The Structures of Ravnica

I'm a proud partner of card Kingdom use card Kingdom comm slash studies when shopping for all things magic Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions but the Emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorers in the lives of Emperor's there's a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of understanding them Italo Calvino's introduction to his 1972 experimental novel titled invisible cities sets the mood for my meditations on Ravnica there are two characters who occupy the frame narrative of these stories Kublai Khan the aging monarch who is tasked Marco Polo a traveling merchant to describe to him all the cities of his vast empire the Venetians chronicles make up the majority of the vignettes Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan a myriad of fantastical worlds and uncanny locations halfway through the novel though we learned that polo is not describing various cities across Khan's Empire but rather Venice over and over and over again every new city is simply a retelling of an aspect of Venice in a different light Ravnica like Calvino's Venice is impossible to pinpoint to a singular description like Marco Polo's stories this plane is divided into a million little microcosms that overlap in otherworldly ways Ravnica to its citizens is multiform Ravnica to its players is even more fluid my experience with the city is perhaps similar but never the same as yours given the nonlinear and randomized nature of card games no two encounters with this world are alike and so as a result rabbinic as its own invisible city a setting with general boundaries but no clear or perfect definition like Venice the perspective shifts with every new visit today I want to look at the elements of Ravnica that render it so difficult to grasp and it's in irony last time I concentrated on how colors can create a sense of identity and mood in a set this time I want to look at the city itself the one hiding behind all these fantasy creatures occupying the center of the card frames I want to shine light on the efforts that go into world building and the effects they have on illustration these structures are often overlooked so I want to slow down and analyze their place in the construction of an image above all I'm interested in thinking about the city as a place as an idea and as a character all its own in 2016 Mike liniment wrote an article titled architecture on innistrad in which he referenced all of the real-world buildings that the creative team reimagined and forming the beloved plain of gothic horror as with many of his articles Mike juggled with the question how much realism do you want in your fantasy this piece is stuck with me since I read it for the first time and has inspired the research and thinking that drives this video rabbika like innistrad joins the ranks of settings that interface with our worlds and put a magical twist on it we can find examples of the source material in our day-to-day lives which bridges the fantasy and the real and allows us to better imagine living on this plane this plane in particular is magics riff on medieval and renaissance Prague Europe as a whole is so rich with many of the fantasy tropes that lead to excellent starting points for world building and story crafting and Prague is the perfect prototype to tap into it has seen centuries of artistic and architectural development it has been the subject of conquest of monarchies and dynasties and even the seed of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the fourth in the 14th century Prague was also subject to German occupation during the Second World War and has since become an affluent epicenter for tourism and work with every new political and cultural development came new buildings walking around Prague or any major city in Europe for that matter is like touring a museum in the open air so when translating a city like Prague into Ravnica I wondered what the creative team studied and discussed in the concept bush I called up magic artist Titus lentor once again to get some insight my name is titus lentor I am a illustrator I work primarily for magic the gathering and Wizards of the coast and I've been building worlds since 2010 Ravnica has taken sort of the best of 600 years of European architecture we're taking the coolest doors we're taking the coolest archways we're sticking them on top of the coolest windows and this forms this horrible kind of amalgamation this Frankenstein's monster of a building and what we then do is we we trim off all the bits that we don't need and then a unified whole kind of pops out and I think that's what's unique about the about the Ravin the generic rabbinic and architecture at the generic buildings and spires and stuff that we see Titus was part of the concept team for the guilds of Ravnica block in 2018 which marked the third visit to the city of guilds his team could draw upon all the visual information found in the entirety of the two blocks prior some 1200 cards and the vast mechanical and design theory that has been produced since in 2005 when Ravnica debuted though there was no point of reference for the world builders they had to render the city from scratch I know that Ravnica is synonymous at this point with the 10 guilds but I want to concentrate for a moment on just how unorthodox the first set was simply by virtue of bringing magic to the urban center at its core and origin magic is a game about resources the entire mechanism hinges on the five basic lands and the colors they represent the first Ravnica set succeeded in conceptualizing the ten ways you can combine these colors as I explored in the previous video but it also inverted the concept of the basic land and the idea of mana as a product of the natural environment prior to 2005 every magic set was still looking towards the tolkien-esque models of high fantasy as a source of inspiration for its creative design all the basic lands echoed this approach they used nature as the example of beauty and power for 10 years Islands mountains forests swamps and Plains resembled vistas and national parks and romantic visions of faraway lands mere dens arrival in 2003 was the first break in this tradition but Ravnica a couple of years later entirely redefines the concept of a basic land to bring wizards and goblins to a Renaissance cityscape was a fissure to vention Ravnica was visually speaking anti-magic and the basic land suite embodied this transgression instead of depicting a literal mountain for red mana artists instead had to capture what jeremy Cranford called the essence of the basic mountain in order to better inform his