Giga's Alters

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Hello, hello, and welcome to Giga's Alters, a blog featuring various alters by yours truly. Anyway, this is only the introduction, so rather than going through the entire alter process of a specific project, this post will be about card alterations as a whole. Enjoy!

Why Alter?

Card alteration, though far from a new thing, has only become widely popular in the last few years, with alterists such as Eric Klug leading the charge with new techniques and styles. I have been altering magic cards since the beginning of last summer (or winter, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, I suppose), and in that time I have received various reactions, ranging from praise to "Why would you deface a card like that???"

Despite how ignorant I find the latter sort of response, they have a point. Why would I paint on a card? It reduces the value, it forces you to use a sleeve (though you should really be using one anyway). Now, this question is difficult for me to answer without bias, so I asked one of my. My friend Conor, who commissioned this altered Vraska from me, summed up the case quite well:

[background=#f6f7f8]"Sentimental value. And personal feelings towards the renewed art... I didn't intend to ever trade it away or sell it, so the currency value did not outweigh the sentimental value."[/background]

This is pretty much it. New art personalizes the card, and when the card is something you intend to keep, the value does not really matter. This ties into the Commander (EDH) format tightly, where player identity is important. This was further elaborated upon by another person who has commissioned a card from me (a Teysa, Orzhov Scion that will be highlighted in the next post):

[background=#f6f7f8]"Another reason would be that, in my case, the alternative artwork not only improves my taste in the card, the work done into a more be holding and meaningful representation of the artwork simply strengthens the love I have for the card. You can make a cake, and it can be delicious, however if you give it a personal touch or enhancement to your liking, the cake is that much more valuable.[/background]

[background=#f6f7f8]"[/background]

This continues the theme of personal value>market value. Anyway, I will stop my rambling about the philosophy behind alterations, and give a quick overview of what can be expected from this blog.

Blog Features

This blog is not going to be a gallery, and it is likely that not all of the alters I create will be featured in it. I intend for this blog to be a method of showing the alteration process in depth, with various progress pictures being taken during the process of creating an alter I plan to feature.

Additionally, each week I will pick out my 5 favorite alterations posted on /r/mtgaltered to show to you, giving a short analysis of why I love that piece. 

If there is anything else that anyone would like to see, just go ahead and drop a comment below, I plan to check this thread frequently, so you can expect a response promptly. Furthermore, I am always looking for ideas for alters (particularly lands, as they are very low-cost, and easier to sell or trade) so if you can anything, feel free to make the idea known.

I plan to post regularly on each Friday, starting tomorrow (in my timezone it will still be Thursday when this thread becomes visible).

See you then!