Could be an illusion spell (trideo phantasm, anyone?), too.

The hell, I keep liking this cover more and more...
Also what's up with the guy with the goatee on the roof? is he supposed to be the rigger?
Riggers always die in the intro stories

Figured he was the dwarf Rigger controlling the drones that were shooting at the Corpsec and the CorpSec were shooting back at. The guy in the poncho seemed to be the Decker trying to hack the door. (( Plugged in, I'm assuming because Ares purposefully has it's security as a stand alone, off the Matrix grid.))

No, it's not. It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.

If I decide "there's too much mayonnaise on my sandwich", that doesn't mean I want NO mayonnaise at all on it. Just that I'd like ... less than there is.


No, it's not.

Some people despise heat, so being hot at all makes the weathr bad to them. Some people only dislike extreme heat, but like it a LITTLE hot.


But, one can go and say "I generally like hot days, but today is just too hot".


No, no I really don't think you do.

It's not perfect, I think it's a bit too busy, but overall, it's a very good cover for the new main book.

Well, to chuck in my tuppence, I love the cover.

At first glance, I felt it was perhaps a bit hectic too, but having looked a bit more, it's really grown on me. There are so many little details to discover, all of the metatypes are represented properly and the magic "effects" fit with the general feel of the picture. Given some of the art that made the books in the darker periods of SR4, I think this is right up at the top end.

For those saying that they don't know what the "story" of the picture is, I feel like there could be any of a number of different situations going on and I think that's a great idea. The cover of a roleplaying game book should be a jumping on point for the imagination and I think this cover does a great job.

Can't wait to see this with a logo, a title and some pages hidden underneath!

Those are some bad hands that suffer four finger hand syndrome. Artists that haven't properly studied anatomy (As in taken a serious scientific class on anatomy) often will leave out bone and joints that would exist even though a perspective isn't allowing of visibility of that limb. The Elf hand and the other human-ish guy suffer from this badly. There are entire joints missing.

I know I'm probably the only one bitching about the art and that I *always* complain about the art, but to me this is like getting there, they're and their mixed up if you were a writer. These are mistakes you do not make. The overextended spines on the women are pretty crap-tasic too but less offensive to the eye. Oh and the dwarf's knee actually gets *smaller* as it sits nearest to you on body. Things get larger as they come closer to you visually. The perspective on everything in this work is just way off, that's the reason the entire background looks off.

</artnerdrant>

They suffer from comic book spine syndrome. It's a very common affliction of women in modern gaming and comics art.

Correct anatomy is less important if it still looks cool. Case in point: http://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/diablo-...-yeah-312091457
If you claim photorealism, yes, anatomy is important, but you don't have to have properly studied anatomy to be an outstanding artist. Just look at Munch and uncountable others.

This being said: As a fellow 'art nerd', I'll have to say I don't see glaring errors. All those fingers look fine to me, and where they are 'missing' it's easily explained with perspective.
The only thing where I agree is the dwarf's knee, and even there it's not so bad that you think "OMG, I can't look anywhere except at that knee"
So, no, the perspective is not 'in everything way off', apart from maybe those skyscrapers in the background.

There has never been a more incorrect statement in "Correct anatomy is less important if it still looks cool." That just isn't how it works. If you want to cite artists such as Munch you need to understand that the intent of his work was to abstract what we saw as conventional, that was kind of the point of Symbolism and what would go on to be Surrelalism.

Art is at it's roots about intent, that is how we judge if it succeeds or fails. An abstract artist such as Munch's intention was to symbolize a person or an object and alter it to make it in some way symbolic to the viewer. The Scream for instance as been abstracted to create a sense of fear and to make the viewer uncomfortable in the subjective. By transposing the frightened and abstracted man into a subject of great beauty (re:sky and calm people walking behind him) it creates a feeling of uncomfortableness with the composition. This was the intent, there was intent to abstract.

In modern fantasy art, artists are trying to create a bridge between real and fantasy, but I don't think that in fantasy worlds our bones will move in and out of joints nor be made of some pliable material that allows them to move to and fro in an amorphous fashion. The intent is to create realistic worlds that viewers can relate their fantasies to. It's not about photorealism but it is about creating a realistic representation of what a fantasy world would be.

