Fun_BigLittle

This is MTGinktober's day 21 post, "Big," starring my absolute favorite monogreen creature, one of the very first rares I ever opened back when I started, Silvos, Rogue Elemental. Going into this piece, I didn't realize how nondescript he looks--I'm not sure he has a face--so he ended up being pretty challenging to capture...

But anyway, I knew I wanted someone smaller in the foreground to contrast with his size, but who? Well, if I'm including my all-time favorite greenybopper heartthrob, then I had to include Mortivore, my all-time favorite creature, period (and perhaps the absolute first rareature I ever opened). But this was the Silvos show today, so I needed to sneak Morti in there, especially since it wouldn't be a clear comparison. Regardless, I did want to push Silvos's size anyway, so a human would be best, but how could I sneak Mortivore in there? Tie him in thematically. Thus the foregrounder had to be fellow green legend, Saffi Eriksdotter, of Lhurgoyphobic fame. So if you look at her boots and bracers, I incorporated all 8 type-named Lhurgoyfs (as of Kaladesh), including the Ice Age and 8E versions of the namesake star/star. Her knee pads are the Ice Age expansion symbol, of course.

The story I came up with in my head about this image is that Saffi was fleeing the Lhurgoyf, yelled back to Hans to run, too, but he ended up getting caught and eaten. Stricken with survivor's remorse, Saffi eventually decides to jump off a great cliff in the forest to atone for her cowardice in not staying back to help Hans. Her sorrow and pain are so great that in the middle of her fall, her spark ignites and she planeswalks to safety. She eventually teams up with Silvos and they decide to protect the deep forest from poachers and to assist anyone lost or in danger. Silvos will never be tamed, but he will obediently take command from Saffi, in whom he sees a hungry, honed power greater than his own.

I am super wiped out from these MTGinktobers, so when I found out (kinda expected, after "Big") that Day 22 was "little," I was relieved cuz it meant I might be able to do a smaller piece. This Metropolis Sprite got out of hand and while I had just wanted to draw her huge next to a d6 or something for a reality-check scale, I kept seeing more fun stuff we could incorporate at bite size.

For instance, there's an M15-bordered Japanese Mortivore (doesn't exist), a Champions of Kamigawa d20 (which doesn't exist, to my knowledge), and a From the Vault: Lore Dark Depths, curled to kingdom come, in reference to the famously horrendous and dangerous foiling process they use for these supposedly extremely special edition printings. Since college, I've enjoyed hiding my signature into my art so that it adds to, rather than detracts from a piece (and it's harder to remove or notice by nefarious people)--this was heavily inspired by studying Will Eisner's designs--so I did have to puzzle over how to hide it in the wing. The d20 hosts my favorite number at top, 13, using the old dice font.

Oh, I also recorded myself inking some of the wing, by the way. The full video ended up going for 15 minutes, but Instagram has a 1 minute version. Wish I knew how to time lapse...I'd like to do some video stuff, including streaming when we return to digital...kinda want to color a couple of these...

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FanArt_ink.Boots

MTGinktober pulls itself up into Day 3, "Boots," starring Saffi Eriksdotter!

All right, I had a couple of ideas for this one, and I coulda gone either way, but I just gave it to Saffi, since her boots are a little more key to her character, as opposed to another character who just has boots.  Plus she wouldn't need any additional boot-related card, it could just focus on her and her narrative.

Fun Facts:  This is Saffi's fourth MTGinktober appearance, starting with her original, MTGinktober AU narrative as a Lhurgoyf hunter.

Easter Eggs:  As always, her boots contain every Lhurgoyf (creature) presently in the game, including--Mortivore, Barrowgoyf, Cantivore, Cognivore, Detritivore, Lhurgoyf, Magnivore, Necrogoyf, Nethergoyf, Polygoyf, Pyrogoyf, Terravore, Tarmogoyf, and Urborg Lhurgoyf, though I suppose I missed the Playtest one...maybe next time, Chimney Goyf.  The background is from the Remastered Ryan Pancoast version.  The bottom of her shoes have the Future Sight creature logo and Arena's companion logo.

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FanArt_ink.Camp

MTGinktober plans derivative activities for Day 22, "Camp," starring Spike, Tournament Grinder; Vorthos, Steward of Myth; and Lord Windgrace (Tatamepi version)!

This year is definitely about a lot of really similar prompts, so might as well make a sequel to our old Camping illustration, though Camp Wedonwannamull has upgraded its facilities (or Thalia and Tyvar just paid for the hardmode experience last time.  Anyway, I loved reading stories people post of their learning Magic while away at camp, so I wanted to draw a scene like that, where clearly only Vorthos is into it (see her various camp bracelets) while Spike is just constantly jamming games.

Fun Facts:  This is Spike's fourth MTGinktober appearance--and she's since learned not to play lands in front, at least as a courtesy to Vorthos, who makes her second appearance, her debut being with Spike last year.  And it's easy to scoff at Vorthos helping Spike prep her perfect 75, but she's instrumental in choosing the most thematic Basics.  Also we've done pretty well this year, but on the 22nd day, we've finally got an unmaskable ink smear (see Vorthos).  The cat's inspired by these charming, responsibly-nagging cat illustrations I've been seeing on Twitter.

