Top Down Design - The Art Set

I have referenced a mysterious new design project a couple of times recently in posts. While this project was inspired by the homemade cube, conceptually it predates it. This project is a cube or set that is based on real life artwork, and is is about as opposite as can be from the homemade cube. When I was first gifted the fine art set of lands in 2020 or so my friend and I looked at trying to put art to the nonland cards as well. It was off somehow. We accepted it didn't work, enjoyed the lands that did work, and moved on with our lives. Move on a few years and I am doing the homemade cube in which I learned much, and one of those things was about what makes a card design work. When a card is right it just clicks into place somehow. Like a well engineered plastic gizmo. It goes from being just an idea in your head to a reality, as if it had always existed. A card needs more than good mechanics, it needs to feel right. You get this by having the right harmony between name, mechanics, and art. You sort of want a lead from one of those three and the others to support it without over complicating matters. When done well by the designer a player can pre-empt what the card is all about at a glance because everything is where it should be. It is a kind of ergonomics of design. When done badly it creates a kind of unsettling dissonance instead. This is where the attempt to use classic art on existing magic cards failed so hard. It was like forcing square pegs into round holes. The art was so strong it had to lead but you can't lead anything when it is already fixed. The key to working with external artworks is to let them lead the way in design. This is where the top down design aspect is coming in. You look at the picture and then try to frame what it is saying or evoking, but in the language of Magic mechanics. It is really fun and leads to some wacky cards. 

This is a stark contrast in approach to how I did the homemade cube. As I had several parameters I was trying to adhere to I was very directed in my design choices. I had a clearly defined and mapped out blueprint for what I was aiming at thanks to my years honing of my existing cube. I was simply trying to recreate that while trying to solve what I saw as issues with it, but doing so with clean and simple cards, in as true a tribute to magic as possible. I knew all my ratios well, both in terms of mana curve and card/effect types. I knew how much ramp and burn and countermagic I wanted. I also knew what kind of power level to be pegging this all at. Much of the design process was knowing what I needed more of, and then looking for the gaps in the design space for that, and then filling them. The art and names were then selected to work for the mechanics. It was a mechanic lead process for the most part. It felt like a construction project. I laid the foundations, I built up a structure or framework, then I fixed things around that framework, and finally finished it all off smoothing over the dodgy bits and filling in the gaps! It was build up and built to specification. There are a lot of perks to this bottom up style of design but I suspect it is a bit drier and stagnant in end product. It was at the engineering end of the creative spectrum rather than the pure artistic. The most interesting cards, those that are most liked by the players, tended to be those few in the homemade cube that were designed top down, as inspired by something non-mechanic based, be it a name I thought of, an artwork I stumbled upon and liked (the most common of the routes to a top down design in the homemade cube project), a tribute I wanted to make, or just some random concept I had. If the cards people like most are those that are top down rather than bottom up then perhaps it is a good idea to design a cube with that method taking the lead.

Letting fancy and the creative inspiration lead the way results in a very wonky looking set of cards. The curves are off, the ratios are off. It might be fine, it might be the most fun way to play it, but that seems unlikely. It seems like the further you stray from sensible and established balance the more likely things are to becomes unplayable. Our solution to this problem is to wildly overdesign cards for the set and then be somewhat ruthless in culling down to a smaller number of cards with sensible looking card balances. This can be done from a gameplay and mechanical point of view and serve the role that having top down design did in the homemade cube, but without getting in the way of the design process on an individual card level. This will mean a lot of beloved cards, and mechanical groupings will likely not make the final release, but that is the cost of having ones cake and eating it. Creating a set out of a much greater pool of cards feels more like a sculpture. The set is already in there somewhere, you just have to slowly chip away at the right bits to reveal the set contained within. The engineering project building from the ground up for the homemade cube, and the slowly revealing sculpture that is the art set. 

The plan is to make around 1000 cards and then start the chipping away process. Plans are all well and good but I expect to wildly over shoot on the front end while also jumping the gun on the back end too! In the back of my mind I am already earmarking a bunch of the cards for things I expect to cut or that I expect will be retained. We are also over 500 cards made already and I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of what the art world has to offer! 

One of my goals with the homemade cube was for simple, clean, and elegant cards. This affected a lot of design choices. I was aiming to keep text down. I wanted cards doing fewer things by themselves and so I set a limit of three things per card maximum. There were several cards I let stray outside of the power level I would have liked simply because it let me keep the text on the card that much shorter and simpler. This was a good choice and a really good discipline to get into that I would fully recommend to anyone on their first design project. If nothing else, it means you have more card space to work with when it comes to the inevitable re-tuning of cards required once some testing gets underway. 

Not only was I being as clean and simple as possible mechanically with my Homemade Cube, I was also being as canon as possible. I highly respected colour pie mechanically and in flavour terms. I represented creatures as they are to be found represented in Magic. This was mostly for tribute based reasons but in practice it worked out really really well for helping people appraise what the cards did quickly and effortlessly. Despite seeming just like a flavour thing it was a real restriction on design. This card should have flying, a dork of this type should be at least this size, etc. Limits are good for expediting the process. All the shut off routes somewhat lead you to the "correct" or "optimal design a bit faster, but these terms are just within the contexts I had set. Remove these constraints and there are many more potential correct and optimal designs out there. One could certainly posit that there are no bad magic cards, only inappropriate meta games! 

For the Art Set I felt I had earned the right to let my hair down rather more. I had earned my wings and I was going to fly. No longer was I bound by convention. If I wanted to slap on 5 abilities I would. If I wanted to write a mini essay of text on a minor card I would allow myself. I let my types, sizes, and colour pies all go a bit loosey goosey. I was just trying to match the weird and wonderful art as best I could and in order to do that I really wanted the full range of what magic mechanics have to offer. I wasn't being verbose, different, controversial, or convoluted for the sake of it. Any time I was any of those it is because I thought the artwork portrayed was best depicted as such. Indeed I found some artwork where the minimalist approach of limited text/effects to best help the art stand out on the card. 

I am in no great rush to get this project out and done. I am very much enjoying the journey and relaxed pacing of this project. I will likely do the odd teaser article before I do a full spoiler drop of the Art Set but that full spoiler drop is at least a year away what with other more time critical projects also in progress. It also seems as if rushing creative projects has the adverse affect while also diminishing their fun. A big plus this Art Set project has over the Homemade Cube is that I am not only having a blast with my favourite hobby and enjoying a creative outlet, but also I am learning about art and culture and a lot of non-Magic stuff and I am really enjoying that as well! All the more reason to keep it ongoing.