WotC's Irwin, Tanji, and Crawford on Tales from the Yawning Portal's Art Direction

The YouTube channel Dungeon Life has posted a video featuring WotC's Kate Irwin (senior art director), Emi Tanji (senior graphic designer), and Jeremy Crawford (managing editor). It talks about designing Tales from the Yawning Portal. One of the themes discussed it how the adventures in the book were kept the same at the core, updating the stats and wording to make them feel like 5th Edition - "What would you do if you redesigned the adventures to be more like a modern D&D design? And the answer is, we didn't. What we did is we took Tomb of Horrors, and it's still Tomb of Horrors that Gary Gygax wrote..." Tales from the Yawning Portal hits preferred game stores tomorrow (ask your local store!) and everywhere else 11 days later.

[video=youtube;6-rif5ag9bY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-rif5ag9bY[/video]

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[SunGold]

Funny a lot of the 5E books reused 4E art. For example on the second page of the 5E Bard Class, it uses artwork from a 4E book on the Fey Wild.

I'm not talking about specific pieces of art, but the grander WoW/Wayne Reynolds flavor to the whole edition. Not every piece of art was garbage, but even those that were nice suffered from the unfortunate graphic design and layout.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I agree with you!
Well, except for halflings... those are preeety fugly...

The haflings are beyond fugly, they're so bad it took till last month for me to even consider making one in 5e, bc every time I flip to a page with a Halfling image I grimace.

Overall, I like the art for 5e, but find it less consistently good than the excellent art from 4e. There is a lot of good, and more "meh" than I'd expect.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Funny a lot of the 5E books reused 4E art. For example on the second page of the 5E Bard Class, it uses artwork from a 4E book on the Fey Wild.

Heroes of The Feywild had some of the best art I've seen in a DnD book. One of the best lore books, too. That is a book worth using even out of its intended edition. I feel like it's origin story mini game could easily be adapted to 5e's version of backgrounds, as well.

Anyway, my whole group was really disappointed with the 5e core books, in terms of art. Too much reused old art, too much weirdly purportioned halflings, to much forgettable art. And a half elf image that just....wasn't done well.

That said, the art since then has been very good!

 

[DM Howard]

Really cool video! I love looking behind the scenes (behind the screen?) at how D&D products are made!

 

[akr71]

The haflings are beyond fugly, they're so bad it took till last month for me to even consider making one in 5e, bc every time I flip to a page with a Halfling image I grimace.

Overall, I like the art for 5e, but find it less consistently good than the excellent art from 4e. There is a lot of good, and more "meh" than I'd expect.

I agree with you!
Well, except for halflings... those are preeety fugly...

Fair dues. 5E halflings are a bit...creepy? But I'm willing to deal with it considering how beautiful everything else is.

Good! I was concerned I was being an insensitive jackass for hating on those pumpkin headed freaks

 

[Nickolaidas]

This is actually one of my tiny complaints with 5th edition - not enough art in the modules. I'm not saying it should become a comic book but I'd like to see double the art in the modules.

 

[gyor]

Am I the only one more interested in Appendix B then the actual adventurers?

 

[tuxgeo]

I'm sure Kate Irwin is a talented person but I really dislike the art direction of 5E. It's the only edition with art I haven't liked and I was hoping for something different in the Yawning Portal. I guess I'm stuck with it throughout this edition.

For the sake of more completeness of information: During the playtest for "D&D Next," the art director was Jon Shindehette, and Kate Irwin was at a lower level of authority. Much of the art style of 5E was set by J.S., so I wouldn't blame K.I. for the whole thing.

 

[WackyAnne]

I don't care much for modern game maps. They are too saturated with color. Does WOTC put out plain black and white printer friendly maps too? I am very tempted to get Tales From The Yawning Portal, but I need maps that are easy to play the game with.

No, there are no black-and-white maps anywhere in 5E. But I’m fairly certain the maps are nearly or identical to the originals, which you could pull those pretty easily, from your old books or even online.

 

[The Old Crow]

No, there are no black-and-white maps anywhere in 5E. But I’m fairly certain the maps are nearly or identical to the originals, which you could pull those pretty easily, from your old books or even online.

I have some, but unfortunately not all, of those old modules. Still would be nice if they would put out printer friendly versions of maps. They could put them up at DM's Guild. I am tired of getting modern modules and getting dark colored or solid black background maps that are hard on my printer, and its a pain to have to redraw them by hand.

How does everyone else use the maps as they are?