Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #747: Dawn Murin

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

In this podcast, I talk with Dawn Murin, one of the art directors for Magic.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So I've been interviewing people. I've been trying to interview lots of different kinds of people. So I'm excited today to have Dawn Murin with us. So say hi, Dawn. Hi, everybody. Hi, Mark. How y'all doing? So let's start by telling them what you do. What is your title? So my title is senior art director uh i am on the magic creative team at wizards of the coast okay so but i want to first start with how you got to where you were and then we'll talk about what exactly it is you do um so how you actually have an

interesting story how did you get to wizards of the Coast? Oh, my goodness. I got to Wizards of the Coast because I was working at TSR, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, in the 90s. And it's no secret that the company was going bankrupt. And fortunately, we had a knight in shining armor whose name is Peter Atkinson, who bought TSR and moved us all out. Well, not everybody, but, you know, geez, about 60 of us. Yeah, I mean, so Peter, for those who don't know, Peter Atkinson, one of the people who created Wizards of the Coast, and the original CEO, was a huge Dungeons & Dragons fan. Yes. And he found out that basically the company that made Dungeons & Dragons was going under,

and so he bought it. I mean, Wizards, he organized Wizards to buy it. Yeah. So that was in 98? Is that right? That was in 97. 97, okay. Yep. That was in 98, is that right? That was in 97. 97, okay.

So we brought out a bunch of people from TSR to come work at Wizards, and you were one of them. I was one of them. So you spent, I assume, numerous years working on Dungeons & Dragons. What got you from Dungeons & Dragons to Magic? Wow, that was a, it was kind of a long, circuitous journey, I would say, because I worked on D&D for, oh my goodness, long time. You know, through third edition, 3.5,

and it was right before fourth edition, I had the opportunity to work on, I don't know if you remember Hecatomb? Hecatomb, yeah, I remember Hecatomb. It was another game we made that had, like, see-through pieces that were hexagons. Yeah, there were three cards, five-sided,

plastic, printed on plastic, so that, yeah, cards could stack on top of each other, and depending on how you stacked them, it revealed it made variable rules mechanics, because you could stack the cards in different ways to change the mechanics. It was a very clever game. Mike Elliott designed it.

It was a very clever game. It was cool, but very expensive. Plastic is, you know, made from oil and oil prices were going up. So, yeah, so I worked on Hecatomb, and then after that, I worked on a couple Japanese brands that were released exclusively in Japan. One was Charm Angel, which is a trading card game for girls that had collectible charm bracelets. Oh, I remember that. I remember that game. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. And that was interesting. I learned a lot about – I mean, I had already known a lot about prints, but I learned a lot about manufacturing. Yeah, because we were designing and manufacturing the charms. And then interestingly, it didn't do well. The girls liked the game, but they didn't get the they didn't understand the concept of repeat purchase model. Yeah, they they just bought the game and they played and they're like, why do I have to buy more? So it didn't do so well.

Duel Masters, on the other hand, was the same age group, you know, 8 to 12 year olds, but targeted towards boys instead of girls. No collectible charms, obviously. And Duel Masters is still very successful. But I worked on Duel Masters is still very successful, but I worked on Duel Masters for about five years. Um, and, uh, again, exclusively released in Japan. Um, and then one that summer, geez, I think it was about 2013, uh, Jeremy Jarvis, who, uh, I had known for a long time, he actually worked for me as a freelance artist for Dungeons & Dragons. He did a lot of work for me.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. So he already knew how I worked. He knew how I art directed. He knew how I interacted with artists. And he was kind of slammed that summer and he called me when was this what summer was it like what set was it 2013 2013 okay i'm gonna say 2013 yeah i was out over in wenatchee visiting some friends and he called me and asked if i uh actually prior to that let me

back up prior to that uh he had asked me to help him commission some work because he was kind of slammed. And so the first thing I actually commissioned for Magic was the oversized cards for Plane Chase 2. OK. And in hindsight now, as I look back on it, I have a feeling that that was kind of an audition because because yeah because like I said he had already worked with me so he he knew you know how I and you know knew how I worked as an art director so I think that was kind of a little test because then in August um he called me that's that's when I was in Wenatchee he He called me and said, hey, do you want to, would you be interested in coming over to Magic Team? And I was like, oh, yes.

Yes, I would. Thank you for asking. So you worked on Plane Chase 2. What was the first set that you did art direction for other than Plane Chase 2? So then when I came over, I commissioned some pieces that were the tail end of Theros. Okay, the original Theros.

