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Vadoc
Dec 31, 2007

Guess who made waffles...


I was about to wonder that as well, every other post is purple shaded now as well.

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Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction

Vadoc posted:

Robes typically still have arm holes for 2, and not so great at jumping around.

Exalted of course being a realistic game that's always encouraged people to make characters who wear practical clothing.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Stephenls posted:

It's the trade-off with him, yeah. I really like Ross Campbell; I think the djala are great, I love his designs for the Dragon Kings, and he's the reason the Lintha are the only fantasy pirate culture I've ever really liked. And I love the way he draws people who aren't obviously caucasian. I think he's working comfortably in indie comics right now, though.

(Why do all the letters have drop-shadows all of a sudden?)

Is he the one that could be asked to draw a slice of pizza and would, an hour later, provide you with a shot of a bald topless black woman with 3 lip piercings? That dude seems to have a type.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

theironjef posted:

Is he the one that could be asked to draw a slice of pizza and would, an hour later, provide you with a shot of a bald topless black woman with 3 lip piercings? That dude seems to have a type.

Yes, that's the guy. In fairness he draws amazing bald topless black women with 3 lip piercings.

EDIT: Oh! And dinosaur people!

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Mar 18, 2014

Ego Trip
Aug 28, 2012

A tenacious little mouse!


Stephenls posted:

Yes, that's the guy. In fairness he draws amazing bald topless black women with 3 lip piercings.

EDIT: Oh! And dinosaur people!

Those are some pretty good dinosaur people.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Ego Trip posted:

Those are some pretty good dinosaur people.

They are. We in the Exalted-writing-and-publishing business owe Ross Campbell a great debt for an awesome set of Dragon King designs. It's a pity he doesn't have his all-four-of-them images up on his website.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

I actually do love the Dragon Kings, they're the best dinosaur people, and I know my dinosaur people. I actually like his topless bald black ladies, too. I used to love reading a new Exalted book so I could play spot that dude's pet character re-exalted to whatever the book was. Lunar? Better stick some tails and scales on my bald topless black lady. Alchemicals? Gear for a mohawk, go.

Kerzoro
Jun 26, 2010

I am incredibly amused at discovering that the Djala are entirely a product of an artist drawing a ton of tiny panda people.

Heck, I think that's the same reason why Warcraft has had the pandaren joke since forever: Samwise just really really liked pandas.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Kerzoro posted:

I am incredibly amused at discovering that the Djala are entirely a product of an artist drawing a ton of tiny panda people.

Heck, I think that's the same reason why Warcraft has had the pandaren joke since forever: Samwise just really really liked pandas.

That's the thing about artists not following art notes. Nine-tenths of the time, you get people drawn white when they're supposed to be of color, and women wearing boobplate when they're supposed to be wearing sensible armor, and posed in gently caress-me poses when they're supposed to have good stances! But one-tenth of the time, you get panda-people!

EDIT: Actually significantly less than one-tenth of the time.

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Mar 18, 2014

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

Stephenls posted:

That's the thing about artists not following art notes. Nine-tenths of the time, you get people drawn white when they're supposed to be of color, and women wearing boobplate when they're supposed to be wearing sensible armor, and posed in gently caress-me poses when they're supposed to have good stances! But one-tenth of the time, you get panda-people!

EDIT: Actually significantly less than one-tenth of the time.

I blame comic books for artists not knowing how to draw non-whites, sensible armor, or women with actual skeletons.

King Doom
Dec 1, 2004
I am on the Internet.
Look, if you can't count a womans nipples then she isn't a strong female character and thus not a good role model.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Thesaurasaurus posted:

I blame comic books for artists not knowing how to draw non-whites, sensible armor, or women with actual skeletons.

And to think Fredric Wertham was worried they'd destroy patriarchal cultural institutions.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

mistaya posted:

I like that he draws women of color and people who aren't Disney-variety beautiful. I just wish he would remember to put more than torn scraps of clothing on them.
I'm kind of curious as to how they originally looked because according to the quote I found White Wolf apparently was the one to sexualize them more.
EDIT:
Just to make it clear I'm not criticizing White Wolf because sweet jesus that seems a bit unusual for an artist to interject himself like that into the artwork.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Mar 18, 2014

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


theironjef posted:

Is he the one that could be asked to draw a slice of pizza and would, an hour later, provide you with a shot of a bald topless black woman with 3 lip piercings? That dude seems to have a type.

