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* the artist

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bootneck

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I have a friend who graciously gave me all their new MGT stuff as they "couldnt get on with it". Knowing Im a huge Traveller fan I was chuffed to bits.............Until I saw the art work in the Alien modules.

Its a bit jarring when the the illustrations just dont work with the text.

Aslan are not lions, yet every illustration shows a man like lion with no attempt to reference any of the previous history or depictions of the race.

And as for Vargr? We get a lazy series of dog images, turing the page i expected to see them playing poker!!

Come on mongoose, sort it out!!

Or me and my ACR will sort for you.............
 
Mongoose does struggle with its art. Some pieces are inspired (I even like the oddly cartoonish ones, like the "Fat Vargr Pimp" and Darrian Business Women in Merchants) and some (like many of the starship pictures) are horrible - they need to stick to the clean, straight lines and get away from the T4 type "everything looks like it's melting" pictures.

I was also bemused by the blatant "lion man" artwork in Aslan, especially after the text continues to tow the "they're really only vaguely leonine" line.

Vargr pictures have a history of being a bit "comic relief" though. I remember one CT picture of a party in an Air/Raft with the Vargr hanging his head out the window.
 
hdan said:
Vargr pictures have a history of being a bit "comic relief" though. I remember one CT picture of a party in an Air/Raft with the Vargr hanging his head out the window.
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But at least Vargr are supposed to be canine-like, even if smaller than humans and just as high-tech, not giant samurai dogs. But you can imagine unusually large Vargr who dress up like that. The Lion Men of Mongo look of the Mongoose Aslans, OTOH, really vexes me. Mongoose should definitely not count on selling me any miniatures with that look.

Still, it's their franchise and as I understand it[*], Marc Miller explicitly signed off on it.

[*] Even though I don't understand it. ;)​


Hans
 
Rancke2 said:
The Lion Men of Mongo look of the Mongoose Aslans, OTOH, really vexes me. Mongoose should definitely not count on selling me any miniatures with that look.
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No argument here; the Aslan art (though competently executed for the most part) has got to go. It would be as bad as droyne that look like D&D "Dragonborn" or K'Kree that actually look like Greek Centaurs.

On that note, I'm going to shut up now before whoever is illustrating the Droyne book starts to get ideas....
 
Its just artwork and is very subjective.
but c'mon.....
"Shoot the artist" thread title?
the following quote?
bootneck said:
Come on mongoose, sort it out!!

Or me and my ACR will sort for you.............
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a death threat, made jokingly, over such a trivial thing.... that doesn't disturb anybody?
Whatever happened to just saying "I don't like it."
 
Ishmael said:
a death threat, made jokingly, over such a trivial thing.... that doesn't disturb anybody?
Whatever happened to just saying "I don't like it."
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I was not disturbed at all.

I took it completely as rhetorical hyperbole. I saw it as a metaphor and nothing else.

"I don't like it" has none of the intense emotions I suspect he wanted to convey. I did not see it as a personal attack. I saw it as criticising the decisions made by the art directors.

The very fact that it was made jokingly over a trivial thing made it no more serious than a action movie that gets produced by Holywood. I don't think that Holywood is seriously advocating shooting people as a prefered method of problem solution.

But then that is me and my perception.
 
The problem with Mongoose art is that there does not seem to be a single code for it. It is constantly struggling for a uniform look. Sometimes, it ventures into the dark & gritty stuff (stuff I personally like) and other times it goes for buffoon look and sometimes like large parts of Darrians just somewhere inbetween - reflecting that it was a book of Space Elves...it will be interesting to see what they do with Zhodani and Sword Worlds - if they keep on the high end say like Darrians, I will be very happy, if they go higher like they did in cybernetics, central supply catalogue and a few others...I will be also very happy.

But, if the do the jokey thing that is in careers and animals. I will not be pleased. However, the biggest litmus test will naturally be 2300AD due out later this year. If the art is jokey there then I will have lost confidence in the art director who will have spoiled an excellent Hard SF gritty product...not saying GDW did not make mistakes but significantly fewer and less jokey than Mongoose.