I relaize that the VAST majority of fantasy artists did not recieve the same schooling as I or others are privileged to, but there needs to be a maintained desire to create realism. Fantasy art and comic art as a whole is a joke to the fine art world. I was privileged enough to study at one of the world's most prestigious art school and from day one my professor used to say' "If you want to draw dragons, find another school.", this is because the genre as a whole is a joke due to the low standards that it is held to.

Realism is important and it is something we should expect out of artists, just like we should expect writers to construct full sentences with proper grammar.

(I can't believe I'm discussing art theory on here...)

I do actually know what I'm talking about here, but your lecturer obviously has had a different opinion than mine and we'll have to leave it at that.

The intent of art is set by the artist, no one else. Sure, Munch wanted to abstract his work, but it's still there, a lack of anatomic correctness. At the time, people hated it, because he was 'obviously unable to do it right'
Other artists may chose not to adhere too closely to real anatomy because that's not their focus. Instead they may want to tell a story, or even be unable to do so, but still want to transport their art / intent. Doesn't make them less of an artist, despite what hardliners and / or purists may think. There has been a constant paradigm shift in visual arts since the middle ages when people mostly painted funny 2D pictures at the level of 6 year olds. It went to hyper-realistic drawings during the renaissance and today we have an eclectic mix of styles, which are all valid in themselves.
There is no such thing as 'modern fantasy art'. There are people who draw fantasy pictures, in their own, varied styles.

Good for you to have studied at such a fine institute, but your professor sounds like a pompous ass. The lowest common denominator, and as such, lowest standard one's art can be held to, is if people like it. If the artist tells his story and people enjoy it, he's succeeded, no matter what a crusty, arrogant old man may say. There is NO need to create realism. Except when you claim you want to be a realistic artist. Personally? I don't. I find photo-realistic art very boring, all in all, not only to create but also to look at.
I am sure that your privileged schooling provides you with the ability to create and objectively criticize such art, and I applaud you for it. But it is still only an opinion, in a very confined space.


Oh btw: Look at Vallejo. An immensely successful artist in his own right. Then look at his dwarf and troll on the fields of fire cover. Those suck donkey balls

I'm not even going to start on Vallejo, he's Lyfelidian levels of atrociousness.

I don't think you're really understanding what I am saying but either way, you're entitled to your opinion as I am.

For the record, I'm an abstract artist, so I know a little something about making things that aren't at all realistic, I can also draw realistic and correct art. It makes me better to understand what I'm abstracting. You need to know a rule before you break it, and as much as you might not believe it, there are rules in art that need to be adhered to in order to create successful art.

ETA: Most of the Renaissance was a direct result of one forcible hand creating trends in art, the Di Medici's. That time of art is largely diluted due to their "influence".

I do understand that you hold the cover art for an RPG book to an impossibly high standard while inferring intent on the artist's part that you have no way of knowing about.
You apply the rules (yes I know them, and I know that it is USEFUL to know them in order to break them, but not necessary. There are tons of autodidacts that prove you very, very wrong) and therefore do not like the artwork. Don't get me wrong here. I am a critic as well, but the overall tone is good enough for an RPG cover, in my _opinion_
I do not like it 100%, as I've pointed out in an earlier post, but the things you criticize are good enough for my taste to represent the SR world.

And we're in full agreement over Vallejo. He still earned tons of money with his bikini chainmail girls.

Sidenote :
its Louis Royo http://www.luisroyo.com/
http://lcart1.narod.ru/image/fantasy/luis_...o_shadowrun.jpg
, not Boris Vallejo
(Thats the 80's Airbrush Fantasy Painter http://vallejo.ural.net/1980/ )

with a Sidedance
Medicineman

You are entirely correct. I lost my FoF years ago and identified from memory
The point still stands (for both artists, btw *g*)

That sounds rather snobbish. The reputation of abstract art everywhere but fine art circles and their hanger-ons nonwithstanding, it is also rather unfair. It is quite similar to saying you don't care about 50% of the electorate because they're not rich enough to matter anyway. Modesty is a virtue, something many artists, especially 'fine' artists, don't seem to understand. Well, as long as there are enough muppets who will pay ridiculous amounts of money for the nth iteration of "it's a blank canvas" ...

