Saturday, February 14, 2015

Oathsworn Giant

For Tommy's card we did something a little different. I translated his card into Hebrew. Many Hebrew inscriptions were written on pot sherds, broken pieces of pottery that made for a useful writing material. To this end, I bought a planting pot and smashed it to create some pot sherds. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get pottery to break in exactly the same size and shape as a magic card. Since I didn't want to have to buy lots of pots just to get lucky, the piece I ended up using was larger than a magic card. To mimic an ancient Hebrew art style, I choose to take inspiration from drawings found at Kuntillet Ajrud dating from 9th-7th centuries BCE. It is a bit simple in style compared to the art of Mesopotamia and Egypt, although I think it has a certain amount of charm. I thought I'd provide some examples, so you could see what I was using as inspiration. I think my brush skills are still in need of work. At Tommy's request, I added a castle in the background, which is fitting for a card that is basically a creature version of Castle.

Here are the images of the finished card with a magic card for perspective:
We hope you like it! Let us know what you think!

Sunday, February 8, 2015

The Mimeoplasm

Here is the nearly finished Mimeoplasm (we still need to erase some of the penciled guidelines and cut it out). Although I had some worries about my ability to translate the text, I found some of my old notes for some of the other Egyptian cards I had done and was able to translate the text of the Mimeoplasm into Middle Egyptian. Funny story, I could not find an equivalent for the "ooze" creature type, so I used "mud" instead. The card art depicts Ammut, the monster goddess, who is part lion, part hippo, and part crocodile, and who devoured the hearts of the dead during afterlife judgment, if they were evil. The text behind the goddess is the beginning of Spell 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Veronica did most of the art and text transcription. I translated and found appropriate artistic parallels. Hope you like it!

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Road Rage Tips

Just like diarrhea, we are all prone to a little road rage occasional fits of road rage. Here is a great instructional video with some pro tips about turning your road rage into something constructive.