Cropped card art

DaisukeK

I don't know maybe this is brought up somewhere in the past, but I'd really like all the cards' art is not clipped or cropped to fit PQ context. Paper cards have more to show outside PQ card art window's boundary, and look better. I know currently there's ton of other higher-priority issues devs are (or at least should be) tackling to solve like cheating, matchmaking, tiebreaking, etc. So I'd like this change stacked up somewhere in dev's long term todo list.

jetnoctis

I agree. Part of the allure of magic is the absolutely beautiful pieces of art that bedeck the cards. When I go online to check out the original cards, I am always impressed when you can see the full picture. Some cards don't even make much sense without the edges.

Just a couple from the SOI set:

How much more insidious is Angel of Deliverance if you knew that she was peering into someone's balcony, about to end an innocent's life?

How much more staggering is Geralf's Masterpiece when you realise his size in comparison to the cropped human being?

How much more terrifying is Goldnight Castigator when you see the cropped bloody instrument of torture she wields?

I actually thought Sigarda, Heron's Grace was a centaur until I saw this and realised those were not legs and horse body, but just her loincloths (?)

DaisukeK

jetnoctis wrote:

I agree. Part of the allure of magic is the absolutely beautiful pieces of art that bedeck the cards. When I go online to check out the original cards, I am always impressed when you can see the full picture. Some cards don't even make much sense without the edges.

Just a couple from the SOI set:

How much more insidious is Angel of Deliverance if you knew that she was peering into someone's balcony, about to end an innocent's life?

How much more staggering is Geralf's Masterpiece when you realise his size in comparison to the cropped human being?

How much more terrifying is Goldnight Castigator when you see the cropped bloody instrument of torture she wields?

I actually thought Sigarda, Heron's Grace was a centaur until I saw this and realised those were not legs and horse body, but just her loincloths (?)

Thanks for augmenting the claim with excellent examples, yet these are just a tip of iceberg I'm sure.

I simply don't understand the reason devs decided to cut them up, if there's any reason at all.

If the aspect ratio is the problem then why don't you just insert blank strips at either horizontally or vertically?

Cropping discards the detail as well as overall compositional integrity of otherwise thought-out pieces of art.

The_Cheater

Whoa, this thread just blew my mind! I thought Geralf's Masterpiece could fit into a Volkswagen. Why is he 2/2? I had no idea he was so yuge. Seems like the devs may have been able to just scootch the art over a little to show the human.

Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Kozilek is bigger than a house fern.

buscemi

They zoomed out the artwork on Disperse a bit. Probably a good thing.

Reaganstorme

Perhaps croping them reduces the size of the file? Possibly also a resolution reduction at the same time?

By keeping image file sizes smaller, it will reduce the download hit a player takes to update them, though I understand that large update sizes are already present.

It would also reduce loading times for the game engine.

Mainloop25

I don't see how, it's the same HxW ratio no matter how much they zoom in or out of the picture in the file.

The virtual cards aren't the same dimension as their paper counterpart; they are a lot more narrow. Doubt there is any more to it than that.

Fake Cards

Geralf's Masterpiece At least you can see Geralf.
Angel of Deliverance Couldn't find a high res pic of this anywhere.
Goldnight Castigator Pretty off center and wonky, but you can kinda see the weapon.
Bonus! Rashmi, Eternities Crafter For dem hips! Also her ability is less sucky.






_______________________________________________________________________________________
Also retired until the game works.

jetnoctis

Mainloop25 wrote:

I don't see how, it's the same HxW ratio no matter how much they zoom in or out of the picture in the file.

The virtual cards aren't the same dimension as their paper counterpart; they are a lot more narrow. Doubt there is any more to it than that.

Agreed that this is the most likeliest of reasons. It's a small shame to miss out on intriguing details but I guess we can always go online for them. I wonder what else I've missed? Time to trawl the interwebs!

khurram

So glad that someone finally brought this up. This has always bothered me ever since i started playing in the last january. The true flavor and theme of the sets are not translated very well due the incomplete card arts and also because they leave out a lot of cards from the sets too. With BFZ it was kinda understandable since we wanted to get to SOI faster and no one really wanted more ingest and process. But I wish they would stop doing that now.

buscemi

Mainloop25 wrote:

The virtual cards aren't the same dimension as their paper counterpart; they are a lot more narrow.

Why?

