Anyone Else Not Like the Art Direction of Dnd

The dilemma: two production lines, two fine art direction styles, ane company

One of the things that has long been a source of irritation for me is the inconsistent art direction of Wizards of the Coast's two major game products – Magic: The Gathering and D&D.  Information technology strikes me as weird that One thousand:TG and D&D are both product lines owned and operated by WotC, and notwithstanding they have such wildly different approaches to art direction. (To be honest, information technology seems similar a bit of a branding issue to me, simply then what the hell do I know. I'm but an indie publisher.)

This has become top-of-mind recently for a few reasons. First, despite both of u.s.a. being Magic: The Gathering fans, my married man follows the design and spoiler blogs much more than closely than I do. (In that he reads them and I don't.) So he tends to evidence me previews of art that he knows I will either find hilarious or objectionable. (Or both.) Recently, he'due south been showing me a lot more than of the latter, alas.

Second, as I gear up for this year's GenCon, I proceed thinking about terminal yr and how the release of D&D 5th Edition wound upwards existence a pretty large deal for me – despite that I still accept non purchased whatsoever 5E products or even played the game. I got to take lunch with Mike Mearls and discuss the future direction of D&D and D&D art direction – something which wasway encouraging.

And everything that I've seen, at least observing from a distance, coming out of the new D&D line has been pretty great and inclusive! Like check out these illustrations that come from the starter ready:

Pretty awesome, correct? Fully clothed female person characters that have personality, agency, and aren't pointlessly objectified. And there's lots more examples of this sort of thing!

Which, again, is baffling when you lot consider that Magic… Magic can't decide what the hell it'south doing – if they want to do better past women, or exclude them, or have more of them but sexier, or just get back to their old atrocious ways and forget nearly trying to improve their depictions of women at all. As someone who has just seriously gotten into Magic in the last two years, it's been weird and off-putting to spotter.

So while I realize that the plural of chestnut is not information, it'due south something that has bothered me sufficiently that I thought it would be worth taking a look at what Magic has been upwards to recently that has been getting under my skin.

M:TG'south recent art direction: I phone call shenanigans

I've written in the by about how I find the trend toward better art in Magic expansions to exist (mostly) encouraging. Particularly in Khans of Tarkir – in that location were some really dandy illustrations of non-sexualized powerful women doing fantastically gonzo awesome shit! Still, while Khans may take done much better in cut down on the bullshit sexism, they did and then at the cost of actually – yannow – depicting whatever women.

Still. I was hopeful that the overall trend of non fucking up at depicting women might continue! But alas, no joy.

Start in that location came Magic: Origins – a core set up focused on, well, the origins of the planeswalkers – characters that are meant to be role player avatars. Being a core set, there are frequently a lot of reprinted cards, which tends to mean reprints of old art. So it'south not surprising that some old awful art (like the boobplate sideboob in Act of Treason) is sneaking through. But don't worry, in that location's nonetheless plenty of brand-new awful to be found – particularly with their handling of female planeswalkers.

Encounter, planeswalkers in Magic: Origins are actually double-sided. They beginning out as a Legendary Creature, then when they meet a certain condition you turn them over and they become a planeswalker. In theory, pretty absurd, right? Y'all get a chance to see and play with familiar planeswalkers in their pre- and post-planeswalker states. The problem is, as always, the execution. Take, for instance, Liliana – one of Magic'due south oldest female planeswalkers. Liliana is a pretty classic example of the evil adult female who is evil considering she is sexay (or mayhap she is sexay because she is evil?). But somehow WotC dug deep and found a mode to make Liliana even worse:

On the left, y'all meet Liliana in her pre-planeswalker state. That'southward right, immature, innocent, demure, and not even remotely sexual. On the correct is the art for Liliana once she becomes a planeswalker – definitely one of themore sexual Liliana'southward that I've seen. Because women with power are evil and evil women are sexy. Or something.

