Art for A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture

[jgbrowning]

I've just written the introduction for A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture and have been thinking about the artwork. Given that I have several issues I'm thinking about, I thought to open the discussion to you guys.

I'm not, and never have been, a big art fan in rpgs. However, I know its important to a lot of people so hopefully some of ya'll will speak up and give me your opinions.

Brief outline of the book before art questions: MS:EC is about ecologies and cultures in the magical society line. This means that we're talking into account what effect magic could have on world creation, biomes/habitats, lifeforms, and cultures. It has three main sections: 1 about planet building, 2 about ecologies/biomes, and 3 about culture. It's going to give a massive amount of ideas and information to GMs so they can make their world a more immersive environment, and help out new world-building.

Now art info... we're going to use illustrations (ie. what does a glacier look like stuff) to help explain landforms and also diagrams like food webs. We're also going to use a lot of portraits of "native" people. Native meaning native to what environment they're living in.

1. Would you like to see one artist showcased, or multiple artists?
2. 144-page softcover B&W for $25 or color for $30? or a 144-page softcover B&W for 25$ or hardback B&W for 32$?
3. Would you like to see a few full-page illustrations or would you dislike the "waste of space"?
4. I'd like every piece of art to show an idea from the book in practice, wether or not its two people arguing around a fire near the section about cultural types of dispute resolution or simply showing a miner when talking about mines. Do ya'll think artwork is "better" when used in such mannor? (in my experience its harder to layout, that's why i'm asking)

We've got a long way to go in the writing and a lot of time for an artist(s) to work.

Thanks for the replies.

joe b.

 

[alsih2o]

1. Would you like to see one artist showcased, or multiple artists?
2. 144-page softcover B&W for $25 or color for $30? or a 144-page softcover B&W for 25$ or hardback B&W for 32$?
3. Would you like to see a few full-page illustrations or would you dislike the "waste of space"?
4. I'd like every piece of art to show an idea from the book in practice, wether or not its two people arguing around a fire near the section about cultural types of dispute resolution or simply showing a miner when talking about mines. Do ya'll think artwork is "better" when used in such mannor? (in my experience its harder to layout, that's why i'm asking).

1. either, but keep a similar flavor

2. b+w is plenty powerful. especially wiht so many people around who are great with a pen.

3. partial pages work, and lets art get tied in better wiht text imho

4. this is soooo important. i did a poll a while back and that was listed as the most important thing ot most peoaple. i know i am sick of reading monster descriptions that do not match the art. wrong number of legs, or coloring, or amouth in the worng place takes something out of it.

if you make the illustrations, no matter how small or what color choice match the text you will have won many hearts.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

1. Would you like to see one artist showcased, or multiple artists?

Normally, one artist. I think it helps to define the flavor of the text better. In this case though, you're focusing a little more on substance than style. I mean, you don't want an abstract representation of a glacier, you want a solid drawing of one. Some artists are better at geography than others and some artists are better at animals/botany. So I think you're better off drawing from a broad pool of talent rather than exploring one talent in depth.

2. 144-page softcover B&W for $25 or color for $30? or a 144-page softcover B&W for 25$ or hardback B&W for 32$?

I prefer softback B&W. I am in a minorty. The few industry studies that have been made point to hardback and full color. I'd go hardback, color cover, B&W interior as the best comprimise.

3. Would you like to see a few full-page illustrations or would you dislike the "waste of space"?

It depends. A full-page image of "She-Warrior of the North", not so much. A full-page image of a sample map drawn from your methods is a very different story.

4. I'd like every piece of art to show an idea from the book in practice, wether or not its two people arguing around a fire near the section about cultural types of dispute resolution or simply showing a miner when talking about mines. Do ya'll think artwork is "better" when used in such mannor? (in my experience its harder to layout, that's why i'm asking)

I'd say use the artwork to describe the stuff you have a hard time describing. I can pretty much imagine a mideval miner in my head. I'd have a harder time with envisioning the dynamic between a mountian dewlling folk and their valley-living cousins.

 

[DonAdam]

I'll second the motion for lots of maps; if there's one thing missing from MMS:WE, that's it.

 

[Coreyartus]

1. Products with one artist are stylistically stronger, IMO, than multiple artists. There is more of a unity to the product. Imagine having a comicbook illustrated by many different artists page to page. Continuity issues abound, and the product starts to be about the artwork rather than the subject matter.

2. If indeed this is going to be about culture, removing the color aspect from artwork would be detrimental to the product, so some version needs to have color in some respect. Color cannot be underestimated as a tool to express subliminal character, mood, and focus. While some of this can be achieved in B&W to a lesser degree, part of the emphasis of this book is on culture which is inherently artistic and expressive.

3 & 4. Full-page illustrations are never a waste of space, but their subject matter can't be superfluous. If the illustration is merely decorative, then why bother? The illustration has to demonstrate something, clarify something, explain something... When it comes to cultural expression, not having illustrations is like reading a paragraph of text about a piece of artwork. Pointless. For example, comparing stylistic expression between German, English, and French is a lot easier when one can visually demonstrate the differences in architecture, clothing, furniture, weapons, and art. Without a visual guide, discussion of cultural expression is kinda worthless.

I have noticed, as a general trend, a dirth of cultural expression in RPG products as a whole. Many of the products on the market contain a lot of historical, geographical, and political detail, but don't discuss what the cultural expression of these societies would be like. For example, Tolkein took huge strides (some would say excessive) to create a world where the impact of myth, language, and cultural style was a part of the conflict between his fantasy forces. The recent movies gave a face to those cultures, and suddenly they were intrigueing in new ways. The clothing, the armor, the architecture, the music... There's something missing when all you can do is summarize things from a historical/geopolitical stance.

