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

[Wormwood]

What better to introduce the adventure game of Dungeons and Dragons, than a painting of some adventurers, in a dungeon, facing a dragon?

I find your lack of faith in boobs disturbing.

 

[Pale Jackal]

But he takes all the aplause.

PC's ahoy!

Nice edit. Certainly improves the cover, IMO.

 

[Ahwe Yahzhe]

I know, I said "did you make the cover" regarding the D&D logo, etc.
Did you make the fake cover?

I made that fake cover with MS Paint (sad, I know) and the original WAR art. Here's a slightly bigger version, per your request:

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

The third...

While the Player's Handbook is not intended to be the entire Dungeons & Dragons game, it is the one book that everyone at the table should have. For some players, it may be the only D&D book they ever purchase!

The Player's Handbook should evoke a feeling of group-oriented adventuring (something that the cover has, honestly, failed to do since the original cover of the 1e PHB, and barely so then).

Also, this cover very clearly illustrates a simple principle: adventurers in a dungeon (or some strange locale) fighting a dragon.

I know that if I ended up buying the 4e PHB, I'll be printing out a book-wrap cover of the green dragon art.

 

[CleverNickName]

I find your lack of faith in boobs disturbing.

Eh, there is a time and a place for everything. For boobs, a good time and place would be the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, for example. And even on the suggested PHB cover, it isn't the boobs that I dislike...it is that weird thing standing next to the hawt sorceress that ruins it for me. I guess it is supposed to be a Dragonborn, but it looks more like an Armadilloborn to me.

 

[pukunui]

Someone, somewhere (in this thread or a different one on this subject) complained about how the new image was off-center ... turns out the image they've put up on the product page has had a bad crop job. If you watch Chris Perkins' seminar video on YouTube, you'll see the full PHB cover in his PowerPoint presentation. You can see all of the female wizard on the right as well as more of the cave and it places the two characters at the front of the party more or less in the center of the picture instead of off to the side. Much more aesthetically pleasing.

I quite like it. I would've voted for the heroes fighting the dragon one except that I absolutely despise the makeover they gave the green dragon. That horn on the end of its nose is absolutely ridiculous. It's the only thing I dislike about 4e so far.

 

[Li Shenron]

Page layout 101: The eye movement for a Western person (who reads left-to-right) across a page runs from left-to-right on the upper part, then across the page right-to-left, then again from left-to-right. That forms a "Z" over the page.

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.

 

[pukunui]

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.

Yes, the Gutenberg Principle is generally more about eyeflow on a page than in a work of purely visual art (although it certainly can apply to that as well). When I look at the PCs fighting the dragon, my eye is drawn to the dragon's head first before anything else, and it certainly isn't all the way over in the top left corner.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Yeah it is generally there is one main focus point in a picture and for good composition 1-3 minor focus points. They usually all lie on the Rule of Third too.

 

[pukunui]

Yeah it is generally there is one main focus point in a picture and for good composition 1-3 minor focus points. They usually all lie on the Rule of Third too.

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.