[The Rustbelt] trepidations about illustrations
Marshall Burns:
I want the 1st edition of Rustbelt to have illustrations. I don't have the money to pay an artist -- I mean, AT ALL. My budget for this project is zero dollars. I don't consider my own attempts at illustrations to be up to par (although I will be doing a cover even if it kills me). I do, however, have dozens of photographs that are excellent illustrations of the Setting, and also look really cool.
Here's where my trepidation comes in: none of these photographs include people. The Rustbelt runs on Character-based Premise. I worry that this combination is a problem, that illustrations that only show you Setting could shift reader attention away from Character (where it belongs) to Setting (where it won't actually help the game be fun).
Am I right? Am I worrying to much? Discuss. Help!
-Marshall
Seth M. Drebitko:
Do you perchance have adoring artistically endowed friends that you can trade with?
Some people might be interested possibly in getting a free copy of the game and some free publicity for providing a bit of art.
Maybe you could do pre-orders and factor in art costs to what needs to be collected, providing the actual text of the game in the mean time.
(Maybe all of the above combined?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Marshall,
No one knows what illustrations actually convey to (the, a, or plural) reader.* I think the only standard an author can go by is whether the graphics (including layout, graphic design, et cetera, in addition to illustration) work for him or her. I'm assuming from your post that the photographs do work for you. If they do, then they do.
We might speculate all over the place whether leaving the illustrations empty of characters militates against character-centric play as you fear, or whether conversely doing so would actually facilitate such play by not imposing a text-based standard for character priorities. That might be a fun discussion but it would also suffer from no foundation whatsoever. The fact is that whatever you choose, you can invent some unfounded reason for how it will undermine your goals. You've named the thread well: you're experiencing trepidations, and I suggest that that's all you're doing.
Let's look at the questions at hand.
1. Are the photographs good for the text?
2. If they are, are they enough?
3. If they aren't enough, or if they aren't good, then what other artwork would be desired?
4. Given an answer to #3, how can such artwork be generated on a limited or absent budget?
I'm reluctant to address #4 - for which useful answers do exist - unless I get a better sense that #1-3 are founded on real answers, rather than trepidations bombing back and forth in your mind.
Also, when and if #4 does become a more solid topic for you, then I recommend this thread be focused very directly upon what other publishers have actually done, rather than on speculative notions.
Best, Ron
* I suggest that "a" reader, "readers," and "the" reader are all problematic concepts in the first place. So this post focuses instead on the author and publisher.
Marshall Burns:
I really like the photographs. I think they're well-composed (some more than others, but good in general), they look cool, and they evoke the texture and atmosphere (to me) of the Rustbelt setting. I think they do a good job of suggesting the miserable conditions that the characters probably live in. No matter what else might happen art-wise, these photographs will be used in some way.
Are they good enough? Good enough for blues. This is my first project for publication, and I know there are limits to what I can do -- I know that if I go all-out with my ambitions that I'll only stumble over them. By which I mean, although there are certain subjects (fight scenes, Psyche mechanics, Push/Price mechanics, eldritch shit) that are not at all illustrated by any of these photographs, I can live with that fact. (For one thing, the text goes into great detail on all of those, and there's no necessity for the illustrations to be redundant.)
Would I like to have illustrations of fights and Rust phenomena and such? Sure. But are they absolutely necessary? Nah. But I wouldn't say "no" if, f'rinstance, I was offered some for no monetary cost.
(The idea of doing pre-orders to offset production costs scares me. But besides that, I don't have any liquid capital in the first place to handle the production costs until money from pre-orders came in.)
-Marshall
C. Edwards:
Just chiming in with complete and 100% opinion here, but when I see a well crafted photograph without people in it I usually find it pretty powerful. Doubly so if the photograph shows the effects/results of human endeavor. The Rustbelt is apocalyptica correct? Images of ruins and wastelands can have quite an impact.
-Chris
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