Community Project #4 on my list is to create something that has all the artists’ contact information easily accessible online. Getting in touch with artists to buy original paintings, have cards signed, or, really, just to be in touch is oddly difficult. Currently, we have four lists online, and frankly, they’re just not that awesome.

1. This list from 2011, updated on July 29, 2012
2. This one, from 2003, updated sparingly (Though Matt Cavotta himself actually updated it at least once.)
3. This one from 2004, started by . . . well, those in the know should realized who started that thread.
4. This one as well

None of these lists has all of the artists, and the information is crazy-out-of-date due to modern communication methods.

If you don’t see an artist, the final resort after searching for hours online is to send Wizards of the Coast a physical letter to forward onto the artist. A quick pro tip: If you’re looking for a Portal Three Kingdoms artist, don’t waste the stamp. They don’t have any of those contacts anymore—it was all outsourced.

I would love if a few of you would scour this list and fill in the gaps. The most important thing about this list is to create a central resource now in January of 2013 and update all the other lists. By doing so, tournament organizers and local store owners can easily contact artists.

If you have an artist who lives within fifty miles, offer him or her $100 and a table to sit at in a Pro Tour Qualifier for a morning. Have the artist charge $1 for a play set of signatures, and that money will pile up beyond print sales and original paintings. I would love a regional list of artists that could be checked out—so the same ten artists don’t go to every Grand Prix. That’s a longer explanation of why there are usual suspects, but I’ll cover that in a future article.

For your Pro Tour Qualifier, for your Grand Prix Trial, and even for your prerelease, if there’s an artist nearby, invite that artist! What’s the worst that could happen? A “no”? In that case, you’re exactly where you were. If a few players talk to their store owners, it’s not that terribly difficult.

In my most recent article for This Here Site HereI made a reference to a movie deal between Hasbro and Universal Pictures that was supposed to have generated scads of big-budget movies but thingsdidn't go quite as planned. I believe I even made a joke in the article about the poorly receivedDungeons & Dragons movie being the reason a possible Magic: The Gathering movie fell through.

I don't necessarily have to eat my words, but they're tasty when dipped in chocolate.

 

 

Hasbro is press releasing, Daily MTG is Magic Arcana-ing, and Wizards personalities from Mark Rosewater to Doug Beyer are "we can't say anything else"-ing about a new deal for a Magic movie. (Personally I'm disappointed that we haven't seen a follow-up question and one of Doug Beyer'spatented "no comment" landscapes on A Voice for Vorthos yet, but so it goes.)

The Magic movie isn't the only Vorthos news to crop up in the last couple of weeks. Wizards is hatching plans with a firm in New Zealand to make Magic: The Gathering coins. That makes two announcements for non-game Magic stuff in as many weeks. Let's take a look.

I once read that only a small percentage of people who actually click on an article ever scroll down past the first screen they see.

Even then, an even smaller number make it more than halfway through an article, and the number of people who make it to the very end is but a fraction of the people who originally clicked on the article.

That makes your guys' (and gals') response to the planeswalker power ranking survey all that much more awesome. Hundreds of people responded, and only a few people submitted "BS ballots" of all tens or all fives. There was even a submission where someone put Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded at ten.

So today, as promised, I'm going to go over the results from the survey and look into where you all think Kiora, the Crashing Wave sits. Then I'm going to take an initial stab at a Modern RUG Kiora list to start testing out for Grand Prix Richmond.

I hate the man who married my mother.

My father died in an accident when I was too young to remember him. My mother always shied away from telling me what happened and I believe she instructed the farmhands not to relate the story. But even as a child I knew he'd had an accident with a load of grain, or more likely rocks cleared from a new field. I remember once she screamed at me when I played near some of the wagons that were full after a harvest, pulling me into her arms and running me away. She never told me what happened to my father, but I knew.

Sometimes I just like to page through our internal tool called Multiverse. It's our database that R&D relies on to help with the development of Magic. From art to cards it contains lots and lots of data. So being able to flip through cards and then look through the iterations of the art in the system is a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Normally, we will see a few iterations per card, maybe around five, for the pieces of art. The last three tend to be color corrections and adjustments, which aren't that exciting and aren't Arcana worthy. But then sometimes we discover a rich look through the evolution of an art piece.

That's what I found when I looked with Karametra, God of Harvests.