Not to say anatomical problems aren't bad and all, but seriously, you have to adapt the level of criticism leveled at a certain work somewhat with the artist's level of skill. So you studied at a prestigious school that was prestigious enough you had to say that in nearly every post. Good for you. Would you hold your nephew (12), who draws with far more enthusiasm than skill, to the same standard your work is held to? Btw, can you link to some of your works? I'm curious what artists who study at the world'S most prestigious schools are capable of.

I always knew Raphael was a loser.

The Medici forced him too. She wrote that here.


I hate James Joyce too.

For reference: Technically, I agree with ShadowJackal. The elf mage's spine looks weird, the dwarf's knee has dimensional problems and the foreground and background are seen from different angles. My problem is more the expectation that commercial artists have the luxury to make everything perfect, instead of delivering a product that largely works (it has other problems too, which I mentioned in my post, but mostly it works well enough for the intended audience, which is what it, as functional art, is supposed to do). You don't hire Neo Rauch to illustrate a pulp novel. You can, hence, not hold the person hired for the job to the same standards you (should) hold Rauch, Aichinger or other post-socialist realists to. Though, to be fair, if you want to you can totally take apart a Neo Rauch painting too.

And frankly, the snobbism oozing from the posts is a massive turnoff and makes people who otherwise might agree at least in part disagree on principle. That's, if nothing else, bad style and a really bad way to communicate your view.

Oh, and it's Liefeld.

As a writer, I know my stuff is the literary equivalent of a Big Mac with fries (thanks be to Stephen King for giving me that line to rip off). And I'm all right with that. As fast food burgers go, my stuff is pretty good. I'm not Steven Brust, by any means, nor even Stephen King. We'll leave masters like Dickens and Joyce out of it (though I'm no great fan of Joyce, to be sure).

But I make a damn good burger and fries, nonetheless. I don't need to make foie gras to know I'm good, and I don't expect that someone demanding foie gras is going to like my stuff.

I'm kind of amused about how snobbish a lot of artists (and writers, to be fair) come across when they see something produced for a relative pittance (though I'm sure Michael Komarck gets more for that cover than I got for, say, Running Wild) for the mass market, and decide it's not Michelangelo or Hugo, and therefore it's no damn good. I honestly don't know what they're expecting by holding people to the impossibly high standards they hold them to. You try working to the timetables that commercial art directors and editors hold you to (and I know whereof I speak here), working from notes that get pretty specific at times, and let's see you turn in O'Keeffe or Verne.

I'm not a painter. I'm a writer and a photographer. I don't claim to be great at either, but I know enough about visual arts to comment on it reasonably intelligently, at least in terms of composition and style (though, since I never took any classes at the world's most presitigious art institutes, I know my commentary probably doesn't matter). So here we go:

Is it a little busy? Yeah, maybe, but combat scenes can get pretty frenetic without a lot of effort. (They're a bitch to write, too, for the record, at least for me.) I'm not 100% sold on all the logos, but I do know that it feels very Blade Runner to me in that sense; there were logos on every damn thing in Blade Runner, and I feel like this gets that part right. Some of those corp logos are gonna be covered up by the Shadowrun logo anyway, so I don't see that as a negative.

The composition works for me; it seems fairly balanced to me, and it easy enough to follow what's going on. I'm curious about what's going on, but it's not enough to make me say, "There's no story!" Sure there is: Runners are in a hell of a fix and trying to get out of it, while security has come up a different way and they're tyring very much to keep the runners from leaving. It's a tale as old as crime itself, though that bug is sure making me nervous.

Are there problems with contrast and perspective? A little, on the perspective front anyway, though unlike some of esteemed fellow forum denizens, I don't have an issue with the contrast, particularly. I like the color palette, and the lighting works for me, too.

