FanArt_ink.Blind

MTGinktober bumps into Day 24, "Blind," starring Nahiri, the Harbinger and Maro254 from Look at Me, I'm the DCI posing up a storm at the Eye of Ugin! Don't blink or you might miss it!

This one almost went to pencils under a false premise. In my mind's eye, I remembered Triad of Fates as being blindfolded, so I was planning the composition in my head to be them in ridiculous Super Sentai, Power Rangers, or Ginyu Force style poses. I then remembered that Look at Me, I'm the DCI features Mark Rosewater as a stick figure with a blindfold, so I thought it'd be funny to include him posing along with the trio. But upon closer inspection, the triad's eyes are just darkened in shadow, but they don't have any apparent visual impairment. Idea killed. What to do?

Well, I had another idea I'd been looking to implement since I did a soft cross-over with Kiora and The Little Mermaid: I'd been wanting to dress up a Magic character in another property's costuming. While I do no prep before I learn of the day's prompt on the same day I am to draw it, I do have these general gimmicks that come to and linger in mind that I wait to use on a given prompt should they ever sync up. So for this one, since there weren't very many usable blind characters in Magic itself, I realized I could borrow a blind character from Avatar: The Last Airbender--Toph Beifong, and dress someone from Magic as her. But who to cast? Well, Toph has earth-manipulating powers, so why not a Magic analog--Nahiri, who controls stone? And then it struck me that we could even salvage the old idea and have Maro254 as a support character, too! To cap it off, I placed them both in the Eye of Ugin, since that was a sight-based place name.

Fun Facts: Rather than dress Nahiri one for one as Toph, I mixed their costuming a little, and fortunately Nahiri's signature stripes, arm wraps, and the prominent stitching on her outfit ported over pretty easily into Toph's costume's design. The worry here was that this might make the costume unrecognizable, so I made sure not to let these Nahiri nods dominate the costume. While drawing this though, I came to see quite concretely how accurate the Tolarian Community College Professor's point was about Magic characters lacking truly unique, definitive character without their trappings to aid them! As far as I can tell, Nahiri has whispy white hair and super pale skin, but other than that, good luck!

Easter Eggs: Nahiri is of course assuming an Earthbending stance. But since Maro254 is drinking some kind of flavorful juice in his card art, I had him take a Drunken Master pose here a la Jackie Chan; he retains his beverage and dart. I hid a bunch of messages in the Eldrazi-esque engravings carved into the background. Let's see, I'll start on the right side going top to bottom--HI MOM; IMPEACH THE FRAUD; YYUR YYUB ICUR YY4ME; [signature]; 日本語大丈夫か; HOLA. Starting at the top of the left side and going down--何これ; YALE; 254; ルーベン; MCR MCS FOB PTV. And on the hedron: HEY LISTEN.

Not normal,

Reuxben