Alter Art
Digital painting
Design
Overview
role
Artist
tech
Adobe Photoshop
Affinity Photo
Sketchbook
I'm a big fan of board and card games. I've played a lot in my day, but I'm particularly fond of the trading card game Magic the Gathering. It's a fun way to spend an evening with friends.
A big part of the game is the ability to customize the pool of cards you bring to the game. In fact, the game's main appeal is its ability to allow all players to bring their different expressions of gameplay style and tastes into an arena of competition. Some people (including myself) have taken this a step further by creating their own art based off of some of the cards in the game for ultimate customization! We refer to these as alter cards, since you alter the very art that comes with the card in the game. I've made alters of different cards from Magic the Gathering that are important to me and my friends on occasion, and I'd love to show you some of my work here.
My Role and Responsibilities
Digital artist
In this project, I leveraged my art skills to create these illustrations of some of my favorite cards and characters from the history of the game. In most of these, I started with thumbnail sketches of different ideas for how I wanted to render these cards, then took them to a linework drawing and colored them in their different styles. However, some of these are modeled after friends, where I have to combine the thumbnail vision with interpretive portraits into my process.
Impact
I have a lot of fun making these alters, and I think it's important to highlight this kind of work in my portfolio. I am a strong believer in having passion in every endeavor, and using that passion to take the project's quality to the next level. These projects taught me a lot about the digital rendering process and graphic design, and I don't think I would have ever learned that if I wasn't passionate enough about the hobbies and interests in my life to pursue this idea.