concept artists on how to recreate that energy for the first block he took them on a field trip to various locations around Washington hiking near Mount Rainier and exploring the Undercity of downtown Seattle helped his team reform the meaning of nature in the context of a city the first 20 basic lands for for each color of manna were the starting points for establishing rabbinic as visual identity in these we see very cleanly the presence of the magical energy they are supposed to produce the swamps like Seattle's underground are foggy and tinged with green the mountains are violently red like the foundries the artist saw on their field trip and the islands are nestled between waterfalls flowing from dams the forests of course are blanketed with trees and the plane shows sweeping views of the whole cityscape illuminated by daylight in these basic lands players fully understood that this set was meant to break with tradition and reinvent the concept of a fantasy world the radical shift in setting was also present in one of the original sets marquee cards birds of paradise by 2005 this creature had already become an iconic piece of magic history showing up in multiple corsets and receiving a new look in 7th edition in both iterations prior the birds are very clearly at home in the tropics but rabbinic his birds are completely contrasted by the presence of a towering gothic s cathedral in the background long ago birds of paradise littered the skies reeds the flavor text thanks to the city sprawl most now exist as pets of society's elite this card echoes the paranoia's that we may be feeling in our lives with every new suburban development or skyscraper that replaces a park or an open field so in marketing in the basic lands and on a high-profile and somewhat nostalgic card the city's presence was explicit looking through the image gallery of the entire first block however Ravnica x' first iteration was still very much seeking to establish its identity so many of these cards either hint at a city or shy away from showing it at all artists could circumvent having to paint such intricate buildings by simply having their subjects interact with materials at ground level these huge stones behind carrion howler watch wolf even remand for example are a staple of rabbinic and architecture the thick low vaults around courthouse are also helped place us in the city without needing much else but cards like aura touched mage and guardians mage mark we're still drawing upon the aesthetics of high fantasy to inform their compositions these cards read more like iterations on the neverending story than city subjects of the mid-2000s some artists of course were commissioned to include the city in all its glory in their backgrounds dagger claw impose us how the city can help guide a composition the sharp edges the tilted camera at a Dutch angle the way the spires fly against the impo is dive-bombing onto an unsuspecting victim all aid in providing movements the monochromatic background solidifies the contrast between the elegance and the grotesque psychic possession gives us a glimpse of the Gothic cathedrals that span across Ravnica and seismic spike shows us the spire an element of Ravnica that will become its defining feature in later blocks overall though the first visit to Ravnica was very much seeking a foundation to build upon there was little in the way of congruent world building and the city itself was much more a backdrop than a character all its own 7 years later with a return to Ravnica these issues would be addressed from the ground up in September of 2012 art director Jeremy Jarvis published an article titled the look of Ravnica in the two-part piece Jarvis described the processes that he and his team of concept artists took to update the visual identity of the city of guilds he writes in preparation for the team's arrival we printed out every single style guide page in card illustration from the original Ravnica block taped them to the walls and then proceeded to circle mark or take down the images based on what we thought worked but perhaps needed a push and what needed a full-on visual redirect along with costuming in the guild symbols themselves a major element of Ravnica that needed reworking was its architecture it is clear from the article that Jarvis wanted buildings that looked unique to each guild and aligned with the philosophies that they represented in order to do so Jarvis brought on the up-and-coming concept artist samberly as an architecture specialist and so in keeping with that spirit I figured I should do the same for this video so I called it my buddy Eric sitter rich to talk architecture yeah so my name is Eric Sachin I live in Milwaukee Wisconsin I graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Notre Dame is a architecture program that focuses a lot on classical architecture and traditional architecture as opposed to more modern styles and contemporary styles and right now I work for a high-end residential architecture firm here in Milwaukee my first goal was to iron out the small details that separate the Osorio structures from those of the borough's these guilds overlap quite a bit in their ideologies but they separate drastically in the manners in which they enforce their ideals returning to Jarvis's article the azureus approach to architecture is centered on order it is meant to force people into standing in lines and to being oppressed by the weight of the law Jarvis wanted a hybrid between a library and a DMV this drawing here shows an emphasis on circles as well as a low arch that keeps its inhabitants firmly in place there is no wiggle room in jurisdiction and the buildings reinforce this idea Eric saw remnants of the Romanesque in this guilt our potential style that was before gothic I was called Romanesque it was a lot of very thick walls round-topped arches as opposed to the pointed ones and short stubby columns holding things up so it was a very robust architecture not a lot of light not a lot of airiness and kind of oppressive to be inside along with the motif of the triangle the most integral and self-sustaining shape the is aureus make great use of the dome if Ravnica is defined by its spires its antithesis would be a covered building that keeps all movement grounded when the Renaissance architecture moved into Baroque circles were abandoned because it was too static of a shape and here you have the domes contrasted with spires the spines are so upward and so evocative that in contrast with these domes these domes just kind of feel like stones in a pond they're just there and they're not moving and it really works with that feeling of