Overall, the image screams "Cool adventure!" and "You wanna play this game!" to me, and that (ultimately) is its job. So I think he succeeds here. I'd pick up this book to see if the game itself was as cool as the cover based on this image.

Hell, I might even super-size it....

some Guys simply aren't happy when they can't complain about sth.
And I thought this is a "German Attitude"

HokaHey
Medicineman

It was used in Derogatory fashion. Not in neutral discriptive. So when you say it that way, that's what it means. Saying you don't like something because of _____ is the same as saying you don't like something because it's "Too___"




But it was still said in derogatory fashion, so in this instance it means the same thing. Trying to nit pick it is just trying to obfuscate it.




and if it was described in great detail you might have a point. It wasn't. It was smallish offhand comments in a forum with out extrapalation. So it very much is a "Same difference" Sort of deal.




One could, but one didn't. One simply said they didn't like it because it was too busy or overly busy or whatever. There was no stipulation that you outline. So the little nitpicky thing you're trying falls flat.




Oh I do. You're just trying to add things out of your head that weren't in the thread, to try and quibble over some word usage.

That was unnecessary - I'd like to point you to the ToS of this board.

Pepsi Jedi, _Pax_: stop it.

edit: sorry, posted after grinder, redacted.

If interested, non-replying content is found in my original post, as I have the feeling that some of my criticism has been misunderstood.
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...p;#entry1212070

Monet and the other Impressionists were similarly disparaged by the established artists of their time.

Just sayin'.

I'm pretty sure the fine authors of the world would hire thugs to jump up and down on my hands so that I never write again...

They wouldn't live up to her standards either, stream of consciousness and all that.

What exactly is these "fine art cirles"?
Last I checked classical arts are struggling to stay relevant, is it a laugh of blissful ignorance?
Because it's sure as hell easier to make a living as an illustrator.

Not really. Check what a Neo Rauch sells for these days. Classical arts are as well or unwell as they've ever been.

It's probably easier to win the lottery then make it big as an artist...

Nah. You may never become Neo Rauch, but your bills are unlikely to go unpaid if you are any good.

Art is subjective. Always has been. Some people in LA will spend $50,000 for a white canvas with a red dot in one corner and go on at length about the artists vision and what not. In reality it's a red dot on a white background. I could paint the same thing for the cost of the canvas and a few bucks for the red paint. Exact same "Artistic work". *Shrugs* People like to cite the 'classics' and what not. By and large I think they are meh. Not my style you know?

Rule One for being an artist/author: GET ANOTHER JOB SO YOU DON'T STARVE!!!

I will also note that, well, spirits can look like damn near anything. So for all we know, that's a City Spirit that looks like a giant cockroach for whatever reason.

Used sparingly, that could actually be a great tactic, since bugs are pretty much still on of the worlds big bad boogey men. I mean, how would your PC react to seeing something that looks like a bug spirit pop up? I know "oh drek!" is mine. Spirits are kinda scary, but they're just spirits. The GM says "You see 4 guards and and air spirit", it's all in a days work. "4 guards and a roach spirit" though, suddenly this run got a whole lot more complicated, or so I think.

(Note, these are just thoughts and opinions based on things I've actually done to my runners in the past, or had done to me. This is not indicative of the type of spirit depicted on the cover of SR5. While I've been following the various art refinements, I don't know what type of spirit that's actually supposed to be, if it's defined at all anywhere. It's entirely possible it exists because the artist thought it looked cool. And none of us diagreed.)

Bull

Bull - That strategy is likely to backfire hilariously. Nothing says "Kill it with FIRE!" quite like Bug Spirits.

What was just a standard datasteal might turn into a holocaust if the Runners conclude the entire building is hived and decide that for the good of metahumanity, they have to let their insane pyromancer off the leash and let slip the dogs of war. Cue the hacker locking the doors and the pyro burninating and cleansing the whole building in flame.

And they'd feel good about it, too.

