Direction and Detail

Quick Blog Note

So my updates are likely to get more sporadic over the next few weeks. I started layout on the Dresden Files RPG right at the beginning of the year, and all my previously queued blog posts have been run through, so the myth of regularity I’ve been operating under is shortly to evaporate. As a writer, when I’m one, I am very, very bursty.

That said, sometimes the hardest thing is coming up with a topic. You all have an idea of the sorts of things I might cover on this blog by this point; what do you want to see me talk about? Toss me a comment and who knows, you might just get what you ask for.

Art Direction

One of the things that I do as part of my career is art direction. Not something I would have anticipated a few years back (which in retrospect seems a little silly). In doing my own publishing, I discovered I really have a drive and a feel for the work, though. I have a very visual brain, and I tend to communicate in great volume (more on that in a moment), and the two seem to work pretty well together. While I can’t personally execute on the art that I want, I can describe it pretty well, and the more that I work with a particular artist, the more I can tailor how I communicate to what they understand and deliver. (Another reason for doing repeat business with proven-quantity artists.)

A Few Examples

So Jennifer Rodgers has been blogging a little bit of an art piece she’s currently working on for the Dresden Files RPG. I’ll give you the links in a moment. But first, here’s what I sent her:

In our Baltimore setting, there’s a quartet of folks who live at the Montrose estate, which existed back in Edgar Allen Poe’s time.  They are:

- Wellington, a “runt” ogre (so he’s only 7-or-so feet tall) who serves as the estate’s butler. An ancient compact compels him never to leave the estate’s grounds.  He usually glamours himself up as a (mostly) human looking guy, a classic butler but for the fact that he’s very tall by human standards.
- Evan Montrose, a young, meticulous wizard who has inherited the estate following his father’s death
- Maya Mckenzie, a thin-boned girl who can shapeshift into a mouse
- Biff Abernathy, a friend of Evan’s from the Ivy Leagues. He’s got old money, is an accomplished athlete, but still lives like he’s at college

We’ll be showing them in the (full page, full color) picture, prominently; I think I’d like Maya to be in human form, though, since if we have her in mouse form we end up with a picture of three dudes, and I’d like to have a lady in there too.

THE IMAGE

(I was originally thinking of something more static, but then I realized that a little more action here would better suit the character of the rest of the pieces in the book.)

An exterior of the mansion at night; a glowing human skeleton is in a fight with Wellington, who’s still dressed as a butler, but his glamours have slipped a bit and we can see a bit of the ogre in him showing through. Wellington has a great big freaking axe and is readying to swing it at the skeleton. The skeleton meanwhile is lunging for him, maybe already tearing into him, rendering his butler’s suit ragged.

Evan is a short distance away looking out of sorts; this is not what he had planned for the evening.  A classic car (like, 1950s or 40s) behind him has had its hood caved in by a big impact, and it’s billowing smoke. He has whipped up some kind of wind spell that is causing big gusts all around him, lifting him a few inches off the ground, and he’s pointing his copper rod at the skeleton, just starting to push power into it, causing a glow.

Biff clearly got into a fight with the skeleton and lost; he’s on the ground, scuffed and bloodied but still conscious.  A soccer ball, ruptured and flattened, should be seen on the ground somewhere nearby.  He’s trying to get up, maybe up on an elbow but otherwise on his back, rubbing his head, trying to shake off whatever was done to him.

Maya is down on one knee near Biff; she was in the middle of checking on him, seeing how hurt he was, but now she’s looking back towards the fight, towards Wellington and the skeleton and Evan.

Perspectivewise, I sort of visualize Maya and Biff foreround, but down in the lower left quadrant of the image, with most of the action deeper in, Evan and the crushed car mid-field, Wellington and the skeleton and the mansion a little further back.  Does that make any kind of sense?

REFERENCE STUFF

Baltimore inspiration — Here’s a flickr of Baltimore that a friend of mine who lives up there has put together. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwiv/sets/72157600042294212/

The estate itself is a few dozen acres of partially wooded grounds, but some Baltimore skyline over the treetops (if the image’s orientation happens to be able to support it) wouldn’t stink — tho you may need to do more research to get a good view of that. There aren’t a lot of TALL buildings in Baltimore, tho, so I don’t know if that’s even feasible. We’ll survive if so.

Here’s the writeup of the montrose estate:

The Montrose Estate

Threat: Skeletons In The Closet…And Basement

Located on the northern edge of Baltimore, the Montrose house and events that happened there in the early 1800s were the inspiration for Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” So, you can imagine that the house is a really great place.

The estate is, on the surface, a well-managed and elegant old-money mansion. (And I mean really, really vast amounts of old money.) Very recently, Old Man Montrose passed on (the cause of death is still mysterious; the medical examiner claimed “natural causes,” but nobody in the know thinks that’s right) and left the entire estate, grounds, and his fortune to his 20-something son Evan.

The estate consists of a dozen acres of partially wooded grounds along a tributary of the Patapsco. There are a few cottages used for servants’ residences, a garage/maintenance building, and of course the big house itself. Imagine the classic Old Money Mansion, and you’ll get it: dozens of rooms, a huge hall, a kitchen able to provide a state dinner, high ceilings, sweeping staircases in the entryway, and a vast cellar. The estate is managed by a collection of faceless accountants and maintenance personnel, but an unusual gentleman who goes by the name Wellington serves as the lord of the manor’s personal aide and performer of “odd” jobs.

(The big “secret” of the Montrose Manor is that the family name was originally Montressor, and Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” was a thinly veiled indictment of Old Man Montrose’s father’s alleged revenge visited upon an enemy. There may quite literally be skeletons in the closet.)

