Art Recycling

[Protagonist]

Apart from monster illustrations (and some minor illustrations for character races) I don't care for art at all in my rpg books. Maybe a nice illustration of a very important place in a campaign book, but I don't need pictures of weapons or guys in a chase scene. If WotC decided to strip all art from all non-monster books I would probably prefer this, since this makes for a much better text per page ratio and thus faster browsing/reading. I got my imagination for the pictures. And even better than simply eleminating all other art from the books would be filling the resulting space with vivid descriptions.

 

[Klaus]

Apart from monster illustrations (and some minor illustrations for character races) I don't care for art at all in my rpg books. Maybe a nice illustration of a very important place in a campaign book, but I don't need pictures of weapons or guys in a chase scene. If WotC decided to strip all art from all non-monster books I would probably prefer this, since this makes for a much better text per page ratio and thus faster browsing/reading. I got my imagination for the pictures. And even better than simply eleminating all other art from the books would be filling the resulting space with vivid descriptions.

You're forgetting another important part illustrations play in a book, namely, to serve as "bookmarks" to help you navigate the text and reference the appropriate part quickly, and to give the eyes a break from the monotonous layout of a reference book.

Back to the topic:

I don't mind SOME art recycling. Say, for minor things, just to spice up a page of nothing but stats, you could use some item pictures from the Magic Item Compendium. Maybe you could use a piece to illustrate a paragon path or somesuch. Some Paragon Path illustrations are so generic-looking, you might as well have a recycled piece of art.

But there are things that ought NOT to be recycled. Major NPC/Monsters deserve their own pictures, based on the written description. If there's a previous, totally awesome picture of it, maybe you can use it again (say, WAR's picture of Tiamat from Complete Divine). It's just a matter of managing what gets recycled, and where.

And then there's the case of bad Photoshopped recycling, like the Human racial entry in the PHB, where a female tiefling was Photoshopped out and a human female was Photoshopped in, leaving a big white hole on the male human.

Good recycling -> Todd Lockwood's female drow in the MM, or Steve Prescott's Medusa archer from the cover of The Sinister Spire.
Bad recycling -> The aforementioned human entry, from the cover of Races & Classes, or the Kaz the Betrayer illustration in Open Grave, from the MM5's vampire entry.

 

[Duskblade]

I don't mind it so much so long as a piece isn't reused an umpteen amount of times. Like certain B&W sketches throughout 3E.

 

[Dragon Snack]

I liked some of those repeats. In a Wilhelm Scream kind of way...

And here's another vote for M:tG art. I never played, but some of that stuff is sweet.

I could go for less art though. Rulebooks ARE a reference books and I don't really need art to break up the layout. In fact, I would prefer it in a PDF that I had to print out.

 

[ProfessorPain]

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..

Package and image matter. And when you get a lot of recycled art people read it as a negative. Not saying Wizards thinks its customers are stupid, but I think that is how a lot customers feel when companies do things like this.

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

No. But of all the RPG companies out there, they should be the one that doesn't need to recycle art.

IThere 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.

This is all true. I used to be in an editor in the publishing industry and these things do happen. In such cases, I think no art is better than recycled. I'm not a wizards basher, don't get me wrong. But art work is important, especially in a fantasy RPG book. And customers notice these things. I may place more value on original artwork than some others, but I doubt I am the only reader who winces a little when I see a recycled piece of art.