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Hand Drawn Art

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northgun
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I'm heavily considering having the art for my board game hand drawn. This would include the cards, board itself, box art, and instruction booklet. I would simply scan the imagines in and photoshop them into the cards etc. This sound like something that would work or should I stay away from hand drawings?

ElKobold
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I would say this heavily

I would say this heavily depends on your game's theme and target audience.

(provided the images are made in a way to highlight their hand drawn nature)

andymakespasta
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If you're prototyping, go

If you're prototyping, go ahead.

If you're not experienced, and you draw it yourself, the end product will look amateurish.

The problem isn't with hand drawing, but the fact that you're asking this question shows that you're not experienced with digital art, and as with all things, it's not as easy as it looks.

Could be fun to learn to do digital art though.

jonathanflike
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Possible

It's possible to do this. If it goes with the art direction you can go a-la-Yoshi-Story, but even when something looks hand drawn, that effect is manipulated in digital programs. Might be worth learning. Like I draw things out by hand and then put them into the computer, but the sketches are just reference and everything is manipulated in the computer.

northgun
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I am no expert in digital

I am no expert in digital art, however I am a pretty experienced web designer, been doing it on the side for years. I have done quite a bit of graphic design in that category, but my skills are limited. Drawing complex characters and land forms is outside my skill level. However, designing templates, logos, backgrounds and such is.

The artist I am working with is a very skilled hand drawer, I don't think I would have a problem using my scanner I use for my photography and inputing the pictures into my templates.

Im just wondering if this stays within the realm of professionalism, if anyone else has tried doing the same, or there is something I am missing completely on the subject.

jonathanflike
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Can you do both?

northgun wrote:
I am no expert in digital art, however I am a pretty experienced web designer, been doing it on the side for years. I have done quite a bit of graphic design in that category, but my skills are limited. Drawing complex characters and land forms is outside my skill level. However, designing templates, logos, backgrounds and such is.

The artist I am working with is a very skilled hand drawer, I don't think I would have a problem using my scanner I use for my photography and inputing the pictures into my templates.

Im just wondering if this stays within the realm of professionalism, if anyone else has tried doing the same, or there is something I am missing completely on the subject.

If you are able to do logos and backgrounds on the computer, can you do that for the cards, box art, etc.? Everything (almost) starts hand drawn, the only question of professionalism that comes into play is how those professional-looking drawings get implemented into the final work. I mean if I can see colored-pencil marks everywhere it starts to raise eyebrows. Are these drawings full-color? If it's pen/ink it is very easy to convert the line art into a line layer in photoshop/illustrator and just color digitally underneath it. Would take some practice but the hard work of the initial drawings is done.

northgun
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jonathanflike wrote: If you

jonathanflike wrote:

If you are able to do logos and backgrounds on the computer, can you do that for the cards, box art, etc.? Are these drawings full-color?

Yes and Yes. It would be a possibility to try to learn how to convert the images into digital.

jonathanflike
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cool :)

Well just hit me up if you have any questions. You can literally click one button in Illustrator and convert line art into a vector (Image Trace).

andymakespasta
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Oh, I misunderstood what you

Oh, I misunderstood what you were trying to do.

From my personal non-professional experience, scanning hand drawn pictures and printing them often causes blurring and loss of color.

If you have a good scanner, maybe you can get away with it, but it won't be as shiny as something digitally colored

As mentioned, a common way (before tablets became so popular) was to draw in pencil and ink, then digitally convert them to lines. Coloring is usually done completely digital, though guide lines can be part of the scan.

JewellGames
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Hand drawn

I like the look of hand drawn art when its done right. My favorite example is Guild of Dungeoneering.

gilamonster
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I am neither a professional,

I am neither a professional, nor published, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt, but:

For millennia, all illustration was hand-drawn, painted or engraved!

Have a look at this link to a 16th century European martial-arts manual: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0000/bsb00007894/images/index.html?f...

Also google for the fencing and wrestling manuals illustrated by renaissance artist Albrecht Durer.Or any of the highly detailed and well-finished "plates" in late victorian or early 20th-century books - prepared without use of a computer.

It is perfectly possible to produce polished, high-quality illustrations entirely by hand. Some of the best examples are arguably better than much of what is produced by most commercial artists today (depending on how you weigh current fashions in art and personal taste, of course). It just takes much longer, and requires more skill on the part of the artist. So it is more expensive to get the same level of polish (for example - the guy who commissioned the manuscript linked above had to embezzle funds from the city he was mayor of to finance the creation of the book - and got hung for it when it was found out).

I think that choice of tools and methods are sometimes over-emphasized. Use whatever works best within all your constraints - it is the end result that matters.

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