MWS Scan Enhancement Experiments

[viberunner]

Hi,

First, thanks to everyone for an amazing amount of hard-work through the months and years to build the libraries to the state they are today. I D/L MWS a few weeks ago and have been playing catch-up.

I'm a sucker for bright, well-contrasted, highly-saturated tokens and card art, particually to be distinctive as a small icon. To be honest some of the scans seem a bit washed-out and lackluster. I've tried to do something about it, taking pre-existing scans and touching them up in Photoshop. I've also made a couple of new tokens, and a changed card art.

UNGLUED:

(original: )






UNHINGED:






CUSTOMISED TOKENS:

(She looks a lot better as an icon)
(beast tokens are a good outing for this amazing art)
(blue bird)
(Sure, it's Bob', but nicely tidied-up. Ain't he a REAL giant?)
(baaaa)
(Pleased how this one came out. Goblin more distinctive, backdrop blurred into RW colours)
(goblin rogue, don't he just look it too?)
(chitter chitter)
(awwww, sooooo cuuuuuute!!) (my take on the saproling)
(shapeshifter)
(soldier)
(warrior)
(Leonardo da Vinci's actual Thopter blueprint!!)
(green wolf)
(and spider)
(looks a bit oversized for a 1/1 black/green worm, but looks good as an icon)
(merfolk)
(faerie/faerie rogue, my favourite bitterblossom token)

UNOFFICIAL PROMO:

Progenitus Itself


Okay, now the hard part. Is a single soul in the universe, other than me, wanting me to keep making and posting?

[extreme]

there's a token dedicated thread if you haven't seen it. You might find in there some tokens you'll like.
About saturation sorry, we deliver correct scans, which means they are not so vivid. But your versions don't look like the real cards and in any case are miles beyond reasonable saturation. You might have a problem with your monitor maybe.

[viberunner]

I didn't want to tread on toes in the token thread with nonwizards material. As for "liking" them, I have them and like them, but as scans of cards they're not designed for MWS, many of them have a creature's head in the top seventh of the frame, which gets overwritten with text in-play in MWS. That's why there's space at the top of most of my tokens (either background art, or blank space). Like the Zombie token, for example. Great token, but in play he's a body with the word Zombie written on his face. For that matter I tried to keep the bottom-right free from too much art detail either.

I know the scans are supposed to be scans, these are not. My monitor is fine, perhaps its indicitave of being of the nintendo generation but I don't necessarily agree about the saturation, these touchups are designed for a cm or two icon, in play, in hand, etc., with new frames. What's the right call for a wallpaper (or high res card representation) isn't the same one for an icon. The default mws theme, and every theme I've run across, is richly saturated, i've seen none with muted hues. It just seemed to me to be a mismatch between the game-experience saturation and the card art. I'm studying video game design, though I'll admit I'm no expert. There's also such a huge difference old and new play frames, and art. Old art and new frames look washed, new art in old frames looks gaudy. Look at the crops in Urza's Destiny, for example, they look a tad palid. Though I haven't as-richly saturated them as tokens and comedy lands, increasing the contrast and saturation does improve them. Working Example:

Original:



Tweaked:



Variant 3D:



Again I empahsise, in terms of play, how these look at 400x300 isn't as imporant as how they look when reduced to play size.

[Huggybaby]

Thanks for the work viberunner. There is room for a tweaked play set, while the official project remains true to our goal of verisimilitude and documentation. My tiny fun pics set is certainly way saturated compared to the HQ set, for the same reasons you mentioned.

If you want to make your own set and provide links, feel free, and I'll advertise it in the official thread. If 100 people want to provide their own versions it certainly won't detract from the base set. After all, without the base set the tweakers would have no foundation on which to work. I really like the 3D version you did, that's quite cool and something different.

OTOH, there's no way we could include alternate versions of regular cards in the main torrent. Anyone that wants to go that distribution route is on their own.

Your tokens comments are very interesting.

many of them have a creature's head in the top seventh of the frame, which gets overwritten with text in-play in MWS. That's why there's space at the top of most of my tokens (either background art, or blank space). Like the Zombie token, for example. Great token, but in play he's a body with the word Zombie written on his face. For that matter I tried to keep the bottom-right free from too much art detail either.

Please post a couple of screenshots illustrating your point about text overwriting the pic. I haven't used MWS in a while so that would help.

MahamotiD has his own thing going, but there is always room for more tokens, custom or otherwise, even in the torrent, so have at it! You'll see many separate token collections in the torrent and we'd be happy to add yours.

Huggybaby

[viberunner]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I am fond of the use of blur/soften on images, I used it extensively on the Tokens. For example, burring out the background on the Giant, or the bubbles in the foreground of the Merfolk, bring a picture to life. There's no way on God's green earth I'm going to try to get the altered art hosted, or probably even finished. However if I can get a reasonable script together I might release that, give people the opportunity to freshen up any images they want to. However unless I can get it to run stand-alone, it would require the user to have an art package installed.

For the Tokens, I'd be deeply honoured to have them included in the main Torrent. My goal is to have a unique picture for every producable token in Standard. I'm still searching for artwork to base some on. These tokens are a good start, but some are not finished, and I'm coming to the conclusion they need some kind of border, however modest.

Here's an in-game picture of some Tokens:



You can see on the Zombie token the text goes over the head, just over the cheekbone on the left side of his head (as we look at it).

The problem is compounded by longer names that take two lines, such as Goblin Warrior, and Kithkin Soldier. I'm certainly going to have to do something about them.

PS, is it just me, or does MWS have a bug regarding tokens? I followed the advice given (lots of places) about naming conventions and size, e.g. Beast 3.full, Beast 8.full; and I've tried Beast3.full, Beast8.full. It works fine, small or large, the correct art is used. However if in the same game you make another token of a different size it uses the art of the first. Quite annoying. That's primarily the reason I (incorrectly) named the 8/8 Beast token Godsire.

Anyway, if you could give me a bit of room to finish the set I'll make them available to you.

[extreme]

As huggy said, it's a free world, you can do anything you want.
It's a question of taste. I personally dislike them. Maybe the artist didn't want a high contrast image. Maybe he did, we don't know.
But for playing in MWS I am sure there are people who would like that and you may be right. The thing is, this project is not about MWS. It just started like that.

[viberunner]

Actually, and unfortunately, what the artist intends matters less than what the printers do. I assume you've seen commercial fantasy artworks originals in real life. I have yet to see any printed material, including very quality prints, that look even the least bit as vivid as the original. I was stunned the first time I saw Easley and Brom originals. Not a bit like the reporductions. And that's on HQ reproductions, not mass-sets. There are some runs of MtG card where the colours are not even the least bit similar to each other, one of the Ravnica cards was grey or brown depending on the print run, for example.

The gaudy lands look great in-game, but I admit after careful testing that Goblin is sickeningly red. He needs changed.

[extreme]

I assume you've seen commercial fantasy artworks originals in real life. I have yet to see any printed material, including very quality prints, that look even the least bit as vivid as the original.

No, never Magic originals. But many images are created digitally and don't have an "original" per se to compare to.
Still, you've got a point.
Good luck !