FanArt_ink.RiskMidnight

MTGinktober chances and nods off to Day 31, "Risk Midnight," starring Olivia Voldaren and Falthis, Shadowcat Familiar! 

Well, that's a wrap for this year.  I drew everything in this small notebook that really limited the scope of each illustration and an experiment in forcing limitations upon this year, as traditionally, I get really stressed out and physically and mentally sapped every Inktober, so what did we learn?  I didn't like it.  As I suspected, I'd rather be miserable and making good work than comfortable and making weak stuff.  

 Even the joy in physical drawing was limited, especially having to cater to the Twitter crop--the penciled box in the middle third shows where it'll cut, and that forced every illustration to feel too similar.  And limiting my drawing time felt like we could bake in less per piece. As for using two prompt words rather than just one, I didn't like how on-the-nose most of the Magic ones were.  I like the official ones because they're open ended and you can have a decent leash.  So by metrics of inspiration, execution, and reception, this has really felt like a poor year.

Fun Facts:  I've been wanting to draw Olivia, and this was our last chance so we took it over a funner concept I had been wanting to draw for a while (an Akira spoof).  In any case, it looks like we're back-to-back years with a legendary vampire finale.

Easter Eggs: Of course the cat is upsetting a game of Risk, also owned by Magic's parent company, Hasbro, as I understand.

All right, that'll do it for this year, as always, I hope I got to a reasonable amount of favorite and pet creatures and cards, but feel free to message me with requests and we'll see if we can do a couple bonus pieces.

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FanArt_ink.SlitherCandle

MTGinktober slides to illuminate Day 30, "Slither Candle," starring Kaya, Ghost Assassin and Slitherhead!

I've been wanting to draw Kaya and a heavy shadow piece with a lot of negative space for a while, and we're just about done with this year's run, so it's kinda now or never.  Plus, in that spirit, I switched to my new ink, and it's unreal, day-and-night the difference...the ink I've been using hitherto has been so clunky and labored, but this new stuff--my old brand--is just insane.  You can go ridiculously fine, hatch and everything like a dream...ugh...maybe our series coulda been stronger this year if I'd just switched back earlier...

Fun Facts: This is Kaya's second MTGinktober appearance, oddly enough also with a lot of negative space from back in 2016...just for speed's sake, I filled in most of the solid black background this time with my magic wand, but I'll go back and fill it in manually for the record.

Easter Eggs:  My signature is hidden in her afro!  I love doing that.  The composition is loosely based on the classic Batman posing with him and Robin in front of a brick wall--I was originally going to go straight black, but at the last minute, I sketched in the wall, and am glad I did.

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FanArt_ink.PatchBat

MTGinktober updates and swings at Day 29, "Patch // Bat," starring Spike, Tournament Grinder!

There were a couple directions I coulda gone here, and probably for more of a sure thing with, like, Meren or something--who I've long wanted to draw for Inktober--but I went for the rare double-metaphoric, so it's not a patch in the physical sense, but a digital fix and it's not the animal, but the baseball equipment.  And who else to rage at an annoying Magic patch than Spike? 

Fun Facts: This is Spike's second MTGinktober appearance--what a difference between incarnations (I was super tired and woke up later than usual for today's piece, but I also didn't want to repeat the same kinda background as last time.  Fortunately, the action of the scene made it less important for there to be a clear background.

Easter Eggs: The keyboards have my name.  And the screen she's locked on is the stupid Loading Initial Scene screen that seems to sit there forever.  The displayed wait time--which is not actually on Loading Initial Scene screen, but is there for comedic effect of Spike interminably waiting--is today's date.  The quote is also another annoying thing "serious" players say--I hate the over use (and the abuse, period) of the word "literally," just how last time Spike rattled off annoying Magic traits.

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FanArt_ink.CrispyDog

MTGinktober singes and hounds Day 28, "Crispy Dog," starring Chandra, Flame's Catalyst and Igneous Cur!

My gosh, so crazy exhausted, so I had to go really simple on this one, but it's a Chandra day, so it's a bummer not to be able to go all out for her.

Fun Facts: Chandra probably has the most MTGinktober appearances out of anyone, because I really like drawing her, and since she has multiple incarnations, she's also good for multiple appearances per year as Dora-chan, even, though this specific rendition is mostly based on Grzegorz Rutkowski's take.

