Worst Art in Magic Thread

I dunno man, I think it's pretty good. It's not crystal clear, but ocean water isn't. I like that kind of attention to detail.

I agree, but the actual model and texture for the Kraken aren't of great quality. It's basically monochrome, lacking in detail, and overall kinda just looks cheap.

Blowing it up big actually makes it look better in my opinion, but on the card itself it just looks like a single color blob.

Anything by Ron Spencer.

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Mulan really let herself go.

>Got lost on the way to Kamigawa

>The sharks following to give a sense of scale
Oh baby!

>People posting art that isn't actually that bad

Is this bad or genius? Or both?

It's abstract my dude, and I fucking adore it for it.

It's some spy kids 2 level of cgi
If you want the worst cgi in recent years looking further than here or

Here
These were from a time when wizards art department was running on the cost of a latte. I wouldn't expect much better, especially compared to the millions they rake in every

>I'll just blob some watercolors around and call it a day

That piece actually has really solid composition and impressionist trappings. Like their color choice and balance is on-point and they don't muddy up the image with inconsistent line work.

I dunno. I think this one is fine.

This one, and the kraken, are less so.

Also, I think Igor Kieryluk is one of the most hit or miss artists ever in M:tG. Some of his stuff is actually pretty good, but then he has actual trash like this.

>calls that are bad
The artist nailed that piece. The stones add negative space that works well with the people, the background is awesome considering the little detail used in the foreground.

I think it would be great full size, but really doesn't work as card art.

Igor's biggest problem is he can't render textures for skin (or feathers for avian related stuff) basically at all. Pearl Lake ancient, the birds in your art, they all look like plastic toys. Shrine is fucking awful because he literally copy pasted it. He has good work too, but the spread of quality from curiosity (INN) and adaptive automatron to this is ridiculous

That's a valid critique but I think when we discuss magic art we need to consider a few things:
-the size it is painted at
-the size it will be viewed at

In that regard, I wouldn't consider this a failed piece because even though it doesn't make the best art at card size it remains a solid piece and becomes even better when views at the size it was painted on. Very few, if any, artists paint at the size the card art will eventually become.

I just find his stuff is way too spartan. The one I posted above just feels unfinished and unpolished, and I feel like that's a theme that runs through a lot of his works.

drew tucker is one of magics best artists, go fuck yourself

there's no dynamism to any of his work, it all looks way too static

Forgot to add onto this point before I hit post:
Great MtG art looks great at both card and painted size
Good MtG art may not look good at card size but will look good at full-size (or vice versa)
Shit art will look shit whether it's at card size or full-size.

Stasis is ugly, dumb, nonsensical, and claiming to like is just trying to be ""quirky"" because you know it's objectively ridiculous and bad.

One of the main things is how splotchy and rough everything looks. Like there was no polishing done.

It's not even like it's one of the older more impressionistic pieces. It just looks like unfinished work.

Except it's not? I'm fairly sure this is bait but the art actually has a lot going for it insofar as expressing the concept of stasis. The see-saw is perfectly balanced, the colors on the color wheel are perfectly balanced, the blindfold on the Jakal is a reference to blind things being balanced and fair in mythology (there's a reason Justice statues show a blindfolded woman).

It's symbolism desu.

There is literally nothing wrong with pearllake ancient or whatever this fish is called. I swear, the same 3 examples every time, Ancient, Kraken, and Nykthos. Nykthos is the only one that's truly bad because of the repeating pieces, the other 2 just keep getting thrown together every time to pad out the arguments of parrots.

Sort of related, but does anyone have a picture of that prejudice alter that says something like "If target opponent does not match color, that cunt pays the cost"

>the colors on the color wheel are perfectly balanced
>tiny green dot
>tiny white dot
>giant red dot
>PERFECTLY BALANCED
?????
Why is it floating between them?
Why isn't the moon a half-moon then?
Why a clown striking a jojo pose?

they look bad, the colours are dull and lifeless and the details don't pop nearly enough on a tiny card

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Yeah fuck you, I've heard it and heard it and heard it. You're not even worth a debate.

He's not wrong though. I like pearl lake ancient and the kraken, but ultimately I think the kraken doesn't look very good on the card.

Pearl is fine though.

come on guys, this one's easy.

Did wizards give you the .02 cents for defending their cgi monstrosities yet? Please don't tell me you are doing this for free.

