Today's edition of "Sketches" is special, because we'll be previewing a new piece of artwork for a brand new, previously unseen card from this Fall's expansion set, Time Spiral. But first, let's go into some background on the artist, Barry Jaochim.

Artist Portfolio

Artist Barry Jaochim is a brand new addition to our Magic illustration team. He was commissioned to make pieces for Greater Dreadnaught, Otarian Razer, Ravnica in a Bottle, and Teferi's Return in addition to Engraved Outcropping, today's card.

Art Description

First, we write an art description for the artist. This gives artist ambiguous clues about what we're thinking of in our brains. We express these thoughts in small sentence fragments. The goal is to save time and money by keeping our descriptions to 50 words or less. Here's the art description we gave to Barry:

Color: Artifact creature
Location: Area of terrain
Action: Standing w/ 1 arm
Focus: The creature?
Mood: Self-explanatory

That's a lot of action, we hoped Barry could handle it! Reading the art description, you may think, "That doesn't sound like a land card." It wasn't -- at first! During the art creation process, it's not just the artist who goes through numerous changes and revisions. We also go through a couple ourselves. The card we initially commissioned for was "Ur-Golem Traveler."

Ur-Golem Traveler
4
Artifact Creature - Golem
If a spell or ability would have you look at the top card or cards of your library, you may return Ur-Golem Traveler to your hand.
4/3

Pretty good, eh? Being a long-time Magic player himself, Barry was quite excited when he heard he was going to be illustrating a card that had Constructed potential.

Here was his initial sketch submitted for Ur-Golem Traveler:



Oops! We wanted a metal golem, not a wood golem! Clearly something got lost in translation, and Barry strayed from our intent. We called him and informed him of his failure to adhere to our art direction. In addition, the loss of an arm here makes him look junky and weak -- certainly not a creature with power 4.

He came back with another attempt:



Now that’s a nice golem. But, as you can see, he looks too smooth and shiny. It just doesn't seem right juxtaposed against the jagged terrain. He's got the elements in place, but there's still work to be done. We asked him to make the golem seem a bit more elemental, a bit more "rough around the edges." On top of the flavor issue, Barry again suffered from deviating from our art description, which asked for a one-armed golem. This was beginning to become a slight problem, but one which Barry was eager to resolve.

Here's the revised sketch:



This is really good! We couldn't think of anything Barry could have done to improve it. Thing is, though, it doesn't look "primal" enough. When people open packs of Time Spiral they expect things to make sense, flavor-wise. Looking at this picture, no one's going to believe that this is a raw, unadulterated rock golem. They're going to look at the card and say, "Is this a misprint?" They'll question whether the card is real, or if it's some unfortunate printing mistake.

We sent this input off to Barry, and this is what he came up with:



Now this is more like it! Raw, primal, and in-your-face. Nobody's gonna question that this guy means business, and that he mixes business with pleasure, and that he finds hurting other creatures very pleasurable. Now, however, instead of looking like an independent entity, he looks like an extension of the landscape. In Barry's eagerness to make his creature more and more natural and primal, he crossed the line and went too far.

Fortunately, as it turned out, we had another card that needed art. That card was Engraved Outcropping, and Barry's latest sketch looked perfectly suited to be adapted and revised into this legendary land.

We sent our idea back to Barry, and his sketch revision shows how receptive he was to the slight change in plans.



Perfect! Barry's final sketch really felt like the land could communicate, even though it's a mere rock formation. And that's the mark of a true artist, to be able to take a relatively mundane theme and express oneself through it, "talking" to the viewer somehow.

The Finished Card Art

Here's the card when we were all finished, as you'll see this Fall when you crack open a pack of Time Spiral.

Discuss this article in the Magic: the Gathering Forums!

