List of card art descriptions/Zendikar

Card	Description
 	Color: Artifact
Location: Any outdoor
Action: Show a pair of rugged, leather hiking boots crisscrossed with straps and bindings and plated in places with weathered metal. These are essential gear for adventurers and travelers. Perhaps we see streaks of mud and turf stuck to them from clearly distinct terrains.
Focus: The boots
Mood: They'll take you anywhere in the world.
Notes: Be careful of anachronism. These are well-made, but still fantasy boots -- no rubber treads, etc.
 	Color: Red creature.
Location: Any outdoor.
Action: Show a badass, burly human shaman in cool traveling armor/cloak. He's armed with an arm-mounted, heavy-looking mystic fire staff, and has it hefted like a minigun (except it's attached to his arm -- maybe it and part of his arm are blackened from repeated use). He's in the act of blasting a gout of flame out of the end of it, toward an out-of-frame foe. It's so powerful that his body is set against the "kickback."
Focus: The fire shaman.
Mood: If all else fails, bring in the guy with the flamethrower staff.
 	Color: White spell
Location: A jagged ice chasm
Action: This spell keeps travelers safe from the elements. Show two kor explorers (one male, one female) who are braving the icy wilderness. They're using a system of ropes and hooks to traverse the gap of a chasm. Snow swirls around them, but a swirl of golden light orbits around them, keeping the snow at bay.
Focus: The protected travelers
Mood: It's hard going, but they're going to make it thanks to a little magic.
 	Color: Red creature
Location: Rocky mountainous area
Action: A goblin warrior leans precariously headfirst off of a cliff face or large boulder, ready to ambush someone out-of-frame. The goblin has a sword, spear, or other long melee weapon, and has precariously anchored himself to the rock face using ropes and spikes.
Focus: The goblin warrior
Mood: Upper ground advantage
 	Action: Look at the "forest reef" concepts on pg. 19-20 of the style guide. Now imagine them coming to life as a huge "forest elemental," a gigantic creature made of stony reef lattice with "skin" of green shrubs and lichen, and limbs made of twisted landforms. Perhaps it has torn up a crater's worth of dirt, roots, and a small village as it lurches to its feet.
Focus: The huge forest-reef-creature
Mood: The land has come alive -- and it's not happy
 	Color: Blue/black creature
Location: Water (perhaps in deep, murky waters or breaching the ocean's surface)
Action: This is a legendary kraken of the deep, the one shown on pg. 72(B) of the style guide. He's an enormous beast, a king of the deep and possessed of eldritch magics that should not be uttered. Feel free to add/change details to make him a unique monster.
Focus: Wrexial the Kraken
Mood: When he shows up, bad things are about to happen.
 	Location: Forest clearing, or towering over some treetops
Action: This is a mega-huge, fantasy pachyderm -- the lord of all the hugest mammals. Show it as a sort of cross between a rhino and an elephant -- tusks, nose horn(s), plates of armor, and thick round feet -- charging aggressively or rearing back over the treetops. It's definitely a fantasy creature -- perhaps it has six spiraling tusks, or a clawed trunk, or a partially bipedal stance.
Focus: The pachyderm-lord
Mood: Ultimate strength, ferocity, and destructiveness
 	Action: Show a female kor "forgemaster," a kind of blacksmithing mage. In the air nearby her, a large stone of iron ore has been sliced in half, and inside it we see the glowing form of a kor weapon (see style guide pg. 48). It's as if the stone was a mold for that weapon, and the weapon has formed out of the molten heart of that stone, just now beginning to cool. Perhaps the kor is in a pose of meditation, almost prayer, to perform this magical forging ritual.
Mood: Her nomadic people have no place to put permanent forges -- so they use ritual magic instead
 	Color: Green creature
Location: Dense, thorny forest
Action: This is a female human adventurer, a traveling druid who is trained in summoning and controlling mana. Show her opening a worn leather pouch or other container, out of which floats a small magical orb made of golden energy. She carries mana around with her the way that other travelers might carry food or water. Her gear, including her magical container, looks rough and worn, having seen much use in the harsh wilderness.
