MTG Artist Donato Giancola Reveals Wizards’ “Take It Or Leave It” Contract Policy

Last updated on January 18, 2025

Inkshield | Illustration by Donato Giancola

Renowned visual artist Donato Giancola has published a series of posts on his website Donato Arts, in which he criticizes Wizards of the Coast in the harshest terms.

“You should be ashamed Wizards of the Coast,” he wrote in the first of three (to date) open letters to Magic: The Gathering‘s publisher, in which he describes Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, and Disney's Marvel as defining examples of “corporate exploitative practices.”

“I am stunned by what this company has become,” Giancola wrote in that same letter, which he also published on his Facebook page on October 25, 2024. “I am disgusted.”

Middle-earth's Caravaggio

Depending on how much you care about Magic card art, you may have jumped off your seat when learning that Giancola and WotC are not on good terms…

… or you may be wondering who this Donato dude is.

“Donato Giancola is the Caravaggio of Middle-earth,” wrote Jeff LaSala in an article for Reactor, a sci-fi and fantasy magazine published by Tor Books. “He’s [also] a teacher at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts and an award-winning painter who’s done an unfathomable amount of work for Wizards of the Coast, LucasFilm, a bunch of magazines and video games, and basically all the major book publishers.”

Giancola has won honors including a World Fantasy Award, a Hamilton King Award, and many Chesley Awards for his illustrations. His latest accolade is an Award for Best Artwork for “Frodo's Inheritance” from the Tolkien Society, which he earned last April.

Giancola's “Frodo's Inheritance” – Tolkien Society

Giancola is widely regarded as one of the best LotR artists and has worked with WotC for nearly three decades, so you may be surprised to learn that he didn’t illustrate any of the cards for Magic’s Lord of the Rings Universes Beyond set. 

Giancola has since made it clear why he doesn’t want to work on UB sets, or ever again for WotC.

As described by Giancola – who only works on physical mediums, and not digital – most artists contracted to do Universes Beyond work are required to work digitally and sign much stricter contracts than those that illustrated sets based on Magic's IP.

For now, at least.

“Although these new contractual obligations are only occurring with the Universes Beyond sets,” Giancola wrote on November 2nd, “it is not too hard to see them implemented on standard Magic contracts in the future.”

But that's only part of what prompted Giancola to post at length on Facebook.

The Iron Man Controversy

WotC and Giancola parted ways last year due to contractual differences, ending a nearly 30-year relationship.

According to Giancola, he had been asked to work on one of the upcoming Marvel sets; this being a UB set, the contract had additional clauses, and Giancola wanted some clarifications.

“The contract for the Marvel Universes Beyond was solicited back to me back in May 2023,” Giancola told Draftsim, when we asked him for comments, “and I refused to sign it in June 2023 after they refused my modest clarification request.”

Giancola accepted his last commission from WotC in October of that year and turned in his last paintings the following December.

It should have been a somewhat amicable parting of ways…

… but four months later, a plagiarism scandal shook the Magic world.

Long story short, attentive MTG players realized that artist Fay Dalton had plagiarized Giancola's work in her Trouble in Pairs illustration…

… and soon after, as the whole MTG reddit-sphere jumped onto this scandal, it was discovered that Dalton had “borrowed” from a lot of sources.

If we’re being charitable, this plagiarism may not have been WotC's doing – more like a sore lack of due diligence – and they did sever ties with Dalton… but WotC also published copyrighted material without permission, so they had to meet Giancola in court.

“My lawyer and I were finally able to reach a settlement with Wizards in September which would put this infringement issue behind us,” Giancola wrote. “My silence in commenting on a legal issue as it was resolved showed my good faith toward my ex-client.”

Yet that silence was not to last.

Soon after the settlement was reached, Giancola was made aware that WotC was using one of his paintings in their internal documents and style guides without permission.

