While doing art for Warriors of the Red Planet I was thinking about the cost of printing. For an endeavor like this, which is really a fan publication - a labor of love - the cost of printing in full color is out of the question. So the hardcopy will certainly be black & white (with a color cover of course). While the cost of color art is usually prohibitive, that is not the case here, because I'm happy to do all the art in color. The problem is that printing full color costs too much. So I thought it might be neat to do the PDF in full color - where the cost of printing is not an issue, and doing the hardcopy in b&w.Now, I'm not promising this, just saying it's an idea that occurred to me as I was making art for this incredible RPG being written by one of our very own talented designers.
You may recognize the little beastie above. A hideous plant man of Mars! I did a full color version previously, and when I paint full color I usually do a b&w first. So this crazy scheme to add more value to the PDF sounds more reasonable. (In some ways I like the b&w version better anyway, so thought I'd share)
I actually prefer B&W interior art, I find it "cleaner."
ReplyDeleteB&W is nice enough for gaming. Color on covers, maybe a splash page is usually enough. The charm and character of a well-done b&w illustration is something in itself that cannot be captured by color art.
ReplyDeleteMy love of old-school gaming makes me a sucker for black and white line drawings. I don't know if that's the case for your audience; if it is - great!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd imagine that putting full-color illustrations in the PDF gives the PDF version an advantage. This might hurt your sales. I have no idea how you're going about distributing the materials - and you might be planning on doing this already - but I'd charge for the PDF.
I prefer black & white interiors also. Though I might like the occasional full color splash page. AEG and FFG used to do b&w RPG's with a small color section, which was kind of cool.
ReplyDeleteSince WotRP is supposed to emulate old-school, I think a B&W version will feel the best.
Yeah, I'm all for the black and white artwork. The illustrations that I've seen thus far stand on their own.
ReplyDeleteI'd buy both a BW print of this and a color PDF. So thank you for going the extra mile!
ReplyDelete