an interview with sue ann harkey, magic's greatest art director

Who’s your favorite Magic artist?

A popular answer is Terese Nielsen. From early works like Natural Order to newer ones like Enter the Infinite, her work is breathtaking. Maybe you like Rebecca Guay’s unmistakable watercolors, or John Avon’s innumerable landscapes. Kev Walker has illustrated more Magic art than anyone, and picked up a lot of fans along the way. Or perhaps you have a more alternative favorite, someone that goes against the grain, like Robert Bliss, Chippy, or Scott M Fischer.

Those artists all have something in common: they were recruited to Magic by the greatest art director in Magic’s history, Sue Ann Harkey. She only held that position for six total sets (Alliances, Mirage, Visions, Weatherlight, Portal, and Fifth Edition), but her importance can’t be overstated.

Coming from a background designing magazines, Wizards hired her as a graphic designer. She’s quick to credit Maria Cabardo, who was working in art direction at the time. They had something in common: they “shared a vision of accelerating the quality of the art,” in Harkey’s words. Cabardo promoted her to art director during development of Alliances. The change in art from early Magic was noticeable almost immediately.

The previous art director, Jesper Myrfors, is known to Magic players for his numerous paintings in Magic’s early sets. But he was even more important behind the scenes. “Jesper and all his friends were illustrating these cards, the first three releases. As the game gained an immense popularity, the company grew so much. And then for reasons I don’t know, Jesper decided to leave. It was kind of open, the creative direction.”

At the time, there wasn’t a clean separation between roles: someone who worked for Wizards might, as Jesper did, dabble in painting, art direction, card design, and what we’d think of now as “creative.” With Jesper gone, that left Harkey and Cabardo to decide the future of Magic’s art and storyline.

“Maria came from a comic background, and she had already made relationships with these really amazing comic artists. What we wanted to do was get the best artists in the industry at the time, because we had really big budgets.”

But there was a catch: the earlier model of commissioning Magic art had to change. “The earlier artists were getting royalties when Magic was at its height. When we started art directing, it turned to work for hire. So all the illustrations were copyright, owned by Wizards of the Coast.”

Magic’s unprecedented success made those original artists money. A lot of money. Now that Wizards knew that sets could go into print runs up to 500 million cards, paying royalties per card printed was unacceptable. They had to buy the works for an up-front fee, and the original artists weren’t too happy about that, among other things.

“The biggest thing they freaked out about was dropping the royalties. I was in the position to represent the company in that respect. I was the messenger. I was fine with that. I was the bad guy. I took on that role.” She drafted the contract that all artists would get.

While it didn’t sit well with the original artists, paying up-front for art had benefits. “I commissioned way more than a million dollars worth of art. And I still came more than 20% under budget, because of the way that we structured it.”

She detailed how the new model worked: “we can do 150 cards at 1000 each, we can do 150 cards at 800, we can do 150 cards at [300 or 400], for beginning artists.”

This let Magic art change from its early, nepotistic phase into an era when Wizards was continuously hunting for up-and-coming talent.

“There was a lot of art scouting. We’d go to the comic conventions, art conventions, and we’d look at portfolios. And that’s how we got new talent, while we were also courting existing high-end, known artists.”

Between Cabardo’s contacts in the comics world, and Harkey’s continuous scouting, they introduced tons of artists new to Magic. Then husband-and-wife Terese and Cliff Nielsen, at the time collaborative comics artists, produced wonderful pieces for Magic (Terese’s painted, Cliff’s digital). Artists also happen to hang out with other artists, leading to successful referrals: the relatively obscure artist Ian Miller recommended his British countryman John Avon. His superb Mountains earned him a reputation for landscapes that continues to this day.

There was one specific piece of art she obtained in a different way: a work known at the time as “The Green Man.” This painting of a fantastic ape-like figure was in the portfolio of an up-and-coming artist named Stuart Griffin. It hadn’t been published in any form, so Harkey took a Polaroid of it, scribbled the name, address, and phone number of the Brit on the back of the picture… and bought the piece for use in Magic. It eventually got used on a card called Maro. No other work during her time had already been created before being bought for Magic; it’s just not how things usually go. But the piece moved her so much, she had to make an exception.

The original Polaroid that Harkey took of "The Green Man."

Harkey and Cabardo did have a subtle agenda, though: “we were looking at women artists. We were women art directors! There’s such a gap. Any women artists we would commission, and I would take risks on women artists. It resulted in some rejected card art, and rightfully so.” While it did result in a couple pieces destined for the art graveyard, it also led to Rebecca Guay’s introduction to Magic.

