Legend of the Five Rings Art

Well, that’s a tricky answer. In theory more as he is now the last minute emergency artist on many cards. But less in some areas as the time being AD takes cuts into painting time. All the logo’s are by Steve starting with Second City, and all of the [REDACTED BY THE MINISTRY OF LIES..er…TRUTH] that will be coming out are done by him. But his art will still be in every set, so far he has had time for at least one to three cards per set.

I think its a matter of continuity in the visual narrative. It’s hard to feel like his characters exist in the same world as say someone April or Drew has created, the styles, while both well implemented, don’t match or come close the majority of the time. So I think its jarring for people who are use to a spectrum of “acceptable” when art falls outside that range it can break that mental and visual narrative for the viewer of what Rokugan looks like to them.

A Rembrandt and Warhol piece are both considered amazing art by people but those circles of people don’t overlap as much as say circles who enjoy Pieter de Hooch and Rembrandt might overlap. Now thats not to say Warhol doesn’t belong in the right type of gallery, just that people expecting one type and getting dramatically different are going to react in some fashion. For Genzoman it takes the form of people feeling he doesn’t fit like others do which isn’t inaccurate he is noticeably and dramatically different.

I agree that in theory it seems like it might work, the game is indeed  greatly influenced by eastern culture, anime is a big part of some of those cultures. But in practice it’s just more complex.

Age and familiarity with the game and its art I’m sure plays a roll in peoples reactions to his work.

I suppose the short answer then is that the world has a long established look and feel, and disruption or changes, good or bad to that look will cause people to speak up loudly since the game has a very passionate follower base.

Not having directed the piece it is hard to say. But its very possible that she was suppose to be a magistrate and that was part of the description he got.

When you see a character across two cards most of the time its due to the art description. Not always though, some people like Drew and April have favorite characters that they might toss into the background or be the focus of an action card simply because they know the character would fit and they like to draw them. They tend to bounce that idea off us. 

Personally I love seeing a character in a personality card show up in an action card. So expect to see more of that. 

Huh an interesting idea, I like it. Never thought of that before. I’ll run it by the high ups. 

Busy indeed, both in L5R and our day jobs. Steve has been out to some events, I’m prepping for a new day job and trying to rotate from graves to a normal 9 to 5. Plus Final touches on Alpha Set and the finals for Beta set. Also Minecraft when I can’t stand doing anything productive anymore.

Daily updates are tricky, but I think I’ll aim just to put up art even without comments just to give people their L5R dose as best I can.

I lace Cheetos in LSD mostly. 

It’s a running joke with the artists. Steve and I tend to be really laid back. So the idea of us being tyrannical is absurd. In someways we’re both half an art director, he is qualified artistically but has very little time to dedicate to it, I’ve been playing for 15 years, but not an artist. However I have the time to filter out all the day to day grind of the job for him so he gets to focus on the art. Neither of us could ever have really gotten the job without the other. And yes I abuse the power all the time, I get to tell Steve what to do now, it’s awesome. 

I think the art and story team tend to gravitate more towards some specific clans. I know design has people who tend to focus on clans a bit more they seem to divide up some of the duties, I’ve not asked them about it just yet it might be based on play style or clan affiliations, not sure. I’m very much a Mantis Player, Steve Argyle loves Spider, our informal third henchmen Steve DeBirk is a hardcore Crab player. I don’t know the story teams exact favorite clans but I suspect a few here and there.

I agree though that clan loyalty is an awesome part of the game, its a huge feature. Tribalism at its best really. When taken too seriously it brings out the bad perhaps but in general L5R players are a fantastic bunch of people. I love that people get attached to styles of play. I often hear people talk about their “Ancestor Clan” or “Birth Clan” They’ll tell you about what clan they were introduced to the game as, and if they stayed or moved on and why. Personally my L5R pedigree is Unicorn->Mantis.

I actually like the idea of clans getting beat on a bit in story so they can rise up again and kick some ass. I don’t know that in real life I’ve ever met a player who really took serious offense at some perceived slight of their clan it’s always been more a minor complaint or a sarcastic remark there nothing big. It seems to happen plenty online big drama fests of “this is a slap in the face” ect, ect, but I’ve never seen it among the many players I’ve gotten to meet in person. 

