Vampiric Tutor

So this is the first card that does not have the borders etc. I used toothpick to get the paint from the name of the card and the type of the card. When I was trying to get paint off the 'instant' it was rather dry already so I wasn't that successful with that. I still did not manage to mix the right colors for this card...and I forgot about the blood I wanted to paint on the knife...so maybe later.

Trinket mage fetching for Sensei's Divining Top

Repost frommy university projects blog

Background was the first step, now I tried the 'content'. I did not want the top to be so bright as on the original image so in the end it ended up really dark. I wanted it to be dark so the focus would still be on the Trinket Mage nor the top.

In real life it looks much better. The scan though shows how inaccurate I was when doing this and what needs to be improved.

Experimenting with magic card altering

Repost from univstsu blog

After manga girl I decided to paint on Sensei's Divining Top. What I had in mind was this cards background to become pink(ish) with sakura trees and petals. This idea was already realized by someone - Yawgmoth - but I wanted to do this a year ago already. Now the time has come.

What I wanted to try and figure out is what base color I should use and what should I do to get a clear pink color on that base color. I ended up mixing ombre and buff titanium, but any shade of grey would work I guess.

After this coat I started adding more layers - pink. It resulted in a really beautiful color. It was so bright I had to do this process once again to make the color look dull.

When this was done I tried painting the sakuras and some petals. I finalized it the next day.

My altering 'history' - look back

Quite a long time ago, Squop-kun mentioned that I could try altering a Magic: The Gathering card. He supported me for a long time and allowed me to start and learn how to do alters the way it should be done.

I never really tried painting anything and doing alters seemed as a challenge. Not to mention that I wasn't really sure how to even mix colors. I later found out that I actually have good knowledge base for this coming from mixing colors for website creation. But still mixing numbers and paint is different.

My first ever try was on Gustrider Exuberant. I just picked a random card (I actually used this as a proxy) and tried to 'paint' on it. I used a bit of water, some acrylic paint and a brush (obviously). I wasn't really sure what to do so I tried to do some brush strokes and see what would come out of it.

You can clearly see that I encountered several problems. First what I realized is the fact that I would probably need to do something with the borders or other parts of the card I want to paint on. Because if left as it is you can clearly see what is underneath. And the second obvious problem was color matching.
Looking at it now, I can tell that I had many more problems than just these two. But I wasn't really sure how to solve such problems. You can see that I have a lot of paint there. It is far from being a clean alter. That is because I did not do more layers of the paint. (I actually did, but it wasn't well done)
One of the other problems I wasn't aware how to solve was the paint protruding where it shouldn't.

But at this point, after my first alter I was concentrating more on how make the paint behave the way I want. I also had some real issues with figuring out how to mix a red color for Executioner's Capsule. This was my fourth alter (I think) and it looked way better. Matching all these colors was a pure hell. At least that's what I thought at that time. Nothing prepared me for the worst colors (for me) ever that can be found on Sorin Markov.

After feeling a bit more confidant with altering I wanted to try my own alter. For that I chose Fallen Angel.

After finishing this one, it seemed that I should start right from the beginning. The paint was thick once again and there were parts I just couldn't figure out how to paint. But still it was an achievement. I had problems with the cards surface. The paint did not want to stay on the card and I encountered this problem with some older cards not in good condition.

Some time later I started doing commissions. Some of my borderless alters got good feedback and people actually bought them. While doing more and more alters I found out that trying to get certain hues of brown or some other color is not that easy as it seems. But the colors came out ok usually.



At this point I also started to use a toothpick to get rid of some paint going rogue and I started to master the technique of erasing the original card print color. This also meant that I bought some artistic tape and started using it to protect the parts of the card I did not want to erase. (see picture below). When all the job is done, you need to seal the paint. For that I use acrylic spray and it works fine, but it took me a long time to find one that works well.