DaisukeK

Yes the virtual card is narrower in width, so I understand the original art need to be clipped if trying to fit it so that the art part is nearly equal in area to non-art, information area.

But I don't understand a) why the virtual cards need to be narrower the way they are at the first place, and b) why they decided to zoom up the art so that there's out-of-boundary area at both sides (actually there's non-included area at top and bottom as well) which need to be cut off.

Alternative approach would be to a) change the dimention of virtual card to more closely represent paper version, increasing the relative width, or to b) fill space with blank space at either top-bottom or left-right, not crop, to make the art of original dimensions fit.

The size of image data is not irrelevant here because it is determined not by its aspect ratio, but by resolution.

One more thing I wanna point is, when a card is in its "thumbnail" view mode (like when they appear on battlefield) the dimension more closely matches the paper version, only it's zoomed in even more!

I'd really like to know the design philosophy behind all this.

khurram

Another fun example is Emrakul's Evangel. In mtgpq all you see is a flaling mutated shoulder. In the paper version he appears to be giving a sermon and dousing someone (possibly killing) in holy water with his tentacley arm.

DaisukeK

Fake Cards wrote:

Geralf's Masterpiece At least you can see Geralf.
Angel of Deliverance Couldn't find a high res pic of this anywhere.
Goldnight Castigator Pretty off center and wonky, but you can kinda see the weapon.
Bonus! Rashmi, Eternities Crafter For dem hips! Also her ability is less sucky.






_______________________________________________________________________________________
Also retired until the game works.

NICE. I especially like the way you saved Geralf

Mainloop25

buscemi wrote:

Mainloop25 wrote:

The virtual cards aren't the same dimension as their paper counterpart; they are a lot more narrow.

Why?

Are you asking me like you want to know my answer, or is this a rhetorical question?

I've worked in an art department before, so I know that the communication between the tech and the artists isn't always the strongest ones and there's a lot of butting heads on stuff like this. Now we are talking two different companies, and the art department from WotC probably gives them zero input as to how they format their cards.

buscemi

jetnoctis wrote:

I agree. Part of the allure of magic is the absolutely beautiful pieces of art that bedeck the cards. When I go online to check out the original cards, I am always impressed when you can see the full picture. Some cards don't even make much sense without the edges.

Just a couple from the SOI set:

How much more insidious is Angel of Deliverance if you knew that she was peering into someone's balcony, about to end an innocent's life?

How much more staggering is Geralf's Masterpiece when you realise his size in comparison to the cropped human being?

How much more terrifying is Goldnight Castigator when you see the cropped bloody instrument of torture she wields?

I actually thought Sigarda, Heron's Grace was a centaur until I saw this and realised those were not legs and horse body, but just her loincloths (?)

Can I just say that is the best post anyone has ever made on this forum

jetnoctis

buscemi wrote:

jetnoctis wrote:

I agree. Part of the allure of magic is the absolutely beautiful pieces of art that bedeck the cards. When I go online to check out the original cards, I am always impressed when you can see the full picture. Some cards don't even make much sense without the edges.

Just a couple from the SOI set:

How much more insidious is Angel of Deliverance if you knew that she was peering into someone's balcony, about to end an innocent's life?

How much more staggering is Geralf's Masterpiece when you realise his size in comparison to the cropped human being?

How much more terrifying is Goldnight Castigator when you see the cropped bloody instrument of torture she wields?

I actually thought Sigarda, Heron's Grace was a centaur until I saw this and realised those were not legs and horse body, but just her loincloths (?)

Can I just say that is the best post anyone has ever made on this forum

DaisukeK

bumped on another example:
I didn't know this guy in Inner Struggle was fighting against self in a mirror
Thought it was more like an illusional duel in someone's mind.

Mainloop25

Well unless they completely change the dimensions of the cards themselves, that's the way it's going to be. Because there are so many different phones /tablets running this game, they may have found this to be the optimal middle ground. If they formatted the cards to the same ratio as paper cards, things might have to shrink to fit the screen.

buscemi

Mainloop25 wrote:

Well unless they completely change the dimensions of the cards themselves, that's the way it's going to be. Because there are so many different phones /tablets running this game, they may have found this to be the optimal middle ground. If they formatted the cards to the same ratio as paper cards, things might have to shrink to fit the screen.

Does anyone own a device where there isn't a border around all 4 sides of a card when it's displayed?