Just Add Milk: Second Helpings (1)
Just Add Milk: Second Helpings (1)
Part 1 of an all encompassing look at the sequel to my favorite project...
Welcome back friends! Who’s craving seconds? The Secret Lair Cereal Saga continues with Just Add Milk: Second Helpings!
If you haven't read my post about the first batch of Just Add Milk cards, I encourage you to do so. I've got plenty more to share about these new cards but it's all building off what came before, so I won’t be covering details that remain the same in this post.
1. Intro
In November of 2023, right before the announcement for the original Just Add Milk, I received an email from the new Art Director for Magic: the Gathering's Secret Lair, Jacob Covey. He invited me back to create another 4 cards in the style of cereal boxes. At this point, Just Add Milk had already proven to be my all-time favorite project to work on and that was before I experienced the positive reception from fans, so I couldn't have been more delighted for round 2.
2. The New Lineup
For the sequel, I was allowed to make card suggestions for the first time. I considered a LOT of cards but ended up narrowing down my selections to just 19 before pitching them to Jacob. Some felt like great opportunities for a redesign of the character in a cartoon style, some specifically referenced “Food”, “Hunger” and/or “Eating” and all were Legendary creatures, so I had an eye out for Commander friendly options across the board. As I'm sure is the case with any Secret Lair, there's a lot to consider when picking which cards to include and for various reasons most of my suggestions were not selected, however I'm happy to say that one of them did get chosen, so why not start with...
3. Yargle, Glutton of Urborg
Yargle was my one suggestion that made it through. There was much to be excited about with Yargle; he's a Glutton (it's right there in the name), he's already got a following of devoted fans, and at this point in time he was just 1 of 2 Legendary creatures to have no rules text (unless you include the 11 appearing in Legends, but those cards haven’t been printed since 1994).
Why should it matter that Yargle has no rules text? For those who don't know, Magic players commonly refer to creatures without any rules text as "vanilla" so when else are you going to be able to celebrate a card for its delicious vanilla flavor like this? And yes, that means I also suggested Isamaru, Hound of Konda as well. While I would have loved a chance to portray the fearsome canine in a cuter cartoon style, I think Yargle was the optimal choice here and I hope the audience agrees. Apologies to the Yargle and Multani fans out there, March of the Machine hadn’t been released yet or else that card would have been suggested as well.
Now onto the character redesign…Yargle has a very interesting body shape. While technically a Frog Spirit, to me he appears awfully devilish. Upon researching ways to reinterpret the character, I decided to take inspiration from the Tasmanian Devil of Looney Tunes. With a somewhat similar body shape as well as personality, it felt like just the right fit for Yargle.
A couple more fun details I added are the human-shaped cereal pieces alongside Yargle shaped marshmallows, all served up in a bowl crafted after the Cabal Stronghold of Dominaria.
For the back of the card, there’s no puzzle for this one, instead my AD Jacob had the excellent idea of trying a cut-out puppet of Yargle. While chopping up your cards is not required to enjoy them, if anyone dares to try please send me photos! Regardless of whether you keep your cards in mint condition or not, I hope folks appreciate the concept.
Next up, we have…
4. Sakashima of a Thousand Faces
This one was a real head scratcher at first. What's really cool about the original art by Jason Engle is you can't see exactly what Sakashima looks like because he's hiding behind all of these masks.
I had no choice but to figure out how to keep the character’s face hidden while still coming off as a compelling cereal mascot. Ultimately I'm really happy with the composition, I think it ended up with a dynamic pose that comfortably fit all the elements including a variety of different masks, all reacting to the delicious bowl of cereal. My aim was to downplay Sakashima’s true face peeking through the masks so that viewers might not even notice until after looking at all the other faces.
Each mask references something specific as well. The farthest away, in white and gold and the closest in full red are both visible around Sakashima’s neck in the original card art above. The one in the back with the looped hair is the face of Sakashima’s Protege, and the circular one in blue and white is the mask on Sakashima’s Student. Lastly, the green mask up top is a direct reference to another card in this set that I hear compliments Sakashima quite nicely…more on that later.
For Sakashima’s cereal design, I really wanted to echo the 1000 faces with the cereal having 1000 flavors, so I came up with a few ideas involving a rainbow of flavors, one of which we ultimately went with. Some alternate ideas I tried were combining all the cereals of every other Just Add Milk card onto this one as well as another option that had cereal pieces in the shape of faces.
For the back puzzle, we went with a match-finding game featuring masks. For a time we considered doing a name-fill style puzzle, but it required a lot of space and just didn’t have the same visual appeal, so we decided that the mask idea felt like a much more appropriate fit.
Still wondering about that green mask? Well it appears that there’s too much excitement to contain in one post and I’ve run out of room, so you’ll have to wait for part 2…coming soon!