Hello and welcome back to In The Frame! The format for all card art enthusiasts!
It's time for another Fan Art Spotlight! In the last one, we checked out Guillaume Beauchêne's Hammerloc, a great piece of artwork that provides a unique spin on the usual Murloc design. If you missed it, you can check it out here!
For this week's spotlight, we're gonna stay with the Murloc theme, and take a look at how a different artist can make use of the chaotic, mischievous nature of our fishy little fellas, to create his own character.
The artwork we'll be talking about was made by Joao Vagner, a Freelance Artist from Brazil, whose portfolio contains many beautiful pieces of fan art. One of those is a little project called Dr. Murkstein's Creations. It's an imagining of what a set, that centers around a mad Murloc scientist and his evil abominations, could look like. It comes complete with concepts and final images of the Doctor himself, as well as for a couple of his helpful hands.
So, if you're excited to see what Joao stitched together, let's get started!
First off, we've got the logo.
From just one look alone, you can already tell what kind of science we'll be dealing with.
It's not gonna be as nice and friendly as The Boomsday Project, where we got to play with cute little mechs, no, no, no!
We're gonna use the electrifying might of science to make some really horrifying monsters!
Next up, we have a couple of design ideas for the Doctor.
You can see Joao trying different types of equipment and thus changing the personality of the character ever so slightly.
Is he gonna be a cooky chemist? A malicious maniac? Or a deranged degenerate?
Maniac sounds fine, let's go with that.
Now that Joao knows what kind of Doc he wants, he proceeds to work out the finer details of the design. All those little things, like the scars on the face or the cracks in the glasses, add something to the seemingly reckless nature of Dr. Murkstein.
The staff's design also adds a certain prowess to him, showing that this murloc is fully capable of creating ingenious inventions!
I wonder if the final design was based on the Staff of Origination?
Time to put Dr. Murkstein into the frame!
Here we see how Joao experiments with a couple of compositions for a Hero Portrait.
But, although these compositions differ in points of camera and pose, they all have one thing in common:
The focus is on the Doc's reaction to his new invention.
The Doctor will see you now!
Now, what would a mad scientist be without his trusty henchmen?
Here's one of the Doc's horrible abominations!
Usually, I'd put a pun here...but unfortunately, I don't have any at hand!
If you want even more concepts and monsters, check out the original here over on ArtStation!
Also, if you want to see more from Joao Vagner's art, be sure to check out his ArtStation or Instagram!
And that's it for this week's spotlight, I hope you enjoyed it! Truly some electrifying artwork this time around!
What did you think about the art? Is there a certain piece of fan art you'd like to see featured here in the future? Let us know in the comments!
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Comments
What I imagine Dr Murkstein to be as minion:
Neutral legendary, 2 mana 2/3.
“Battlecry: Create a Murkalgam equal cost to your remaining mana crystals.”
How it works: It’s an Amalgam or “All” tribe creature that is similar to zombeasts. But instead of choosing two beasts that cost 5 or less, you have a wider assortment of effects.
To ensure Blizz isn’t constantly updating this each release like Deathstalker Rexxar, perhaps the cards can just include 3 to 4 options at each cost level (similar to Kazakus) so there is a set number of creatures you can make. What those options look like, no idea. Just coming up with this on the fly.
Loving the hand especially, but great stuff all-round :)
There's two other minions on his ArtStation, if you wanna see more from this
Yeah, they r both awesome too.
Blizzard, please hire this guy and make an expansion around this. Deathrattle stitched together electrified murlocs.
Dr. Murkstein. It's so good.