Arsenal Cover, crappy or craptastic? Options

[ixombie]

Looking at the cover of Arsenal, I'm not surprised. Shadowrun has a history of kinda silly, cartoony art, after all.

What I wonder (and maybe a dev could answer) is whether they use that kind of art on purpose, anymore? Gone are the internet-free days of the late 80's when it might be hard to locate and retain a good artist. There are hundreds of underemployed artists that could do the work, so it's not lack of people. Is the current SR team sticking with the cartoony art just to keep up the Shadowrun tradition of having campy, cartoony art? Or is there some other motive for not updating the art style?

This post has been edited by Redjack: Feb 2 2008, 08:29 PM

Reason for edit: Add sr4 icon

[Stahlseele]

yeah, kinda wondering about that one myself too . .
the art inside the books has been getting better . . save for Arsenal 2071 as they're pretty much reusing images from Arsenal 2060 to show most of the weapons and other stuff that's been in there . . but the cover art has been bad from the beginning more or less in my eyes x.x . .

[knasser]

I'm not going to completely slate the cover. But I would describe it as pretty mediocre. One of the things I really didn't like in third edition was the very cartoony artwork. My tastes run more to the impressive stuff like the cover of Shadows of Europe or some of the very excellent work in the sample characters. One of my favourite pieces recently is the cover of Runner Havens which is slightly not my style but just so beautifully done and the troll is great.

I've rambled haven't I? The cover of Arsenal is not this style of artwork - it's more like the cartoon stuff of third edition. I think the tone of it is okay - this is the Book of Loot afterall. It should have a sort of toybox subject matter to it. But it doesn't work for me.

Aside from everything else, the perspective is off in many areas, even if you try to see it as looking down on the scene slightly. The two guns on the upper right are at different angles but both are painted as if they are flush to the wall. Both the wheels on the vehicle and the front windows are slightly out as well, whilst I can only assume that the ammunition to the forefront of the picture is magnetic.

Sorry to the artist aside from the screwy perspective the picture is fine - I just don't like it that much.

-K.

[Whipstitch]

I love the troll on Runner Havens. I'm pretty sure the gun he's firing weighs as much as your average kindergartener.

[Method]

Craptastic. Hands down.

I think the cover of SoE is the best SR art I've seen in almost a decade. There's nothing cartoonish or cheesy about it and there's nothing overstated. To quote possibly the greatest band ever "what's become of subtlety"? (karma bonus for naming the band)

I agree with ixombie. Certainly in all the vast internet there have to be some good artists that happen to be SR fans and would love to contribute.

[Zen Shooter01]

I love the cover. I think it looks great. Usually I don't give a damn about cover art - I'm not buying the book for the cover art. But I loved this cover right away. I love the personality of the ork. I love the composition of the piece. It made me laugh out loud with delight. Best cover since SOE.

The boldness of the composition reminded me of the Cannon Companion cover, but this one is more charming.

[Fortune]

[Whipstitch]

Or else Tool. Not that uncommon of a lyric.

Also, the cover made me wince as if I was trying to pass tacks through my urethra sideways.

[Method]

And the prize goes to Whipstich, although Fortune could also be correct (I don't know Blanket Music).

The line I was thinking of is "Something kind of sad about the way that things have come to be. Desensitized to everything, what's become of subtlety?"

[JonathanC]

YOu guys are all wrong. The Arsenal cover is AWESOME. Augmentation sucked, though.

[kigmatzomat]

I'm on the "suck" side. I can live with cartoony. What gets me is that the perspective is forced, the angles are bogus, the lighting/shadowing makes no sense, and let's not even get into the scale.

IMO, the SR art generally peaked in SR2. SR3's art was generally well done, but I just wasn't quite as fond of it.

[ixombie]

If Tool had stopped making music about 10 years ago, they'd be the best band ever. They're still good, but they no longer deserve that title.

Back to the topic, the thing I hate most about the Arsenal cover is the knife on the back wall that has a blade which looks like 12" wide and 6" long. Yuck. Also, the rocket thingy the ork is holding looks really stubby and not cool.

To clarify the subheading, crappy vs. craptastic means, in essence, bad vs. intentionally bad which makes it good. I don't think you can argue that the cover is good; it might not be horrible, but they could have done better. But I think it's possible that they're intentionally trying to invoke that kind of late 80's camp that's been with Shadowrun since the beginning, which means that they made the cover sorta cheesy on purpose.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

I like the artist's work a lot, and even like this piece, but not as cover art. The "cartoony" stuff is cool inside, but I prefer the more sophisticated stuff for covers. Zeleznik or Zug, please.

