Artwork Change of Plateau

[Tenacious_Dyl]

Hey all... not a particularily exciting post... but surely one worth laughing over... I was searching for misprints and errors on eBay... and look at this "very rare find!"

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=19115

well durh... it appears to be unlimited or revised... (my eyes are not good enough to tell from the scan) ...some misprint. Lately, I have seen more and more stupid auctions like this... sigh.

[monkeymadness]

It has to be unlimited since it was between unlimited and revised when the art file became corrupted and the Plateau art was changed.  Certainly not a misprint as you say, but is worth the current $12 bid if in good shape.  At least it is not the "rare" misprinted Serendib Efreet with new art, no expansion symbol, and white border "pulled" from an Arabian Nights booster.

[dry_cereal]

yeah, or the mox jet with the picture text and expansion symbol of a chub toad.

[AXIOS]

it's unlimited, since it has the old art.

i knew it was not a misprint (i'm iluvatar_666) but hé,
who doesn't want to pay 12 dollars for and dual  ;D ;D ;D

[mahdishain]

greetings

perhaps someone can unravel my confusion. was unlimited badlands produced with both the beta and
revised art? if so, what is the story and is it the relative rarity of each version known?
        mahdishain

[gamingjim]

It came in Alpha, Beta, and unlimited. The reason the Pic is different is the film was lost or destroyed going in to Revised edition so that had some new art made.

[l0qii]

greetings

perhaps someone can unravel my confusion. was unlimited badlands produced with both the beta and
revised art? if so, what is the story and is it the relative rarity of each version known?
        mahdishain

There was only ever 1 version of the art for Badlands. Did you mean Plateau?

[Tenacious_Dyl]

Ah-hah! The scheming monster himself (me!) just realized something more about the Wizard's printing process from this bit of data.

Ok... to start, at the beginning of the game they didn't seem to have much money, at least not as much as they do now, so if they could have helped it, and for normality's sake, they would have used the same art if possible.

Here are some questions and comments I have drawn from this:

1) They say the Plateu art was destroyed or damaged in all cases I have seen of people discussing this. There is a difference between destroyed and damaged.... and there is no reason to use both words, which probably suggests whatever happened to the original art was hazy even at WotC... perhaps it was stolen, and if so, imagine the value on the underground market...

2) This also suggests that they NEED the original art to make the card. Yes, technically they need the film or whatnot, but they could always make new film from the old art, instead of buying new art, and making new film from that. So... we can say that the printing process uses some sort of larger media, like the film, or the actual image itself (unlikely). And... if it uses this film, and they couldn't make more it would suggest the ACTUAL plateu art was damaged, lost, or destroyed.

3) WotC's presses must not use other types of media, or it is too expensive. Otherwise, someone could take a *high*-quality scan of an old Beta Plateu's art, and use that scan to make the newer cards art.

4) This also suggests that older cards plates/films (whatever is used in the final process) are immediately destroyed, erased, etc. Otherwise, like above, they could have used the older plates/films (whatever) to get art again for the Revised Version.

Comments? Anyone know more about the printing processes?

[flatmatt]

Actually, from what I've read about the Plateau art, the computer file with the original art was corrupted, and the artist no longer had the piece for one reason or another.  I don't remember exactly what they said.  I believe it was in an Ask Wizards some time back.

[Ralph Herold]

I can confirm what flatmatt said. It is exactly what I remember.

[motorcitymagic]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/arcana/35

[monkeymadness]

Here is a brief version of the whole story:

If you've ever seen an older (Unlimited or before) version of the dual-land Plateau, you probably noticed that the art used in those editions was different than that on the more plentiful Revised version.

The swap was not intentional. Between the printing of Unlimited and Revised, the computer file of the Drew Tucker art became corrupted and the original painting was lost, leaving the production team with no reasonable way to create a high-quality image. Luckily, art for dual-lands had been commissioned for the then-upcoming Ice Age set.

R&D eventually determined that dual-lands were too powerful to put into Ice Age, meaning the art wouldn't be needed for that set. So the Cornelius Brudi Plateau painting was then used as a stand-in for the original in the base set, and was actually misattributed to the original artist, Drew Tucker.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/arcana/35

[Tha_Gunslinga]

I believe the original art for Plateau was sold.  Not sure where I heard this, but I definitely remember seeing it somewhere.

[TerraFrost]

i wonder how long it took for WotC to realize that it miscredited...  because summer magic sure didn't fix it:

[Tenacious_Dyl]

If you look on Wizard's link above, it says tucker on the revised one too. Oh well... quality control I guess. Maybe the picture was added last minute. Who knows?