How important is art to you?

jiriku · Nov 19, 2018

In published work by minor or independent sourcer, I have noticed a strong correlation between poor art, awkward rulesets, and lame, uninspired roleplay concepts. Likewise, some of the most compelling material, the stuff that winds up under my arm when I go to the cash register, usually combines a unique, evocative concept, high-quality art that clearly illustrates the uniqueness of the gameplay experience, and clean rules that are well-presented and easily understood.

It's actually pretty rare that anyone skimps on art while delivering an original concept and well-designed game. I suspect that the mindset that wants to cut corners on the art often cuts corners elsewhere.

Li Shenron · Nov 19, 2018

Slit518 said:
Say somebody is creating their own custom setting; module; rule book; whatever 5th edition related.

How important is the art quality to you?

Does the art have to be masterpiece quality? Can it be sketches like the 1e D&D books? Would you prefer no art over bad art? Or would you prefer art, as long as you can tell what it is you're looking at?

How do you personally feel about this subject?

Very important. I cannot stand a RPG book with bad art. An awesome monster picture often makes me want to feature the creature in some adventure, so by contrast I suppose that bad pictures have subtly put me off and away from a MM entry all the time.

That said, quality does not have much to do with how complex or advanced the drawing technique is. Editing and printing should be of good quality of course, so that smears or other printing mistakes are avoided, otherwise they can spoil eve the best art. But black-and-white, simple pencil drawing, and even stick figures (see OotS!) can be wonderful... and a wall fresco or a digitally-enhanced picture with 6 million colors can be awful. It all depends on what and how the artist made. Of course it's also at least partially subjective. So all in all in terribly difficult to define what is "great art", but you generally know it when you see it

Hjorimir · Nov 19, 2018

I love great art, so it's pretty important to me. That said, I don't think you need color artwork at all. Some of my favorite pieces are pencil sketches. Scan through Richard Whitters Twitter feed and find some of his sketches: they're wonderful.

https://twitter.com/WhittersRichard

Older Beholder · Nov 19, 2018

Art has always been important to me, I think you could trace my start with D&D back to my mother buying me 'The art of the Dragonlance Saga' in the late 80's when I was in my early teens.

In my mind I still define 2E settings by artist (despite crossover, especially on the first three)

Greyhawk - Parkinson
F. Realms - Caldwell
Dragonlance - Elmore
Dark Sun - Brom
Planescape - DiTerlizzi

As for Indi publishing, PDFs, DMs Guild etc, I'd be more forgiving of bad or no art if it was an interesting adventure (or whatever) with good ideas, good writing, as I'm generally looking for something specific.
But even then, the stuff with the best art will be looked at first, and I think it just creates the impression that more effort has gone into it.

Blue · Nov 19, 2018

jiriku said:
It's actually pretty rare that anyone skimps on art while delivering an original concept and well-designed game. I suspect that the mindset that wants to cut corners on the art often cuts corners elsewhere.

While in traditional publishing where your cost-viable print run size and distribution costs put a barrier to entry, I don't see this holding true in the digital publishing age. When over the lifetime of a product you might make tens or hundreds of dollars, spending several hundred for a few pieces of quality art can turn all of your work into the red financially that, if ever recovered, may take years.

jiriku · Nov 19, 2018

Blue said:
While in traditional publishing where your cost-viable print run size and distribution costs put a barrier to entry, I don't see this holding true in the digital publishing age. When over the lifetime of a product you might make tens or hundreds of dollars, spending several hundred for a few pieces of quality art can turn all of your work into the red financially that, if ever recovered, may take years.

All too true. The tabletop market is saturated with too many authors chasing too few consumer dollars. The vast majority of people publishing in this space don't make enough money to quit their day jobs, and never will. In this respect it's much like the market for fantasy and science fiction books in general, where most published authors do not make enough to sustain themselves.

77IM · Nov 20, 2018

Like many here, I love good art and hate bad art. BUT I think art also has a functional value as a navigational aid. When I'm flipping or scrolling through a book that I'm familiar with, instead of looking at page numbers or section headers, I often look at the art. My eyes are just drawn to it, and usually the art is tangentially relevant to the text, which makes it a really good mnemonic. For example, I often find a spell in the PHB by flipping first to the picture of burning hands or insect swarm or prismatic spray depending on where in the alphabet the picture is. In the class chapter, the class "splash" portraits are an amazing example of art used to signify important section boundaries. Many RPG products have glorious full-page or half-page pieces at the start of each chapter which serves a similar function.

delericho · Nov 20, 2018

Slit518 said:
How important is the art quality to you?

The artwork is incredibly important.

Does the art have to be masterpiece quality? Can it be sketches like the 1e D&D books?

Any of these are fine. What is important is that the artwork be evocative.

Would you prefer no art over bad art?

Neither. If that's the choice, you're better delaying publication until you can fix the issue.

Slit518 · Nov 22, 2018

Hjorimir said:
I love great art, so it's pretty important to me. That said, I don't think you need color artwork at all. Some of my favorite pieces are pencil sketches. Scan through Richard Whitters Twitter feed and find some of his sketches: they're wonderful.

https://twitter.com/WhittersRichard

I'm familiar with Richard, I've talked to him on several occasions. Great guy from what I can tell, and a great artist as well. Seriously, his sketch potential, it is massive. He also did all of the Xvart portrait work for the D&D team that they all used on social media a bit back.

How important is art to you?

How important is the art?

Highly important! (professionally done)

Moderately so. (decent/good drawings, maybe some coloration)

Not very important. (bad drawings/no art)

jiriku

First Post

Li Shenron

Legend

Hjorimir

Adventurer

Older Beholder

Hero

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

jiriku

First Post

77IM

Explorer!!!

delericho

Legend

Slit518

Adventurer

Similar Threads