Clip art thoughts

[malladin]

I've recently discovered the virtues of clip art available to small e-publishers like myself.

When I first looked into clip art, I didn't find much I liked, but I've recently discovered the Image Portfolio series by LPJ Design (at RPG Now). These are really good quality B&W pictures, not just simple drrawings of skulls or swords, decent character art and action pictures that will revitalise the (often somewhat bleak) Malladin's Gate products.

Has anyone else got to grips with clip art and found anything else good out there? Anyone else found these Image Portfolios useful?

cheerio,

Ben, Malladin's Gate Press

[JoeGKushner]

One thing to never underestimate is some artists desire to get into the 'printed' field and some newer ones may actually work for the price of clip art with good quality.

I personally like the ELmore list but its very recognizable.

You might want to see if V. Shane is up for some promotion by doing something under 'special license' or something with him. Pretty friendly guy.

[Drawmack]

I use clip art on web sites all the time. Here is a nice trick. Use line drawings, print them out, color them in and then use those. You would be surprised how different the picture looks once it's colored in.

[Flyspeck23]

You could color the clip art with Photoshop. That should save some time (print&scan), and you could really go to town with effects (shading&lighting).

Small example, although it's not clip art (coloring with Photoshop becomes pretty essential for anything consisting of more than line drawings), and only the thumbnails:

Anyone wanting a quick instruction on how to color in Photoshop can email me.
(BTW, that example above was my first coloring attemp.)


On a general note:
Personally, I'll only use clip arts as "fillers" (if there's 1/8 page or less of blank space). I ain't got a good URL though. And, frankly, I can't find the LPJ Design image portfolio

[Drawmack]

I find that photoshop coloring comes out cartoony where as when I hand color it, the art is much more gritty.

It takes a very long time to make photoshop colorization look realistic and I've been using photoshop professionally for 4 years now so I know my way around it.

For an example of printed, colored and Scanned check out my avatar is a Larry Elmore line drawn elvin theif.

[lmpjr007]

Originally posted by malladin
I've recently discovered the virtues of clip art available to small e-publishers like myself.

When I first looked into clip art, I didn't find much I liked, but I've recently discovered the Image Portfolio series by LPJ Design (at RPG Now). These are really good quality B&W pictures, not just simple drrawings of skulls or swords, decent character art and action pictures that will revitalise the (often somewhat bleak) Malladin's Gate products.

Thanks for the nice words. We will be releasing the Image Portfolio series for as long as it makes money, and right now it makes A LOT OF MONEY!!!! We also plan to start adding full color version of the art with the black & white ones. So, soon we will have two versions of the same products; one with B&W art only and another with B&W and color. The B&W only will still only be $5, while the B&W and Color will sell for $20. Hey I still have to eat, but, I think 50 cents for Color art is somewhat reasonable.

[jmucchiello]

Originally posted by JoeGKushner
One thing to never underestimate is some artists desire to get into the 'printed' field and some newer ones may actually work for the price of clip art with good quality.

Even the desire to get into PDF can be good enough. I didn't pay all that much for the artwork in Character Customization. The art's already been paid for after 50+ sales.