GLOOMHAVEN RPG: Designer Diary 11
Greetings Mercenaries!
I know it’s been a little while since my last update. There hasn’t been too terribly much to report, and I’ve been deep in the process of art direction along with playtesting. I wanted to chat a little bit about the back end processes of game book creation today, as I think these are the murkiest of processes that we don’t hear a lot about when talking about game design and production.
Folks are familiar with the concept of writing, feedback, editing, etc. But the visual design of a book is extremely important as well. Layout isn’t just putting the text into a PDF with a nice background and calling it a day. It’s also designing breakout boxes for special text that are both noticeable and accessible. It’s picking colors that are easy on the eye, and are accessible to folks with color blindness. It’s picking a font that is legible to the least common denominator. It’s also framing paragraphs, headers, bulleted text, and a myriad other things to ensure readability, cohesion, and aesthetic appeal.
Then we have to consider the art. I know the last time I updated, I talked about getting art contracted, but there’s more to it than just contracting an artist and telling them to go. We have to define where the art is going to be in the book. Do we want an image that takes up a whole page, just half a page, a small spot in a corner? And what text is near that image? Is it something we can illustrate to give a visual example of? Is it a person, place, or thing that we want to ensure captures the reader’s eye along with their imagination?
Then, we decide what the art should look like. We can’t just give the artist the accompanying text and expect them to envision exactly what we think would be interesting there. Instead we need to explain how many people, what the action is, what the setting is, maybe even time of day and colors to use. The more direction we can give on large elements, the more creative the artist can get with the details.
Then we go through three rounds of progress checks. First an initial sketch to ensure the basics of the action are what we’re looking for, correct number of characters, general location, no real details. Second, we get a color rough, where the artist has filled in the colors, given options, and filled in some larger details. Last, we get a final detailed image with all the little details filled in. At each of these stages, we go back and forth with the artist to ensure the image is where we want it to be. We ask for corrections on stuff like “quatryls only have 4 fingers on each hand, and vermlings have 5 fingers on each hand” and “inox are completely furred, so make sure their skin doesn’t look smooth.” But we also ask for other things, “this is really cool, but I think it would be even cooler if this character had a black eye and bloody nose!”
All the while, we’re trying to ensure that each illustration gives a representation of the Gloomhaven world along with what characters in this world look like. In the board game, art is essential to know what you’re looking at. We have so much art to show off every character, monster, and maps. In the RPG, we want to show characters, but more importantly, we want to show where they are, what they are doing, and how they interact with each other. We want to show off cool ceremonies, big fight scenes, dark rituals, and creeping doom. But we also want to show loving comrades, people at play, and the lighter side of Gloomhaven that makes this game dark, but also extremely compelling. So, we pick artists with a variety of styles and we choose to illustrate action and drama over landscapes and cityscapes.
So you’re probably going to see a variety of art for the Gloomhaven RPG that evoke many different emotions. That’s a good thing, I promise!
Speaking of, here’s a sneak peak of a small portion of a 2-page spread we had illustrated which shows off all 19 of our playable factions. This is the Shields, Merchant’s Guild, University, and Way of the Robin. Art by Nastya Lehn.
And here’s a not quite yet final piece of art from Jocelyn Sarvida of our harrower quartermaster forging a new weapon.
Finally, we also needed new symbols for all the factions. So, I hired Rich Thomas, an accomplished artist for Revised Magic the Gathering, VtM, VtR, and many others. And he absolutely delivered. Here’s the Sect, Shields, and Merchant’s Guild symbols:
I think that’s enough for now, until next time!
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