you know waiting in line you're gonna be here forever these domes are gonna be here forever and so are you much like the azure yes the Boros are also interested in oppression albeit through much more physical means they are the military units of the city and their architecture reflects the order they seek to enforce on to the citizens of the plain the easiest question would be for what is the personification of a Boros building what does Boris actually stand for they want you to feel safe because they are there but it's not in a nice way it's not like in a fatherly kind of way it's in an oppressive way but they wouldn't really admit that first hand to you so we're looking for the personification of power but with the hint of domination if the azureus embody the Romanesque the Boros read to me like Brutalism the frigid 'no sand indifference of concrete as a primary building material and the intense weight that these structures personify amid feelings of subjugation Brutalism is not playful it is meant to call attention to the core purpose of buildings that of providing solid shelter where do we get that feeling from in terms of image making itself what power often means balance I know exactly how the waiting needs to be needs to be balanced I know that the verticals need to be dominant so we're probably looking up at a building that's when you get the really steep verticals going and I know that I need to offset it with some horizontals I need a very firm base they're there they're not reckless power right there they're grounded so I also need to show the ground planes so that's why I went for this big promenade going in so you feel like they're accessible there's a road that's going in and it's not you know barricaded off so clearly you're free to go in and out as you please but if you do realize that you're in the shadow of this great power great power is also communicated by the auras off syndicate but in the exact opposite way if Brutalism is a building stripped down to its core elements then the gothic movement of centuries prior was instead fully about exploring the decorative potential of architecture and its effects on those who enter the or azov' represents opulence they earn their wealth through exploitation and criminal activity and their building served to flaunt their morally ambiguous riches so the cool thing about Gothic architecture was that it was kind of created by this group of rulers and France and they all came to power and they were like okay we need to build buildings that are gonna prove that we are powerful that we are wealthy and so they set out and they started to build churches virtually every city in Europe impacted by Catholicism has a cathedral somewhere towards the center of town but the innovation of the flying buttress came the ability to make thinner walls and in effect install windows stained-glass became a way to communicate the major events of the Bible for the illiterate churchgoers as well as it means to let more light into the building in effect entering a Gothic cathedral is very airy and uplifting it is meant to be a marvel and upward conduit to the heavens the or azov churches play with the same ideas returning to jarvis we ended up pushing the architecture into way overblown grandiose churches ceilings and arches far too high for any sort of practical purpose at all then filled with walls of stained glass the orzo gag was needlessly high ceilings and arches with only human-sized or because of the flexibility of a fantasy world artists can also make use of stained glass as a plastic material or an adornment Halcyon glaze from the original Ravnica block took that texture and turned it into birds gift of ores OVA and gatecrash did something similar and is often referenced as one of the favorite pieces of this block amongst players in 2019 with the announcement of war of the spark the teaser trailer leaned fully into this idea the Planeswalkers essentially the game superheroes are now the idols of the cathedral their images are venerated into stained glass and serve as a storytelling device much like the subjects and the window panes of all those gothic churches intertwining with Gothic aesthetics are the medieval rock dose buildings which lean into the flamboyant as a means of communicating their fascination with pain life is a circus to the rack dose and their buildings echo this core truth sinister and diabolic imagery emerges in the shape language of these structures and their arches are always tall enough to allow for the Lord of riots himself entryway into any of their shows red lighting and black paint are motifs Eric took note of rack dos guild gate as an exemplary piece of their style and mood I was noticing that a lot of the rafters kind of pushes towards the more medieval and the more castle and crenellations sort of moves moreso than the large gothic moves you can see everything in that image kind of looks like cobblestones I get more of that feeling that they are also maybe in an in-between point in the architectural style you know whereas like some of the more progressive deals that have moved on with an architecture and the racket is like man like we got this sort of dungeon pointy vibe and we love it and we're going to stay one of these more progressive guilds that eric alludes to is of course the Simic combine in this guild we see the most hodgepodge mixture of architectural styles they tap into multiple centuries of development and to me best represents a city like Prague as it exists in the modern era they also carry motifs of the highly decorative art nouveau movement that was ushered in at the turn of the 20th century perhaps its most famous artist Alphonse Mucha was a pioneer in this development and is celebrated in stained glass at the st. Vitus Cathedral at the center of Prague the Simic like mukha are interested in flourishes in beauty and in leveraging biology as a source of aesthetic inspiration I think the Simic would have their own kind of subcategory which would be symbiotic architecture between biological life-forms and more mathematical design within architecture itself they are the biggest mishmash of styles with kind of which kind of reflects you know the way they approach their their creatures and their super mutants and their soldiers that they have you know they kind of experiment and mash things together this one is really really interesting because it really does feel like a European city you have one style next to another style next to another style as you walk down the street it's kind of this hodgepodge of styles across time that gives this a very interesting feel and so yeah obviously all