Art Recycling

[Dausuul]

Recycled art that is good is fine. Indeed i would be happy if wotc never used a new illo for the rest of 4E and used all recycled MTG artwork.

Oh hell yes. Magic: The Gathering gets much better art than D&D, by and large. And I'll bet with all the cards they've printed by now, they could find suitable artwork for just about anything.

 

[Hairfoot]

Ha, my attitude is the exact opposite. I have no problem with recycling good art, but I freakin' hate stuff by Wayne Reynolds, whether it's old or new.

Of course, I have not generally been a fan of the artistic style pioneered by 3E and largely continued in 4E. It's too dungeon-punky and too cartoonish for my taste. I prefer the more realistic, quasi-medieval style of 2E and late 1E.

My thoughts, too.

 

[Wormwood]

It doesn't bother me. I don't buy RPG books for the art.

...aaaand another vote for this.

 

[Scribble]

It both bothers me and does not bother me...

In that when I am looking at a book and come across some art that's been used before I momentarily think: "Eh, that sucks wish that was somethign new..." but then that moment passes and that's pretty much the last time I think about it.

 

[starwed]

I don't care that much if it's at least appropriate.

But open Manual of the Planes to the gatecrasher prestige class (p 142). Does that look like a rogue trained in Arcana to you? No, it's recycled art from the Book of 9 Swords.

It bothers me a little more that the Manual of the Planes description of Sigil is a copy-paste job from the 3.5 Planar Handbook. (Mentions of the old cosmology are expurged.) I'm not sure how much of the other fluff in that book is copied from previous texts, that's just the one that I happened to notice. (I was playing in a game involving Sigil, and reading as many descriptions of it as I could find.)

 

[arscott]

Starwed, does it bother you that many of the spells in the 3e phb were copy/paste jobs from previous editions?

And count me among those who don't really mind the re-used art. As someone who owned only five 3e books, every piece of art in 4th edition is new to me.

 

[Soel]

I hate the recycling of the art. This was supposed to be a big launch, perhaps d&d's biggest ever, so the core books at least should have been filled exclusively with new artwork. This is a new edition, with new ideas, so let's have new images to properly display those ideas. New interpretations of older creatures/classes is inspiring. Using the same old pic, or especially repurposing an older pic, does nothing but show the cost-cutting.

Art is important to me, and I have purchased many books because of it (not solely, but it is a major factor.)

Many don't seem to mind, but when someone figures out that they can save even more cash by filling a book entirely with reused art, or maybe even having no art at all, well...

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Recycled art that is good is fine. Indeed i would be happy if wotc never used a new illo for the rest of 4E and used all recycled MTG artwork.

This. Or their could place Jeremy Jarvis as art director for D&D; the M:tG art keeps improving, and never fails to bring the exact feeling of the setting on the cards.

Cheers,

 

[wedgeski]

This bothers me for a number of reasons, and I don't think it is a shallow criticism either. Recycling art sends the message that they don't care about the quality of the product. Just like recycling text or letting in too many typos sends the message they don't care about the quality of the product. It also insults the intelligence of the reader, it implies "they are too stupid to notice we are using the same art over and over."

I really can't disagree more strongly with this. People see whatever message they want to see. If Wizards "didn't care" or thought their customer base was "stupid", we'd be getting books a fraction of the quality that Wizards produces.

I do understand that budget constraints might force a company to recycle, but Wizards is the biggest RPG company out there. They can at least splurge on original art work.

Wizards is big so they're somehow immune to budgetary constraints?

Why cut corners and end up with a product that looks less polished?

There may be perfectly good reasons: perhaps a commissioned piece was late or hopelessly sub-standard; perhaps there was a simple editorial error and a piece wasn't ordered in time; perhaps the content of the book was expanded just prior to release and there wasn't enough time to commission something original. I don't see why the reason has to be laziness, or simply not being bothered about it.

 

[Vael]

I don't mind the recycled art, I just want good art, which, for the most part, WOTC delivers. I like the style of 4e, and the new chapter spreads have been very nice ... and probably quite expensive pieces, given their size.