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Mgt art

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spinwardpirate said:
Enough for me that it didn't meet my expectations. I want stuff that's on a level with the color plates in an Osprey Vanguard series book.
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Well, you get what you pay for. And given the price/size factor of the Osprey books you'd have to pay a LOT more for HS to get that quality. Quick look at Amazon:

HS = 200 pages for 30€
Osprey Medival Armies = 48 pages for 12€ (and it's a smaller format!)

So a HS in that quality comes in around 65€, well past the money most people will play for a single supplement that needs at least another book to use.
 
Colin said:
Exactly. I have all of them, save the very latest. Even his B&W deckplans are incredible.
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They are very nice. I'm a cartographer by trade... I wish I could make stuff like that. I need to practice more with these new-fangled computer thingies.
 
PathfinderAP said:
Thats true,

I'm looking at the front cover of the Mongoose Oct-Nov catalogue, its a picture of a Vargr, and its rather cool, I like it,

At least this line does have some good artwork, not alot, not alot by along way, but some, now if they could only sort the wheat from the chaff
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I agree - and when I saw that catalogue cover, my response was, "so those aren't horns, but ears!."

Though I still seem to be in the minority who liked the art in the first printing of the TMB (the new stuff is good but I'm not trading in until I can do it for free). The ships in it aren't all great but the Gazelle and the Broadsword are good.
 
Colin said:
...Why do you keep doing this? Every so often you pop up in the Mongoose forum and fire off some sort of criticism at Mongoose Traveller.
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S4 and Brinksey do seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about a game they profess never to play and not to like. I always thought they were latent MgT players. . .
 
Yes, I do think that Mongoose did go a little crazy with the whole deckplans issue. But, remember folks, it we the fans who asked for more deckplans. And, I yes, I do hate the errors that creep into them plus the redundancy issue. And, they would have been better served if they went the way of realistic deckplans a la Ryan Wolfe/Ki-Ryn Studios.

But, some hicups, notwithstanding, it is still way cooler than some of the newer Traveller art or CGI stuff that is out there in the larger RPG market.

However, I do urge all fans to contribute what they think should be the Traveller look on the Mongoose thread entitled Colin's Inspirational Traveller Art.
 
Supplement Four said:
Matt...put stuff like this in Mongoose Traveller.

Traveller fans would go ape over art like this.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/images/8518/2_DECKPLAN107.jpg
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In this case, S4 is quite correct. However, such art is not cost-effective to produce, at least not on demand. A high-quality model like this takes a long time to do, and so is expensive. A fan might do it for cheap, once or twice, but fans are not really reliable (no slight to MagMag intended. His stuff is awesome). Not in a business sense, anyway.
 
Colin said:
In this case, S4 is quite correct. However, such art is not cost-effective to produce, at least not on demand. A high-quality model like this takes a long time to do, and so is expensive. A fan might do it for cheap, once or twice, but fans are not really reliable (no slight to MagMag intended. His stuff is awesome). Not in a business sense, anyway.
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OK, I understand the business aspect. But, that's besides the point.

Let's stop making excuses for crappy art. Maybe the MagMag stuff is too expensive. OK. But, there's got to be some better stuff that isn't.

As was mentioned up thread, DGP consistently put great art in their books.

Everybody remember the Beowulf deckplans in the Starship Operator's Manual? Sure, the actual design was off by a few squares, but look at the presentation!

Those deckplans blow away what Mongoose is doing, and those were published 20 years ago!
 
One thing to remember, tho...

Conan was done at a point where they had fewer irons in the fire.

Further, fantasy is easier to get stock art for, especially conanesque stuff. Sci Fi, due to the variety of approaches, needs more tailored art.
 
I suspect the market potential for Conan was also bigger than that for Traveller, allowing and perhaps even demanding more money and artistry in the budgetary equation.
 
mbrinkhues said:
One big issue I have are the "ships" pictures in MgT (not the deckplans, that's another issue(1)) The quality of the rendering is very low quality in most pictures and fails to please the eye. A problem with elder Mongoose (pre-Traveller) works in SciFi like Babylon5 where the Mongoose add-ons never hit (The original ships where great) Back then the craft where to "cartoony" and now they look like the artist had a fabel for spiked leather and body piercings.



(1) The plans range from "useful once you scan them and replace the drohne areas with something useful" to "why the hell do I need 10+ pages of deckplans for a Tigress" but all are well done quality wise
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Now I had just the oppsite,I liked some of the ship drawings & had issues w/the deckplans that didn't match the drawings.The character drawings on the careers I couldn't stand the art style.

I agree on the Tigress;it's cool to have deckplans for it but they're hard to read.Not that I'll run a game where I'll need the plans for a Tigress:smirk: but they're cool.
 
mbrinkhues said:
The Slammers book has the best set of artworks in the line IMHO. They obviously used earlier pictures (like the Novel covers) for inspiration and at least looked at the wargame that was/is out there. One can argue the looks of some characters (My Impression of von Steuben does not match his picture) but the art is consistent and above average. A bit less technical and more cartoony the the 2300AD stuff but not too much.
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I loved the character pics (Yea Von stuben didn't match the image I had in my head eather.;))but the maps I thought sucked.They told me nothing of what was going on.Thought I was looking at the screen of a late 70' early 80's video game,& a crappy one at that.The equipment pics were good too,even though the powerguns weren't as impressive as I imaged them in my head.
 
Supplement Four said:
OK, I understand the business aspect. But, that's besides the point.

Let's stop making excuses for crappy art. Maybe the MagMag stuff is too expensive. OK. But, there's got to be some better stuff that isn't.

As was mentioned up thread, DGP consistently put great art in their books.

Everybody remember the Beowulf deckplans in the Starship Operator's Manual? Sure, the actual design was off by a few squares, but look at the presentation!

Those deckplans blow away what Mongoose is doing, and those were published 20 years ago!
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't making excuses for crappy art. It's just more difficult for SF than for fantasy. An art director can say to the artist: I want a picture of Conan. Or a dwarf in a chain-mail bikini, and any fantasy illustrator can pretty much nail it first time out. SF though, not so much. It takes quite a bit more art direction, time, and thus money. Best bet, really, is to hire a fan as a staff artist, and work him to death churning out enough pieces so that you will have stock art for years. Which is more-or-less what Dream Pod9 did with Ghislain Barbe. (Heavy Gear artist, along with Jovian Chronicles and Tribe 8).
 
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