I love this art simply because of how terrible it is. It's just so perplexingly bad, i do't know what anyone was thinking when they were creating it

The problem with the kraken is that people expect things to look a certain way, sometimes the truth looks "uncanny" and fake. A deep sea creature would be smooth, just look at an Orca. There's no hard lines, it's almost unnaturally smooth, the patterns are perfectly round, you shouldn't expect it to be like patterns on fur, with flaws and jags.

I think people are trying to judge it by above water standards, and that's why it's always that damn kraken and that damn pearl lake ancient, which look perfectly fine. The shrine is what's horrible, because every single pillar is literally the same as the one before it.

The kraken just looks bad because on the card it looks like an orange toy. The small amounts of texturing and detail the artist put into the model are completely lost because the image is so small. It ends up just looking too smooth and monochrome.

Kraken's are fictional and that particular one was literally plucked out of the artist's brain to put on a card, the idea of the art is to look interesting and evocative, the kraken does neither. Trying to use the whole 'but muh realism' argument doesn't work in universe or out of universe

A lake, the one where I'm fuckign thinking I'd fine a PEARL LAKE ancient, is not deep sea. Plus, it's a serpent, give them some fucking jaws.

>sometimes the truth looks "uncanny" and fake
I agree, I also like the watery reflections, most artists don't bother.

If anything, it's the boat that look like a toy.

>fuck realism
I disagree. Yeah sure, obviously magic worlds aren't real but they all still use our same physics. Each is clearly based on an Earth like world which would, I would assume, have Earth like qualities. It's just a known that creatures in the water will likely have smooth or even amphibious like skin.

What exactly would you want changed to it? The skin rougher and more patterned? What if they added spots and gave it alligator skin? Would that please you? Cause then I'd be in your seat thinking "Wow this looks fucking stupid".

just give it some features that are a different colour to fucking brown, like give it some lighter colours on the tentacles or the eyes or something, or give it markings like an orca, if you desperately want it to look realistic

A nostalgia set with LSD-induced art like this would be pretty cool tho.

Like Jokulmordor?

Shading is what really sets the two apart.

My main gripe with a lot of magic art is the unnecessary amounts of BLACK; some to the point where you can't even tell what you're looking at.

I swear wizards is trying to save money on colored ink by telling artists to only use black on 75% of the piece.

> The whole set take place inside whatever planeswalker mind as others enter his mind to fight for his sanity.
> Maybe a Jace vs Ashiok mind battle inside whoever fell victim of Ashiok. Maybe a planeswalker tainted by phyrexian oil whose spark protect him as long as it doesn't break.
> We see more or less coherent scenes from his past, sometime clashing together. Every bad feelings and remorse feeding his corruption, while other parts of him strengthen him.

that feels like the makings of a time spiral 2.0

The inside of Karn's mind? It could be a retreading/nostalgia set going over all the events he witnessed. Urza could get a planeswalker card.

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now the mostly black thing actually makes sense on a card called 'Child of Night' that is also a vampire

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The black in this is to make the subject pop a little more.

Same here.

what's wrong with this? Admittedly it's a little meh but it gets the job done, hardly the wort art ever

The face/perspective here isn't great, but overall it's not bad.

Velinov is probably one of the better modern M:tG artists.

It might look perfectly fine as a full-res composition, but it looks awful on the card; it's something the editing team needs to consider.

I'll agree with you about Keranos to a certain degree, but I think the bear lady is fine.

I've got both cards and think they look great.

WHY IS LEG?

>t.no_taste guy

The look on his face is like he's shocked by the fact he's holding a leg. Like he was just messing around and accidentally pulled it straight off.

Looks like he hasn't figured out what it is yet. Or he pulled it off to do something specific and has now forgotten.

Like "Wait, why am I holding this?"

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I want to play that card, looks like from Unglued

FOGLIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I laughed way harder than I should have.

>why is leg?
>is it leg if not attached?
>Does dead man need leg?
>what is meaning of leg?
>does a leg by other name still kick?

Apparently the Foglios are making deviantart-tier comics/webcomics now.

This was illustrated by Richard Garfield's aunt, as a favor.

Arm is best.

>deviantart-tier
Hey fuck you. A lot of good things have come out of deviant-art.
Foglio's webcomic does not look aesthetically pleasing though haven't bothered trying to read more than a few pages.