Related Stories

• Sketches: Walt Disney Concert Hall
• Making Magic: You Get to See Another Card
• You Make The Crap Land - Step 14

Today's edition of "Sketches" is special, because we'll be previewing a new piece of artwork for a brand new, previously unseen card from this Fall's expansion set, Time Spiral. But first, let's go into some background on the artist, Barry Jaochim.

Artist Portfolio

Artist Barry Jaochim is a brand new addition to our Magic illustration team. He was commissioned to make pieces for Greater Dreadnaught, Otarian Razer, Ravnica in a Bottle, and Teferi's Return in addition to Engraved Outcropping, today's card.

Art Description

First, we write an art description for the artist. This gives artist ambiguous clues about what we're thinking of in our brains. We express these thoughts in small sentence fragments. The goal is to save time and money by keeping our descriptions to 50 words or less. Here's the art description we gave to Barry:

Color: Artifact creature
Location: Area of terrain
Action: Standing w/ 1 arm
Focus: The creature?
Mood: Self-explanatory

That's a lot of action, we hoped Barry could handle it! Reading the art description, you may think, "That doesn't sound like a land card." It wasn't -- at first! During the art creation process, it's not just the artist who goes through numerous changes and revisions. We also go through a couple ourselves. The card we initially commissioned for was "Ur-Golem Traveler."

Ur-Golem Traveler
4
Artifact Creature - Golem
If a spell or ability would have you look at the top card or cards of your library, you may return Ur-Golem Traveler to your hand.
4/3

Pretty good, eh? Being a long-time Magic player himself, Barry was quite excited when he heard he was going to be illustrating a card that had Constructed potential.

Here was his initial sketch submitted for Ur-Golem Traveler:



Oops! We wanted a metal golem, not a wood golem! Clearly something got lost in translation, and Barry strayed from our intent. We called him and informed him of his failure to adhere to our art direction. In addition, the loss of an arm here makes him look junky and weak -- certainly not a creature with power 4.

He came back with another attempt:



Now that’s a nice golem. But, as you can see, he looks too smooth and shiny. It just doesn't seem right juxtaposed against the jagged terrain. He's got the elements in place, but there's still work to be done. We asked him to make the golem seem a bit more elemental, a bit more "rough around the edges." On top of the flavor issue, Barry again suffered from deviating from our art description, which asked for a one-armed golem. This was beginning to become a slight problem, but one which Barry was eager to resolve.

Here's the revised sketch:



This is really good! We couldn't think of anything Barry could have done to improve it. Thing is, though, it doesn't look "primal" enough. When people open packs of Time Spiral they expect things to make sense, flavor-wise. Looking at this picture, no one's going to believe that this is a raw, unadulterated rock golem. They're going to look at the card and say, "Is this a misprint?" They'll question whether the card is real, or if it's some unfortunate printing mistake.

We sent this input off to Barry, and this is what he came up with:



Now this is more like it! Raw, primal, and in-your-face. Nobody's gonna question that this guy means business, and that he mixes business with pleasure, and that he finds hurting other creatures very pleasurable. Now, however, instead of looking like an independent entity, he looks like an extension of the landscape. In Barry's eagerness to make his creature more and more natural and primal, he crossed the line and went too far.

Fortunately, as it turned out, we had another card that needed art. That card was Engraved Outcropping, and Barry's latest sketch looked perfectly suited to be adapted and revised into this legendary land.

We sent our idea back to Barry, and his sketch revision shows how receptive he was to the slight change in plans.



Perfect! Barry's final sketch really felt like the land could communicate, even though it's a mere rock formation. And that's the mark of a true artist, to be able to take a relatively mundane theme and express oneself through it, "talking" to the viewer somehow.

The Finished Card Art

Here's the card when we were all finished, as you'll see this Fall when you crack open a pack of Time Spiral.

Discuss this article in the Magic: the Gathering Forums!

Related Stories

• Sketches: Walt Disney Concert Hall
• Making Magic: You Get to See Another Card
• You Make The Crap Land - Step 14