Art for next release

[manikus]

What else (aside from weapons) do people need to make a design?

[Uatu]

Hmm - in my opinion, I will need mostly:

1. Lots of pictures of monsters/NPCs (for encounters). This is the most crucial!
2. At least one general treasure picture
3. At least one general camp/resting picture
4. A few pictures of artifacts/relics/powerful magical items might be nice

In general, though, we need lots of #1, I think (I am making a few, too, but this is slow work...)... Along with #1, sprites would be very nice as well, of course.

[manikus]

We do have treasure and camp pics available in the default art...

For monster portraits, action or posed?

[Uatu]

Hmm - what do you mean by "posed?" Non-action poses?

I guess in general, looking at the old gold box games, monster pictures tended to be somewhat action-like, but not exactly flying at the PCs or anything. Just looking sort of mean and sometimes moving a bit (sticking tongues out for dragons, etc.).

[manikus]

Yeah, by posed, I was thinking like sitting for a portrait. (I am now imagining an orc sitting for a photo session at glamour shots.)

I think the Goldbox way is probably a good way to go. An all out action pose is not quite as versatile.

[Uatu]

Yeah, we want pictures that can be used as monsters attacking, but also monsters parleying, too.

(A glamour shot might be interesting, but... )

[Dinonykos]

I guess it is always good to have both sprites and small pics for monsters. Should monster pics always depict only one monster?

[manikus]

Always only one monster? Probably no. If we see in the Monster Manual that they always appear in groups, it would probably be okay to show several together as well as showing just one. But, it probably wouldn't work to show more than one type of monster in the same picture.

[Dinonykos]

Would be cool if DC could handle several layers of sprite-pictures... Than you could add different sprites of the same monster species (or different monsters) according to the number of monsters you encounter.
Since this is not yet possible, it would perhaps be reasonable for small pics of monsters to assume a certain number of monsters per species that you will probably meet: Let's say 10 kobolds, 8 orcs, 2 trolls, 1 giant, 385 mosquitos...

[manikus]

Originally Posted by Dinonykos Would be cool if DC could handle several layers of sprite-pictures... Than you could add different sprites of the same monster species (or different monsters) according to the number of monsters you encounter.

There are other games, some of them older than DC that do this, including Final Fantasy some number or other before VIII. I don't think those games show one sprite per combatant, but one sprite that represents every five or so of a given creature.

Originally Posted by Dinonykos Since this is not yet possible, it would perhaps be reasonable for small pics of monsters to assume a certain number of monsters per species that you will probably meet: Let's say 10 kobolds, 8 orcs, 2 trolls, 1 giant, 385 mosquitos...

The issue is figuring out what "the" number is. Personally, for creature of 1st level, I tend to put them in combat in factors of the number that represents the party, i.e. if there are 6 PCs, there would be 6, 12 or 18 kobolds depending on how hard the combat should be.

So, we just need people to share their 'general' numbering scheme, then we can take the most popular or do an average and do that. We should still do individual pictures of creatures, though. With this way we would end up with two kobold pics, one with 1 kobold, and one with say, 8 kobolds. I guess the same would go for sprites as well.