I always gave him a pass because most of his drawings felt too weird to be intentional cheesecake. It's like he had a window in his head into the non-euclidean plane of Pierced Alien Nipples, and he just wanted to show us what he saw.

Calde
Jun 20, 2009

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

I always gave him a pass because most of his drawings felt too weird to be intentional cheesecake. It's like he had a window in his head into the non-euclidean plane of Pierced Alien Nipples, and he just wanted to show us what he saw.

Same here. His art style did so much to give Exalted a look and feel unlike a standard white European fantasy setting that I'd mentally give him a pass. I remember Houses of the Bull God has art like Ulito Swan and a flame duck invoking African imagery, yet another page has some other dude's Ledaal Mittromney stroking his strong chin being uninspiring as hell.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

I always gave him a pass because most of his drawings felt too weird to be intentional cheesecake. It's like he had a window in his head into the non-euclidean plane of Pierced Alien Nipples, and he just wanted to show us what he saw.

He's a lot better if you're aware that he drew stuff other than that one lady over and over. Before I checked for signatures I figured there was just one Exalted artist that had a picture in his head of a shaven-headed black girl with her tits out and pointing upward at about a 20% grade, and then he also had a rainy-day craft chest up there so he could decorate her with googly eyes and fabric swatches to represent various types of Exalts.

I like him because I like playing Exalted with a heavy punk aesthetic. Robot arms and crazy hair is where the good stuff is.

BryanChavez
Sep 13, 2007

Custom: Heroic
Having A Life: Fair
So, in the 1990s, Rob Liefeld made a character called Glory:


In 2011, Ross Campbell, along with Joe Keatinge, made a miniseries revival of the series:


And this is why I like Campbell a whole lot. He totally has his 'thing' (or 'things', I should say), but it's so different from most other people's thing that it's refreshing.

Edit: http://www.tencentticker.com/projectrooftop/2011/10/31/pr-approved-ross-campbells-glory/ - Looking through his creative process in redesigning Glory is pretty cool, too.

BryanChavez fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Mar 19, 2014

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Ross Campbell is cool as hell and I welcome his work in Exalted.

Bigup DJ
Nov 8, 2012
I always got him mixed up with Adam Warren. Warren was cool too when he wasn't drawing the exact same character over and over again - the covers of RoGD I & II were great.

Roadie
Jun 30, 2013

Bigup DJ posted:

I always got him mixed up with Adam Warren. Warren was cool too when he wasn't drawing the exact same character over and over again - the covers of RoGD I & II were great.

The way to know Adam Warren art is to look for the fish lips everywhere.

Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction

Stephenls posted:

That's the thing about artists not following art notes. Nine-tenths of the time, you get people drawn white when they're supposed to be of color, and women wearing boobplate when they're supposed to be wearing sensible armor, and posed in gently caress-me poses when they're supposed to have good stances! But one-tenth of the time, you get panda-people!

EDIT: Actually significantly less than one-tenth of the time.

What I don't get is why they still get paid if they do this. I mean I do artwork for car replicas and I get poo poo sent back for the tiniest of flaws, let alone drawing completely the wrong thing. Are you not allowed to send it back and say "Yeah no, try again"?

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Fans posted:

What I don't get is why they still get paid if they do this. I mean I do artwork for car replicas and I get poo poo sent back for the tiniest of flaws, let alone drawing completely the wrong thing. Are you not allowed to send it back and say "Yeah no, try again"?

The old traditional print distribution model was basically "Diamond Distribution threatens to stop carrying your stuff if you fail to hit your projected publication dates enough times."

(And beyond that there's just the general problem of missed deadlines for companies running on narrow margins.)

