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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dias Ex Machina" data-source="post: 4503994" data-attributes="member: 58907">Nick Greenwood has an immense strength with organic illustrations that cannot be compared.  He is able to switch formats with ease and has mastered both without flaw.  He did work for Goodman Games and Green Ronin.  It was a dwarf monk that had caught my attention.  Nick liked my proposal and offered a rate that was competitive and relative to the others (other meaning artist that could do black and white, but just didn’t want to).  I initially offered Nick 25 pieces.  These were half page sprawls of races, a few chapter starts and the like.  Then we started getting images.  Two half-page commissions became nine ¼-page commissions.   Ten half-page chapter starts became eighteen.  Fairly soon, Nick’s commission ballooned to fifty.  My budget exploded as some of the most impressive artwork I had ever seen starting flowing down.  I couldn’t help myself.  This was Amethyst.  I had found the one eye that could match my voice.  On the basis of just his sketches, we were getting acclaim from people checking our posts.  When the finals came down, we were slack-jawed.   We never expected in any dream that we would have this much artwork with this much quality for our publication.  Every review posted praised the art, wondering how such high quality work could appear under a new company first book.  We don’t have a staff of dozens.  We have no office.  This is about the joy of the work and I could tell early on that Nick loved what he did.  Through the expression of a few muddled ideas and hackneyed words, Nick was able to channel exactly what I was picturing, often times delivering something I wasn’t even expecting.  Oh yes, not all of them were perfect, but my obsession of perfection was shared by him.  If something didn’t feel right, I would tell him…often times resulting in several new sketches until we finally got the one that worked.  I have a rejected folder of images I like to keep.   Most of those were so good, we ended up ordering them as well.   When we order an image that is 100% there, no need letting the one that is 98% there go to waste.<img src="http://www.diasexmachina.com/nihilimancer.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />    In the end, a commission I asked from an acclaimed artist fell through (a professional with a signed contract is expected to deliver and not ignore emails…how sad) and so that got passed onto Nick as well.  A good chunk of the work he did for Amethyst, including his seldom seen alternate cover, can be found at his site at <a href="http://www.nick-greenwood.com/" target="_blank">Nick Greenwood © - Illustration and Graphic Design</a>.  The 3.5 book is not perfect.  Beyond my unchecked spelling mistakes (insert baby crying), it features some artwork I am not personally happy with.  With the 4.0 edition, we committed ourselves to not make any compromises.  Although we could have acquired a shotgun blast of artists to handle dozens of commission all at once (like everyone does it), we decided not to.  Why can’t there be a singular voice to the artwork.  It’s one thing about the Palladium games I always appreciated was the singular style of its art.  Many games, even big ones, have been criticized for having an inconsistency with their art, ranging from the evocative and beautiful to the absolute embarrassing, often within a page flip.  <img src="http://www.diasexmachina.com/Techan.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />    This is one aspect of the game I gloat about…because I am not the one doing the drawing.  I could not see doing this project with anyone else with the pencil and paint.  I can see that dedication in the artwork for the 4.0 edition.  I rarely reject anything.  Nick usually does it himself, having taken a personal investment in the final quality.  There is no phoning in of any talent, forcing us to live up the artwork he presents.  For a signature piece for Thornshroud, Nick must have gone through a dozen sketches before he even let me look at them.  The final is nothing short of magnificent in its own revolting way.  Nick is also doing to cover for the 4.0 Ed, and I can’t wait to see what he bring to that.  <img src="http://www.diasexmachina.com/pagus.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />    My common comparison, without making too many allegations, associates Nick’s relation to Amethyst as John Howe to Lord of the Rings.  Howe, a Canadian artist out of Vancouver, is the closest name associated with the franchise other than Tolkien himself (and now Peter Jackson, of course).  Along with Alan Lee, Howe created many of the most striking visuals of the entire franchise.  All of this, and I have never even met Nick.  No idea if he is short, tall, black, white, Sasquatch.   I know little more other than from the dedication of his work and the fact he is extremely productive—he has four daughters.  Practice though I have, I have failed to even get married.  All I have to show for the last two years was a persistent eye twitch which has not gone away and a book with a brilliant artist behind it.</blockquote>

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