Sadly, it's not unique to Liliana – whose color is blackness, which has always been the color of "evil". Nissa Revane doesn't fare any better, and she is apparently old green. Just similar Liliana, she gets to wear apparel when she's not a planeswalker, merely and so equally presently every bit she'due south a planeswalker? BOOM. CLEAVAGE WINDOW.

What the e'er loving fuck, Magic? Are you trying to say that women can only have ability so long as they are sexually pleasing to a (presumed) straight male viewer? Because that's pretty fucked upward, specially for a game that claims to be friendly for children.

Information technology gets even worse when you expect at more than fringey 1000:TG products that WotC is working on releasing, like Mod Masters – a limited edition set that will be reprinting some of the most popular cards that have fallen out of legality with the standard format. These are just directly up reprints of old cards with old fine art, which means that there is someextra shitty sexist cards like these gems:

Human, that adult female in Blades of Velis Vel is possibly the most Liefeld-ian piece of Magic art that I have ever seen – obscured hands and feat, impossibly sparse torso, improbable levels of spine curvation, and ridiculous 90s-ish costume. All it needs is some AWSUM POUCHES!!ane! to complete the ensemble.

Meanwhile, Indomitable Angel is both weird and baffling. Is she wearing armor, or is she really fabricated of metallic and is simply naked? Does she actually have an 8-pack? What is up with her shoulders? Are those actually fastened to her boobs? Does she have metal boob-pauldrons? WHY ARE BOOB-PAULDRONS Fifty-fifty A THING??

But even Dogged Angel isn't equally disruptive every bit Peppery Autumn. It took a solid two minutes of staring at it for me to even figure out what was going on until I realized that it was a human being woman falling upside down so that the artist could get in both upskirt AND underboob without the unwanted endeavor of trying to squeeze in humanizing details like a face. Considering who cares most portraying her equally a person near to meet a grim fate so long as nosotros can ogle her tits before she messes them up by falling into lava?

Ugh. Just ugh.

Simply for me, the shit icing on the shit cake are these two carte du jour previews taken from From the Vault: Angels – a limited edition 15 menu set reprinting one-time angels. 5 out of the 15 cards are even getting new art, which I would ordinarily take equally an encouraging sign! That is until my husband showed me these:

Nope. That'due south not old artwork, folks. That's NEW artwork. New artwork which took the old character designs and faithfully translated them into something just equally bad, or possibly even a fleck worse than the old art:

I KNOW that I adopt the one-time Angel of Wrath to the new art. Certain the boobplate is just equally stupid and obvious phallic symbol is notwithstanding obvious and phallic. Merely at to the lowest degree the old art doesn't make her look like she's five seconds away from humping the damn sword. As for the Affections of Fury, I get back and along. It's definitely artist that the artist got lazy when it came to the non-sexy bits – obscured easily and feet anyone? But at least the old art looks like she's reallydoing something – namely flying. Whereas the new art shows her… uh… vamping? Power posing? I'm not really sure what, to be honest.

Conclusion: I don't know what the fuck to call up

And then all of this nonsense has left me feeling very conflicted about the state of Magic: The Gathering and whether I desire to continue supporting information technology with my dollaz. I enjoy the occasional sealed-pack event, which is pretty much how I've acquired near of my collection. And despite the problems that the Magic partition of WotC seems to accept with not really failing at depicting women, I was willing to cut them some slack given that things overall seemed to (slowly) be getting better. Simply given the corporeality of center-rolling I've washed lately, I'grand starting to question my willingness to continue turning a blind centre.

Seriously – I go that it can be hard to change the direction of a flagship product equally large and entrenched as Magic: The Gathering. Simply the cognition and feel on how to practise so already exists IN THEIR OWN DAMN COMPANY. Someone on the Magic team needs to pick up the damn telephone and take a serious conversation with the fine art team for D&D already.

(As for myself, this has me regretting that I didn't go on all my old data on art from Magic sets for previous posts about Magic on this blog. I know it would be quite the undertaking, merely I'one thousand thinking it could be pretty interesting (if incredibly fourth dimension-consuming) to compile numbers for every set for the final three or and then years so equally to be able to have some real numbers regarding trends.)