using a weapon? Is it a magical spell? Is it, you know, is it a, sometimes we'll hit story points. Like, what exactly is going on

in this card? And so we figure out from the card concepting, and this is something the creative team does, is okay, oh, they're using disease magic, or they're using locusts, or they're using, you know, some sort of fatigue, or whatever they're doing. Whatever they're doing, whatever the flavor is, what it means that they're destroying the creature, they figure out what that is. And so the card concepter works closely with the art director to figure out sort of the essence of, okay, what does this represent? And there's a lot of training that goes into that because you have to not just figure out what it is, you have to figure out what it is in a way that an artist can draw. So one of the things that's important to us is we, as much as possible, want to give freedom to the artist to draw it in the coolest way they can.

So we don't give composition to the artist most of the time. It's sort of like, here's the thing we need to represent. You figure out how you want to visually represent that. We don't tend to tell them that. We might say, oh, it's a wizard using, you know, disease magic, and, you know, well, another big thing about art descriptions is you have to be able to... The art box on a magic art is pretty small.

And so you really have to focus in on what you're showing because you can't show too many things. So, for example, maybe I'm doing a kill spell. Maybe I'm not showing the wizard casting the kill spell. I'm showing the victim getting the results of the kill spell. Usually that's what we do. We show the results of the spell most often. So let's say you see a creature withering away from

disease or something. Because it shows that someone is using disease. And the idea is, we say to the artist, okay, well this is what, you know, it represents a magical spell that is causing the recipient to become immediately sick. But then we leave it up to the artist to figure out how do they do that? How do they want to represent that? Who do they want to show? Now, they'll have the world guide.

One of the things we show them is what exists in the world. Here's the creatures of the world. Here's the humanoids of the world. Here's the monsters of the world. Here's the things that are in the world to a certain extent. Now, sometimes if somebody's drawing something and it's the only one, like we're drawing a dragon, we might say to them, okay, you have the only dragon. We didn't bother showing what a dragon looks like.

But what we're asking you is, this is what the world looks like. Can you draw a dragon that makes sense in that world? And since there's only one dragon in this set, it doesn't matter if other dragons match it because it's the only dragon. So a lot of times when an artist has drawn something that's unique, we let them have some flexibility in how it looks. But we give them the world guide as a means for them to understand sort of the world it goes in with. And if they're doing a humanoid or something like we have stuff like the clothing and locales and, you know, we have things that we're showing, okay, you can, you can have a lot of freedom, but it still needs to take place in the world that we're in. And there's a lot of different rules that'll happen depending on the set. Sometimes the set is about sort of who the characters are. Sometimes it's about the

setting. Sometimes it could be about, oh, this set, it's more shown at night, or it's more shown, you know, we're trying to show things scarier, so please do more underlighting, or, you know, try to get the tone of it being a little scarier. And so what happens is, we, the art director, so what happens is, somebody usually on the story team does the card concepting, and then they get passed along to the art director. There's multiple art directors. Each set has an art director. Once upon a time, Magic had one art director,

but Magic's got big enough and we do enough worlds now that now we have many art directors. And usually the way it works is any one world is under the guise of one art director. So if I'm working with somebody, if I'm doing a new world, there's a singular art director I'm working with and usually a singular story person I'm working with somebody, if I'm doing a new world, there's a singular art director I'm working with and usually a singular story person I'm working with

to sort of consolidate it all to make sure we have the essence of what that is. And then what happens is, okay, so the card conceptor makes a card concept. It goes to the art director of that set. Art director will look it over, maybe tweak a few things to the art director of that set. Art director will look it over, maybe tweak a few things for the art description.

And then it's the art director's job to go find the artist that best can draw that thing. And what you realize over time is that different artists have different strengths. For example, John Avon is famous

for being awesome and doing lands, doing landscapes and stuff. There's a lot of artists. I mean, every artist has his or her specialty or their specialty. Every artist has things that they do really well. And so what we try to do is match up the artist with the card that will let them shine as an artist.