The process of commissioning art for Magic has changed a bit since Harkey’s time. “R&D would provide the brief for every card, and then I would commission from this big stack of briefs.” At the time, R&D was in a different location entirely from the art department. “They were sort of like my client, they would give me the briefs I needed to commission.”

Once Harkey had the briefs, she’d try to find the right artists for them. “I read all the briefs. As I was reading them, I could visualize certain artists for certain pieces. Oh, some hands—give them to [Donato] Giancola! Dragons? Ian Miller! And stuff like that. And sometimes I’d have four or five briefs, and I’d read the briefs to the artists and go, ‘tell me which one of these interest you.’ And the one that they got attached to, I’d commission it to them.”

Her style was a far cry from how current art direction micromanages what’s supposed to be portrayed in a certain piece. “We knew how to get the best artwork out of artists. This is a quote from Maria: ‘we’re not hiring their hand, we’re hiring their mind.’ So the broader strokes, the less detail in the brief, gave the artist a lot more leeway for their vision, and you got a lot better artwork.”

Some of Giancola's hand illustrations.

One preference jumped immediately into her memory: D. Alexander Gregory’s talent for drawing the female form. “He got all the babes. Terese Nielsen and him got all the babes.”

Some of D. Alexander Gregory's "babes."

If you’re familiar enough with Magic art, you might remember that one Nielsen piece from Alliances: Elvish Ranger. “I got in a little trouble for that one, but I think the guys liked it.”

Of course, that one little bit of cleavage could never hold a candle to the king of provocative Magic art: Robert Bliss. “[Bliss] got me in so much trouble! Oh my god. Because Rob, being the naughty chap that he is, would put penises in everything.” Speaking specifically of Polymorph, “nobody saw that penis for ages and ages until we printed millions of them. And ever since then, everyone looked for penises… and then I couldn’t commission him any more.” (Despite looking very carefully, I couldn’t see that one myself until she pointed it out in great detail. When it was reprinted in a core set, they didn’t replace that magnificent piece of art, but they did crop it to make it less obvious.)

The Mirage original and the Magic 2010 reprinting. Note the cropping: the rabbit's testicle-like lower body is cropped out to draw attention away from its intentionally phallic upper half.

Tastes and rules change over time, of course. One piece of his that was rejected eventually became, a decade later, Disembowel. “This was way too gory for them.” At the time, the policy was:

“None of the art should depict overly violent, gory, racist, or sexist images, or demons with or without horns.”

This ruled Disembowel out for multiple reasons.

On Wizards’ site, she had been credited for coming up with Mirage’s African-inspired setting. When I asked about this, she wasn’t sure. “I can’t remember the specifics of it, to tell you the truth.” Will she take credit anyway? “I would love to, if it was good! But it probably was the case, because I did have a lot of ideas for creative direction.”

[7/3/2015 update: Pete Venters contacted me (with a comment you can read below) to offer a correction: he was the one who came up with Mirage's African setting. He has a far more distinct memory of how and why he did this, and he was in charge of worldbuilding at the time.]

Her position as art director meant more than just commissioning art. “Before I came to Wizards, and probably why I got hired, I was a pop-up book designer.” This naturally led her to innovate the way Magic sealed product was displayed: instead of just a nondescript little flap on top of the booster box showing the name of the set, she came up with a way that the booster box would use a flap of cardboard from the back of the booster box, to pop up with the set’s name and logo. Instead of just a boring box, it presented a unique silhouette from the shelf.

Comparison of pre-Harkey Homelands booster box and her "pop-up" Visions design.

The graphic design didn’t stop there. She designed the set symbols, she commissioned Ian Miller to make Visions’s “triangle of war,” she designed the booster packs, she designed the set’s logos for those booster packs. Keep in mind that this is the time when Magic is really starting to print in other languages, so she designed the logo for every set in every language it was printed in.

Despite all that, there were more conflicts than just finding hidden penises. Especially after the new contracts, the old-school Magic artists didn’t like her much. “A lot of them resented my coming on. I commissioned them less than they used to get. I think they felt a little self-conscious in the presence of really famous sci-fi and comic artists.” Artists new to Magic like Geoff Darrow (of Hard Boiled with Frank Miller), Mike Dringenberg (of Sandman with Neil Gaiman), and John Bolton (of various DC and Marvel comics) would make any illustrator feel that way.

I shared my feeling that artists such as Douglas Shuler weren’t very good, and she agreed. “A lot of them weren’t!” But it was written as a rule that they needed to "retain art continuity between sets,” which meant commissioning more by those early-Magic artists. “That was a dictation from R&D. And that was really difficult.”

“I think the fanbase was very important to keep intact, rightfully so. It was worth using some of the artists, but they were unprofessional, they were hard to work with, and they were pissed off about the royalties.”

