Nature – This Time It’s Personal
Waaaaay back in the dawn of time, well, early for Magic the Gathering but the rest of us know it as 1993… okay, that really does seem like a long time ago now. Damn.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah, in October 1993 on my very first trip to the United States I accidentally met Jesper Myrfors, art director for Wizards of the Coast, at Philadelphia Comic Fest. A month later I was working on my first Magic cards.
Due to a peculiar set of circumstances, Antiquities, Legends and The Dark were all being assigned at the same time but had a staggered deadline a scant few months ahead of the card sets hitting the shelves. This was seat-of-the-pants set production. I feel sorry for the editors and whoever was working pre-press. Actually, the latter was likely Tom WÃ¥nerstrand who’s a great person so I guess it didn’t do him too much damage. Probably. But he does smile a LOT. Hmm…
Okay, apparently my brain is set to “off topic” today. Anyway, during early November of 1993 I worked on my six pictures for Antiquities. COP: Artifacts was my favorite for play value – I mean, how cool was it to do the one missing COP? – but my favorite image belonged to Gaea’s Avenger.
The power was nothing special, but this was my first rare card (or ‘Uncommon 1’ but let’s not get into that) and it was my first card where the creature was demanding your attention. The finger pointing out of frame is kind of an accusation or threat aimed at your opponent. This was a trick I’d do a few times in the future, though most notably with the Demon Token from Mirrodin.
I got to revisit Gaea’s Avenger three times in other pieces. Once in Drawn Together from Unhinged, once in a promotional image that’s never been seen by the public – but that will change sometime in the future – and once for the Duelist Magazine.
Here’s the Duelist piece which was painted in 1995. No idea what article it was for but you might notice that I’m up to my old tricks of tucking my signature into the image again.
Oh wow… I had completely forgotten about Drawn Together. I actually made a Pete Venters theme deck for that one. It made for fun multiplayer bouts.