And once again, we really like to have a lot of flexibility so the artist can do what they want to do. So what happens is we give the artist, they get the assignment. So the way it works is we have what we call waves, art waves. And the idea is we send our art and then we expect art back. So art waves are seven weeks long. That's how long an artist has to do the full painting. And we have seven art waves in a year. So

seven times seven is 49. I think we take a few weeks off for the holidays. And then that's the whole year. So we have seven art waves in a year. Now, one of the things you'll realize is we make a lot of products. We make four main sets a year. Or now we're gonna make three main sets and a core set. And we have supplemental sets, many of which have new art. So the idea is you have to balance all that stuff. All the art, every single thing we need to do that requires art, we have to put it in one of the ways. And usually the way it works is the bigger sets tend to have two ways

and the smaller sets had one. Now we've been doing away with the smaller sets. In the new world we're living in, I'm not quite sure how the art's working. I do know there's seven seven-week art waves. Okay, so what happens is we find the right artist. The art director will call them up and talk to them. And part of the art director's job is making sure that we have the right artist for the right job and that they understand what they're doing. Not only is there art descriptions and the world guide, but also usually the artist will have a discussion. The art director will have a discussion with the artist. Just make sure that they're understanding what we want. Then what happens is the artist starts by doing a sketch.

And when I say a sketch, it varies from artist to artist what that means. What we mean by it is, before you do the whole painting, do a simpler version of it so we can look at it to make sure that we're happy. So often it's a sketch, sometimes it is done on the computer, but I mean, it's not the final version of the picture. It's an earlier version that it's done quicker so we can get the basic essence of it, understand composition, understand what we're doing. The reason it's important is that while we give a lot of instructions to the artist, the artist don't know the world as well as the creative team does. So one of the reasons we're doing the sketch is sometimes we can catch

things. And it could be oh you've done something that's not right about this world, oh you did this thing but oh you didn't know but this thing's not in this world or whatever imagine you were doing Tarkir and just for flavor you put a dragon in the background and you're like oh no no no

in Conjuring Tarkir there's no dragons, you can't have a dragon in the background and so what happens is we look at the sketch. Sometimes there's things in which we forgot to say something, and then we have to come back and say, oh, oh, this creature flies. Can you make sure it's clear that it's flying or in flight or something? Sometimes it could be something's changed.

Development's changed the card. And so it comes in and goes, that's an awesome thing. Okay, something's changed about the card. We need you to change this one small feature. Can you tweak this thing? And so the idea of the sketch is it's allowed us to get a general sense

of where they're going. I don't know when they turn sketch in. Roughly halfway or something is my guess. But I don't actually know how into the seven weeks they show it. But anyway, so they then will turn in the sketch. They get notes on the sketch, and then based on the notes, they make the final, and they send the final in.

A question I get a lot is, how many artists work digitally work in more traditional forms. The answer is over the years more and more and more and more artists have gone to digital and the answer is that digital there's an ease of use of digital. For example once upon a time when people did art or and some people still do this they make original art if you paint on canvas we need the art so you have to box it up and make sure that nothing happens to it and mail it in to us and we have to scan it in and then we can send it back to

you um the artists get get the original art so if they make an original art um one of the things about the contract is you own the original art. You don't own the image. We own the image. But you own the original art. So if you make a piece of art and then want to sell it, you can. In fact, one of the reasons some artists still work in traditional media is there is a thriving, you know, people like magic art. And so there's a lot of people that like to buy original magic art.

Anyway, I would say about the vast, vast majority, 90%, 80%, 90% tend to work in some sort of digital form. Now, that doesn't mean that technology has gotten good enough now that you can do a lot of techniques similar to how you did them on Canvas on a computer. The computer also allows a lot of flexibility. Not only is it easier to sort of use it and send it in and stuff, but also if you want to fix something, computers let you paint in layers and things. So the idea is that you can go back and you can adjust just one piece without the things around it. But anyway, most of the artists, or the majority of the artists, use computers these days. Not that you can tell necessarily. Like I said, as computers have gotten better and better,

it's becoming harder and harder to tell what medium someone is painting in because computers have gotten better at sort of mimicking the real world thing. So anyway, the artist then sends in their final. Every once in a blue moon, there might be notes on the final. Sometimes someone sends it in, and for whatever reason, something happens.

We might go back to the artist. You know, sometimes we'll talk to them and say, oh, you did thing X and Y. You know, and there's all sorts of different reasons we'll talk with the artist, but we never change an artist's work without consulting with the artist.