the stuff in the background is so much different than all the things in front but I think that it just speaks to the sort of hodgepodge of nature of the Simek guild and the creatures and everything is a hybrid so this image while the individual buildings are distinct the image itself is a hybrid genrih venez breeding pool also stands out as an exemplary piece of Simek ideals made manifest they really kind of hit the sort of Art Nouveau feeling in this one I think - it's still ordered you know there's still a series of arches but the detailing of those arches is way different than any classical even gothic even Roman or Renaissance architecture but the form is there even if the details are gone and so this building reminded me a lot of gaudí's buildings so the Simek are the most experimental in their architecture and as a result the most fantastical they do not need to interface with our worlds to inform their designs perhaps in this way they represent one of the avenues to the future and insights into the potential of city life in the century to come and this idea leads me to my final point about Ravnica as both Eric and Titus have stated prior Ravnica embodies centuries of human development wrapped in an artifice of fantasy it is a city where conflicting ideologies can co-exist and every approach to life can express itself tucked away in its own district the guilds are simulacra of these ideals they lean into simplified tropes to make clear the divisions in thought but I've hoped to say with this video is that buildings too can communicate in ideology they are superficial and decorative but also serve as a function for storytelling and a totem for identity and fantasy stories have always been to some degree about imagining what life could have been like in a distant past or what it may be like in a very real future the architecture on Ravnica and my analysis explores both ends of the spectrum through these cards we can look back into a very real human history sidestep into an alternate universe and also juggle with the harder hitting issues that plague our lives in the present one of these is what will happen to our cities in a thousand years the remaining four guilds provide some answers to this question the goal gauri suggests that all fades to ruin they represent the first fall from grace and posit that eventually nature will consume us whole Stephan Bella Dean's overgrown tomb is emblematic of this idea it shows one of these prototypical radnik and structures fit with a dome and pointed arches completely immersed in ivy and moss it is underground perhaps nestled next to one of Ravnica x' main sewer lines and uses time as a narrative device other pieces like Vulcan Boggis go Gary longlegs suggests instead that life can continue and thrive in the underworld maybe human societies can find a way to live without the Sun Resident Evil's Raccoon City played with this idea and the goal gari approach seems to suggest that the fall civilization can sprout a macabre birth the solez Nia then are the other side of the same coin much of their architecture makes use of old ruins from an ancient city they also believe in the resurgence of life and the symbiosis between the natural world and the constructed one solez nyan cards show a much brighter and hopeful future they've turned the mistake of the past into monuments from which to grow the trees that rise from the cracks in the ground are not eye swords they are to be built around and preserved and perhaps even worshipped if nature is destined to overthrow the concrete world then the solez Nia welcomed it as a positive and even ornamental force their polar opposite is the fully mechanized industrial wasteland of the is at Leake I said in my previous video that the is it our magicks riff on Blade Runner the world is entirely void of free roaming rivers and trees and instead take the cityscape to its extreme I think that is it would find themselves at home riding the subway system in New York City where grime and grits are byproducts of a landscape fully transformed into machine visit suggests that if the world were truly to be covered in industry life would keep charging on full steam ahead and this leaves one last guild to consider I'd like to use this image to conclude all these thoughts about the functions of architecture and the role of a city this is gruel guild gates by Alexander forsberg if the goal gauri represent the first collapse of civilization and the solez Nia are the eventual rebuilding and harmonizing with its ruins then the gruel are the exact moments that everything comes toppling down I stated at the beginning that magic at its core is a game about resources everything revolves around the idea of the basic land Ravnica took a leap into the urban center and explored all the facets of the developed world but the gruel advocate firmly for a return to the pastoral they are the harbingers of nature they wish to remind civilization of its roots and aggressively removed the structures that depart from that place of origin this image is perfect it is simple it is legible and it is hilarious it communicates a profound resistance to urban sprawl and reminds us that nature is life's most powerful force the torches are anti anakin and echo old-timey fantasy aesthetics of dungeons and dragons the collapsed stones around the door a reminiscent of the primary building blocks of the city of guilds and the graffiti symbol of the gruel clans is properly applied in blood this is far less a guild gates and much more a cry to return to the basics food water shelter earth that is the essence of the animal spirit I will end with one last thought from Calvino's novel contemplating these essential landscapes Kublai reflected on the invisible order that sustains cities on the rules that decreed how they rise take shape and prosper adapting themselves to the seasons and then how they sat in and fall in ruins I've partnered up with the beloved magic artists at McKinnon to help promote his second Kickstarter this one like the first one has limited-edition prints and play mats including a few works from the latest Ravnica block these will never again see print so back the project before its deadline on April 22nd and after supporting subs work head on over to my shop to pick up my very first ever piece of merch this is a limited edition 16-ounce Rotundo mug with some ristic study stylings it's sturdy and holds coffee tea hot chocolates or cool lemonade I'm only making 125 total ends when they're gone they're also gone for good follow the links down below and happy shopping thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rhystic Studies