Focus: The traveling mana-druid
Mood: She's handy to have along on the expedition.
 	Color: Black spell
Action: A scene of epic destruction. The Eldrazi titan Emrakul floats over a forest that contains a large elvish settlement. The titan emits a "sphere of annihilation" -- a powerful field of magic that simply obliterates living things. At the bottom of the frame and in the foreground, we see indications of the devastation -- living things being swept away like dust.
Mood: An entire community and its ecosystem, *obliterated* simply by the presence of the Eldrazi titan.
 	A champion of the elves, an ally of the planeswalker Nissa Revane, lies dead in the foreground. A single long-stemmed, deep-purple flower blooms right in front of the elf's corpse -- an assassin's magically spawned calling card. In the distant background we see the silhouette of a vampire walking away.
 	Color: Blue spell
Action: A human or elf nature mage has just had his/her spell foiled, and the spell's remnants have exploded like a paint bomb. The nature mage stands in front of a rock face, bracing from the blasted-apart spell, and the "spell-stuff" is splashed all over the mage and the rock face behind him/her. The splashed stuff gives the impression of a radial splatter painting, and the splatter, through some kind of strange magic, forms a rough, partial landscape "painting" from the spashes of spell goo.
Focus: the exploded spell and the 'art' it has created
Mood: Creation through destruction
 	Color: White creature
Location: unimportant
Action: This card represents a holy man who has "ascended" and become a demigod. As a simple holy man, he started off looking like the figure in the Zendikar styleguide on p. 35L. But now he floats a few inches off the ground, robes flowing as though underwater. The sun is directly behind his head, and where his hooded face used to be there is now only pure light. Perhaps there's a larger, ghostly "echo" of him in the sky behind him.
Focus: the holy man who has achieved transcendence
Mood: Epic, divine power
 	Setting: Zendikar
Location: Kozilek-warped cavern
Action: Show Omnath, the legendary elemental from the original Zendikar block. It is enraged by the Eldrazi destruction of its plane, and we can see strands of red rippling through its green energy like red ink in water. Razor sharp red stones orbit around it. In this shot, Omnath looms at the edge of a cliff in a a cavern that has been warped by Kozilek. Like Omnath's reference, energy flows out of it, only this time it pools on either side of it like a heavy fog, and we can see the energy forming into vague replications of Omnath itself.
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: White enchantment
Location: A felidar lair
Action: Show a rocky lair belonging to a family of felidars. There are bones littered by a cave entrance and a precarious rocky peak where an adult felidar lounges at the very top watching over the others below. Maybe there's a kitten or two playing.
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: White creature
Location: The ground of a rocky valley
Intent: This card shows a stampede from a mouse's perspective.
Action: Show a cute, fantastical mouse based on a jerboa (see reference, it's a small rodent with big back legs for jumping). It stands at the bottom of the ravine and sniffs the air for danger. The pebbles on the ground around it bounce into the air, and dirt billows in the background as if there's an earthquake. A stampede of creatures is coming, but we're too small to see them.
Focus: The mouse
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Blue legendary creature
Location: The sea
Action: Introduce us to Charix, a massive crab the size of a small continent. He bursts out of the sea, and water cascades off his shell. His shell has elements of the surrounding land, maybe a couple shrubs grow on it and bits of Skyclave ruin stick to it, giving it a distinctive pattern. He has multiple sets of pincers, but one should be much larger than the others (see fiddler crab reference). Include some elements for scale such as floating ruins or birds—it's important this creature be huge.
Focus: Charix
Mood: An absolute unit of a crab
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Blue enchantment
Location: A ruin interior. Light pouring in illuminates the puzzle at its center.
Action: Show a ruin interior with a huge "water puzzle" levitating at the center of the room. The "water puzzle" consists of streams of water weaving in and out of each other to create a complicated knot (or some other intertwined shape). A female explorer looks up at the puzzle and contemplates it.
Focus: The water puzzle
Mood: Mind-boggling; an obstacle to overcome
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Black creature
Location: A dark corner of a ruin
Action: Show a terrifying shade emerging from a ruin wall. Black smoke trails from its eyes and claws. Skyclave patterning should be integrated into its wispy body.