“This is the VERY set and the very CHARACTER that I REFUSED to work on because Wizards would not negotiate in good faith and agree to modify their contract,” he wrote (caps included). “I rejected the contract. So, instead of partnering with me to work on the set in an official capacity, I am now UNWILLINGLY FORCED to be a part of a professional commercial enterprise I PROFESSIONALLY and MORALLY object to.”

The illustration in question is an Iron Man portrait Giancola painted several years ago.

Donato Arts/Facebook

When asked by Draftsim, Giancola said that the Iron Man painting was produced as a live demonstration of oil painting techniques, stressing that it was “an educational and conceptual work regarding the power of the human spirit over material strength.”

The demonstration took place for an Illustration Master Class held in Amherst, Massachusetts, back in 2008 for the around 70 attending artists, and was executed during multiple days. “There was no commissioning client,” Giancola told Draftsim, “nor did I receive a fee for its execution.”

According to Giancola's posts, WotC is now using that image – without his consent, and after having severed contractual ties – for WotC's internal style guide.

“I recognize I do not own the trademarked likeness of characters like Iron Man,” he mentioned. “But Wizards use the entirety of my painted image within a style guide, including the background which is the majority of the image, and it is that background which is 100% my creation.”

Magic’s Artists Are Undervalued

The root of Giancola's contractual disagreement is how Magic's artists are compensated for their creative work.

In his November 2 post, Giancola details how his first work for WotC in 1996 earned him $1000.

Amber Prison | Illustration by Donato Giancola

Fast-forward 27 years later, and his last commission earned him… $1000. Adjusted for inflation, that would only be about $500 in 1996 money.

“Why would someone work for a client who did not raise their pay after 27 years?” Giancola asks in his post.

“The private, secondary original art market for Magic: The Gathering card illustration has seen tremendous growth over the past two decades,” he answers. “From practically ‘giving away’ Magic art back in the late 1990’s for a couple hundred dollars, full color finished card art can now sell from $2000 to $10,000 and up, sketches sell for $300 to $800 and more.”

That's what changed for the worst with WotC's focus on Universes Beyond.

“Recent Magic:The Gathering set releases in their Universes Beyond themed expansions appears to prohibit the sale and creation of ANY physical art and removes ALL secondary aftermarket sales – no original art, no artist proofs, no prints, no playmats, no repainted interpretations, no convention/event sketches of ANY kind for ALL of the commissioned images.”

According to Giancola, all commissioned art was to be expressly and purely digitally executed, with the initial work-for-hire fee as sole compensation.

WotC does seem to have increased its rates in 2024 from $1000 to about $1250, but after calculations that’s still significantly less than the initial $1000 from 1996.

Recently, “Wizards has seemingly thrown traditional artists a scrap from the table with the new Marvel set,” Giancola wrote, “allowing them to sell a painting from their commission into the secondary market, but treating digital artists differently with no such offering it appears.”

A recent post on X/Twitter from renowned MTG artist Magali Villeneuve, where she auctions her original oil painting for Storm, Force of Nature, confirms Giancola's assertion that now artists are allowed to sell a painting:

… but Villeneuve also confirms that it's the only item she's allowed to sell.

According to Giancola, Wizards has introduced a new level of contractual obligations that will destroy the secondary aftermarket sales, a vital source of revenue for Magic artists.

“This removal of incentive means that Wizards has guaranteed that the quality of art they will receive for these sets will diminish, likely impacting sales negatively,” Giancola wrote in his Facebook posts.

And from what he told Draftsim, artists have little to no room for negotiating those terms. For WotC, these terms are “100% take it or leave,” he told us.

Hands and Bookends

Magic: The Gathering/Twitter

“I have refused to create any new work for Magic since then,” Giancola told Draftsim, referring to his December 2023 commission. “This final commission has just been released showing the Aetherspark for the new Aetherdrift set.”

“It's both funny and sad,” he said while remembering Amber Prison, one of his first commissions, “how my love for painting hands completely bookends my work for Magic.”

Draftsim reached out to WotC but they have declined to comment so far.