There are times, for example, for different reasons, we have to crop things or flop things. There's different times where for things often outside the artist's control, some tiny thing has to be changed. And once again, there also is stuff where we're changing cards along the way because the art gets done midway through the process when we're still working on the set. So things will still change. So sometimes when the final comes in,

the things have to change because of that. But anyway, what happens is the artist sends his work in, and then once the artist sends it in, there's sort of a quiet time where we have the art, but the set's not out yet. So one of the rules about how it works for the artists is they can't talk about art until the art is public. Meaning until the audience knows it exists, they can't say anything. And the reason is that we are very secretive about what's up and coming.

And sometimes the tiniest piece of information about a piece of art could give away a huge twist for example ixalan's coming out one of ixalan's big thing was dinosaurs well if somebody had shown their art before it was public and you could see dinosaurs well that kind of gives away there's dinosaurs coming um so the artists do not show their art until we publicly we have showed the art publicly and then they're free to show it. We obviously credit the artists. If you notice on a Magic card, the artists are the one person actually credited on the card. I guess we've done a little bit of credit for outside designers. But the only people that regularly get credited on a card is the artists. It's always at the bottom.

There's a little paintbrush with their name. It used to say Illustrated by. The reason we moved for a paintbrush, anyone know the answer to that? Is translation. It allows us not to have to translate. Because the names don't get translated. So it allows us one less step of things we have to translate. So for being an artist for magic, obviously we pay you. You also get what are known as artist proofs, which are versions of your card that don't have a back on them, that have a white back. I forget how many we give, but we give a bunch.

And the idea is it's something the artist can sign and stuff at shows and things. Another thing that we do for the artist is while we control, like we own the image, you know, they own the original, we own the image, but we allow them to make prints of their work to sell. They own the original. We own the image. But we allow them to make prints of their work to sell. So if you ever go and see at a convention or something and see an artist,

they often want prints to sell. We allow them to have prints to sell. The other thing that we started doing recently is we, there's some authorization for this one, but they have the right to try to sell or they have the right to sell like play mats and other things with their art on it. There's a process they have to go through

to sort of get okays on that. But, you know, if we allow artists now to sort of, for example, make play mats and then, you know, if fans of theirs want a particular play mat,

the artists manage it and it's, you know, it's their own inventory. They're paying for it but they're selling it and getting the profit. But there's a process they work with us to, you know, make sure the images are okay and everything. And the other thing that we do for a lot of our artists is we help coordinate. There are shows all around the world and people love having artists come. And so another thing that we'll do with a lot of our artists

is help coordinate to get them to shows so they can get flown. Usually the person who puts on the event is the one who flies them in. But we help coordinate that so that, you know, one of the cool things about being a magic artist is that you have opportunities to travel.

And, you know, I know a lot, I have a bunch of friends who are artists and, you know, like Matt Cavada, for example, a good friend of mine, he's been all over the world, you know, signing and being sort of a visiting artist. In fact, I first met him because he was in Australia, there for one of the, I think, the World Championship. So there is a lot of opportunity there. Also, the other thing that's interesting about the art is magic art has proven to be a really good calling card. I know a lot of artists will...

Magic has been a really good way to get exposure of their art, so a lot of other people see it. A lot of magic art wins awards and there's a lot of sort of exposure in sort of there's a whole series of different like competitions and things where people can get awards for art. The specific ones for fantasy art and also just being on a magic card just gets wider exposure. So many of our artists have gone on to, you know, do a lot of amazing things. And a part of that's come from magic. It's just a really good calling card for people to sort of see your art.

I think any other thing. The thing that's really important that I want to stress is artists are super important. We really value the artists. Like I say, we work really hard to have a very positive relationship with our artists. We work very hard to give our artists a lot of freedom to sort of have some control of what they draw. We like artists, like I said, the artists have the rights to their original and to be able to do prints and be able to do like play mats and stuff and we want artists to be able to get their art out there we we encourage the artists to you know be able to um interact with the fans um and like i said the artists are not not actually employees

but they're freelance employees i guess uh and they're really really important to us and there's a lot of artists um so a couple questions people ask me all the time about artists. Number one, do they play Magic? What we have found is the majority do not play Magic, only because the majority of people don't play Magic. They fall into three camps. There are the artists who are gamers, and those learn how to play Magic, mostly. So there are plenty of artists that do play Magic.