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Mar 19, 2014

Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction
A lot of the problems with the old books seems to be "We didn't have time to really put it all together properly" hopefully you'll get the chance this time round. The character artwork this time round has all been lovely so far and while I'm not a fan of the Comic Stuff we've been shown I assume that's just for the comics and not also going to be in the books.

How all over the place Exalted 2e's art style was always bugged me a bit, I get that Exalted is a broad game but it didn't really feel that trying to put Anime or Comic style people alongside the more realistic versions really worked out. I wasn't sure if the game wanted to take itself seriously or not and the occasional punk mohawk, piercings and heart panties seemed to be from a different game entirely.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
Oh God heart panties.

The thing about the heart panties is that we love Kiyo! She's great! But, uh, good luck getting her to stop doing stuff like occasionally putting heart panties on Dragon-Blooded warriors.

But given the choice between "Kiyo, and occasional heart panties" and "No heart panties, but also no Kiyo...."

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
It's honestly kind of baffling to me that you apparently can't tell someone who is ostensibly a professional artist working for you "hey, stop putting heart panties on the illustrations you turn in for us, okay?" Like, this is apparently an insurmountable obstacle that just can't be overcome. You would think something as simple as "every piece of artwork you turn in that doesn't meet the guidelines set down by the art director is a piece of artwork that you don't get paid for, and if this gets to be a huge problem we'll find someone else who can also do nice drawings of demigods with big swords" would do the trick, I know that when I've worked my supervisors have generally made it clear that if I don't do the jobs they give me to the specifications they establish that I'm always free to rejoin the exciting world of unemployment.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
I dunno, I'm starting to feel like artists are unique snowflakes who follow their muses and to some extent I have to base my opinion of them on their work taken on its own terms rather than some hypothetical version of their work that follows spec exactly. Like, if you go into Kiyo's Exalted gallery you can see one pic she put up of two versions of the same illustration (a set of First Circle Demons) where she initially drew an infernal lion with a set of horns, and was asked to remove them. And I think I prefer the former, because at least horns on an infernal lion is an interesting artistic interpretation of a thing, even if canonically teodozjia don't have horns. I would rather have the variant interpretation than the rigorous portrayal of the text description.

But maybe I'm just nostalgic for Ye Olden Days when RPG art had no loving thing to do with the text, and was occasionally done by SCAR, but at least wasn't boring CG-colored Cooly-Posed Badass-Looking Person after CG-colored Cooly-Posed Badass-Looking Person page after page after page after page none of them with backgrounds aaaaaarg!

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

That's a pet peeve of mine.

(And obviously stop hiring the artists who keep posting trite, unimaginative sexist bullshit, partially because it's sexist bullshit and partially because ultimately if that's the best they can come up with they're probably not very imaginative in any other respects, either. Like, they're not going to be all "Hey I bet this lion would be cooler with horns" because they're too busy applying immaculate Photoshop coloring techniques to traced porn stars.)

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Mar 19, 2014

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Kai Tave posted:

It's honestly kind of baffling to me that you apparently can't tell someone who is ostensibly a professional artist working for you "hey, stop putting heart panties on the illustrations you turn in for us, okay?" Like, this is apparently an insurmountable obstacle that just can't be overcome. You would think something as simple as "every piece of artwork you turn in that doesn't meet the guidelines set down by the art director is a piece of artwork that you don't get paid for, and if this gets to be a huge problem we'll find someone else who can also do nice drawings of demigods with big swords" would do the trick, I know that when I've worked my supervisors have generally made it clear that if I don't do the jobs they give me to the specifications they establish that I'm always free to rejoin the exciting world of unemployment.

Artists!

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc
If your work fails to do/be what your employer orders, that means you have not actually done the work you were hired to do. I don't see why this should be different for artists.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Piell posted:

If your work fails to do/be what your employer orders, that means you have not actually done the work you were hired to do. I don't see why this should be different for artists.

That's coherent ideological position!

Mr. Maltose
Feb 16, 2011

The Guffless Girlverine
Because creativity! Expression! Deadlines!

