D&D 5E D&D Next weekly art column!

[Mercutio01]

Of the ones pictured, I picked red and voted that way before I realized there was an "other option." If I had stopped to think before clicking submit, I would have said "other" and noted a preference for a golden logo, maybe with a slight contrast in the dragon ampersand (silver? maybe?).

 

[Kaodi]

I am not quite sure what Jon is trying to say about colour studies, but the whole prison incident is easily attributable to factors other than the supposed mistakenness of the colour pink being nonviolent. Like the fact that pink is considered to be a girly colour, and thus imposing it upon a bunch of guys who are to some extent obsessed with their manliness is a bad freakin' idea. Had you run this experiment in prison colours back in the early 20th century when pink was considered to be a boys colour, I bet you would have had a very different result.

As for logo colours, if we are switching from the red, then the two yellow options do seem to be the best. However, as we have seen with the new Underdark stuff, having special alternate colour versions of the logo can be cool if used judiciously. The purple and silver looks great, though it would probably lose the effect if it became too widespread.

As for common colours in D&D, I think one that also needs a shoutout is grey. Dungeons are often grey, mountains are grey, streets and buildings are often grey. And grey used right can give you a good vibe too: consider the contrast being a grey cement block building and a rough hewn limestone one. One is drab, and the other is magnificient, despite the fact that they are the same colour (or rather, shade).

If we are talking covers though, one thing I think I would stay away from is black. Looking back, the black covers from 2e just do not seem very appealing. Maybe it was because they also made heavy use of red. And that is a thing to think about too: colours do not necessarily go together well in all contexts.

And finally, I kind of thought blue was the traditional colour of glowing swords because blue was the colour of the light that the magical swords in the Hobbit shed...

 

[Mercutio01]

I am not quite sure what Jon is trying to say about colour studies, but the whole prison incident is easily attributable to factors other than the supposed mistakenness of the colour pink being nonviolent. Like the fact that pink is considered to be a girly colour, and thus imposing it upon a bunch of guys who are to some extent obsessed with their manliness is a bad freakin' idea. Had you run this experiment in prison colours back in the early 20th century when pink was considered to be a boys colour, I bet you would have had a very different result.

I think that was his point. To wit, just because "SCIENCE!" says something is good, does not mean it is good in practice. I don't think he was necessarily trying to debunk the "pink is calming" scientific study. Just point out that the study may not have the same results in the real world.

 

[triqui]

What is more important?
Stylization, that defines the attributes of the world, or realism?

Example: WoW & Brink stylization more important that realism

I think this blog will brief my opinion about the matter much better than I could do with my lowbie english skills.
Fantasy armor and lady bits

 

[Scribble]

Just to chip in about the logo:

The graphic design of this edition should look classic, but not "retro." So an ampersand like the AD&D ampersand would be awesome, but reproducing exactly the AD&D logo would be disastrous.

I believe one of the biggest mistakes of D&D's art department recently was the design of the Red Box. It looks like some retro re-print of the original red box. It has the old logo, and the old painting (which has not aged well). It does not look like a modern RPG product, and certainly nothing like the RPG to which it is supposed to be an introductory product.

Then you open the box and, what's this on the cover of the booklet? It's a redesign of the original red box, with the same general graphic design but with the current edition logo and a new painting (which looks good by modern standards) of the same subject matter and composition as the original painting. It looks classic but modern. That's what they should have put on the front of the box.

Wasn't that supposed to be the front? They ended up doing the retro one as a sort of special edition thing to make people happy, with the plan to revert to the new cover after the first print run ran out or something.

(They should have realized that doing something with the goal of making gamers bitching about something happy isn't going to make them stop bitching.)

 

[Steely_Dan]

Jeff Dee's art really sucked me in back in the day, especially the 1st Ed Deities & Demigods.

I also really like the original black & white art in the early Ravenloft stuff.

 

[Klaus]

Jeff Dee's art really sucked me in back in the day, especially the 1st Ed Deities & Demigods.

I also really like the original black & white art in the early Ravenloft stuff.

That was the great Stephen Fabian.

 

[Libramarian]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Brown Is Nothing but Dark Beige)

Cool, I brought up the meaning of red to me earlier. I said it felt a needy and loud and toy-like, whereas purple is more appealing. Of course I'm talking about more than just the colors. Red generally has the quality to me but I don't hate red, it could work.

My general view is that I don't see why the logo and cover of a D&D gamebook has to concern itself with "capturing attention" at all, really. Why would it need to do that? Whose attention does it need to capture?

How do newbies come to D&D? Is anybody actually strolling down the aisle of a brick&mortar store when the cover of a D&D book grabs their attention, so they pick it up and read the back, then buy it and play it and get into D&D like that?

No way. Maybe in a toy store in 1985.

Today newbies hear about D&D through cultural osmosis, and then look it up on the internet. Generally by the time they're looking at your PHB cover, they're in -- you have their attention already. At this point I think it's more about keeping their attention, by projecting subtlety, mystery, class (as in classic), quirkiness, the fantastic.

I mean -- think about the initial investment that D&D requires out of people. They have to buy hundreds of pages of printed material, read and learn it and put together an adventure and play it. If people are considering doing this, you don't need to "shout at them" in the art direction. They're already giving you so much attention, you know what I mean?

Also I don't think what I have in mind is so out of touch with current trends and tastes, because the cover of mondosuccessful CRPG Skyrim does it.



Look how much strength this cover projects. Skyrim knows it's huge. It's not trying to grab your attention with an image like "you can be this!" (although I am aware that it has an iconic character used elsewhere) or even "you can explore this!".

It's all like: if you're looking at this, you already know what this is.

That's what I want the D&D logo/cover to say.

(Not that it necessarily needs to do the this-new-book-looks-like-an-old-book thing. That's just one way. The silver and navy-blue contributes to it, talking about colors.)

 

[tuxgeo]

The illustration (by Richard Whitters) accompanying the article shows caricatures of six members of their art department portrayed as D&D characters: Mari "Mistress of Monsters," Kate "Keenblade," Dan "DooMhMhamer," Emi "Evil," Jon "Machete" Schindehette, and "Nique Necromantique." (Except Emi is listed as "Emil" in the text below the illustration.)

All of them are LEFT-wielding their weapons or leashes. (Alright, "Nique" holds his reins in his right hand, but he has a left-wielded sword pointing upward across his right shoulder.)
I have to suppose that the left-wielding was part of the original idea for this piece; otherwise, why have it? (Are all of those people actually left-handed? Or is this a mirror-image sort of thing, wherein we are supposed to see ourselves as those people, as though in a mirror?)

 

[Mengu]

Are all of those people actually left-handed?

It would not surprise me to find out Kate and Jon are left handed. It's harder for me to tell the handedness of the others (even Dan's depiction is somewhat questionable). But these are artists right? Left-handedness is a lot more common in artists, compared to the general population.