While the upcoming set, Bloomburrow, is full of adorable woodland critters, it’s also a world that feels just as full of adventure and peril as any other Magic: The Gathering plane. A talking animals setting could have been all kittens and puppies, rainbows and unicorns, but the set’s art director, Zack Stella was careful to prevent a cuteness overload getting in the way of a classic fantasy tone.
“I’d like to give a shout out to Zack for guiding us on the art for this set, because so much was important about these looking like animals and not humans or not being honestly too cute,” said artist Sarah Wassel, at a preview presentation Wargamer attended. “Zack was honestly pretty militant about keeping an eye on the little details.”
Bloomburrow art director Zack Stella tells Wargamer, “It was very important that this still felt like an MTG set. So even though the goal was to have one of the most pastoral settings we’ve ever made, we wanted to retain that Magic feeling. The animals are cute enough on their own, so we wanted to see them doing combat things over seeing them napping or being intentionally cute on top of that.”
Realism was a key focus for Stella too; the animals had to look like animals, not cartoons. “Overall my goal for this set was to make it feel like you’re going to the zoo, where you’re collecting various animal species. A lot of these pieces that feature many animals, you’ll see the species are widely varied across them.”
Wizards of the Coast writer and worldbuilding game designer Neale LaPlante Johnson emphasizes the zoological detail of Bloomburrow. He says, “When we were writing art briefs, Zack would be like “Make sure to mention the color of their fur, or the pattern on it, or what their scales look like – and that was super important to capturing the verisimilitude of real animals in Magic.”
“The set is a lot of cute, but there’s still that classic Magic feel,” he says. “Wizards are still casting their lightning bolts and raising the dead. When you see squirrelfolk, even if it’s a cute squirrel, it’s pretty awesome, pretty terrifying.”
We’ve enjoyed how badass Bloomburrows’ animal warriors are (especially this extremely wide badger) as well as the fearsome nature of the elemental Calamity Beasts. However, there are definitely a few artworks in the set where cuteness was the priority – namely the little baby animal tokens you can make with the new offspring mechanic.
For more Magic content, check out our guide to all the remaining MTG Arena codes, as well as our ranking of the best MTG commanders.
Source: Wargamer