Kill yourself

Don't you dare talk shit about Drew Tucker, you little entitled millenial faggot

I have this problem a lot with foil cards especially. A lot of the time they just seem a lot darker than the normal art, so you can barely see the actual picture. I prefer nonfoil cards for this reason.

Not the same guy, but I think stasis looks fine and mostly fitting, not everything needs to make sense for a sense of stasis to be conveyed: if they illustrated something more concrete it would either be "see the literal effects of this enchantment on literal things" which is boring as all hell or "see the actual psuedo-physical object responsible for this" which likely wouldn't have made sense and is also boring and overdone.
I don't know what he was going on about with the color wheel being balanced but: its a paint pallete and paint is an inherently static medium, making reference to how its own art never changes.
>Why a clown striking a jojo pose?
That's a stereotypical caricature of a man in pajamas; sleep is a state of relative stasis.
>Why is it floating between them?
Why not? Where else would it go? Some place where it throws the piece off balance? That seems obviously wrong.
>Why isn't the moon a half-moon then?
This is the only one that doesn't make sense to me, but probably just because the crescent moon looks cooler. In any case both the moon and the nighttime are associated with quiet.
It's not a perfect masterpiece of art, but it looks cool, it conveys the feeling of objects in stasis (with the added bonus of also conveying the tenuous nature of the stasis which to be fair likely isn't even intentional), it makes enough symbolic sense to not seem ridiculous (to me at least) and beyond that it just looks pretty.
The only thing I can think to criticize it on is that it has too many symbols rather than going for something that encompasses the essence of stasis and it doesn't look as pretty as it could.

This. That's pretty amazing art.

I'd like to see more of the modern cards be so bold

Shit art but badass effect.

I think Time Walk is infinitely better as an abstract art piece.

You get what you pay for.

I won't disagree with this statement, but I do think the two pieces are both excellent.

Don't have the citations at hand, but I remember reading a magic article about the art on stasis.

Basically, the artist was family of one of the developers, and wanted to draw actual "art", not a depiction, which basically means pretentious shit.

>I can make a shitty argument even shittier by obfuscating it needlessly
I suppose your shitty posts are just further proof of your point?

It's not abstract, it's one of the developers saving money by doodling something a grade schooler could produce.

During Alpha/Beta they didn't have money for good artists on most of their cards, so many were just done by friends, family, themselves etc.

I'm sure you guys would call a toddlers mashup deep and abstract art if I framed it and put it on a wall.

holy shit, that's so bad.

>doodling something a grade schooler could produce
How to spot any one who has 0 fucking clue about painting or art. You think a toddler would be able to layer colors like that? Have brush control like that? Be able to balance layer pressures and amounts like that? No because painting takes fine motor skills, it's why painters make more money than digital artists.

>deep if framed a toddlers scribbles
Funny how many retards say this yet it literally never happens in the art world. Guess what dipshit, the difference between a Rothko and a toddler's scribbles are numerous.

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>Funny how many retards say this yet it literally never happens in the art world

No, art is literally signing your name on a toilet

>It's not abstract, it's one of the developers saving money by doodling something a grade schooler could produce.
>It's not abstract
You are legitimately retarded. You are simultaneously critiquing the contemporary art community for being too up its own ass and complaining that a piece isn't abstract because it doesn't require mechanical artistic skill or formal art training.
Never mind you having no idea how much mechanical skill went into that piece.
Do you never think about how those two views make absolutely no sense together at all?
It is abstract. The eyes and figure say someone is controlling you from the shadows.
It looks cool, it makes you feel what you're supposed to: it's good. That's what being good means. It doesn't matter how much detail you can see in it or whatever arbitrary bullshit you use to measure quality.

Or how about this piece of art, a guy who put a literal garbage bag in an art exhibition:

thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/its-art-an-american-garbage-bag

It's literal fucking garbage.

Art isn't defined by balance of color, artistic style or any bullshit deep symbolism.

Art is supposed to break limits, to challenge what you percieve and art. To be new and innovative.

People who draw the most amazing photorealistic drawings don't get any attention, they are objectively better at drawing, it doesn't fucking matter, nobody is interested in that. Art isn't about looking good.

Yes, Stasis is art. It's absolutely god fucking ugly art.

>comparing painting to 3D sculpture
>implying they're even remotely similar
>not understanding Duchamp was making fun of folk art
Ok now you're definitely just baiting. Enjoy the (you) friend-o.