First off, I really must applaud the wonderful artwork and brilliant adventures in the latest Dungeon magazine. Wonderful work. It's combined effect makes every flip of the page an adventure in itself.
But I am curious, has there ever been consideration for incorporating 3D artwork as another style for some of the adventures?
Creative Director
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First off, I really must applaud the wonderful artwork and brilliant adventures in the latest Dungeon magazine. Wonderful work. It's combined effect makes every flip of the page an adventure in itself.
But I am curious, has there ever been consideration for incorporating 3D artwork as another style for some of the adventures?
Yup! Check out the cover to issue #115; all CG all the time there. We also have experimented with using CG for item illustrations; all of the new items detailed in "Death of Lashimire" were done via CG. For the most part, though, CG imagery tends to look too "futuristic" for a D&D magazine.
With the exception of digitial paintings, of course. A large number of artists we use work entirely in digital mediums using programs like Painter and Photoshop.
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So, I just got my issue #134, and I love the cover art, and I'm very happy to see it reprinted in the back of the magazine. However, I also saw the "Next Month in Dungeon" featurette and I'd be thrilled to have that one reprinted as well.
I have one question of sorts. A number of websites, particularly webcomics offer viewers the option to make a donation. This appears to make the webcomic production viable, even though many readers seldom or never contribute. My question is could something similar be done in Dungeon magazine (or Dragon as well). If x dollars is donated this month, the magazine gets an extra page with the reprinted cover. If 3x dollars is donated, the magazine gets a cover poster insert. Something like that.
I'd rather not see the cover price increase since not everyone will appreciate or want this "bonus", but I personally don't mind trying to "enhance" the magazine for others that can barely pay the coverprice each month. I remember when I was trying to buy Dragon and Dungeon pre-high school. Without an allowance.
Anyways, just a thought. What does the staff think? Other readers?
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Creative Director
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It's an interesting idea, but not one that is physically possible. The way magazines are printed makes it so. If we add pages to a magazine, they have to be done in multiples of 8; this has to do with the way it's printed. Adding a single page is possible, but it'd probably have to be done at a specialized printer or by hand or something ridiculous like that. And it'd cost a LOT of money.
Poster inserts are also expensive, although not nearly as expensive as adding a single page to a magazine would be. In any event, we don't have the infrastructure or capability to make such changes to the physical nature of the magazine, so that'll have to be that.
We'll continue to reprint the cover at the back of the magazine now and then when we don't have a Map of Mystery or something else to take up that space. We've talked before about reprinting covers as poster inserts, or in other formats, but have no plans at this time to move forward on any such projects.
Speaking of artwork...is there a way to release cover & interior art for use as desktop wallpapers? Pretty pretty please?
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Rather than increase the physical page count (which I understand why it cannot be done) a page could be sold to the readership as an "ad". It appears such an ad would cost approximately $2400 for Dragon magazine and $1500 for Dungeon magazine. Of course, the readership doesn't have the rights to reprint the artwork, but if we (collectively) paid for the ad, might Paizo consider printing it?
My thought would be that there would be a "donation" spot for both Dragon and Dungeon. Since the ad would have to be sold two months in advance you'd have to work well ahead of the current month, I presume. If I donate one month and we fail to pay for the ad, whatever amount has been donated would simply roll over toward the next month. Thus if this idea generates only $300 per month for both Dragon and Dungeon ($600 total), we would only pay for one reprinted cover every 8 months in Dragon and every 5 months in Dungeon (not including those that Paizo might choose to provide us for free for lack of better content).
Assuming you want to continue selling the same number of ads (and are doing so without difficulty), my thought would be that the reprinted cover would replace one of the Paizo "in-house" advertisements.
Would that idea have the possibility of working?
What do other posters think? Would you donate $1/month or so for such an extra?
Edit - clarified $300 donated toward both cover reprints, not $300 total
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Creative Director
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Speaking of artwork...is there a way to release cover & interior art for use as desktop wallpapers? Pretty pretty please?
We've done this already with some of the art; the wallpapers are available on the Dungeon downloads page. Might be time to update these selections with new art...
More new art would be sweet!
Speaking of artwork...is there a way to release cover & interior art for use as desktop wallpapers? Pretty pretty please?We've done this already with some of the art; the wallpapers are available on the Dungeon downloads page. Might be time to update these selections with new art...
We've done this already with some of the art; the wallpapers are available on the Dungeon downloads page. Might be time to update these selections with new art...
I'd really love to have some of that art that's been done recently. The covers for 121, 124, and 134 would all rock as desktops.
and some of the dragon magazine covers would be really nice to have also. (hint hint...)
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We've done this already with some of the art; the wallpapers are available on the Dungeon downloads page. Might be time to update these selections with new art...
The picture of the chimera from 134's AP adventure would be an excellent piece for a desktop background/poster. :)
More cover wallpapers from the Age of Worms would be great.