Born of the Gods, Tokens. Boy, and then what came after that? Was it Zendikar? You know, things overlapped so much. Yeah, so after Theros was Concertar here, after Theros Block was concert art here. So I, I was not, no, I was not, was I? God, that was so long ago. I don't recall being part of that concept push.

Kaladesh is, yeah, definitely. I remember being involved, you know, from, from beginning to end, you know, was at that point. So let's talk a little. I want to talk a little bit about what you do. Because, I mean, one of the things that the reason I'm doing these interviews is so many people make magic and there's so much work that goes into it. And I don't think the average person realizes all like how much how much there is in all the different aspects. So I want to really examine what you do. so let's talk about you're an art director what does that mean what do you actually do yeah so you know this is funny i i just did donato donato giancola's uh smart school i was his guest ad and this exact same question came up um you know art directors you know depending on

what art directors can do a lot of different things, depending on the media. You know, if you're an art director for a magazine versus an art director for games versus an art director for movies, you have different granular tasks. general is to manage the overall vision of the product and ensure that it is on model to that vision that was created, you know, for what the world looks like. Because, you know, we world build for a reason, right? And I want to stress when you say vision, because I talk about vision all the time, you're talking about a visual vision what correct what it looks like i like i i'm in charge of the mechanical vision but that's a completely different thing yeah yeah yeah exactly and so as a as an art director for games what one thing that's unique for me versus you know someone that works on magazines or you know for movies is my interaction

with you right to ensure that our vision what we're doing visually you know syncs up with what you guys are doing mechanically so one of the things i'm hoping as we talk through this is uh the one there's a project that you and i worked on together that that's been published which was unstable so i'd love to use some examples as we walk through this so that we can give the audience like tangible examples. Right. So, okay. Okay. So, so for example, okay. So on stable print, the, the, the, uh, uh, uh, stitch and augment cards. Yeah. It changed names. It changed names. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the host augment card. So I come to you with host and augment. What what do you have to do? Right. Right. So, you know, design comes to us with a crazy idea like, hey, you know, what if we were able to put, you know, instead of just playing cards individually, you know, what if we could take, you know, what if we had cards that were like that game you had when when you a kid, where you can put different heads on different

bodies of animals, you know, you turn the pages are sliced in the book, and you can mix and match what creatures look like, you know, how can we do that on cards? And so then it's my job to work with, you know, graphic designers to figure out how can we visually satisfy that type of game mechanic. And, you know, which was super challenging, I can tell you, because, you know, with so many different artists working on so many different pieces, to make sure that, you know, every head actually fits on every body proportionately, we had to come up with that little gasket.

Right, right. So if you look at hosts and augments, on the left side of hosts and the right side of augments, there's this little gasket that we put. Correct. So that would help. And that was something that you came up with. That was something that you guys, I'm going to say you,

I mean the art team came up with. Yeah, yeah that you guys, I'm going to say you, I mean, the art team came up with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a tool to say to the artists, the creature has to fit this size so that everything linked together. Right. So that the head of a hummingbird could plausibly fit on the body of a camel or whatever. Dinosaur. Dinosaur, yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah right yeah yeah yes yeah right so yeah so that it could plausibly so that so that every artist was working towards the same template and then because

we have a lot of flexibility with silver bordered sets um to get hand wavy about scale yes the scale is ridiculous you know obviously you can't fit the head of a hummingbird, you know, on the body of a dinosaur. But come on, you know, it's a game. It's fun.

Yeah. Get over it. But the idea is, just to sort of talk in big picture, I, the game designer, and it's not always me, but whoever the game designer is

has to come to the art director and says, here's what we want to do. And also, it goes both ways. Sometimes the art team might say, here's something important to us, and then we have to mechanically figure out. A good example for that, this wasn't a set you did,

but like in Zendikar, it was the creative team that really came up with Adventure World. And then we ended up coming up with elements that matched in Adventure World. So it's give and take. It's not like one way. It's not just us telling you guys. It's back and forth, meaning you're trying to make the most beautiful world you can, most cohesive, beautiful world you can.

