Friday, May 29, 2009

Insect Shrine Art Preview

Tuesday night, Maria and I had Laura Jalo and her boyfriend Oskar over for dinner. Laura delivered the completed artwork hardcopies for Death Frost Doom, No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides (there are still a piece or two to go on this one), and Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill. She was also paid in full for the former two projects (at a shameful rate, honestly she should be paid as much for one picture as I paid for all of them... but that's one of the reasons for inviting them over for a big dinner), but it was the first time I got to see the actual pieces of art rather than a digital camera photo.

Laura completed her first piece for me last June, completed the last Insect Shrine piece for me April 14th, and has been doing ongoing work since then for the other projects. Her development in the past year has been tremendous, and I will be extremely proud to present the art in the finished projects.

But this also puts a lot of pressure on me. I'm not financing large print runs using traditional offset printing, I'm running a tiny publishing effort out of my living room. It will be too easy to screw up her artwork and have it end up blurry or otherwise flawed in the final output. Even having other people handling the printing doesn't mean it will come out so well, as first-print buyers of the Creature Generator can attest after comparing the cover image in the pdf and what appears on the physical booklet. And I'm not exactly "Mr. Graphic Design" as the judges of the One Page Dungeon contest should be aware of about now.

But I will do my best, both in the writing and in the presentation of the projects. It is my hope that when Insect Shrine is actually released (July... but we know how good my predictions are in these matters...) the embarrassment and ill-will concerning the delays will be forgiven (but not forgotten - smack me down if I ever utter the word "pre-order" again without an already completed-and-in-hand product).

But in the meantime, I present a thumbnail preview of the Insect Shrine artwork.

4 comments:

  1. Quality artwork, very evocative

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  2. Wow, that looks great! I can help you with the pictures and layout if you want (pro bono). We can talk about it on Sunday before the game.

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  3. Excellent stuff. Compliments to the artist.

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