Views: 273,834

Keywords: Magic the gathering, mtg, trading card game, themagicmansam, ravnica, Prague, art, fantasy, Titus hunter, architecture, gothic, medieval, renaissance, Italo Calvino, invisible cities

Id: fC64JQXnTH8

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ElixirOfImmortality]

I just watched a half hour long building on architecture as it related to MtG, and I’ll probably watch it again.

What fucking sorcery does Rhystic Studies use?

[u/Spikeroog]

Me: I don't have time to watch half an hour long youtube video
Also me: It's Rhystic studies, nvm

[u/Superpoly]

If this video doesn’t include a detailed analysis of the Tin Street economy I’m unsubbing

That’s not true I could never unsub from Sam 💖

[u/ValuablePie]

Ridiculously well made. I wonder what Sam's academic/educational background is in.

[u/Bantersmith]

As a DM who kind of sucks at describing architecture, and is running a Ravnica campaign, this is exactly what I need.

[u/krsj]

Something is missing

[u/[deleted]]

Rhystic Studies is like the content cop of Magic the Gathering. Every time he uploads a video I just drop everything and watch it. The quality and care he puts into his videos is unmatched in the community. The way he approaches topics really makes you think and appreciate the game and all it’s minute facets is incredible. Keep up the great work Sam.

[u/GSUmbreon]

Every time he puts out a new video, my YouTube front page is always like "Wanna binge watch his whole channel again?" and I've never said no.

[u/AvalancheMaster]

One of the things I did not expect to see in this video was the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, in Sofia, where I currently live. While Ravnica is based on Prague, South-Eastern European architecture as a whole seems to have provided much inspiration to the plane.

Bulgaria deserves more recognition in such work, as it is quite unique in its blend of Bulgarian National Revival architecture, post-Ottoman europeanisation, 30s modernism, and post-1960s Soviet brutalism. Apart from Half-Life 2 (which is based primarily on Sofia), Ravnica is the only other fantasy world that has given me a taste of that.