We're trying to make a fun set. And there's a lot of back and forth. Yes, it is. It's a collaboration. It is a big collaboration. And as an art director working with artists, you know, again, it is, at least this is the way I work. You know, I view working with my artists as collaborations. You know, I'm hiring them for their expertise to problem solve for us. You know, we've got this concept that needs to be expressed visually, you know, in a space that's, you know, two by three inches, you know, and so we have concepts for them. But for me, it's a collaboration because, you know, to let them problem solve and help us, you know, envision something that we hadn't even thought of, you know, that's even

better than what we thought. I'm going to ask you to explain something because there's some stuff that you just assumed that I want to make sure the audience understands. When you say you're artists, who are your artists? Who is that? Oh, my goodness. Freelance artists all over the world. We work with people all over the world. all over the world we work with people all over the world um i mean you know you could go to our magic website and pull up the art gallery and and just look at all the beautiful artwork and

all the different artists that we work with but you know we do have a few artists on staff concept artists but um you know the 99.99999999 percent of the artwork is commissioned by people who are, you know, freelancers. And how many artists are you interacting with? I want to give people some sense of scope. How many artists are you interacting with at any one time? Well, right now I'm interacting with 60. Right. So that's a lot.

I mean, you're just constantly interacting with artists. Constantly. And I'll tell you what, it's a small art wave too. So it's, you know, I've worked with as many as a hundred or more at any given time. It's yeah, it's a little insane. And so your, your job is to make sure that the, you're giving the artists all the information that you need so that you can get what you want from them. Correct. Correct. And, you know, and I'm also giving the artists everything they need to set them up for success, right? Because, you know, if we want them to deliver within the parameters of, you know, X, whatever that means, then, you know, it's the art director's job to help them

achieve that, you know, to guide them in that direction and, you know, kind of, you know, corral them into these parameters just to, you know, we don't want everything to look the same, but, you know, everything should at least feel cohesive in, in, in worlds to the world building and part of doing that part of having a cohesiveness is we provide the artist with a guide right you want to talk a little bit about that yep uh a world guide um before cards get commissions you know months before cards even get commissions uh we have what's called a concept push and we bring in some, you know, like I said, we have a staff of well-rounded concept artists, you know, working full-time, but then we bring in people with who we call specialists, you know, and we try to

make a very well-rounded team. Somebody who specializes in environments. Somebody who's great with costumes. Somebody who's great with creature design. Somebody who's great with creating, you know, putting a visual stamp on, you know, different factions, like in Theros, you know, to make, you know, Miletus versus Akros

versus, right, Cetessa. And also remember, we're always building a magic world because we have to make the game out of it. So that means all the colors have to be represented, all the size creatures have to be represented, that there's a lot of work. You're not just making any world. You're making a world we can make a game of magic out of.

Right, right, right. Yeah, there's mechanical things to keep in mind you know and we have this big wall and all the artwork goes up so we can kind of see the gestalt of of all the pieces and then see where there's holes like uh-oh uh we somehow managed to overlook concepting any flyers for blue. Don't. Better get on that, right? And, you know, and that is a very kind of fast-paced, intense three weeks. Excuse me. And then after which then those concepts are then refined, further refined, you know, as we tighten and tighten that focus, you know,

working with, you know, the design team, again, to make sure that we're hitting everything that they need. And then and then all that work is collected into a, you know, very large document. How large? How many pages? I want people to understand how big. How many pages? So, you know, it depends. Unstable was relatively small comparatively because that was maybe, what, 100 pages? Maybe less. I think it was like 80 pages. That's small. It's like a normal one is way more than that. Same with a small one. And then at the other extreme is when we went back to Ravnica. Yeah. Because we had been back, this was our, what, third time back to Ravnica? Third time back. And every time we tried to add a little more, a little more, you know, and wore the spark.

Oh, my goodness. That World Guide is a monster. It is over 300 pages. Yeah. And then, you know something like pharaohs is less but we went back to it once so we we added to it you know versus a new world yeah it it depends but uh but but i just understand like even the small ones are 80 to 100 pages and the large ones are over 300 pages that we're giving the artists a lot of visual references

so that they're building in the world, right? We have all these artists. We want them to make, all the art has to feel like it's from the same place. Yes, exactly. Because, you know, if the art, you know, just was just generic all the time, you know, every set after a certain time,

you know, I think people might, you know, would get a little bored, you know, every set after a certain time, you know, I think people might, you know, would get a little bored, you know, so our goal, at least on the, on the, on the creative team side is to, I mean, and you guys too, you know, you guys are always striving to give, you know, the players new mechanics, you know, that they haven't seen before to, you know, surprise and delight them. You know, we are doing that visually as well. You know, that's why, you know why we want Theros to look like Theros and we don't want it to look like Ravnica and we don't want it to look like Tarkir or Kaladesh

so that every time you get a new release, you get, wow, something you haven't seen before. So let's talk a little bit. I was going to use Unstable because that's the thing you and I worked on. So when I handed off Unstable to you, it was a faction set, right? There were five factions built into it. Yep.

