Where do you like to see your art dollars in a ttrpg book?

[dragoner]

Art also has a hidden utility in that it acts as a bookmark for sections, esp when flipping through physical product.

My PDF's are all hyperlinked and bookmarked, like ToC takes one to the content, and page number goes back to the ToC, also I have often a 10 page index as well, and a sub-index star list with xyz coordinates of all the star systems. Things such as that.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I want the art budget totally blown on high-quality doodles in the margins. Like Sergio Aragones in Mad Magazine.



Make it so!

 

[gamerprinter]

There can be great black and white art.

While this isn't my work, when I was developing my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG), I found Mark Hyzer, who had been painting art for MtG, but told me he preferred to draw in pencil and nobody would hire him for that. He knew I was limited in funds, so he created about 20 monsters/races from Japanese folklore for an incredibly low price, which when I moved Kaidan to Rite Publishing, became a regular artist for Rite Publishing (as one of my assets). It was perfect for what I needed and he had a unique style... now he's quite expensive, but at least I found him before everybody realised his worth...

Edit: one more, this was a Mark Hyzer illustration as a cover design. He created the background and the character separately, allowing us to place it to best fit in the titling, but showing you a piece with character and background... Up from Darkness is our most insane and darkest one-shot, originally a convention game run by the author's 12 year old son at Origins for a bunch of old gamers. You're playing committed bad guys but don't realize that at the start... you will die, multiple times before it's over.

 

[gamerprinter]

I want the art budget totally blown on high-quality doodles in the margins. Like Sergio Aragones in Mad Magazine.



Make it so!

Ever see the two "handbooks" for Human Occupied Landfill (H.O.L.) by White Wolf/Black Dog. The entire books are scribbles with rules mechanics throughout, sometimes upsidedown - it was exactly what you're describing (well even more so, I think), every page with some full illustrations between. There were no type-set words, everything was a scribble and hand writing.

 

[cavetroll]

While this isn't my work, when I was developing my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG), I found Mark Hyzer, who had been painting art for MtG, but told me he preferred to draw in pencil and nobody would hire him for that. He knew I was limited in funds, so he created about 20 monsters/races from Japanese folklore for an incredibly low price, which when I moved Kaidan to Rite Publishing, became a regular artist for Rite Publishing (as one of my assets). It was perfect for what I needed and he had a unique style... now he's quite expensive, but at least I found him before everybody realised his worth...

Those are awesome

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Ever see the two "handbooks" for Human Occupied Landfill (H.O.L.) by White Wolf/Black Dog. The entire books are scribbles with rules mechanics throughout, sometimes upsidedown - it was exactly what you're describing (well even more so, I think), every page with some full illustrations between. There were no type-set words, everything was a scribble and hand writing.

I am not familiar with that ... maybe I'll have a chance to check it out.

 

[dragoner]

I am not familiar with that ... maybe I'll have a chance to check it out.

HoL is a trip.

 

[gamerprinter]

While I mostly do maps, though now am doing more and more 3D work, back when I wasn't I was working on Way of the Samurai (PFRPG), the Kaidan supplement on samurai, of course, I had big ideas for needed art, but Mark wasn't available, and I couldn't find anybody, and our budget was overly tight on that one, so I ended up creating all the art for it, myself. I found some great photos, but who wants photos in a game book, so I hand-traced every "paint stroke" and hand vectorized the photos, as a work-around, and it worked. Though I haven't tried it again, way too time consuming for my taste - but I did what I had to do.

 

[gamerprinter]

HoL is a trip.

It's a spoof of SuperHero and post-apocalypse - it's crazy, and kind of genius in a twisted sort of way. And like Traveller, you could die in character generation...

 

[Bedrockgames]

So if you have a budget for art and you want to split up between

• cover
• character classes
• character races
• monsters
• miscellaneous throughout the book
• etc

Of course the cover is the most important, but apart from that where would you put Color vs Black & White vs not necessary?

Does every class and every race need a color drawing? Can you get away with just black and white drawings for monsters?

How would you split it up?

I am probably an outlier but I prefer black and white interior art (might just be a product of that being the norm for so many RPG lines when I was first starting, but might also be because I like black and white photography, film and pen and ink art).

In terms of where the art should go: totally depends on the book. Ideally it is spread throughout to give the reader a feel for the game, the setting etc. Obviously a good amount of monster art is frequently a good thing, but that can also be impractical if there are lots of monsters and a small art budget. My favorite art of all time was the Fabian art in the Van Richten books. Those gave you a real sense of place, a sense of what the adventures were about, and they were all black and white. Those didn't require having images for every little thing in the book, it was more about providing a complete picture in an evocative way over the course of the book. It also had a unique style, that wasn't grounded in being especially realistic (it made you feel like you were in another world, rather than create something that looked like it could plausibly exist in our world).