M&T Artwork: Continuity of Style Needed

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Piperdog
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M&T Artwork: Continuity of Style Needed

Post by Piperdog »

As an artist myself, the M&T had a a few different artists/styles appearing in various entries, and for me, it was disconcerting.

Layout in the artistic sense is important, with a sense of continuity in style necessary to evoke a tone or flavor. To me, Peter Bradley's art is distinctive and is one of the defining elements in setting the feel and tone for C&C for me personally. If other artwork submitted by various artists is going to appear, it should at least be done in an attempt to emulate Petes style. At the very least, don't have one art pic be a fabulous grayscale painting, and the next be a moderately adequate pen and ink outline. Its just inconsistent and effects tone and mood of the book.

I understand that Pete cannot clone himself and do all the artwork himself, but it would be nice to see the same style of artwork throughout. I myself am a huge fan of his grayscale drawings/paintings and it would be awsome to see more of that in the next printing of M&T.

Lastly, I am a huge fan of C&C, an avid crusader preaching it to the heathen rpg masses, and love my M&T, so do NOT take this as a criticism.

Thanks for all the awsome work you guys put into making the game great!

This brings me to a question: are there any plans to do another printing of M&T any time soon?

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Post by Rigon »

I think I can answer your last question Piperdog. There probably won't abe a new printing of the M&T for a little while since they just released a 2nd printing of it over the summer. I could be wrong, though. It all depends on how well it is selling.

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gideon_thorne
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Re: M&T Artwork: Continuity of Style Needed

Post by gideon_thorne »

Thats the last thing I want, a bunch of people emulating me. Artists should develop their own style and voice.
Sides, I'm completely mental. There are far cooler people in this world one could be imitating.
One persons vision dominating this game is in contradiction of the entire philosophy behind the system. We want people to make the game their own, diversity of art style is part of it.
When the 2nd printing is close to selling out, then plans will be made for a third. So everyone get out into those game shops and go promote the game and help sell more books.
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Post by Omote »

Let me say this, while I would also like to see only PBs work in the M&T, how long would that have taken to do every single bit of artwork? Quite along, long time I would imagine.

My only thought is that i wised the picutures in the M&T could be a bit larger.

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Post by gideon_thorne »

Omote wrote:
Let me say this, while I would also like to see only PBs work in the M&T, how long would that have taken to do every single bit of artwork? Quite along, long time I would imagine.

My only thought is that i wised the picutures in the M&T could be a bit larger.

-O

A long damn time. I am not fast.
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Post by pactmaster »

I don't see the need for full continuity in the art, I grew up with the 1E MM and I didn't mind the different artists work then nor do I now. To get full continuity you would need one artist to at least do the majority of the art, like Christoph Swal with Atlantis: the Second Age.

If I had an M&T artist choice, I would vote for Swal, hands down. His relaxed and easy style is amazing.
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Post by Julian Grimm »

If you have some of the pre-C&C TLG modules and books you'll notice the near Homage that was done to those in M&T it was nice to see that C&C can use differing art styles just as it can differing play styles. While I do see Pete's work as the artistic 'Voice' of C&C I do like to see work from the other artists such as Jason Walton who gave the artistic 'Voice' to D20 Erde.
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Post by Mike Frank »

I very much like Jason Walton's work and would like to see more of it in C&C releases. As much as I like Peter's work, I absolutely do not want to see it as the exclusive work for C&C. In fact, I'm a little concerned with James Mishler using it exclusively in the AGJ.

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Post by Tadhg »

I'd like to respectfully disagree with PIperdog with regard to having only one artist or others who "emulate" him.

The brilliance of having multiple artists in a monster book, or even a campaign book or module has been seen from the early TSR stuff and also into the 2E books.

Personally, I loved it and thought it works very well. I want to see differing styles.

The LA book More Beasts of Lejend had one interior artist. And while his work is fantastic, the lack of other styled art/drawing was a detraction for me.

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Post by gideon_thorne »

Mike Frank wrote:
In fact, I'm a little concerned with James Mishler using it exclusively in the AGJ.

Fairly safe bet it wont be. First issues of anything tend to go on the economical side. And its just economical to use one artist instead of many on an initial effort.
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