Focus: The shade
Mood: An evil menace
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Black sorcery
Location: Flying past the Skyclaves
Action: Show a shadowy blast smiting a dragon through the chest. The blast of darkness has an angular shape. The dragon roars in anger as the magic slams into it, shattering its scales and killing it.
Focus: The dark magic hitting the dragon
Mood: The fall of a mighty creature
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Red creature
Location: The top of a cliff edge
Action: Show a canine-inspired take on a red-aligned Zendikar elemental standing at the very top of a precarious cliff. An elemental-meets-animal. It should have clawed paws made for climbing steep cliffs and a molten-red glow to its stone body.
Focus: The dog elemental
Mood: Agile, fierce
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Red creature
Location: A rocky Akoum region
Action: Show a massive red-scaled lizard monster with a chubby pouch-like throat. It resembles a Komodo dragon with tusks, spines, and little beady eyes. See the attached reference for how its neck looks. There's a hot glow coming from its throat pouch as it burps up a fireball.
Focus: The spitting lizard
Mood: A little goofy, a lot of danger
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Red sorcery
Location: A mountaintop
Story info: Nahiri is "lithoforming" the landscape, reshaping the world according to her will and stilling the chaotic effects of the Roil.
Action: Show Nahiri attempting to calm the Roil using her enhanced lithomancy powers. She stands on a mountain peak, arms outstretched. Giant chunks of rock and ancient hedrons tear out of the land and swirl around her. It looks as if she is about to recreate the hedron network.
Focus: Nahiri's lithomancy
Mood: Stronger and more determined than ever
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Green legendary creature
Location: A forest landscape. Bits of ruin and hedrons are scattered about.
Action: This is Ashaya, Nissa's elemental familiar. See the attached reference for how Ashaya has looked previously. Ashaya is a bipedal elemental with a distinctive curved head shape, composed of thick vines and living plants. Ashaya is taller and more powerful than before (about 30 feet tall). Maybe some explorers can be seen admiring it from below for scale.
Focus: Ashaya
Mood: A loyal guardian
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Green creature
Location: Hanging above a lotus field
Action: Show us an updated take on the Lotus Cobra, a snake with prismatic scales. The lotus flower should be integrated into its design in some way—maybe the inside of its hood is patterned like lotus petals. Its body drapes and coils around a tree branch.
Focus: The colorful cobra
Mood: Mesmerizing
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Red green creature
Location: Murasa
Action: Show a towering elemental based on the body shape of a troll. Its body is made from brambles, vines, and leaves, and where its heart would be glows red with flame. It scoops up a sapling, dirt and everything, and holds it up to its chest in a careful manner. Green energy surrounds the pair and flows into the sapling.
Focus: The elemental
Mood: Watching out for even the tiniest of plants
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Red-green-white-blue legendary creature
Location: Towering over the watery landscape of Tazeem
Action: This is Omnath, an elemental being made of four colors of mana (red, green, white, and blue). See the attached reference for a sketch of the new four-color Omnath design. He has two legs, four arms, and an intense white light shining from the center of his "head." Omnath looks powerful and recharged—his body glows brighter than before and looks slightly more defined and muscular. Each one of his arms manipulates a different type of mana around him.
Focus: Omnath
Mood: Mana manifested
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Colorless artifact
Location: Fallen into the Guul Draz swamp
Action: Show the floating monument from the attached reference having fallen to the earth. Only a portion of the Eldrazi statue remains, alongside several toppled cubes. Foliage, vines, and moss have grown over parts of the lost monument. A faint glowing energy glows from the cracks in the cubes—they still hold some magical power. An explorer or two could stand next to the monument for scale.
Focus: The ruined monument
Mood: Eerie, long dormant
 	Setting: Zendikar
Color: Land associated with mana of any color
Location: A Skyclave interior
Action: Show a vast Skyclave ruin interior. At the center is some kind of prominent basin. Ghostly energy pours out of the basin and fills the room with a white fog. Within this fog are several humanoid figures made out of negative space. The figures aren't well defined, only given form by the fog that flows around them.
Focus: The ghostly room
Mood: Spooky
==References==
Category:Parts of a card