Frontier Guide!

Terese Nielsen's original art is pretty cool, but I had to make this borderless. Also, I wanted the art to be a little more fairytale-ish for an EDH deck I'm making that's all old border or full art.

The original art for Teysa is actually pretty good, but still it can't compete with borderless full art ;)

For the original image that I was using had a lot of red and blue in it. I find that when you add gold text boxes and colored mana symbols that they can often clash with the colors of the image. Of course the art director at Wizards knows this, and this is why you will see that the color scheme of the card art matches the borders and the mana symbols in modern cards. 

When making my own alters I've found that the selective color filter in Photoshop helps a lot. In the Vish Kal I've removed most of the red and blue to make it more black and white. Also, I've used the most prominent color as the background color in the rules text box. 

I originally got into altered art after trying and failing to make proxies look as good as their digital counterparts. This is probably the first card I've done that actually lives up to the standards that I've always dreamed about ever since I saw my first digital proxies. 

I'm continuing to work on the borderless cards. Its funny how hard this process is and how easy it is to make mistakes, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Seems a little odd to see such a pimped out common, but I need to practice on cheaper cards until I perfect the process. As you can see though things look pretty good so far. 

Yo yo. I'm starting to get into borderless cards. I've always shied away from them because I couldn't figure out how to make the corners of the text boxes round. Turns out that I can use acrylic paint to make them look fantastic. Here's my first borderless card:

Another reason I prefer this look is that the images look less cluttered. 

Here are a few alters that I did for my blink EDH deck. Portcullis is one of my favorite cards ever and I love this art for it!

Another one from Theros!

Kresh the Bloodbraided!

Another sweet general!

Here's a new general for my blink deck. I'm really looking forward to Born of the Gods. I bet there's gonna be a lot of sweet cards to alter. 

BEHOLD! I unveil full art transparent border cards!

I feel like every other alter I've made has just been a warm up for these guys!

I'm really excited about the technique. My first few alters I did in this style I removed part of the border and made it look like the art was popping out of the card, but I've since realized that keeping the whole border transparent is much better.  

You see, the border actually communicates valuable information, namely what color the card is and that it is, in fact, a magic card. When the border is eliminated you lose this information. However, borders conceal beautiful pictures. Designers have this problem when making apps for mobile phones--a lot of information and too little space. One solution is to use transparency. 

Another thing I love about this technique is how smooth and uniform I can make the surface of the card. Take a look at the light reflecting off this card. 

No added thickness either! These are truly the best alters I've ever created. 

There are a few quirks I'm working out in photoshop. I'm still trying to find the best way to optimize the transparency effect. I think in some places I use too much and in some places I use too little. Getting that right is a bit of an art. 

 

Over all I love the feel of these legendary creatures. They are truly epic.