As great as Ross Campbell (and boy oh boy is Ross Campbell great) or whoever else is, around the fifth time those same jarring elements appeared without being asked for you can probably be justified in saying "Hey, good work but from now on could you cut this motif out because it's not jiving with what we're trying to do here." Presumably they're professionals and will do so.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Except the thing about doing artistic work to spec is that you're doing it to spec. It doesn't matter how special your snowflake is, you're not being paid to express your inner muse's interpretation of whatever bullshit excuse you've cooked up for turning in something other than what you were asked for, you're being paid to do what a director is telling you to do. How is this any different than someone taking money for commissions and then ignoring what the person paying asks for? "Oh, but I'm an artist and I have a vision," no, you're someone who can't follow directions apparently. Like, looking through that artist's gallery her work is nice and all but I've seen plenty of art from plenty of other artists that's just as nice, nothing about it says to me "holy poo poo, this is an irreplaceable creative resource you have here, do whatever it takes to keep her on board."

Yearning for Ye Olden Dayes is beside the point, if you want the general artistic direction of your book to go in another way then that's something to talk to the art director about, artists are still going to need to follow the director's guidelines. "You have to take the artist on their own merits whether than how well they can follow your 'guidelines' and 'rules' man" is how you wound up with the Savant & Sorcerer cover.

Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction
I just want a coherent art direction for Exalted much like it (Usually) had a coherent writing style. The two did not match up that great in 2nd Ed, even though it gave us Sharkdad and Finger Guns shooting Gorilla's which can forgive an awful lot.

I think Exalted is the only real White Wolf game that had this problem, the World of Darkness art was usually pretty on mark. I mean I loved the poo poo out of Changeling's art and while occasionally the art in the books was terrible (I'm looking at you Aberrant), it was at least consistently terrible.

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

Stephenls posted:

I dunno, I'm starting to feel like artists are unique snowflakes who follow their muses and to some extent I have to base my opinion of them on their work taken on its own terms rather than some hypothetical version of their work that follows spec exactly. Like, if you go into Kiyo's Exalted gallery you can see one pic she put up of two versions of the same illustration (a set of First Circle Demons) where she initially drew an infernal lion with a set of horns, and was asked to remove them. And I think I prefer the former, because at least horns on an infernal lion is an interesting artistic interpretation of a thing, even if canonically teodozjia don't have horns. I would rather have the variant interpretation than the rigorous portrayal of the text description.

I'm actually going to buck the trend; While I understand producing work to specifications is important, I think that anything artistic or creative should leave room for a talented person to buck the trend, be idiosyncratic, and do something better than the specifications. Like "They drew horns on our imaginary demon lions, but we never wrote that our imaginary demon lions had horns. Oh, the humanity!" is the kind of thing where I hate canon-obsessed nerds, because they want to have this absurd level of dull certainty about what is and is not the case in an RPG game world that is supposed to be different things to different groups.

But keeping sexist bullshit out of a game line's art is not like that; It ought to be a high-level mandate for the entire line as opposed to "Do this picture like this" and everyone working on the game should be made aware that it is a core design consideration for every piece of art, short story, blurb, whatever. I do work as an editor, and I think Rob Liefeld Spine Jutsu art suddenly appearing in a well-edited and well-managed game line that cares about not being sexist would be about as jarring as a 40k Space Marine appearing in Legends of the Wulin, or a Dead Serious Middle-Aged Face Stubble Protagonist With Multiple Guns being a piece of full-page art in The Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

MiltonSlavemasta posted:

I'm actually going to buck the trend; While I understand producing work to specifications is important, I think that anything artistic or creative should leave room for a talented person to buck the trend, be idiosyncratic, and do something better than the specifications. Like "They drew horns on our imaginary demon lions, but we never wrote that our imaginary demon lions had horns. Oh, the humanity!" is the kind of thing where I hate canon-obsessed nerds, because they want to have this absurd level of dull certainty about what is and is not the case in an RPG game world that is supposed to be different things to different groups.