The irony is that they are not following an established style like in the case of T4 or GURPS - so it is somewhat the exceptions (of either really high or really bad) that raises the most ire and they should know that and put fire to their artist to look at the inspired pieces that one person started an inspirational art thread and I an inspirational movie thread for a sampling of what we want to see. So not shoot the artist but certainly threaten her/him with torches...
 
Mongoose has been pretty much nothing but disappointing in the art. The lack of common thread, the artists who haven't read the AM texts, and the art director who lets slide art that is bad on its face... It's really a bad sign.

The RQ art was only somewhat better.

Now, while I dislike both their Judge Dredd rules treatments, I do love the look of the JD lines. What little art that is new is seamlessly integrated with the JD look and feel.
 
...And you think that's bad?

Gents,
Yesterday I bought Supplement 10: Merchants and Cruisers, and wow did I have a big laugh. Some of the designs are anemic to say the least with few detailed 3d views of the ships depicted. The big laugh came on page 45 The Ritchey Class Escort! It looks like...a big Phallus!?!?!?! Come on Mongoose could you have come up with a different design? I hope that any captain that is forced to serve on it is issued a paper bag to wear during operations!
 
dhyden said:
Gents,
Yesterday I bought Supplement 10: Merchants and Cruisers, and wow did I have a big laugh. Some of the designs are anemic to say the least with few detailed 3d views of the ships depicted. The big laugh came on page 45 The Ritchey Class Escort! It looks like...a big Phallus!?!?!?! Come on Mongoose could you have come up with a different design? I hope that any captain that is forced to serve on it is issued a paper bag to wear during operations!
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After reading your post I went and found the sample pdf. OMG! The deck plans in the sample have got to be the worst in Trav history (I mean in a main book).

I could do MUCH better in 10 minutes with a pencil, ruler & graph paper.
 
The ships they did do 3d rendering on were ok, but as stated before..anemic. On another slam, the Signs & Portents 93 Annic Nova article. The use of the penances for maneuver drives is a bit hokey to me. I would think that RCS units would not be that hard to install. IMHO the ship looks a bit star trekish for the trav universe.
 
kafka47 said:
However, the biggest litmus test will naturally be 2300AD due out later this year. If the art is jokey there then I will have lost confidence in the art director who will have spoiled an excellent Hard SF gritty product...not saying GDW did not make mistakes but significantly fewer and less jokey than Mongoose.
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I am in the same boat. Thank goodness all my 2300AD books are in great shape and will be taken out of retirement if they junk it up. Never thought the GDW rules were that bad.
 
dhyden said:
The ships they did do 3d rendering on were ok, but as stated before..anemic. On another slam, the Signs & Portents 93 Annic Nova article. The use of the penances for maneuver drives is a bit hokey to me. I would think that RCS units would not be that hard to install. IMHO the ship looks a bit star trekish for the trav universe.
Click to expand...

That's actually a hold-over from CT.
 
dhyden said:
The ships they did do 3d rendering on were ok, but as stated before..anemic. On another slam, the Signs & Portents 93 Annic Nova article. The use of the penances for maneuver drives is a bit hokey to me. I would think that RCS units would not be that hard to install. IMHO the ship looks a bit star trekish for the trav universe.
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The 3D ships in the new book (like the salvage ship) are IMHO exactly what they should be doing more of.

There are however some exceptionally hard on the eyes deck plans, a few of which have appeared in S&P articles before.

Annic Nova is an old CT design. It might have been nice to see a new look for that ship, but given the fact that they "gave it away for free", I can see why they mostly recycled the art (and article), and I'm just happy that they're re-statting some of the CT adventures, so no complaints on that front.
 
I have not seen the book yet. For whatever reason (a common expression with MGT), the preview pdf's are apparently much much lower res than the book or the actual pdf. Thats what I've heard from people with the book or pdf anyway.
 
AN would have been better fixing a few of the worst issues. However, they didn't make it worse, so props. And that would have been easy to do.

As for some of the art---WTF! not just Alien modules, but the truly crappy art used in most of the ship books. And the useless ship floor plans.
 
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