Which meant that on the visual side, it's like, okay, well, you're going to take each of these factions, and they had to have a look and a feel. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you did something like that? Oh, God. You know, Mark, it's probably different for everyone. For me, personally, it is, well, in general, it is very organic. It is an extremely organic experience. You may, at least for me, I rely on my team. I try to build a good solid team of people you know to challenge my expectations to you know like I said you know deliver on what's

in my head and make it even better than I could have possibly imagined and so it's it's very collaborative it's very organic you know, well, like, for example, to change, you know, I oftentimes I go in with, you know, like, I think I want so okay, for instance, unstable. Yeah, you know, in my head, initially, I was thinking something kind of a mix between Dr. Seuss and, oh Christ, Nightmare Before Christmas. Okay, so a cross between Dr. Seuss and Nightmare Before Christmas. Yeah, who's the director though? Tim Burton is Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton, yes.

In my head, visually, I was thinking, you know, something between Tim Burton and Dr. Seuss, you know, and you can see how it evolved from that. I mean, it still has that whimsy for sure, but it developed into so much more than that. It really did. And a lot of it was driven by the mechanics. Yeah. So here's a really good example. So when I turned it over, one of the factions when I turned it over was I was making fun of the fact that we make a lot of humanoid animals.

And I thought it was fun of a race where we just mix and match animals. And I really I gave you a very just weird concept. Sure. And then your team just went to town and just made amazing things with it. Yeah. You know, and that's interesting. That's a good example, too, because, you know, the crossbreed labs, you know, because we're mixing and matching animals, you know, we were very conscientious of not not messaging anything that came was even remotely close to animal cruelty. Right. You know, we did not want these to be like, you know, horrible

lab animal experiments, you know, like it wasn't Dr. Moreau or anything, right? Yeah. And get PETA mad at us, you know? So, you know, I was super, there's very few things that I'm real adamant on, but I was really adamant about that. And that we ensure that anytime an animal looks like they are being modified or whatever, it's because it is their willful intent. Why, you know, the squirrel wants to have gorilla arms because gorilla arms are just better. Not because there's some evil scientist who's, you know, Frankensteining these poor animals together you know they all of them are willing participants they want to be modified because hey now i can run faster now i can lift heavier things now i can now i can yeah and it was it was neat because i mean

the key to a faction set from an artistic standpoint is that there's a lot of work that goes to make sure that each faction looks unique. That if a player sees a card in a vacuum, they know what faction it is. The factions are made to be very distinct from one another. Yep. And we kind of had that same philosophy for the Steamboards as well, which was the blue-white. You know, they were also a very kind of modifiable culture. But again, you know, it was all, they were all willing participants.

Why do I want a screwdriver for a hand? Well, it just makes it easier for me to screw things. Yes. Oh, well, maybe. Yeah. So, I mean, the thing, so that's a good example of just the nature of what you guys are doing is, I mean, on our end, we said, okay, here's a faction,

and we mechanically, like, each of the factions mechanically are different, but we came to you, and then you bring visual life to what that is. Because, I mean, like, yeah, we gave you, these are artifact creatures that modify themselves. Or, like, for example, we gave you spies. We said, okay, these are spies.

And you guys, Agent of sneak, you guys once again, you just went to town having lots of fun. I give all props to, a lot of props to Ralph Horsley because as I looked through that Unstable World Guide again, oh my goodness, he has so many

iterations, just fun iterations of that sort of inspector gadget kind of vibe that we were going for of augmentation, you know, for their particular faction. Yeah, super fun. One of the things that I really enjoyed

is every faction just had their own joyfulness to it and whatever because one of the things we're trying to do on our end is make the audience fall in love with something. And the way you do that is commit. Do something where you're really having, we're having fun with it so they can have fun

with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now here's another aspect I want to talk about. So sometimes really interesting things can happen and I'm going to use contraptions as my example here, where the art side comes up with a really cool idea that then causes us us to adapt to it so let's talk about contraptions because

this was to me a very neat story and shows a lot about what art direction can do so talk about contraptions uh okay so i actually the the the contraption thing came from came from the well, what at the time, I guess, would have been the product architect. And there there was this desire to have. Oh, my goodness. I wish I had my binder with me. We're working from home now. So all my office stuff is back in the office, just to refresh my memory on this. But they, there was, there was the desire to do the, to do alternate artwork. And then there was this desire to like, if we put all these, you know, could we have individual pieces that kind of puzzle together to