Now I see that altering cards is becoming an art. No seriously, the alters some people do like poxy, klug, demonium, masamune, sandreline (and many others) are not only awesome but these alters are taking the whole altering to a new level. If you never heard of these people you better check them out. Good starting point might be Star City Games and the monthly posts by Jeremy about new alters. Or you can browse the alters at mtgsalvation.com.

I try to make my alters clean and well done. With each alter I try to improve and one day I might be able to do my own personalized alters that people would like as well. I try from time to time, but in the end I see that this kind of alters need much more work and improvement. So I try to start with small alterations...



One of popular themes is 'anime girl'. People like them for some reason. They are usually half naked in a sexy pose. I tried some as well. And 'tried' is the word where it ended. Not so long time ago I found out that many people when doing such alters copy a image using carbon transfer. This makes it way easier I can imagine. I never tried this yet...

As for me and the anime girls. I would really need something with what I could be much more precise than a brush. I tried different brushes, different fluidity of the paint and still I can't get the details done well. But I'm improving and one day I might find a way how to become better at doing this.



Thanks for reading. If you are interested in seeing my other alters you can check my picasa album located => here. I'm far from being good at doing alters, but I'm slowly getting there. And if you want to check some masterpieces, check star city games.

Swords to Plowshares

Tournament prize

Bayou

Mountain

Tournament Prize

Liliana Vess + Liliana Vess

My own version of Liliana Vess and original Vess extended

Altering some cards for my EDH mana base

I haven't done alters in a long time, but now starting once again I see all my mistakes. This will allow me to get better. It seems that I lost my patience too, but I can work on that once again. Here are some lands and Darksteel Ingot for my EDH.

I like the Ingot. The colors are good. The lands could still be better, the swamp needs even MORE work. But I'm satisfied, I got better even though there's so much more to improve. It isn't that bad^^. It looks good in real life.

Merchant Scroll (FoW)

After seeing Sandreline's awesome Mental Misstep with Sensei's Diving Top I was wondering what else could be done. If you never heard of her you better check her work out (hint). Well, couldn't really come up with something but I bought some Merchant Scrolls from some player who came to participate in Extended tournament.

After few games of playing against a blue highlander decks and being really annoyed by Force of Will I had my idea. So what would you say about this?

I have another Merchant Scroll to spoil, so I might actually experiment with it in the near future. But for that I should do a little research...so tell me, what is the mostly searched spell by merchant scroll in your case?

Alter? Horizon Spellbomb doodle...

Horizon Spellbomb - an artifact that I can get from the graveyard and play it once again, sac it for a card and a land and be happy. But it has a slight problem. It looks terrible. From my point of view it has really awful illustration and the new artifact design is something I despise since 8th edition so I try to avoid it as much as possible. But well with new cards being printed it does not really work that well.

I tried opening Adobe Photoshop and tried to figure out what I could do with the card. I painted the background with that terrible green. Then I tried different hues of the color. Then I started to play with the yellow/white glowing circles but it did not really help much. In the end I painted red glow out of the red gems in the bomb. But it still looked terrible. But at least something was going on on the card.

Anyway I'm too lazy to take a brush and try to paint on the card so I took few felt-tip pens and tried doodling. It looked a bit better. But it was still too bright and too clean and such, eh. So I smudged few of the colors all over the card to make it look much more messy.

Now I'm quite satisfied, I managed to get it as messy as I could ^_^.

Pimp my deck alters

I build a Glissa highlander deck few days ago. Since then I played many games with it. It works nice and there might be changes to the decklist. But the one thing that I don't really like about the deck is - the white borders of my Nihil Spellbomb and Japanese Vampiric Tutor. This might seem as a silly thing but it really doesn't look good.

So well, the solution?

Alter the cards!

More basic lands

Dragon Guard City Stronghold

L5R Alters

In the last few days I started working on L5R alters, it's nothing special just the borders were erased and replaced with what could possible be on the image...
Here's one of them. (if you click on the first image it will get to the others as well)