Horror in the Big City
Occasionally I create a piece for Magic that practically vanishes.
Sometimes the piece is put into the graveyard. This is a repository for art that no longer has a home due to its card either radically changing – and requiring new art – or the card being scrapped entirely. I have one piece that may never see the light of day as it was a very setting-specific creature for Kamigawa and Magic may never return to Kamigawa as it wasn’t a popular block.
The other occasion when a Magic piece doesn’t reach its broadest audience is when it’s an image for a token, especially when it’s a token made solely for the digital version of the game.
This entry is about the latter.
I was assigned the horror token card for the Ravnica set. The card that actually generated the horror tokens was painted by someone else and it didn’t actually show any horrors so I was free to design my own creature. The art description amounted to not much more than “It’s a horror and it lives in Ravnica”.
So given that, I went for a disturbing, distorted creature, y’know, like you do. I wanted to creep myself out if I could.
And I painted it in an unsettling mix of reds and purples that while suggestive of those few minutes right after sunset actually have more in common with the colors of raw meat.
Now with 80% more tendrils!
The creature flying overhead is a callback to the card that generated the horror tokens in-game.
And, yes, I sleep just fine at night, thanks.
I remember that card … ‘Hunted Horror’? This is totally great. The dragon card that was similar was awesome also. The troll? … Not so much.
Great art, sir!
It’s actually Hunted Lammasu ( http://magiccards.info/rav/en/22.html ) and the token is a 4/4 black horror
Yup, that’s gotta be the one. I remember it involving a Lammasu which isn’t a word you hear every day.