Art Woes

The 'Bastards draft is chugging along. I may or may not meet my year-end deadline, but progress is being made at least. As the days tick by and I get the systems bolted nicely into place, I start to worry about other issues. Writing a game, as it turns out, is only one part of making a game.

We're going to have to deal with the kickstarter thing, sooner rather than later. We've waited too long to wrap all this up as it is. We have a date in mind to begin once we've gotten feedback on this draft. The problem, of course, is that we need art. It was an inevitable issue, but one that presents me with sort of a catch-22. To really get off the ground with a kickstarter, you need good art to sell it -- but our primary reason for doing a kickstarter is to get an art budget.

If you've been around my blog long enough, you've no doubt seen some of my own artwork. I know I'm decent at it, but I also know I'm not good enough to meet the task at hand. Not in any substantial way, in any case.

Further complicating matters, I'm not entirely sure how to start the shopping-for-art process.  I sent out a couple notes on Deviantart, but that's about the depth of my experience with the subject.

This post was mostly just my musing on the subject, but if anyone wants to toss me any advice, offer their services and quote a price, (or ESPECIALLY if you want to contribute art) feel free to leave a comment, hit me up on G+ or otherwise get in touch.

Time Flies

Has it been a month already? Man. Right. Updates:

Grand Heresy now has two youtube channels. Barbarossa has outdone himself with setting things up and getting our whole AV situation sorted. Grand Heresy Press is going to be our core channel, and we'll be uploading things on there as we get them recorded. We'll be throwing some updates on as we get closer to 'bastards release, but it for now primarily be the home of the Grand Heresy AP Podcast. More on that in a moment. Our secondary channel is Grand Heresy Presents, which will be a place we upload stuff that isn't directly related to role-playing games, but involves us or our interests. Barbarossa already has some footage about grilling, of all things. Neither channel has proper content up yet, but Barbarossa did an excellent job on the intros. 

The Grand Heresy AP Podcast recorded some test footage. We just started a Lamentations of the Flame Princess one-shot and are basically recording our normal game footage. When we get it all situated, we'll be uploading the footage to youtube and ripping the audio as a downloadable podcast. Links to everything will eventually be up on our website.

If you didn't already know, because the group is so spread out, we're using Tabletop Simulator for our gaming. It is a huge improvement over Roll20. The mood and atmosphere are a lot better with TTS. It feels a lot more personal than the more clinical interface of Roll20, and having physical space with moving cameras lets you do a lot of things that are hard to do otherwise - using tokens to keep track of gameplay, having multiple maps or sheets out at the same time, etc. Most of all though, the dice. Roll20 has a terrible random number generator system. I have vivid memories of using it for Mordheim and deciding that it actually didn't matter what the stats of the characters were. Most d6 results were either 1 or 6, auto-fail or auto-succeed. TTS treats them as objects with a physics engine, so they roll as they should and produce the results you would expect. Even better? They make extremely satisfying noise when you shake them or clatter them across the table. I've been doing so much online gaming that I forgot how great that noise was, even through simulation.

If I had any criticisms of TTS, it's not particularly well-optimized for complex operations. It will start to tank when you have a high number of objects on the table, but for the most part it hasn't bothered me. It's also relatively early in its life-cycle, so future updates may improve this.

I've also started trying to force myself to piddle with art again. I make no claims towards professional talent, but I like to play with it. It's decent enough to render a character portrait now and then (like the above, from our LotFP group). If you're interested, I keep a tumblr for that purpose. Fair warning: I'm studying anatomy. There are naked people.

I've got some more stuff to post shortly, but that's enough for now.

Until next time,

New fantasy Art Sucks (the MOST image heavy)

Alright. Sucks isn't the word. Much of the art is quite good, in terms of technique and visually interesting, but it's just never done anything for me.

Third edition / 3.5e's art was interesting, but as a whole it actively turned me off.

That's not bad. I actually like that quite a bit, really. It's what you'd expect from a book about delving dungeons. Good on you.

Alright. Stylized, sure. A little cartoony, but it's okay. I'll roll with it. He's a snazzy dresser, though he's carrying an awful lot of crap with him. Doesn't that get in his way? I hope that barrel doesn't come along with him.

Huh. Okay. Well. its obviously some amalgam of scale and leather. It's not terrible, but a little road warrior for my tastes. Maybe he couldn't afford to get the full suit? Poor guy. 