A promotional poster for Mirage. Art by Adam Rex.

Those of you who’ve read all of Mark Rosewater’s old columns might know a little bit about the tension between her and R&D. “I wasn’t a gamer, and neither was Maria. And that had some conflicts with R&D.”

Once she had commissioned art from R&D’s briefs, that department would go back over to make sure it matched what they wanted. “There were occassionally some conflicts. And rightfully so; R&D had very good arguments for that. But there were other things that I’d push back on, as well.”

I asked her specifically about The Dragon Mask Story. She took issue with how she’d been presented in that.

“As an art director, and you’re working with 80 different artists, and artists, as you can imagine, are incredibly sensitive and emotional people. You don’t promise art getting used. You just don’t do that. They’re too fragile for that. My position is too authoritative and on-the-line to make those sorts of promises. And if I did promise somebody, I would have no qualms taking that promise back given the circumstances.”

“He could’ve very well been right in his argument. What I found disturbing was the negative tone [of the story], and also the sort of line-by-line reenactment of the conversation.”

Unused art by Brom.

The art graveyard certainly provided good evidence that getting commissioned for a piece of Magic art didn’t mean it would get used. Among the rejected Mirage art, in addition to the previously-mentioned Disembowel were pieces that became Pariah, Thieving Magpie, Isochron Scepter, and other cards later in Magic. Some of the rejected art, especially pieces by Brom and D. Alexander Gregory, was of such high quality that I was in disbelief Magic never found a place for it. There were also some Christopher Rush pieces that were, well… not quite what Magic was looking for.

The conflict between her and R&D ran a bit deeper than disagreements over one piece of art. “I think that [Rosewater] in particular had thought it inappropriate for me to be art directing when I wasn’t a Magic player. And so, he might have been more sensitive or looking for opportunities to point that out.”

There had been a former art director that was a Magic player: Jesper Myrfors.

“He was a founder. He had very close ties with the [other] founders. So for some reason, they really wanted him to come back.”

Portal was Harkey’s last set as the art director for Magic. Jesper Myrfors was hired back on. “There was a huge discrepancy between Jesper’s compensation and my compensation… that’s why I left the art direction of Magic: the Gathering, I was challenging that discrepancy.”

Despite the spectacular art she had commissioned while still remaining under-budget, all the big-name comic illustrators she had recruited to do Magic art, all the new talent she had acquired, Wizards hired Jesper back on to work on art and immediately paid him more than Harkey. Understandably, she was upset about this. Her protests got her moved out of her position as art director.

From art director for Magic, she was moved to art director for The Sideboard. It was a fitting position for someone with extensive magazine layout experience, but it was a distinct move down. (Note: a previous version of this listed her as the art director for The Duelist, a publication which commissioned original Magic art. This was incorrect. -04/26/2015)

I asked her about her personal favorite artists that she worked with, and it was a given that she’d immediately jump to Robert Bliss, whom she calls “the best artist on the planet.” Looking at all his other work, it’s hard for me to argue against that. Whether it’s in his black-and-white sketches, his full-color paintings, or his clay sculptures, everything he makes is simultaneously unique and unmistakably Bliss. He only stayed on making Magic art for one year after Harkey left, but not before making art like the iconic Reanimate. He moved on to film work, including for the Harry Potter film series, for which he eventually shared an Oscar win.

Unused art by D. Alexander Gregory.

Ian Miller and D. Alexander Gregory are the next people she names. It’s really a shame that Ian Miller made Magic art in the era before high-resolution wallpaper was released for popular cards, because his linework is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Gregory has continued making phenomenal Magic art, including planeswalkers like the cycle from M13. He’s not stopped drawing babes, though his style has drifted slightly more traditional from the expressionist tendencies of Mirage-era cards.

Harkey did more than just recruit Magic’s greatest artists. She got the greatest art out of Magic’s greatest artists. Terese Nielsen and others might have continued working on Magic, but they never got the open-ended direction that they got from Harkey, or the ability to choose exactly what pieces they wanted to illustrate. Rosewater and others might resent her disconnection from the game of Magic, but if her job was to make Magic art good art, she succeeded tremendously.

Magic has been around for over 20 years. This means that Harkey’s tenure as art director was less than 10% of the time the game has existed. Somehow, though, that short period produced all the best artists in Magic’s history, as well as at least half of the best individual pieces. The conclusion is clear: Sue Ann Harkey is unrivaled in her talent as an art director for Magic, and unequaled in importance to the game’s artistic history.

All quotes are from an interview with Ms. Harkey conducted by the author. Italicized quotes are from printed style guides she kept from her time at Wizards, circa 1995-1998.

Some of Harkey's artist-signed cards.