It's not like there are none. There are a bunch that do play magic. There are some that learn to play magic just enough because they illustrate from magic and want to have a general understanding of it. And so there's some that sort of play it lightly. And then there's some that just don't play at all. And one of the things we're really careful of

when we do art descriptions is the art director sort of learns over time the knowledge of the person and how much they know about magic. And that the more magic they know, the more the art director can talk to them sort of in game terms. And the more they don't, we can talk to them in sort of more generic terms. But there's all sorts of funny stories about artists. Like one of my favorite, real quickly, since I'm almost to work, is the artist's description was, show a drake being hit by a lightning bolt. And so the artist showed a male duck being hit by a lightning bolt.

It's called a drake. Not realizing that a drake is a fantasy creature, kind of like a dragon. And that's just an example of someone who didn't know fantasy well enough to understand what a drake was. Now, obviously, he did the sketch, we caught it at sketch and it all got fixed but it's just a good example of not, some artists are very very familiar with fantasy and very very familiar with magic and very familiar with our world some artists less so, but that's why we do a lot to work with them so they can understand

that and that we, why we, and other big things happen over time, like that Drake story from long, long ago. We do a lot more prep work with the artists before they see it, as far as showing them the world guides and all that. We've been making world guides for a while, but we've gotten the technology of the world guides and how we do them and what we put in them has just vastly improved over the years as, you know, we iterate. I talk about iterating in game design. Well, they iterate in art, and they're constantly figuring out the better ways to make worlds and make style guides and make world guides and such.

But anyway, guys, I'm now at work, so hopefully that gives you a better sense of kind of who artists are and how do we get the artists. Oh, okay, final thing to answer before i go um is you want to be an artist how do you become a magic artist um this one's a little more complex there is a procedure online i know to submit things um we do have our art directors do go to shows um i know like gen con and san diego comic-con and Con. They go to big conventions, and there are portfolios where you can get a time to do a portfolio and show them.

There are a bunch of different ways where you can show your work. And a very common thing, by the way, is a lot of people show their work, and what the art director will say is, you're not quite there yet, but here's the things you can do to move there and help artists, something they try to do.

We are constantly looking for new artists. You know, it is, we make a lot of magic art. And, you know, there's a natural ebb and flow. Like I said, a lot of artists go on to do other things and that we're always looking for new artists, new and exciting artists. So if that's something you're interested in, like I said, I know there's stuff online. And also you can look at conventions for portfolios.

We show up a lot at conventions. But anyway, that, my friends, is hopefully a lot of things about artists and how we work with artists and who the artists are. They're a huge part of the game. Like I said, I don't want to undersell how important art is to the game. It really is one of the things that sets Magic apart from a lot of other games. And we prize our art, we prize our artists and we spend a lot of time and energy. Like I said, the creative team once upon a time, the creative team was just a few people with one art director

and now it's a giant team with many art directors and concept illustrators and we're building all sorts of worlds and it's a giant team with many art directors and concept illustrators. And we're building all sorts of worlds. And, you know, it's really cool and exciting. And so it is awesome that our artists, I've had a chance to meet a lot of our artists over the years. At conventions, at different places. And I'm always impressed and always excited. And our artists come from around the world, by the way. It's not just like they're all American or something.

We have artists from almost every continent I can think of. We have artists from around the world. We have artists that don't speak English, but they know art. And so we interact with a lot of different people and it is really cool and exciting to see all the stuff. One of the cool things for me is when the art comes in, now given this is of the traditional art,

but the traditional art they'll put up and you can see it. And sometimes when they get cool art, they'll print out the stuff that's digital so we can see it. And it is just neat to see as the art comes in, see the art on the wall. And like, I'm used to playing with magic cards

without art. I'm used to playing with just little stickers. And it is always such a joy when we finally get to the point where we get to see the art on the cards. Like, I know, for example, for Unstable, I was watching when the art came in, and, like, it's amazing how it just brings cards to life. Things that you really are proud of from a design standpoint,

but you put the art on, and all of a sudden, it transcends into something even more amazing. So, let me end today by saying hats off to all the artists. It really does make magic what it makes. And anyway, I'm now at work. So that means this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.