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 DonaisThis 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 BlizzardThe 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.
I thought the "Art of Hearthstone" was supposed to be released on October 15th. Did the release date get moved? What is the new release date?
Somebody was on reddit today
'' Priests, why do you gotta steal everything? (Even Reddit content) '' -Fluxflashor
For Westfall combat, you forgot to mention that Murloc Raider is at the base of the light house, and Murloc Scout (which is the same art as Murloc generated by I Am Murloc from Elite Tauren Chieftain)are all charging onto the shore besides Old Murk-Eye.
How about Young Priestess? In Hearthstone she looks like a Night Elf, but compare to the original she's a blood elf.
That's weird. Good catch!
Damn, I always thought dagger mastery showed daggers sticking in gold
Where do Captain Cookie's stats come from?
The current Tavern Brawl. When you choose th pirate custom, he is in the deck
That's still quite a bit of extra data to download, even for computers. Not all art is created equal though and for some cards, what you see is exactly what was created.
The Frozen Throne and Un'Goro art packages each come in at just over a gig. If it's like that for each expansion, the client is going to become larger than even the World of Warcraft client. Of course, that is the full resolution art, they could easily scale it down and use lossy compression to get the size down considerably.
I think the Hearthstone Wiki on Gamepedia does a pretty good job at giving people an easy overview of full art and is better than any implementation the Hearthstone team would do.
https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Full_art
My brain assumed Valeera's daggers were dug into a grassy hill.
I always wondering why the daggers in the hero portrait don't match those on the hero power.
I wish they would release full art cards (kinda' like in MtG) for some promotional events or special releases. Or alternate art cards. Or both!
Nice info from Flux and other contributors.
Just serach any card in google images and you can see full art for most of the cards. Maybe even all cards, but i can't gurantee that as i didn't serach all of them. :D
I hate HS art, look, they used arts from fan artists and some arts cartoonish and some serious and some arts just rly bad. Worst CCG art. IMHO. SW have anime art it's not cool for me, but it's so much better, tes L have rly good art, Gwent is the best.
I like it for the most part, but yeah, the inconsistency is a little annoying.
OMG at those Shadowform hero powers!
A mind trick indeed.