But keeping sexist bullshit out of a game line's art is not like that; It ought to be a high-level mandate for the entire line as opposed to "Do this picture like this" and everyone working on the game should be made aware that it is a core design consideration for every piece of art, short story, blurb, whatever. I do work as an editor, and I think Rob Liefeld Spine Jutsu art suddenly appearing in a well-edited and well-managed game line that cares about not being sexist would be about as jarring as a 40k Space Marine appearing in Legends of the Wulin, or a Dead Serious Middle-Aged Face Stubble Protagonist With Multiple Guns being a piece of full-page art in The Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG.

This I pretty much agree with. Although Dead Serious Middle-Aged Face Stubble Protagonist With Multiple Guns would be a good illo to put next to the Immigrant From Earth playbook. (America!)

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

MiltonSlavemasta posted:

I'm actually going to buck the trend; While I understand producing work to specifications is important, I think that anything artistic or creative should leave room for a talented person to buck the trend, be idiosyncratic, and do something better than the specifications. Like "They drew horns on our imaginary demon lions, but we never wrote that our imaginary demon lions had horns. Oh, the humanity!" is the kind of thing where I hate canon-obsessed nerds, because they want to have this absurd level of dull certainty about what is and is not the case in an RPG game world that is supposed to be different things to different groups.

This is also part of an art director's job, though. Like the story about how the Djala came into being, if Ross Campbell gives you some illustrations that include weird little panda-dudes you didn't ask for but you think they're kickin' rad then the art director is free to go "hey we didn't ask for panda-dudes but these are pretty awesome, how about we keep'em and maybe work them into the game somehow?" Similarly with horns on your imaginary demon lions, if you and the art director decide that looks cooler then you can put horns on your demon lions and tweak some text around to make it work, a good art director is capable of making these sorts of judgement calls.

But when the art director tells you "okay, this is good but the heart panties aren't working, we need you to go back and edit that bit" the proper response to that isn't "gently caress you art-dad, I do what I want!" it's "oh okay, sure" because you're being paid to take directions, not do whatever the hell you feel like. You can post the heart-panties version on your DeviantArt account later if you feel the need, but when you're taking money then your job is to do what the client wants regardless of how it tortures your delicate creative soul.

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

Kai Tave posted:

Except the thing about doing artistic work to spec is that you're doing it to spec. It doesn't matter how special your snowflake is, you're not being paid to express your inner muse's interpretation of whatever bullshit excuse you've cooked up for turning in something other than what you were asked for, you're being paid to do what a director is telling you to do. How is this any different than someone taking money for commissions and then ignoring what the person paying asks for? "Oh, but I'm an artist and I have a vision," no, you're someone who can't follow directions apparently. Like, looking through that artist's gallery her work is nice and all but I've seen plenty of art from plenty of other artists that's just as nice, nothing about it says to me "holy poo poo, this is an irreplaceable creative resource you have here, do whatever it takes to keep her on board."

I dunno, I can sort of see it. They weren't just looking for artists, they were looking for 1) artists who 2) had a style they liked and were 3) willing and 4) available to take commissions at RPG-industry rates over better-paying work, who could also 5) piece together a coherent work from the contradictory, schizophrenic clusterfuck that was Old White Wolf's design process and 6) deliver this all in a timely fashion without undergoing some sort of psychological meltdown, as artists are sometimes wont to do. Filter through all those selection criteria, and I can imagine whomever's left would be pretty important assets to the gameline, heart-panties or no.

Kai Tave posted:

Yearning for Ye Olden Dayes is beside the point, if you want the general artistic direction of your book to go in another way then that's something to talk to the art director about, artists are still going to need to follow the director's guidelines. "You have to take the artist on their own merits whether than how well they can follow your 'guidelines' and 'rules' man" is how you wound up with the Savant & Sorcerer cover.

Not that I disagree with the broader point, but wasn't that particular offense caused by several rounds of a back-and-forth telephone game between the writers and an artist who knew nothing about Exalted and didn't speak English, minus any sort of interpreter involved in the process whatsoever?

A_Raving_Loon
Dec 12, 2008

Subtle
Quick to Anger

Thesaurasaurus posted:

Not that I disagree with the broader point, but wasn't that particular offense caused by several rounds of a back-and-forth telephone game between the writers and an artist who knew nothing about Exalted and didn't speak English, minus any sort of interpreter involved in the process whatsoever?

