Eosin the Red
First Post
You want HOW MUCH
You want how much!!
So lets talk about the price to produce a quality piece of gaming action for your average bloke. Art is a big piece of your expense; I mean a big piece. The way in which you greet the world is the cover. A bad cover often prevents me from even picking up a module or setting.
Covers run the gamut from $50 up to more than a $1,000.00 and I suspect that some people like Bron, Terese Nielson, and Lockwood would charge even higher. Can anyone ballpark one of these biggies?
Let’s face it if you bomb on the cover, you start the game fourth and long. I did not scrimp here but I also did not go with the highest person.
Interior art. This is the strange thing about art – I love the feel of a game when it has consistent art. Dark Sun, Original 7th Sea, and similar products stand out in part due to a uniform look. I want this – I suppose some business major would call it branding. I want a certain style of art identified with our products. It is much harder to find “a style” than a good artist. Most of the people whom I did not select for the art were very good. Some were flat out amazing but their work just did not have the flair I was looking to put into my products. The good guys are $25.00 to $50.00 per ¼ page. They know they are good and by goodness, they deserve to be paid based on quality. That is a real hurdle for a PDF company. Just do a little math and you will start to see how bleak this becomes?
There are other sources of art, but I recon there is only ONE first product. In today’s RPG atmosphere, you only get the chance to win a customer once. Important lesson – if you are serious about doing this and jumping into the “biggies” expect to take a financial pounding on the first product or two. If we can jump to print then this is much less burdensome since the level of the art is already “printable.”
Total art bill for the first project, including maps is going to bury me at or around $800.00 to 1,000.00 dollars. That is on a project that I plan to make $1050.00 over the course of 3-4 months and any PDF people will tell you that what I am banking on is VERY unlikely.
So, we are going to take a loss the first few products or break even if we are lucky. I can live with that, this is basically the vanity press of the new millennia. Getting out without loosing my rear would not be a “defeat” it would be the lowest level of success.
I stewed over several different artists and finally decided to go with this:
Lee Smith is going to do the initially proposed character designs in color.
Jeff Ward will be doing the cover.
Jason McCustion will be doing several interior shots.
Clayton from Morningstar is doing the maps.
I am considering a piece from two other artists; we will see how my bank account holds out. [These two have not been notified since I need to do some number crunching but they are Sarah Skinner & Ian Armstrong].
Finally, I also picked up a layout artist from group, Sarah Skinner.
The moral to this story is expect to either: take a loss, put out an inferior looking product, become an artist, marry an artist, or design a product that needs no art.
Next - comes the dreaded discussion of becoming a pimp daddy. Also, webdesign and product concept. Shortly after that we will get to the "special
features" then we will be up on today where I got the brilliant idea to write this thread instead of doing any real work.
You want how much!!
So lets talk about the price to produce a quality piece of gaming action for your average bloke. Art is a big piece of your expense; I mean a big piece. The way in which you greet the world is the cover. A bad cover often prevents me from even picking up a module or setting.
Covers run the gamut from $50 up to more than a $1,000.00 and I suspect that some people like Bron, Terese Nielson, and Lockwood would charge even higher. Can anyone ballpark one of these biggies?
Let’s face it if you bomb on the cover, you start the game fourth and long. I did not scrimp here but I also did not go with the highest person.
Interior art. This is the strange thing about art – I love the feel of a game when it has consistent art. Dark Sun, Original 7th Sea, and similar products stand out in part due to a uniform look. I want this – I suppose some business major would call it branding. I want a certain style of art identified with our products. It is much harder to find “a style” than a good artist. Most of the people whom I did not select for the art were very good. Some were flat out amazing but their work just did not have the flair I was looking to put into my products. The good guys are $25.00 to $50.00 per ¼ page. They know they are good and by goodness, they deserve to be paid based on quality. That is a real hurdle for a PDF company. Just do a little math and you will start to see how bleak this becomes?
There are other sources of art, but I recon there is only ONE first product. In today’s RPG atmosphere, you only get the chance to win a customer once. Important lesson – if you are serious about doing this and jumping into the “biggies” expect to take a financial pounding on the first product or two. If we can jump to print then this is much less burdensome since the level of the art is already “printable.”
Total art bill for the first project, including maps is going to bury me at or around $800.00 to 1,000.00 dollars. That is on a project that I plan to make $1050.00 over the course of 3-4 months and any PDF people will tell you that what I am banking on is VERY unlikely.
So, we are going to take a loss the first few products or break even if we are lucky. I can live with that, this is basically the vanity press of the new millennia. Getting out without loosing my rear would not be a “defeat” it would be the lowest level of success.
I stewed over several different artists and finally decided to go with this:
Lee Smith is going to do the initially proposed character designs in color.
Jeff Ward will be doing the cover.
Jason McCustion will be doing several interior shots.
Clayton from Morningstar is doing the maps.
I am considering a piece from two other artists; we will see how my bank account holds out. [These two have not been notified since I need to do some number crunching but they are Sarah Skinner & Ian Armstrong].
Finally, I also picked up a layout artist from group, Sarah Skinner.
The moral to this story is expect to either: take a loss, put out an inferior looking product, become an artist, marry an artist, or design a product that needs no art.
Next - comes the dreaded discussion of becoming a pimp daddy. Also, webdesign and product concept. Shortly after that we will get to the "special
features" then we will be up on today where I got the brilliant idea to write this thread instead of doing any real work.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
(I'm here to learn, like everyone else.)
