Hearthpwn

12 Pieces of Hearthstone Art Where There's More than Meets the Eye

Hearthstone card art has always been a big topic in the community in one way or another, and today is no exception! Mike Donais revealed in the wee hours of this morning that the art for both Dragonling Mechanic and Squirrel were based off his daughters' World of Warcraft characters.

Quote from Mike Donais

This art was originally commissioned for WoW TCG 10 years ago as a card matching my daughter's WoW character. Same name, same pets, same engineering goggles and everything. The WoW TCG card even had the same name as her character. My other daughter's character is now used for the squirrel token art.

But Flux you ask, why does this matter? It matters because we're going to take a look at the bigger picture for some of Hearthstone's best pieces and show you everything going on, not just the part the Hearthstone team wanted you to see.

Mike Donais' Daughters - Dragonling Mechanic and Squirrel

No, he doesn't actually have a Squirrel for one of his daughters, although it's pretty crazy at how much is going on in that art.

Fake Warlocks

Did you know that the art for Mind Spike, the Priest hero power from Shadowform, is actually the same art used on the Warlock's Corruption spell? It goes even further because the upgraded Mind Spike, Mind Shatter, is the same art from Reliquary Seeker, a card which came out way after in the League of Explorers Adventure.

Priests, why do you gotta steal everything?

This is our Town, Scrub! DIE!!

The poor Orc depicted in the full art for Defias Ringleader has made a terrible mistake; YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO LOOK AT THE RINGLEADER!

Rogues Do It From Behind

And no, we're not talking about the token card. I bet you never considered what exactly those daggers in Daggery Mastery were sitting in. Is it a hilltop? Trash? Jello? Nope, as it turns out the hill is actually an Abomination. Sorry dude.

Is Valeera Legs or are Legs Valeera?

If you haven't seen Valeera's full art, you're either in for a treat or going to be horrified much like certain images of Dugtrio you'll find on the internets will do to you. Bonus, here's her original art as well!

More Dots!

The full art for Onyxia showcases an entire raid group trying to take her down. If they aren't successful, I hope their DKP doesn't get hurt too bad.

Fallen Ghosts

There's not way you can touch this topic by not including Wisp. In the full art for this wonderful card, two ghosts and a Spirit Healer are seen out of frame, likely performing a corpse run. Assuming the three dead adventurers are together, the Wisp should get back to their body before the other two thanks to their ability to navigate the spirit world faster than normal spirits. Cool!

Westfall Combat

Old Murk-Eye is actually on the western beach of Westfall, an Alliance territory found in Eastern Kingdoms and home of the Deadmines where you'll find Edwin VanCleef, Captain Cookie, and more, It looks like his group of Murlocs are going out hunting for fresh Alliance newbies.

Bad Gorilla!

You can just barely make out the hooves of a Tauren on the card portrait for King Mukla, but the full art shows us that the poor captive is a female Tauren that is really trying to get out of that crazy grip. And yes, Mukla is HUGE.

Reckless Cataclysm

Art from World of Warcraft Cataclysm was re-purposed for Reckless Rocketeer but that's not something new to Hearthstone, what makes this piece interesting is she's actually a background character and one you very likely never saw due to those awesome daggers present on the main character.

That's All Folks!

Are there any other pieces of full art you know about which have background secrets?

Tell us about them in the comments below!

But Wait! There's More!

This section contains affiliate links to Amazon - they help support the site!

The official Hearthstone Art Book is coming out soon (it was supposed to be out earlier this month) and you can pre-order yourself a copy of it over at Amazon! "The Art of Hearthstone" will contain 288 pages of some of our favourite game art and as a bonus it's currently discounted across Amazon from the normal price of $45 USD, which makes it a great time to pre-order.

• Page Count: 288
• Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 1 x 10 inches
• Includes concept art, final art, and Hearthstone history.

 Pre-order on Amazon.com  Pre-order on Amazon.ca

 Pre-order on Amazon.co.uk  Pre-order on Amazon.de  Pre-order on Amazon.fr

Quote from Blizzard

The Art of Hearthstone offers an in-depth glimpse into the creativity that made the wildly popular collectible card game into a global phenomenon. From the unseen concepts built early in Hearthstone’s development to the hundreds of beautiful fantasy illustrations that have captured players’ imaginations, this volume will show readers the art of the game in breathtaking detail. The book also tells the story of how Hearthstone came to be, growing from a small-team project to the worldwide success that it is today with more than 50 million players.