She seems to be going to the same armorer as the guy above. It's okay though, after the first couple dungeons I'm sure she'll be able to buy the rest of the set.

I'm not sure what to say about this ensemble. Some kind of chaps and a biker jacket? With what looks like a discount katana. Honestly, he seems more like a biker in Shadowrun.

Oh god. That armorer. Nevermind. No matter how much gold you loot, the armor will never improve. Are there people out there who actually find the above representation more attractive than, say this?

Well. Lets look at Pathfinder.

Well. It's certainly interesting to look at. Let's pick some pieces out.

The sword is confusing, but whatever. They are magical types, so I guess we'll give them the benefit of the doubt? I'm already noticing a trend though. I'll hold my tongue.

 That boat oar sword. That aside, I won't lie. It's a cool image. She looks like a badass, even if she appears to be completely floating in that armor.

Better, in terms of "what is armor" - she scores far higher than most of the 3.5 people - but I think I'm realizing what's happening here.

These are all extremely cool images. Hyper-stylized, angular, visually intricate, it's a kind of interesting post-anime sort of style. They are instantly identifiable with the pathfinder brand.

And all at once I realized, that's exactly what bothers me. 



A while back, I made a post sharing some AD&D cards that I picked up ages ago. The more that I look at the artwork, the more I find contemporary fantasy art wanting. And I finally know why.

Yeah. A lot of AD&D era art was ..bad. I won't deny that. But even the art that wasn't great had a certain charm to it that goes beyond nostalgia.

There is a certain quality to it, in it's attempts at realism. You can tell the above was done with models standing in at some point. Their outfits even look like costumes (realism is at times a double-edged sword). But there is a kind of life that creeps into the art. A verisimilitude. I can on some level believe that this is real. And that's exactly the point.

 

With each edition of D&D there seems to be a strong push to define a visual style for the game, in the same way you hire concept artists to establish the visuals for a video game. Games like Pathfinder have been extremely successful in creating a visual brand. I can look at a piece of art and know automatically that it's Pathfinder related. This seems to be the growing trend. The problem with this is that role-playing games aren't video games. It's not a visual medium. We aren't interacting with the world through its stylized artwork. Instead, we're tasked with imagining ourselves as though we were there.

In its attempts towards near photo-realism, early fantasy art is an invitation to imagine yourself there. To pretend that the world is real and breathing around you. It's asking you to picture the scene unfolding around you. Much of it seems to be built around building complete scenes, where the camera is literally you taking it all in, staring at the members of your party. The best example I could ever offer of this was in the Den of Thieves book.

The costumes? Fairly terrible. But it invites you to be there, to take part in the awe and wonder of it. It's an emotion that I find sorely missing in much of modern fantasy art. Pathfinder art is visually interesting, and would make for great concept art for a video game... but that's not what I'm looking for in my role-playing. By rendering the world as a comic book, or a stylized video game, I feel one step more removed from the subject matter. It feels less real and that much harder to identify with. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I have an extremely hard time looking at any of the above and going "yeah, that's me."

This has been a bit of a ramble, and I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me entirely, but I'm at least glad to have worked this out for myself. If nothing else, it will come in handy when I have to start purchasing art for Band of Bastards later.

Until next time,

Well What Do We Have Here? (Image Heavy)

It's no secret that I've been on an AD&D kick lately, so I had the urge to go dig out my old box of stuff. I mentioned in a previous post that I got started role-playing basically due to raw chance and a yard sale buy. I knew that there was a DMG in there, and a couple old copies of Dragon, but apparently that wasn't all.

Inside this old box of nonsense was an unassuming black three-ring binder completely full of card sleeves. And they are awesome.

Apparently, TSR put out a ton of these out as play-aids back in the early 90s. There are three basic types of cards: monsters, NPCs, and magic items. Awesome, evocative art on the front, all of the stats you need on the back. Fantastic. Speaking of art, let's just bask in that art for a minute.

 

I'll apologize for the glare or texture on some of the cards. Having been in those sleeves for the better part of twenty years, I didn't want to risk taking them out of the sleeves. With my luck, they will be stuck to the insides of them.


I don't know how my 12 year old self didn't completely lose his mind over these, because I'm absolutely tickled by them. I have a big love of play-aids at the able, and these are just wonderful.

I've got about 300 of these in total, it looks like. Whomever owned them before I did must have bought them in booster packs, as it seems TSR released 3 sets of 750 of them. Now I have an overwhelming need to track down and purchase them all, just to have them. 

Very cool.

Regards,