We can talk about wars and politics and borders in a historical context (and many RPG products do this) but often we never see expressions of the different types of societies except in full-figure/comparison-contrast racial line-up illustrations. There's so much more to a culture than the difference between what one fantasy country of humans looks like next to another.

In our own world, much of the conflict in the medieval world was a result of cultural strife which led to political problems (i.e. The Crusades). And we never see culture clash that comes from two different societies' influence upon each other, and the new directions they take because of the new ideas introduced. Western Europe was never the same after the Crusades. England was never the same after the Romans. Africa was never the same after the British.

I hope your product deals with some of these topics. Your previous product was intelligent and very useful. If your new product can shed light on how cultural expression impacts medieval life, and how to distill generating tools from that discussion into creating well-rounded RPG settings, then you'll have another award winner on your hands.

Just my two cents!

Coreyartus

 

[Hand of Evil]

I like art and concept art does help visionalization, it does not have to be in color but clear and of a size to have detail.

The bad, not everyone see the same thing, which means it is a good idea for the editor/writer to go back and adjust information to better match the art.

 

[Pielorinho]

I'm not very visual, so I don't buy books because of the art. That said, a few comments:

I kind of prefer art by more than one artist. Especially in a book that discusses diverse cultures; it might be cool to get artists who can mimic different cultural art (sandstone paintings, calligraphies, runes, etc.)

I'd prefer color and will pay extra for it; I much prefer softcover books, as their binding gives out much more slowly, and they're lighter -- an issue when I'm carrying books to someone else's house for a game.

Definitely make art pieces relevant to the text.

That said, two comments about MMS:WE:
1) Excellent book -- I love it!
2) I'm having trouble understanding the building formula in the book; could you take a look at this thread if you have a chance?

Thanks again for the great book!
Daniel

 

[rpace]

1. Would you like to see one artist showcased, or multiple artists?

Depending on the lead time, one artist could probably help shape the final look of the work and make it a better package over all.

I come from a book illustration/design background where you usually only work with one illustrator and the choices in font, layout and even paper are usually informed by the style and palette of the artist.

This is almost never the case for RPG books -- forcing a reliance on design where the art and artist are usually plugged into the book after everything else is done. Thus the reliance on grid-sized art assignments: 1/2 page horizontal or vertical and 1/4 page art descriptions. I think averyone can agree that this has lead to a certain sameness in the look of most D20 products.

The nature of the beast, I guess.

If you are going to use multiple artists, I do suggest you use a small number of topic-appropriate illustrators. Either each artist does a chapter or subject -- if one illustrator does all the maps, the reader will have an easier time understanding to visual style and content, for example. The same is pretty much required if you're doing a series of illustrations on costume or races -- derivations in style could lead to reader misunderstandings of information.

2. 144-page softcover B&W for $25 or color for $30? or a 144-page softcover B&W for 25$ or hardback B&W for 32$?

A colour book will probably get you more mileage -- if I were in the position to decide I'd go for colour & hardcover -- though 144 pages is mightly slim for a HC book (page count seems odd, too -- usually the page counts are in multiples of 32). Atlas' Nyambe book was well done in that it combined a colour signature within a B&W book.

3. Would you like to see a few full-page illustrations or would you dislike the "waste of space"?

Any illustration that doesn't add to the information within the book is a waste of space. Full page illustrations should only be assigned if a full-page is needed to get the information across. A complicated cityscape, piece of architecture or series of costume comparisons might need the size -- a portrait of a single NPC or critter shouldn't.

Less art results in larger type rather than more text, in my experience, so the idea that art is bumping content is usually unfounded.

4. I'd like every piece of art to show an idea from the book in practice, whether or not its two people arguing around a fire near the section about cultural types of dispute resolution or simply showing a miner when talking about mines. Do ya'll think artwork is "better" when used in such manner?

Yes.

Art should be there to support the text instead of merely decorate pages or provide filler. Used in the latter manner we start running into a situation where art becomes a waste of space.

~Richard

 

[drnuncheon]

Is this going to be available as a PDF as well, like MMS:WE?

I know I'm kind of a minority, but the only kind of book I want to pay extra for color on are the monster books. Monte's Malhavoc books do just fine in B&W, as do FFG's Legends and Lairs, everything by White Wolf...in fact, full color books are a rarity in gaming as a whole.

So the question I'd ask is, will the art add to the book? If it were a book about a setting, probably. If it were a book about monsters, certainly. For a setting about creating worlds...possibly, but I for one would rather pay the $30 and get more pages, more examples, more material.

But like I said, I'm funny like that.

J

 

[jgbrowning]

Is this going to be available as a PDF as well, like MMS:WE?

It'll come out as a PDF. Probably before the hardcopy is available, something similar to what Monte's been doing I think.

I know I'm kind of a minority, but the only kind of book I want to pay extra for color on are the monster books. Monte's Malhavoc books do just fine in B&W, as do FFG's Legends and Lairs, everything by White Wolf...in fact, full color books are a rarity in gaming as a whole.

So the question I'd ask is, will the art add to the book? If it were a book about a setting, probably. If it were a book about monsters, certainly. For a setting about creating worlds...possibly, but I for one would rather pay the $30 and get more pages, more examples, more material.

But like I said, I'm funny like that.

J

Everyone's different and likes different things. It's why I'm very interested in hear what you guys think about the art in the book. MMS:WE is ok artwise, nothing special, but we're trying to put out a more visually appealing product for the next one.

joe b.