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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mike Myler" data-source="post: 7699162" data-attributes="member: 6726030">If you can afford the Lord of the Ring license or have <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/numenera-a-new-roleplaying-game-from-monte-cook?ref=users" target="_blank">half a million dollars</a> to do it, it's a crying shame not to see a strong art theme in your RPG book. If I can get the sort of funding Symbaroum got, there will definitely be totally killer artwork throughout all of Mists of Akuma!The whole model of tabletop publishing has transformed considerably over the past decade and while the industry has become far more accessible (which is a good thing) thanks to the internet (read: publishing tools, resources marketplaces (stock art, page templates, etc.), and crowdfunding), it also ends up sending production values way topsy-turvy. Before a publisher looking for artwork to put in a book pretty much had to have some serious capital around to pay for that right out -- now they can go to a website and drop a fraction of that to get (sometimes very good) stock illustrations. That cuts down production costs but it also cuts down prices; when prices get hit across the board, that comes back around to knock down capital for projects.I think that's why you're seeing those sorts of things happen, though I didn't even get that far with Exalted (<a href="http://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/burn-down-whitewolf/1/" target="_blank">recent doings on their part</a> put them right out of my reading bin -- I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in their art department decided to look for greener pastures around then).Morrus and Green Ronin use art studios (collections of artists that band together as opposed to a team of freelancers) and that definitely works like a charm -- but they had considerable capital to do that. If you don't have the funds to budget original artwork for an entire book, you're in a rough spot indeed!In Veranthea Codex we had different artists for different continents and the library of stock art available to RGG was enormous, but the whole concept there was a radical mixup of settings (and <a href="http://endzeitgeist.com/veranthea-codex/" target="_blank">reports so far are that we nailed it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></a>) so having varied themes wasn't an issue. Hypercorps 2099 has visual themes reinforced with each chapter's opening (full page illustrations by the single major interior artist, a great guy named Nathanael Batchelor), but getting cogent stock art to fill in gaps where I needed it was pretty easy to do because I was shooting for a comic book feel.That said, I really want to have a strong, consistent theme to the artwork in Mists of Akuma. We did a two hour discussion and blind art corral between the designers to figure out which of the applying artists were up to snuff, and in the commission e-mails I made it clear to all the prospective illustrators that they'll be working to emulate a Lead Artist specifically so I can get a solid visual theme throughout the final book. The cover artist is confirmed though and I know he'll knock it out of the park and set the stage just right (I'll let Morrus reveal who that is <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />).</blockquote>

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