Easter Eggs: The background comes from Chandra's Magmutt.  And she's eating an American Dog, my favorite style of corn dog, which you can find in most convenience stores in Japan, but I love 7-11's--super thick and crispy on the outside.

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FanArt_ink.SparkHat

MTGinktober ignites and doffs its cap to Day 27, "Spark Hat," starring Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and Calix, Destiny's Hand!

This was a real treat to do, an homage to the classic scene in One Piece where Luffy gives Nami his hat, except this is (completely coincidentally) two hand-themed enchantress GW characters.

Fun Facts: While this is the second MTGinktober appearance this year of a leaf-haired character, this is these specific characters' debuts.

Easter Eggs: This is the one giant salute to One Piece, one of my major influences and inspirations early on.  I tried to keep text out of this as much as possible, but the quote is my name in Japanese plus the JP-formatted date.

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FanArt_ink.ConnectEternalNight

MTGinktober plugs in and is stuck in interminable remote meetings about Day 26, "Connect Eternal Night," starring Professor Onyx!

I had the idea to make a Zoom meeting among different teacher-type creatures and planeswalkers, and the way they always feel like an eternal night(mare) of technical difficulties and ceaseless babble.  The trick was to make it feel in-universe, so as much as possible, I wanted to make the jargon feel non-high-tech, particularly in the error message--rather than connect to the internet, they connect to leylines.  The actual error message referenced proxies (fake Magic cards), so that's included with counters.  Note they cast messages (spell them, too) rather than type.

Fun Facts: While this is Professor Onyx's MTGinktober debut, Liliana has appeared several times, surely at least annually at this point, since she also appears as Lil'iana, too.  I try not to use text too much, but this scene really called for a lot of text for the little gags, so I just had to make sure not to blow it with my terrible handwriting.  The bear is Ruxa, Patient Professor, who is calmly listening to everyone drone on.

Easter Eggs: Many Zoom tropes.  Oldschool Azami isn't tech-savvy, so her handle is her email (Yahoo or Yale dot edu?  I'll never tell...).  Hand(?)-raising Julius is always opinionated and has to push how he's super qualified with M.D. in his display name (tempered by the casual first-name use).  Valenteen Deen of the Veen is the guy with the fun screenname, who can't wait to point out someone's muted.  Shu Yun is the guy who always forgets to unmute.  Trostani speaks ambiguously in the royal we, and prefers a different service, namely Discord.  Sigarda is always angling to be host.

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FanArt_ink.SplatVampire

MTGinktober splashes and nocturnally operates Day 25, "Splat Vampire," starring Mirri the Cursed!

Dude, woke up late again today, so we just had to blast through this one, but fortunately the idea was pretty straightforward with an abstract-ish background to boot, so we finished slightly ahead of schedule.  Originally I was thinking something with Olivia, but then something with Mirri getting with with a squirt gun or something, but anticipating a cat face might take a while, I just went with rain to spare as much time as possible--it ended up going quite easily.

Fun Facts: This is Mirri's second appearance, though she appeared as her normal timeline version then, and heavily stylized at then (she was my favorite interpretation of the four).

Easter Eggs: Though this is based on Kev Walker's classic portrayal, I took cues from Daren Bader for costuming clues when there were murky areas.

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FanArt_ink.ExtinctAutumn

MTGinktober dies off and falls on Day 24, "Extinct Autumn," starring Phage the Untouchable and Braids, Cabal Minion!

Man, I ended up waking up late so we just had to blast through this one a little more haphazardly than I had hoped for, as a sequel to our first fall fashion piece, though fortunately I had spent the early hours wrangling fashion references.  In any case, I was happy with Phage's outfit, at least, but kinda ran out of time to work on Braids's costume.  

Fun Facts:  This is both characters' first MTGinktober appearances.  I was always on the fence about drawing Braids since there's so little to go off of, and she's kinda creepy looking, and Phage is also a little tricky in the regular costuming department, but things lined up well enough here.  The conceit here is that they are both dead characters that kill people, so it's like they are extinct and agents of such.

Easter Eggs: The background is loosely from Autumnal Gloom, one of my favorite cards when it comes to atmosphere.

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FanArt_ink.LeakWizard

MTGinktober drips and spells Day 23, "Leak Wizard," starring Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar and Emry, Lurker of the Loch!