I think for me and Steve we tend to have clans/deck types that get our goat, I know Steve utterly hated Khol Wall decks along with every non Unicorn Player back in the day. I get really frustrated with PK decks and things I can’t shoot in the face. So that’s really as far as the clan v clan thing goes for us most of the time.

That’s what I love about art, it can catch peoples attention in varying ways, I agree his face is great.

I think the one I’ve heard the most feedback on is his BTD Unicorn Moto Hailung

Well it would be hard to have many cards of samurai going “ick blood on me” but I think some might have their place. Generally the rule is no blood on them unless they are A) In the heat of battle B) Maho-Tsukai. Mario’s Phoenix will make more sense once her story is out, her description was pretty clear about her motives and such so it was mostly deliberate on our part that she is doing what she’s doing. But its more than she is holding a skull, she just fried the whole guy a split second earlier so what you see is she touched his chin and he evaporated.

I suspect this is due to yellow being a trickier color to work with in large amounts and green being more comfortable. As far as pushing of colors I find I tend to ask for more yellows and golds out of our Dragon characters so hopefully that will show as time progresses. 

On a bright sunny day in 1986 a roaming band of reckless teens drove their ‘78 gremlin at speeds of up to 35 mph in a residential area. Drunk on pixies sticks they had no regard for the safety of others, these Bayushi teens slammed into and killed my mother that day. For this I will always hate them.

Seriously I have no idea what the question even is getting at, no Scorpion art that we have directed has even been spoiled as far as I know so the idea that we hate them is a bit out there. 

We are players we love the game and all the clans that make up this game are important and all have to look great. I’ve personally played almost since the start of the game I’ve read nearly every RPG book, many of the novels and 90% of all the weekly fictions. I love every clan when all is said and done, each has their place, each brings something to the world. I can get into a mindset of my clan vs this clan, but when it comes to the art everyone gets to be a bad ass and we try hard to make sure everyone gets art they can be proud of or brag about. 

On Scorpion specifically, my wife plays a Scorpion in the RPG, I used a Scorpion as my own primary NPC while GMing a three year campaign. My cell phone background is an epic Scorpion character Charles Urbach turned in a few weeks ago. I am drooling over a Mario Scorpion sketch as I write this just to make you jealous and to make a point. Steve just finished a Scorpion card for the winner of a charity auction. We love our Scorpion. Let there be no question of that.

Alpha set and Beta set are what we call sets who’s names are not publicly known yet. So Alpha set is the first set after Emperor Edition, Beta set is the set after that. Sets are planned well in advance so the play test cycle is detailed, and we have wiggle room for corrections on art and production ect. So Alpha set is also called Feb 2012 Beta set is called May 2012 set as tentative release dates, though they are always subject to change based on what ever madness occurs.

As far as the art cycle, what usually occurs is the art team is given the card place holder names and tentative card mechanics. Then we issue an artist call out which contains the set name, themes, and critical deadlines and then give the freelance artists a week or two to reply with how many cards they can take. During this time we write art descriptions, pair up cards that we want to be a scene or series of scenes. We then send out assignments and purchase orders and final deadlines. We try to given one month for sketches and then another month for finals. During this time there is a steady flow of questions, ideas tossed back and forth, and eating of Cheetos. Some artists send in sketchs the next day, some wait till two weeks after the deadline (STEVE I AM LOOKING AT YOU!), and everything in between. The sketch stage is where we try to get the big stuff corrected first, extra heads, wrong genders, anachronistic issues, composition concerns. Once we get the orange dust of the Cheetos off our hands and keyboards it’s usually time for finals to be coming in. We then use a magic 8 ball to… that is to say we then approve all the final art based on its merits, approve coloring, clan markings, lighting, ect. It will either be approved or revisions are requested. Once the final card art is approved they send a high ress copy and we get to putting them into the card frames. Once completed then those frames go off for type seting and flavor text. Then these pre drafts are sent to the department heads of Art, Story, Design, and Brand to be reviewed under a microscope we check rarity, artist credit, flavor text to image, framing, colors, set name, bug marking, character names, traits, wording. We do two or three rounds of these until all are satisfied that the set is as close to perfect as possible. This is then sent to the printers. 

Sets tend to overlap so it gets a bit crazy at times, when Alpha sets final art was coming in the same week we were doing Beta sets assignments and descriptions. While we try to avoid that, weird stuff happens from time to time and you just try to roll with the punches. 

There you have it a rough outline of how the production from the art team goes.