Easter Eggs: As a sequel, theres there's continuity with the last Camp-themed illo--see the camp's shirt (unclear why Vorthos wears her costume to sleep) and six-timer Thalia, Guardian of Thraben's snoozing in the background with a familiar-symbol eye mask. Speaking of familiar symbols, her swooshy B (ß)'s on her pillow--campers BYOP.  There's a Clock of DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! and the cards are Mortivore, naturally, and Regal Bunnicorn (testing that */* matchup)--Vorthos like bunnies, Spike prefers the power of the best Lhurgoyf--and 七原しえ red Swamps for the edge.

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FanArt_ink.Match

 MTGinktober pairs up Day 8, "Match," starring Saffi Eriksdotter and Hans Eriksson!

 I wasn't entirely sure what to do on this one, but I knew I didn't want to do something with a fire-based character or anything like that, so we went with some parallel outfits in the Erikssiblings, playfully mimicking the local monster that supposedly haunts these grounds, meanwhile they embrace their playful rivalry with matching Erik's Fave hats.   Fun Facts: I forgot the raw inks pic, but it's the least important progress shot. Anyway, this is Saffi's second MTGinktober appearance, but her brother's debut.  I felt oddly attached to these guys while drawing them, imagining their last words to each other--I rarely have emotional reactions to Magic cards/lore, but these two hanging out, having a great time, and then she watches Hans get eaten and then she gets jolted away...it's pretty heavy.  The pose is reminiscent of our Huatli piece, Fierce, but this one's a bit more playful all around, so knowing their fates hurt a bit.    

 Easter Eggs: Just like Saffi's last appearance, I decorated her (and Hans's) leather etchings with various Lhurgoys (though a different line-up and placement this time).  For Hans, his right arm has Mortivore, and his left arm has Necrogoyf.  Saffi's right arm has Ryan Barger's Tarmogoyf, her left arm has Justin Murray's, her torso has Alter of the Goyf, her right leg has Pete Venters's Ice Age version, and her left leg his 8th Edition version.  On top of that, it looks like I had parallel thoughts on the leather engravings with Ryan Pancoast, whose versions informed these. 
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FanArt_ink.Mask

MTGinktober covers up for Day 31, "Mask," starring Sakashima the Imposter, hobbling along in his new position as Kamigawa's chief regional Happy Mask Salesman!

I wanted to draw Nissa for this one, actually. I had this concept of doing an homage to that famous scene in Ghost in the Shell where the cyborg's head/face splits open--I wanted to draw that but with a Magic character. Drawing Nissa as the star was my cold calculation on how to make it more appealing (and slightly more disturbing). The hook was that this was more of a robotic mask. That was my leading idea until I convinced myself that was the easy way out--it's a female character, a Planeswalker, one of the most popular of the main Magic cast, a reference to a popular movie...this whole "selling out" thing has really been eating at me. This would have felt really hollow. I should have done it.

The only other idea seriously competing with this one was my absolute first idea, a reference to Skeletal Grimace, where Nissa was pulling off the skin of her face to reveal a cackling skeleton. That felt just a little too disturbing, such that it might turn people off, so I favored the GITS idea. I had also considered another Kaya and Koth piece with them reenacting the famous The Dark Knight Returns shot of a hulking Batman and lithe Robin jumping in unison and wearing similar masks, but I wasn't sold on the concept, considering I already teamed them last year, so it's like, what the only black characters can only exist together? That felt cheap and dumb, but I don't know if I was overthinking it. I've done repeat teams this year (and imagine I"ll do so again eventually), but they were thematically linked. The only link here would be that they were black, and that felt exploitative.

So anyway, my back-up plan all throughout these waffling debates was doing a take on Sakashima with a bunch of homages in the masks as our final send-off to this year in Inktober. Even better, fusing him with the Happy Mask Salesman from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. So, since I couldn't convince myself that any of the above mentioned ideas were the way to go, we settled on this admittedly unimpressive concept. This was an underwhelming finale, for sure. I knew it would be: it's a not-necessarily attractive character, it's a dude, and it's perilously close to the original art's composition, so it represented multiple levels of mediocrity. I knew the previous Liliana piece would do well, but felt that good old, self-sabotaging urge pressuring me not to employ Nissa again because it just felt too easy and I felt cheap enough this year.

Fun Facts: During research, I rediscovered that there are actually two official interpretations of Sakashima out there. Just like with Stuffy Doll, Udon Crew also made a go at this creature for Magic Online, so I ended up using the original's body and the avatar's face since it was considerably clearer to read than the card version.

Easter Eggs: So we already know it's overall an homage to the Happy Mask Salesman, whose face has become the mask Sakashima holds in his hand, which the shapeshifter created right after he murdered the maskmonger to get this gig. The mask in the back at top, facing away from camera is Zero. Appropriately enough for this coerced piece, right next to Z is the infamous Dragon Mask of legend--they say Magic was forced to use this art under pressure from the art director. To the right is Uba Mask and to Uba's right, just peeking out from behind the backpack is Vicky Vasquez, who is overlapped by Illusionary Mask. Further left is the Happy Mask Salesman's Mario mask of course, followed by Ivory Mask, which seems to have Cho-Manno's fountain in it, I discovered. On the bottom of the Imposter's pack is Mortivore and the old Phyrexian mask, which is most often seen as a logo or costume detail among Phyrexia-aligned creatures and most famously on display as the Apocalypse expansion symbol. Between those two is Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker. And rounding out the collection at the bottom of Sakashima's sleeve, replacing his student's mask, is the mask of The Blue Spirit from Avatar. I noticed Sakashima's masks all have little seals on their foreheads with cryptic characters on them, which seemed like an important detail, so I used each one to spell out my name in Japanese as well as piecemeal convey the date information.

Not normal,

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