And ended with someone looking at the result and saying, "Yes, this goes on the cover. Print it."

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Is that the one that looks like a lady with Chun-Li Leg Disease wearing a strapped-on maxi pad? I love that picture, I always use it as the "this is what you're getting into" example when talking about Exalted. "It's basically anime Red Sonja fetishpunk the fighting game" I say, and then follow it with "Yes, you're allowed to have pants if you want."

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

A_Raving_Loon posted:

And ended with someone looking at the result and saying, "Yes, this goes on the cover. Print it."

Well yeah, that part was inexcusable. I meant more that it's more forgivable on the artist's end if they have only a very flawed understanding of what it is they're supposed to be making via language barriers and haphazard communication on top of that, and it's really only applicable to that specific case. In the end, it still comes down to someone not being harsh enough with the editorial veto on the business end of things.

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Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Thesaurasaurus posted:

I dunno, I can sort of see it. They weren't just looking for artists, they were looking for 1) artists who 2) had a style they liked and were 3) willing and 4) available to take commissions at RPG-industry rates over better-paying work, who could also 5) piece together a coherent work from the contradictory, schizophrenic clusterfuck that was Old White Wolf's design process and 6) deliver this all in a timely fashion without undergoing some sort of psychological meltdown, as artists are sometimes wont to do. Filter through all those selection criteria, and I can imagine whomever's left would be pretty important assets to the gameline, heart-panties or no.

Pretty much!

Mind you, Criteria 5. Hypothetically, if this model of how it works is correct, any compromise on quality necessitated by omitting artists unable to work under Criteria 5 is entirely on White Wolf's head, isn't it?

(Good thing we've got Maria Carbado doing Ex3.)

Thesaurasaurus posted:

Not that I disagree with the broader point, but wasn't that particular offense caused by several rounds of a back-and-forth telephone game between the writers and an artist who knew nothing about Exalted and didn't speak English, minus any sort of interpreter involved in the process whatsoever?

A_Raving_Loon posted:

And ended with someone looking at the result and saying, "Yes, this goes on the cover. Print it."

Basically, Hyung-tae Kim is a Korean artist who got a lot of attention in the Exalted fandom early on for his work on a property called Magna Carta, because the fansite The Exalted Compendium kept an archive of inspirational character art that often seemed to be about 75% Hyung-tae Kim Magna Carta pictures. Exalted dev team at the time looked at that, and at the way his name kept popping up in discussion of what art is good inspiration for Exalted, and went "Okay, our fanbase seem to really like this guy. It would be neat if we could get him to do a cover for us or something!

Hyung-tae Kim does not speak English. Also, he apparently has different ideas about what's appropriate for "fantasy roleplaying" than what White Wolf intended.

The result was, uh, the first version of the Savant & Sorcerer cover. Which I have seen once but can no longer find. It was like the version that went on the final over, except the woman had anime handlebar elf ears and, IIRC, a much more submissive facial expression. And possibly even skimpier clothes? I dunno, my memory might be painting it in a worse light than it deserves. Art director did send it in for a revision pass, which removed the elf ears and changed her face to the generic battle yell thing she has now, but it was too late to do anything about the pose. Also, since this was back during Ye Old Traditional Distribution days -- a delay while they pushed for more revision passes or even contracted a new cover may have pushed publication back by a couple of months, and with a warehouse and a full office staff, operating costs are high and margins are narrow.

Now, whether this is a valid excuse really depends on whether you think there's such a thing as "valid excuses." Like, in general. Ultimately the cover is arguably a piece of offensive sexist crap and at very least the sort of thing that makes you want to carry your book around in a brown paper bag.

They didn't hire him again. That's something.

(Now, on the other hand, Brian Glass, the art director at the time, is on record at the time for popping up somewhere on the Internet shortly before the book went to print and gleefully exclaiming something like "Oh my god you guys you won't believe what they're letting me put on the cover of our next book!" So.)

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Mar 19, 2014

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