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Artisan of Forms says:

Heroic — Whenever you cast a spell that targets Artisan of Forms, you may have Artisan of Forms become a copy of target creature and gain this ability.

Say I play a Gift of Immortality on it which says:

Enchant creature. When enchanted creature dies, return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. Return Gift of Immortality to the battlefield attached to that creature at the beginning of the next end step.

Artisan of Forms' ability triggers and I make it a copy of another creature. Then my opponent destroys it. The way I would interpret the card is that Gift of Immortality will return Artisan of Forms to the battlefield in it's original form but it also seems plausible to me that it would still be a copy.

In the event it does return to it's original form can Gift of Immortality still "find" Artisan of Forms to reattach given it is now a different creature?

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When a permanent that's a copy of something else leaves the battlefield, it immediately reverts to its original form as printed on the card. Anything that happened to it while it was on the battlefield has no influence whatsoever on it once it is in the graveyard or anywhere else (unless its effect says so). Artisan of Forms stops being a copy as soon as it leaves the battlefield, so how can it possibly still be one when it returns?

This is usually termed as a card moving between zones "forgetting" everything about what it was.

400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence. There are seven exceptions to this rule:

Gift of the Immortality can find the right card in the graveyard because of one of the exceptions, but the card will still have reverted back to its original characteristics.

400.7d Abilities that trigger when an object moves from one zone to another (for example, “When Rancor is put into a graveyard from the battlefield”) can find the new object that it became in the zone it moved to when the ability triggered, if that zone is a public zone.

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  • But then what about Gift of Immortality reattaching? The card changed from one creature to another as it "forgot" everything. It is still returned since Gift of Immortality says "that card" but does "that creature" in the card text refer to the copy (which no longer exists) or the returned creature?
    – Fr33dan
    Apr 10, 2014 at 4:16
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    While the creature is on the battlefield, becoming a copy doesn't make it a different object. It's just a continuous effect that is applied to the creature.
    – murgatroid99
    Apr 10, 2014 at 4:46
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    Gift of Immortality's attach effect affects the "creature that it returned to the battlefield".
    – deworde
    Apr 10, 2014 at 8:07
  • @murgatroid99 True but leaving and re-entering the battlefield does make it a new object. Which having a night to think about it deworde's answer is the only one that makes sense. Even if there was no copy ability it still became a new object thus "that creature" must refer to the returned version or the card would not work as we know it to.
    – Fr33dan
    Apr 10, 2014 at 12:40

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