I've been wanting to draw Asmo for a while, and with a vaguely food-related prompt plus the surprising fact that she's a Wizard, we were finally in a position to do so.  I also like putting characters in more playful situations, so it was great to have her goofing on Emry for the shot.

Fun Facts: This is Emry's second MTGinktober appearance, though we almost had her star in this year's Loop prompt, for all the shenanigannary she's often involved with.

Easter Eggs: The soda is based on the Coca-Cola logo of course, but it says Nicol Bolas.  The background comes from one of my all-time favorite combo pieces, Famished Paladin, since I would think he of all people would be hungry for a picnic.

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FanArt_ink.OpenAngel

MTGinktober reveals and floats Day 22, "Open Angel," starring Exalted Angel!

I just couldn't sleep so I knew I was going into this one pretty tired and on severely limited time, so rather than a neat little scene of an Angel waiting for Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar to open her curbside eatery, we went with a dramatically more straightforward concept of a morph shell popping a real OG out.

Fun Facts: While I tend to try to give less famous legends time to shine, it's always neat when I can draw a non-legendary altogether, and this is one of the few that contains no legends at all, in fact--I had considered plopping Ixidor somewhere, but there just wasn't time.  Anyway, I loved getting back to some hatching on the armor thingy.  And I just got some new ink supplies in, so I'm eager to give those a spin as MTGinktober winds down.

Easter Eggs: The morph shell here is based on one of the very worst cards in all of Magic, Break Open.  Also, while we try to run a buttoned-up show around here, we relaxed that a bit here given the prompt.

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FanArt_ink.FuzzyWoods

MTGinktober sheds the firs populating Day 21, "Fuzzy Woods," starring Esika, God of the Tree and the Cat tokens from Esika's Chariot!

Oh, man, such a joy to do this one, a salute to one of my art heroes from way back.  I was so pleased to recall that Esika has that fuzzy trim as a part of her costume, so that made this concept a slam dunk since Algenpfleger has plenty of foresty arts to choose from for the background.  To supplement the jolly good fellow, we went with a more chipper than usual pose, even though I'm not one for random peace signs and such.

Fun Facts: While all featured cards are making their MTGinktober debuts here (almost entirely Standard cards, oddly enough), this is at long last our second Algenjam, the first of which was in 2016, our own debut year, where it's pretty much all fan art to everyone's favorite algae farmer.

Easter Eggs: Here's where it gets fun.  Our woods is comprised of spears from his Jumpstart Forest as well as trees found in Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest, Lair of the Hydra, Windswept Heath (ZNR Expedition, of course), Thalia's Lieutenant, and Skemfar Elderhall. 

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FanArt_ink.SproutStitch

MTGinktober grows and patches up Day 20, "Sprout Stitch," starring Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Woodfall Primus!

This was another tough one because I had two close, leading concepts, the second of which was Tymna and Tana hanging out, but ultimately this one won out since I had a the inkling of a cool composition from the other day.

Fun Facts: This is Melira's second MTGinktober appearance, again along with a giant co-star.  The composition here changed from what I had originally envisioned from the previous prompt, but all three combo pieces remain.  I'm also trying to balance detail and getting away from hatching so much, but the tree textures and the Treefolk shooting up from the ground invited some of that.

Easter Eggs: The background comes from Phyrexian Altar (Yigit Koroglu version), thus completing the combo with the two creatures as a sac outlet.

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FanArt_ink.LoopFear

MTGinktober infinites and intimidates Day 19, "Loop Fear," starring Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian!

There were a couple directions I was thinking for this one, like Saheeli doing a playful cat claw gesture with Felidar Guardian, or even a Melira jam that ultimately felt too similar composition-wise to a piece from a few days ago, but a DBZ spoof won the day.

Fun Facts: This is Saheeli's second MTGinktober appearance, both times have been with a cuddly counterpart, though this one more so. This is also our second DBZ spoof.  Notice I almost forgot Felidar Guardian's jewelry and pattern.

Easter Eggs: This was inspired by DBZ of course.  Our dyamic duo is doing the fusion dance, which creates a loop with their limbs, and I based Felidar Guardian's face on Korin, and Saheeli is based on Bulma and the background comes from Saheeli, the Gifted.  Researching this piece was a joy, as it reconnected me with one of the reasons I started in comics...that early inspiration was/is so dear.

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