D&D 4E Vote for your favorite 4E PHB cover!

[MaelStorm]

Tiefling & Warrior

 

[Klaus]

Pardon me, but that might be true for a written page, or maybe for a newspaper page, but certainly UNTRUE for a cover or picture.

You don't seriously think that people start looking at a picture from the left-upper corner... the middle is the starting point perhaps, but the fact is that the picture itself will lure attention to the "heavier" parts of it.

It's subconscious, and it happens in a fraction of a second. Think "subliminal".

Got that not only from Advertising, but also from comic book artists like Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee.

Using the same principle, the picture of someone running from left-to-right conveys speed, whereas someone running from right-to-left loses momentum.

 

[Ahwe Yahzhe]

I wonder...

...if there's a larger piece of art that the original Character Sheets art was cropped from. In that case, maybe you could center the art on Leeroy Jenkins instead of the dragon head...

...or shrink the dragon's head.... (gotta love Adobe...)

 

[Zoatebix]

Pardon me, but that might be true for a written page, or maybe for a newspaper page, but certainly UNTRUE for a cover or picture.

You don't seriously think that people start looking at a picture from the left-upper corner... the middle is the starting point perhaps, but the fact is that the picture itself will lure attention to the "heavier" parts of it.

And continuing from Claudio Pozas' last post...

Think of how many depictions there are of The Flash facing right; when I close my eyes, that's how I picture him.

This is a measurable tendency that artists and graphic designers exploit all the time.

 

[The Eternal GM]

The fight with the green dragon is simply the most exciting of the covers.

To me, a D&D cover should be exciting, particularly the PHB cover. It's meant to sell the game, to draw interest and the 'odd' looking dragon with heroes is the most interesting of them.

Like the rules cyclopedia... The most boring name for a book, but the cover art was (and still is) a great image. It makes you want to look inside the pages. Cover #3 has the same effect. The other two do not.

 

[frankthedm]

"Adventurers vs. Green Dragon" is stomping the other two. They could team up and get cloned and AvGD would still be beating them.

 

[pukunui]

And continuing from Claudio Pozas' last post...

Think of how many depictions there are of The Flash facing right; when I close my eyes, that's how I picture him.

This is a measurable tendency that artists and graphic designers exploit all the time.

This really depends on the circumstances. With print design (magazines, newspapers, etc), it's not about facing right or left. It's about facing in or out. Facing in is good as it draws the reader into the material. Facing out is bad because it sends the reader's attention off the page and thus out of the material ... so if your image is going to be placed on the right-hand side of a two-page spread, it'll be facing left (into the material), no matter what the subject matter of the image is.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Yes, that's it.

The Rule of Thirds for purely visual stuff (like photos, paintings) and the Gutenberg Principle for page layouts and the like. I should know this. Graphic designer in the making.

I have a portrait-artist/fine arts prof as a father it be simply strange if I didn't know this

 

[pukunui]

I have a portrait-artist/fine arts prof as a father it be simply strange if I didn't know this

I wasn't suggesting you didn't know it. I was simply saying that I should know it because I hadn't been remembering it properly until you posted. I'm on the home stretch of an intensive graphic design course and the Rule of Thirds and the Gutenberg Principle were things we covered in theory some time ago (although they were both things with which I was roughly familiar from prior learning).

 

[Klaus]

This really depends on the circumstances. With print design (magazines, newspapers, etc), it's not about facing right or left. It's about facing in or out. Facing in is good as it draws the reader into the material. Facing out is bad because it sends the reader's attention off the page and thus out of the material ... so if your image is going to be placed on the right-hand side of a two-page spread, it'll be facing left (into the material), no matter what the subject matter of the image is.

Indeed, which is why several books have borders on the outside of the pages to "rein in" your attention back to the page. But look at Adventurers vs. Green Dragon. At the same time the adventurers lead your attention from left-to-right, the dragon does the opposite, and all that ammounts to your attention being drawn to the center of the image (to Sir Leeroy Jenkins, if you will) and the clash of the two movements give the image "weight".