[Cardul]

Before I give my opinion, let me give something so people can understand what my idea of an aesthetic for a cover is:
My favourite covers have always been: Fields of Fire, Dragons of the 6th World, and the Street Samurai Catalog.

Of the things released for 4th Edition, I find Runner Havens and Augmentation to be "meh", but I like On the Run, Street Magic, and Corporate Enclaves's covers. I also admit that, if not for the dwarf hacker and the human sammie, I would like the main book's cover(the sammie just does not have the Aesthetic I like, and dwarf...just looks kind of out of place in that Gangsta Rapper gear)

Now Arsenal..Arsenal is a strange thing for me.
First, I agree with those who say there is something off with the perspective. Then again, I liked the toybox feel. And, you know, I have to say: I found it infinately better then the Cannon Companion's cover.(Then again..a Cha 1 female troll in a bikini would have been better, so that is not saying much.) I also liked the look of the Ork on the cover. Heck, we got a FEMALE Ork on the cover..I cannot think of the last time we got something like that. Especially a fairly decent looking female ork :D I don't think it was really "cartoony", though, I admit, I would have loved something like Street Magic's cover. At least, unlike with Augmentation, I did not look at it and go,"Wow..I have that model, and that model, and that model...and it looks like the guy used PoseWorks shaders." In fact, I kind of liked the style..it had the "Kid in the Candyshop" feel to it. The more exagerated natures of the guns were, though, obviously to try and draw attention away from the Orkess. I think the artist realized too late that he had made the Orkess look too good, and too prominant, and so tried vainly to draw attention away by sprinkling big guns throughout the scene.

[JonathanC]

How anyone can all this cover crappy when we've got the Augmentation cover staring at us is beyond comprehension. That thing looks like it was slapped together in Poser in like 10 minutes. It's embarrassing. I want to get a slip cover for it.

[Cardul]

[Blade]

Actually I'm ok with each separate elements from Arsenal's cover. The problem is when you put them together with a wrong perspective and absolutely no attention to scale (Sakura Fubuki, the only light pistol as big as an Ares Alpha).
Reminds me of these paintings from the XIIth century, back when painters didn't know how to handle perspective correctly.

If they keep on having such cover art, I'll consider applying as an artist!

[Dashifen]

[Eryk the Red]

I've got some bias. Being an illustrator myself (not-yet-professionally), I understand how difficult it can be to get things exactly the way you want them, and how frustrating it can be, when you worked hard on something, to have your work insulted. I'm not talking about criticism. You gotta be able to handle people's criticism. But to call someone's work 'crappy'? It's needlessly mean.

That said, I actually do like the cover. It's silly. It's exaggerated. The perspective is off. The scale is inconsistent. None of those things are deal-breakers for me. My favorite comic book artists rarely draw realistically, and that same taste extends to this. It has a kind of charm that I like. Like the art embraces its own hokey-ness. That's cool to me.

[ixombie]

The internets are a mean series of tubes! Deal with it! :grinbig:

I just wonder what the SR team is thinking, presenting completely different art styles for subsequent releases. Part of it probably has to do with how it went from FanPro to Catalyst, though maybe not since AFAIK the people in charge stayed in charge... It just seems to me that they should maybe pick a style and try to stick with it. There's nothing wrong with the campy cartoonyness, it's just that the book covers all look like they come from a different game these days.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Compared to the cover of the main book and Augmentation, the Arsenal cover is great. (The interior art concerning clothing, however...)
(And Street Magic is nice, but pretty bland... that cover would fit pretty much any modern-fantasy system/story/game/whatever)

[eidolon]

I don't know. The game itself has a different style depending on whose table you sit at, so I don't really have a problem with the art reflecting that.

I have favorites, and there's a few pieces I really don't like at all, but overall the SR line still has some of my favorite RPG art.

[Eryk the Red]

I'm sure the changes in style have a lot to do with the fact that it's all freelance. There's no 'stable of artists'. I'm glad they keep changing it, myself. If they settled on one art style, it might be one that I really don't like. (Though I hate to seem like I'm wagon-jumping, the Augmentation cover qualifies as something I don't like. I just don't like the total computer generated look of it. Not my thing.)

[X-Kalibur]

I was more disappointed with the internal art really, most of it was copy/pasted out of Fields of Fire and Cannon Companion (and some from Rigger 3 of course).

[JonathanC]

Street Magic had the highest quality cover, but the style just made it look...well, not very Shadowrun-like. It looked like a White Wolf book or something. Augmentation just looked awful. I'd rather have a blank cover than the crap they put on there. Arsenal actually looks like a Shadowrun book to me.