Less random than Tariel

I'm not sure what it is about dragons, but for some reason their art is almost always fantastic for 3D. I found the same to be true when I was making 3D cards for the Middle Earth CCG - many of my favorite 3D cards from then are dragons or drakes (though sadly, Smaug's art is very disappointing).

I bought a set of the Commander decks on release day, but life has been so busy that I still haven't had a chance to play with any of the cards.

Bloodbraid Human vs Bloodbraided Elf

Kresh the Bloodbraided has seriously deceptive art. There are certain parts of it that are very obvious and easy for 3D, but then other parts of it that are blurry or hyper-detailed which makes them hard to plot and cut. I think that's a pretty common trait of Raymond Swanland's art.

Kresh was another of the early cards I did when I switched to Magic cards. Compared to other cards I did at the same time, there are more things I'd change if I did Kresh again, but I'm not entirely unhappy with it.

Sometimes I feel Elephant-y

With the shortage of normal layers, I knew that Horde of Notions would be almost entirely piecework. What I didn’t know was what exact pieces I would be cutting and from what copy of Horde I would take each piece. As a result, I ended up using one more copy of Horde than I needed to because I was wasteful with some early cuts.

 

One suggestion I've received regularly is to raise words or mana symbols. So far, this Horde of Notions is the only card I've done that with, and only with the symbols in the activated ability.

Shiny!

After making a partially-foiled Mangara of Corondor, I decided that the Teferis I had in my binder would look good partially-foiled too, so I picked up a foil copy.  Less than 24 hours later Wizards made the announcement for From the Vault: Legends, which will have another foil Teferi in it. Whoops!

 

Other than that, not much to say about this Teferi that I didn't say in the article I wrote about it.  

Not yet old or useless

I used eight copies of Sharuum the Hegemon for this 3D card, and I'm pretty sure I could have used eleven or twelve. There is just so much overlapping detail going on! The card looked pretty great, but looking at it now, a year later, all I can see is the spots I didn't detail that I would if I did it today.

I don't repeat 3D cards much - actually, so far I've only done one card twice (Scion of the Ur-Dragon) and the second version was an abacus life counter so the construction was quite different. There's a good chance I'll be revisiting Sharuum soon; I'm not sure how different it will be but there's a good chance I'll feel compelled to layer all of the pillows, which will take a long time. Wheee!

Jho!

After Momir Monday and Jhoira today, unfortunately I don't have Sto!(nehewer Giant) to finish the set on Friday. However, if you've ever wanted to play Momir Basic, MoJho, or MoJhoSto somewhere other than Magic Online, now you can! Grab a friend and a pile of basic lands and check out http://ark42.com/mtg/mojhosto.php.

I made this Jhoira only because she's such a popular Commander; I like the art, but it isn't very exciting for 3D. I curved the background in a similar way to the Karona I did, but instead of curving the whole side I just curved the top corners forward.

Mo!

When I started cutting up Legendary creatures, I knew right away that I wanted to work on Momir Vig. At the time I was still focusing on cards with lots of traditional layers instead of extensive detail work (other than Karona, that is). I also still like working on cards with lots of intertwining cables, tentacles, or ropes, because these usually look awesome in 3D.

I sold this pretty early on, but I like the art enough that I picked up another pile of copies to eventually make another 3-D Momir Vig. Sadly I sent this out before I figured out how to take good pictures of my 3D cards, so these blurry, awkward angles are all I have.

While I love Momir's art, I don't think I'll ever want a Momir deck. The more I play Commander, the less I like tutors in my decks, so I can just imagine how bored I'd get playing one of the tutor generals like Zur, Captain Sisay, or Momir. I don't mind playing against those decks at all, but I'd rather not pilot one.

You win some, you win some more.

In addition to the guy who collects Warp Worlds, my LGS also has guys who collect Prodigal Sorcerers, Terminates, and Conquering Manticores.

The same guy who collected the Manticores and had me make this for him also happened to be collecting another crap rare from Rise of the Eldrazi: Splinter Twin. Yeah, that worked out well for him.

Let's Do the Warp World Again

It's quite possible that I shouldn't be allowed to use that title for this post considering I've only seen thirty minutes of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On the other hand, I have experienced infinite Warp Worlds multiple times. The first guy at my local game store to build an infinite Warp World deck had collected a huge pile of Warp Worlds before he asked me to make this for him:

Making this card was a miserable experience. I'd liken it to some of my nursing prereqs: a frustrating, mind-numbing experience that I am incredibly glad I went through because I learned a ton of valuable things in the process and I am very pleased with the result.

I have only made a couple life counters, and that's probably the area of 3D card construction I know the least about. I know I want to talk about it in a future article but that means I have a lot of practice and research to do first.