make one large piece and i had i had already done that for dual masters because dual masters does that all the time they print two cards that when you put them side by side make a larger piece of art and dual masters has done five cards side by side and they have done nine cards nine up like we did for the contraptions so i you know fortunately i was like yeah i know how to do this we can do this we've done it for dual masters it's what's going to be harder is for the artist you know for them to think about the gestalt of one large piece right that's nine cards that when you puzzle them all together makes one large image, and that each of those nine sections crops like if we divide it equally into nine pieces, everything

in those nine pieces falls where it needs to on that individual card. Does that make sense? And so what happened is, for example, is when we made contraptions, originally there were ten of each faction, and then you guys came to us with the idea of the three-by-three grid, and we changed it to nine so that we could

make the three-by-three. The idea of the grid was so awesome, we changed it. I forgot about that. We changed it because that was such a cool idea that we adapted so we could match that. Wow, I changed it because they that was such a cool idea that we we adapted so we can match that wow i i had completely forgotten about that yeah well i mean one of the things that i one of the things i think is important for people to understand is um there's a lot of give and take between the the creative side of things and mechanical side of things and that

um both sides are constantly trying to just come up with as many good ideas as they can, and when they do, they go to the other side and say, hey, here's this cool idea. Can we do this? So, like, in Unstable, we came to you and said, can you make host-augment work, and you guys figure out how to do that.

And in Contraptions, you came to us and said, we have this great layout. Can you mechanically match that? So we did. And I just want people to understand the give and take that goes on. That's an important part of the process. Yep. It is.

And again, it's a collaboration. You know, we're all on the same team trying to make awesome games. So we have a few minutes. I'm almost to my. So we have a few minutes. I'm almost to my den. We have a few minutes left. Is there anything else about art designing magic that you think is, you know, you'd like people to know any other sort of facets to it that are

interesting? Oh boy. I guess we always have reasons for doing what we do. You may not agree with them. You know, there might be fans out there that don't agree with it. But I will say that nothing we do is ever just willy-nilly haphazard. There's always reasons. You know, and even internally, we might not agree. But, you know, there's always reasons you know and even internally we might not agree but you know there's

always reasons yeah i mean one of the things that that i don't know people i mean maybe people listen to my podcast maybe they figure this out by now but we spend hours and hours and hours on every decision like nothing nothing is just done randomly you No, no. And there are things that are absolutely out of our control. You know, management makes decisions about things, and we just have to say, okay. So, yeah. So anyway, I want to thank you, Dawn. I'm pulling up to my den, as they say.

But thank you for sharing. I mean, I find the art side of things really interesting. I mean, as someone, I mean, part of my job is working with you guys to make sure that we're making cool worlds. And I love the art wall. I love watching art when it comes in. Oh, the one thing I forgot to ask real quickly. When an artist does a piece of art, how long normally do they have to do that piece of art? Oh, about six weeks and so the process is at some point they send in a sketch right correct and then the idea is the

reason they do a sketch is just hey let's just double check that what you think you're doing and is you know what we want and it's a little way for the artist to give some i mean for you our director isn't feedback and oh yeah yeah yeah yeah because they're you know not only are we checking to make sure that the content is in world we're also checking to make sure that it's hitting any specifics that uh are required mechanically like if it has flying does the thing have wings or can it you know does it plausibly look like it's flying? We're also checking things like, you know, we're doing a lot of things with different card frames these days. And so, you know, it's not just that perfect little postage stamp size anymore.

sketches and we'll plop them into, you know, like a booster fund frame or, you know, something new that we're doing to make sure that it's properly fitting, right? That you can see the important thing in the art box that it's not getting covered by the rules text or whatever. And so, yeah, it's, you know, that intermediary stage is hypercritical for people that work traditionally. Because, you know, if someone were to just turn in a final and then it's like all wrong, you know, it's easier to salvage if it's digital than if it's traditional. Yeah. And there can be multiple rounds of sketch review, too. But at minimum, we do require at least one. Right.

So anyway, like I said, we have to wrap up here because I'm getting to work. But I want to thank you so much, Dawn, for joining us. I love letting people see other facets

and it's always fun to work with you. And so like you and I had a blast on Unstable. But anyway, I have to wrap this up because I'm at my den. So we all know what that means.

I appreciate you asking me. This was fun. So 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 about magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you so much, Dawn, for joining us. Thank you for asking me.

And everybody, I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.