Possible, but I'm betting the "Wet themselves with fear "ABORT ABORT ABORT" happens a bit more than "KILL UM ALL AND LET PREZ DUNK SORT UM OUT!!" type. lol

Last I checked, most runners are more concerned with saving their own skins versus saving everyone else in the sprawl.

So....what I'm hearing from you is that things like "City Spirits" are coming back...

Heh, THAT'S what you read off that?

And technically speaking, City Spirits never went anywhere. They're just one of the variants of "Spirits of Man". It's pure habit for me, but I almost always make a distinction between what I'm summoning in correlation to where it's being summoned. I still say Hearth SPirits. Mages still only summon Elementals.

But that's just me being an old grognard. After all, I still call 'em Deckers...

Yeah, was just hoping you accidentally let something slip about the new edition

Shadowland and Crash 2.0 tends to differ in that opinion.

Somebody called?

Somebody needs to bring back Big D's Temper rounds for shotguns in SR4/5.

And when it comes to Bug Spirit infestations, you definitely want to go with the "Let Big D sort 'em out" option. That, or flee the country.




If the whole sprawl goes bug, what Shadows, exactly, are you going to be running in? When everybody and their dog has a Roach Spirit infesting them, it's game over time. You're looking at another Chicago - at best. So sure, you could just leg it and piss yourselves in fear and hop the next plane to Shanghai and leave a note on the local Shadowlands telling any uninfested Runners to get the frag out of Dodge before it's too late... Or you could do something about it.

Most NPC runners would probably get the hell out of Dodge. Fortunately for the world, there are PC runners, being the heroes for hire that the world deserves since 1989.


[e]Admittedly, saving the world doesn't pay very well. Fortunately, you should be able to extract some paydata or valuable prototypes or something when you burn the building. That's what looting is for.

I just find it inherently necessary to adhere to a standard, that's my only real point. Work can't improve if you don't hold yourself to a standard.





I don't intend to sound snobbish so I truly appologise for my tone. I'm not sure how many fine artists you know in person but most that I've known are really down to earth and just want to have a few drinks and paint. The confidence and the "snobbish behavior" I'd imagine comes from the air you have to put on in the "circles" which is really more to do with the critics and gallery owners, but I'm starting to get way off topic here.

I would hold a child to the same standards I hold anyone to, but on a gradient scale. Whatver you're drawing needs to be drawn to the best of your ability and to be done with intent and purpose. There are steps to take in order to get to that point. One case that's easy to relate to is one that I encountered a few weeks ago with a friend.

My best friend is a craftsperson by trade. She creates miniatures and sells them for thousands of dollars on a regular basis, she's easily one of the best in that particular hobby. We were sitting around gaming and she was drawing her character and she mentions "I suck at drawing hands.", so I grab a post-it and a pencil and start sketching my own hand explaining that if you look at something you can usually draw it much better because you have a point of reference and you are breaking your brain's natural tendency to work from memory. She stated that she couldn't draw anything in person, only from memory. Needless to say, she isn't very adept in the realm of sketching.

Back to the nephew point, I wouldn't expect him to draw a hand like a great master, but I would expect him to look at his hand and do his very best to see all the details. That's what this cover is lacking, there is no life in it because there isn't any true human point of reference. This is also the reason why the anatomy is so incorrect, there's no point of reference.

I'd rather not post my work to this thread because I enjoy my anonymity and I'd rather not let my real name out here but here's some of my sketches (Including a dragon) if you're interested. My actual paintings are on sites associated with my name that I'd rather not link to




*snerk* I see what you did there...

I wouldn't say that's exactly true or untrue, you have to play the field and schmooze but there's a market out there. The real problem is dealing with the subjective nature of an artist muse and sticking with something.Sometimes you just can't produce work. The modern art world is booming in many ways, heck I recently saw the work of a student I studied with in a major museum and I haven't been out of school for *that* long, I'd say that's a moderate level of success. I have friends that attended other schools that are making it on their own on a variety of levels, some producing small works and earning a normal middle income salary and others that are extremely successful. The vast majority of my close friends are in the creative fields and earn their living alone on that.


