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PROCESS THREAD- Throne of Eldraine Key Art. Mood goal: dark fairytale. The brief initially asked for one focal element: a central red apple with a single bite shaped like the Planeswalker symbol. I knew right away that was going to be challenging... (1/8)
Here is the first sketch sent. Witches? check. Knights? Yep. Dark forest? cool. Faeries whisking away a poisoned apple from the hand of a princess? Ok. Problem though... how do I include the Planeswalker logo in there? How do I make it look like a bite out of an apple? (2/8) 
I wrote back to AD Matt Cavotta about my concerns about the apple, and we sent each other some quick apple mock-ups, trying to make it work. I wasn't feeling it at this point, so I tried to think of another solution... (3/8)
What if instead of a bite, the apple dripped poison shaped like the logo. Seemed like an ok idea at first, but in the end, Matt and I both felt like it wasn't working either. I asked Matt: Does the focus of this piece need to be apple? To my relief, he said no. 🙏(4/8)
I didn't want to abandon the challenge, so I kept at it for a couple of days. Eventually, I had write to Matt and let him know that I could not produce a sketch I fully believed in with this apple, so I scrapped everything and started from scratch. (5/8)
I re-read the Throne of Eldraine art guide, and found a paragraph in there that inspired me to propose this new sketch. Matt liked this solution, but asked to keep the distraction of the red fruit on the right under control- they took away from the logo and apple in the hand(6/8)
After much time rendering and perfecting, I sent this as a first pass at final. Matt pointed out how the silhouette of the logo was lost a bit, and asked to warm up the castle, but not too much as to keep it pushed back in the distance. Good call! (7/8)
And lastly, the final. I hope you enjoyed this process thread, a glimpse of how artists and ADs work together. Thank you to Matt Cavotta! It was a great challenge and a fun time. Happy how it turned out 🙂 Prints are available here if interested! (8/8) inprnt.com/manage/print/t…