The characters. We don’t have a lot of physical description in the chapter, so I’ll give you some scant notes on my notions of them and an excerpt of the writeup to get the “attitude”:

Evan – You could dress him like your husband in his finest suit, very classic lines and all, but I see him as a sandy-blonde (we don’t want all of our wizards in the book to have the dark hair brooding look, that’s Harry’s turf).  Writeup reads:

Educated in magic by his father and in mundane matters by the finest Baltimore prep schools and European colleges, Evan Montrose’s hope of spending a few post-Oxford years sailing with his best friends Maya McKenzie and “Biff” Abernathy (see below) was interrupted by his father’s mysterious death. He’s returned to the manor (see page XX) as a well trained wizard of the White Council, but lacking the seasoning to go with his power. The Wardens want to recruit him, but he’s managed to evade their attempts thus far. Evan is meticulous, detail-oriented, and a bit of a neat freak. Despite his tendency toward indulging his playboy side, he never does anything without a plan.

Evan’s wizardly implements should be at least somewhat visible: an oak staff (neatly carved and runed, with a few copper bands along its length, not a gnarly thing like Harry’s), a copper rod (like a hand-held lightning rod of sorts), and a quartz pendant (not quite in the new age style, but you get the idea)

Maya – She’s a dress-to-not-impress type, and probably has some “looseness” to the fit of her clothing to suit the shapeshifting (while she’s a shrinker when she shifts, it still helps in terms of “escaping” from her outfit), and also as bit of a social dodge (form fitting stuff attracts attention!).  She doesn’t have a *nervous* demeanor, but her appearance shouldn’t lead one to think it’s surprising her nickname is “Mouse”.

Maya McKenzie met Biff and Evan as a pre-teen at their prep school. Maya was on scholarship at a school of very wealthy people; a trailer park kid among the trust fund crowd, she quickly learned how not to attract attention to herself. One day in ninth grade, Biff Abernathy finally noticed her, and mentioned that she was “Quiet as a mouse.” He’s been calling her Mouse ever since. She thinks of him as her steady boyfriend, but the relationship runs hot and cold depending on how much of a jerk he seems to be in a given month, but her platonic friendship with Evan Montrose, based on their magical talents, has been more consistent.

Biff - An athletic guy with an Ivy League Educated look to him. Old money, like Evan in a way, but more relaxed in his stance and attitude, and build bigger, like a real world athlete (not like a muscle bound comic book guy, tho!).

Biff was a jock through school, and is still quite the athlete. He’s an outstanding soccer and rugby player, as well as an accomplished martial artist — he’s especially skilled at Krav Maga (a form devised by the Israeli Defense Forces), leading to a great deal of speculation about just how he spent that semester abroad. He has an undeserved reputation as a dumb jock. He’s in a long-term but tempestuous relationship with Maya McKenzie (see below); he, she, and Evan are a more or less inseparable trio.

Wellington – As noted above, he’s a smallish (7 foot tall) ogre disguised as a human. The disguise should be a little ill-fitting, though he’ll still be dressed like a butler in a very classic sense, and will hold an incongruous greataxe or massive cudgel in one hand when pictured.

Wellington is actually an ogre in the guise of a human — a creature of Faerie, bound to serve the Montrose Family. While he is somewhat dry in his wit, his loyalty is absolute. Unfortunately, most of the Secrets of the House are things he has been bound not to reveal, so he can be frustratingly unhelpful when it comes to providing information. He currently serves as aide to Evan Montrose.

So, one thing to note is that I’ve worked enough with Jenn to know she is a master of detail and color. I communicate a lot of up front to get her imagination fired, and I tend to over-ask for details in the picture mainly as an effort to fire off her imagination. I know not everything is necessarily going to make it in, but that she’ll still make the image feel very “populated”. So keep that in mind as you see how things go.

• Here’s the sketch that came about from that.
• And here’s the color study.
• You should follow her LJ to see more updates as the piece comes together. It’s pretty incredible to watch her work.

The other thing you may have noticed is that I provide what might be called an insane amount of information. (At least, that’s how it’s been described to me.) More than one artist has mentioned that I provide reams more information than they’re used to from other art directors. The above is sort of an extreme example (maybe), but we’re talking a full page piece here, so the amount of detail tends to be proportional to that. That said…

Extensive Up Front Communication Is A Ninja Tool For Control Freaks

I’m a not-so-closet control freak to some extent. Honestly that’s part of why I love doing the layout and art direction for my own publishing: I’m there at the very start and at the very end to make sure the final product matches the version I’m visualizing as much as possible. So how do I exercise that without some of the more negative aspects of control-freakery? I take care of it all up front.

I write uber long emails, extensive art specs, etc, because I’m a control freak. I put everything I’m looking for in there right from go (I honestly hate asking for corrections, and I usually don’t have to as a result).  I establish a multi-stage process with the artist (e.g., sketch, pencils, final inks) so any course-correction needed is done as early into the process as possible. Because ultimately, if you’re not the artist, you have to be willing to lose a little control over the course of the process. Even if you’re a control freak you have to acknowledge this. Art is a process of exploration, and the product between two collaborators (art director and artist in this case) is a result of that mutual exploration. So to get that freak-itch scratched, I put it all out there as early as possible. That’s when I have the most control over how things will turn out, with the art. That, really, is about momentum; it’s the direction part of art direction.

When you shoot a gun, the most control you have over where the bullet goes is right there when you pull the trigger, after all.

I’ll probably come back to this topic a bit more over time on this blog, as I do more AD work. It’ll be worth talking about how the Hero Games art direction is a different beast, and what I do there vs. with my own Evil Hat art direction projects.