I know this won't convince you or anyone else on the subject but the point it always comes back to is that you didn't think of that, so you wouldn't do it. It sounds ambiguous but it really comes down to intention. As I mentioned earlier I'm an abstract artist that works in fields of color. My work probably falls into your realm of "I could paint this in five minutes" but it is more than that. It's about color, composition, tone, music and feel. It's about emotion and love and feeling and texture and beyond that, the technique of it is all mine. I know this won't make a lot of sense, but there is more to abstract art than just slapping something on a canvas.



See above, if you work hard enough and want it bad enough you can do it! This is true for anything you love! Just keep pushing and trying and eventually you'll find a way to do it!

I wanted to reply to this specifically because you put this in words that really made me think about things. I totally understand your perspective but I think that you and I think in a similar vein. You say you make a the writer's equivalent of a Big Mac, and that you are trying to make the best Big Mac you can. That's what I find to be most important. I have a problem with the work because it feels cheap and unfinished, it's unedited, it just needs a few things to be a really good cover!

Trust me when I say I understand that the payment on this piece probably equated to about $3 an hour, but I guess I just want to see an artist create work to the best of their ability and strive for the best possible. I think it's important to want to do the best that you can, and if this is the best the artist can do, that's great, his Big Mac still looks pretty good, but maybe he'll fix the errors in this one and make an even better Big Mac next time.

I just want to say that I really relate to you on the Big Mac level, I'm a newer writer that does have a paying job, but one day I'd like to be published in the biggest Big Mac market there is, romance. Sure you can laugh because 99.9% of romance novels are pure crap that a 14 year old could write but as you stated, I want to write the best damn Big Mac I can.

I would point out that there is a big difference between knowing proper anatomy and choosing to stylize or abstract away from it as a conscious decision as an artist, and simply not knowing proper anatomy.

Good artists will learn proper anatomy and choose to use it or not depending on their goals.

Bad artists never bother to learn it, among other bad habits, and wonder why their art never progresses past "amateur" levels.




-k

off and on professional freelance artist

I think it's been mentioned, but it's a good thing to reiterate it: Good writers learn the rules, too, and then pick and choose when to break them for the best effect. But you have to know the rules before you can break them effectively. Anything else is just a train wreck (and I could show you my first novel as proof, if I hadn't thrown it over the side of a shrimp boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico thirty years ago).

But to break the rules and it not be a train wreck, you have to know how to spell, you have to know grammar, you have to know basic style, you have to know how the language works. Until you know that, until you know the basics, you can't make the language work for you. It just won't happen. I'm 46 years old, I've been writing for 30-something of those, and I'm only recently beginning to feel like I've got that part of it down. I can string together some pretty nice sentences, but that's because I've been working on how to make the words work together for a long time. Like KI said, there's a big difference in knowing how to write a simple declarative sentence, and choosing not to, and in not knowing how to write a simple declarative sentence, and rambling on for two pages because you don't know where to put the damn period and start the next sentence. I've seen both. Hell, I've done both.

Okay, that might have been more than people wanted to hear, but there it is anyway.

It's a corny reference to make, I know, but every time this sort of conversation comes up, I remember an episode of that old Young Indiana Jones Chronicles show, an episode called Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues (yes, really, bear with me). Indy insists that because jazz is all about improvisation, he doesn't really need to practice anything -- he'll just be improvising anyways, right? -- and then he humiliates himself. Then he spends the whole damned episode practicing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on his soprano sax, over and over and over and really learning the song inside and out, so that he can improvise it later.

I'm cheerfully admit I'm a Big Mac writer, myself. Hell, I'm a 99 cent value menu Junior Bacon Cheeseburger writer. The point stands, either way, though. I have to do all sorts of professional, grammatically correct, academic writing (and grade an awful lot of the same) in my day job. I know the rules. You've got to know the rules before you can choose to throw them away from time to time.

I think the point stands whether you're talking writing, art, or Sean Patrick Flannery playing the blues.

Some of us actually love the 99cent bacon cheeseburgers.

Keep up the good work guys.