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 $45 USD, which makes it a great time to pre-order.
- Page Count: 288
- Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
- Product Dimensions: 11 x 1 x 10 inches
- Includes concept art, final art, and Hearthstone history.
Pre-order on Amazon.com Pre-order on Amazon.ca
Pre-order on Amazon.co.uk Pre-order on Amazon.de Pre-order on Amazon.fr
Quote from BlizzardThe Art of Hearthstone offers an in-depth glimpse into the creativity that made the wildly popular collectible card game into a global phenomenon. From the unseen concepts built early in Hearthstone’s development to the hundreds of beautiful fantasy illustrations that have captured players’ imaginations, this volume will show readers the art of the game in breathtaking detail. The book also tells the story of how Hearthstone came to be, growing from a small-team project to the worldwide success that it is today with more than 50 million players.
Would actually buy the book if it wasn’t 45$.
It's only currently full price on Amazon FR (okay 1 cent off), the rest have it discounted!
These r cool :) The Wisp one tho is relatively known among custom card designers, iv seen number of ppl (myself included) use those ghosts for a card already :D That being said, the goblin with the dagger from Reckless Rocketeer has been used many times before as well and i never knew it was from this art :O nice!
I like Captain's Parrot art. There is definitely more than meets the eye on that one :)
Isn't the quest in hellfire peninsula?
No, Terrokkar Forrest. I think the quest is in the north eastern top of the circle that was blown away. Auchindoun area.
Interesting how they use one arwork for multiple porpouses.
You sir just blew my mind, I will thank you once I assemble it back together...
I have always thought that was a snake XD
Funny thing is that even if it was the "snake" it wouldn't be snake but murloc LOL
Searing totem is also sweet.
And here we can see Patchwerk's hero power Hateful Strike
I love how this was pulled straight from a reddit thread yesterday.
You're speaking like this entire post was copy pasted from it - it wasn't. Inspiration, sure. A couple of the cards featured here, yep from the first couple top comments. The rest was done from prior knowledge and browsing through my personal gallery of full card art, picking out the most interesting ones.
Here it is
It would've been nice if you hadn't played it off as your original idea though, just a little comment acknowledging that this isn't your brainchild would be more honest.
The post was already sourced through Mike Donais' quote, as all Blizzard posts are. That quote is the exact reason for the post, as explained already in the op. It doesn't exactly take a genius to put it all together.
I'll be sure to include a comment in the next article I do when I get the idea while clipping my toe nails. If you truly look hard enough, everything you look at can be seen as an "unoriginal idea".
By the Holy Light!