Spire Development Log 3 - Art and Layout

As mentioned in the blog on mapping, my first taste of writing for someone else came from participating in the NAP2 contest. Part of the expectation that I had was that we should include art of some sort with a submission. I figured, based on what I had seen before, at least cover art. But to be completely honest, I figured this would be a contest for the masses and that the competition would have been between mere mortals with little to no experience. The front cover (and back) was AI art. AI are was new, it was exciting, and I didn't see any harm in using it. 

This is going to be the thumbnail now and that bothers me.

There's a few minor images I digitally made based on real images, which honestly suck. But it was just to break up the text and make the google doc export of a pdf  come out clean. 

Yyyyikes.

Though, to be fair, my peers also had a similar output. Except for some which went that extra mile. That contest was like 2/3s normal dickholes like myself, and 1/3 people who already had things published in the past and had a much firmer grip on what they were doing. Prince didn't discriminate and why should he? The better the entries, the better the compilation. The better the compilation, the more successful the project. In that project, there was a number of people who had their layout and even artistic additions spot on. I don't feel like I did the worst in that category, but I felt that I could do better.

I was already a big fan of Castle Xyntillan and thought that the format, as well as the imagination that went into it, were unparalleled. The way I wrote rooms really reached towards emulating that fantastic balance of friendly access and thorough information with actual complete sentences. But my influence on how I wanted my stuff to look didn't stop there.

I had Gunderholfen and I thought it was a very well produced and massive dungeon. It was heads and shoulders better than a lot of produced stuff out there. More importantly, I had learned that Hawk had done his own art and layout.  It showed me that I could labor-of-love my stuff to present so much better. Without me pouring over Gunderholfen and Bottomless Pit of Zorth, I don't know if this would ever click with me, but allow me to reiterate:

You don't need a guy doing your layout. And you might not need a guy doing your art. And if you do, a lot of good OSR guys have shown pretty good success in those art packages that you can purchase the rights to. A small investment for some solid, real art.

When I was a teen, I drew all the time. I was okay at it, definitely not talented (which is par for me).  Once I had decided that I wanted to balloon the concepts of Spire out into a setting and write more, I picked up a pencil and started. I needed art, because it helps lengthy writing to have a place where your eyes can take a break. Also, I wanted to give visual context to some of the stuff in there. And if it didn't work out, I could buy some.

That was the first stab at it. Amateurish? Definitely. Charming? Yeah. It was good enough to keep at it. I got some gap-filler art done and I was feeling like I could really do it.

I was shopping around for how to do more with layouts than Google Docs could provide and I took stabs at a variety of things until I landed on Affinity Publisher. I set on putting Spire 1 together, identifying where I'd need more art and trying to get something that would be easy to run at the table. Like most things, the first attempt wasn't quite there. I rode that format for Spire 1 and 2, and even ordered a hard copy of Spire 1.

Poor edits aside, this original format was A5. For some reason, I thought it would be better presented in a smaller format. Page headers were more of me 'wow, this program can do this thing, I should try it.' which is never a good reason. The font is cool and all, but when you look at it from a distance, it didn't work for me. I got my proof of the book in the mail and I tried running games out of it. It didn't work for a whole bunch of reasons.

• The book dimensions with it's relative thickness would not stay open at the table.
• The font became a garbled mess when viewed as a page-flip.
• The I's look like 1's and the same in reverse. 
• The page headers made the whole book feel like a notebook. There was also a stark difference in the exploding skull-moon image in the middle and the corner things that I drew.
• There wasn't enough on each page that let me comfortably rest on one spread for a long enough time.
• This thing was not edited well at all.

I kept at it with the art in the meantime. If I could balance my wrist aches with doing it to relax while re-watching x-files, then I could keep cranking them out. Over the course of well over a year, I ended up with stacks of illustrations. Some better than others. I tried different methods and found what I felt worked and what didn't.

I would improve in some areas only to realize that I was still poor in others. I was both judgmental on myself, while also forgiving. This kind of art will never stand up to the likes of those who are professional, but I felt that they still worked for the stuff I was making.

I used the original proof book to circle typos with a pencil, but ultimately I could barely do that. I ended up reformatting the entire two Spire books into v2. A4 size in all it's 8.5x11 glory. I did away with the page headers and chose better fonts. I ordered two proofs, Spire 1 and Lich Valley, and was mostly satisfied with a lot of my choices, but ultimately I pushed myself further into a cleaner format.

I felt pretty good about it and only recently refined it for Lich Valley. The art still goes, when my wrist allows. And thankfully, there aren't that much more pieces needed. The more pressing need is to clean it up, rewrite a few areas that don't work, and figure all that out via at-the-table testing, which my friends have been great to do.

Queen Dinitra, who relied too much on the aid of Hell.

A word about burn out. This hobby, especially this corner of it, isn't meant for most of us to profit on, even with just exposure. There's a select few who can manage it, and that's another topic, but the point is that you don't have to write anything. You are likely not going to pay bills with this, but you are likely to burn yourself out on it. Take time for yourself. I've burnt out on these books, in the last 2 years, twice already. Do it right and as well as you can. Take a lot of pride in it because it feels good and see it through because it's fun.

It'll be ready when it's ready. And with that, I'll leave you with a pair of Dusk Bats running through the streets of Cabur within the Lich Valley.