Title page

[Q_x]

Forum is a big stagnant last days. That's bad, cause I know things are happening, but are left without discussion. I thought I can give you a sneak preview of what's brewing on my side.

I'll be looking for a bit of more work by the end of this year - yet still I hope for calling it freelancing - so I have to gather a portfolio. I have archived tones of what I've done, but it's mostly medical press: boring, repetitive, dull, not really nice in any way and always done in a hurry (and I'm paid accordingly ). So I thought: what can I lose by making a bit more interesting stuff? I'll design a template for our manual!
We have some really awesome artwork here, that I don't even have to prepare too much to use it, that's a huge plus

So that was the introduction, and...
Here is a title page for the manual. Rather simple, minimalistic.
One remark: The logo is just a placeholder. Not official in any way.
http://chaosrealm.net/wtactics/wiki/ima ... e_prev.png
As always I'm looking forward for your input, remarks and helpful suggestions.

I'm planning it to be a small brochure (to be printed on standard office/xero paper, folded in half and optionally cropped a bit), so it'll be easy to print it in the DIY way. The size determines composition a bit, on full size (a4 vs. a5 it is now) all the letters could have been much smaller.

[TorbenBeta]

Well, I think the colour of the paper and the drawing is good. The picture has positive and negative aspects; that the orc is looking at us with a dynamically looking pose is a good thing. He is like: "I order you to look into this manual.". A negative aspect is that a siege is displayed; because as far as I know WT shows skirmishes and battles rather than sieges. It could be misleading. I dislike the letters of WT as I needed some time to grasp what they are depicting, so that a unaffiliated person would, maybe, not understand what it depicts. Especially if it is posted somewhere on the web without supplied informations.
I hope that I was constructive and don't forget that this is just my personal opinion.
Torben

[snowdrop]

Forum is a big stagnant last days. That's bad, cause I know things are happening, but are left without discussion.

Yups... and the saddest part is I am the one that usually is complaining about it, just to find myself guilty of the same under-usage. Will try to correct.

So that was the introduction, and...
Here is a title page for the manual. Rather simple, minimalistic.
One remark: The logo is just a placeholder. Not official in any way.
http://chaosrealm.net/wtactics/wiki/ima ... e_prev.png
As always I'm looking forward for your input, remarks and helpful suggestions.

1) Not sure, but maybe replace words "game manual" with "game rules".. or maybe not - depends on what you think it should contain. If it contains DIY-instructions etc then I agree with the choice you already made.

2) I think line art should be used only as bg-stuff for example for a register/index-page or something, or on half empty pages that divide two chapters etc. Since the front cover is what meets the eye first I'd rather have it less minimalistic and way more covered with the best of art.

Imagine the paper as it is now, and 50 - 70% of it from the bottom up being covered with something really gorgeous looking and the textlogo at the top(?) on the paper you use already. The art would ofc have some "top part"s that are transparent so it is a cut out, meaning it wouldn't include a sky or cloudes etc. (Maybe we should unleash our new friend on this mission? Could be nice..)

Reason I want it art heavy is our target group and convention: Now it looks too adult/boring for them to even consider opening it up, even if it is indeed classy. What we perhaps need to do is to find the 10 prettiest covers and 10 ugliest ones we can find for games and look at them, have a discussion about what makes them good/bad... or at least let them serve as references. That's our main competitions - all other games out there, and when people see the "box" or the rule book etc they directly get an impression about production value. It must look like it costed us plenty and be heavy on graphics, else we will stand out as just "dull" or hobby-project.

If needed I'll pay for kick as art for it, and it probably is needed. Question is what it should depict...

I'm planning it to be a small brochure (to be printed on standard office/xero paper, folded in half /../ so it'll be easy to print it in the DIY way.

Sounds great. Try out a5 = one page (given a5 is half of a4 ; ) ...rather let it take up more pages and use plenty of airy space than cramming it together to save paper. People will print it like once, and it is seldom associated with huge costs.

[Q_x]

Our logo is completely different story than what I want it to be. What's now I assume to be a placeholder only. I don't want it to be bloated with detail or effects, I'm almost always preferring frugal, clear solutions (the only exception is natural chaos).

Contents of the booklet - I thought about putting in not only OCR - OCR could be an interchangeable part of the document, with other rule systems that hopefully will pop up after finishing the game. I imagined, that the manual could contain factions info, world history, plenty of images to it, almost like a bestiary and chronicles. Also things like our "about" page, licensing, authors, whatever needs to be there to fulfill to formal reasons. That's why "manual" rather than "rulebook". Again, it's a word only. Modularization may even go further - I can prepare more such pages, each with adequate illustration - separate for world and history and factions, describing card elements, dictionary, rules and so on. Each with it's own index, page numbers. Not quite conventional, but it will work

Size - Well, I've been actually targetting little bit smaller format, than a5 - more like 140x200mm, so that you can print it and cut away all the margins, resulting in something that actually looks like a book.

Why and what illustrations - I think that small format overloaded with imagery is not a good idea. I took one, but good illustration. The letters there need some more care, like gradient and contour. Probably needed more on cover than on title page, but still...
Anyway - my point was to take the most awesome image that fits the cover needs best - which is the Siege (and that's my personal choice only), and I wanted to repeat it on the cover as well, just in colour, in more or less the same place.
Of course we can add or change things completely, it's still just a mock up.

As for the illustration choice - reuse the best stuff we have, tell a good story with it. Take two good aggressive portraits and place them face to face, things like that - it will work better when reused. We might need a good background behind the illustrations - sky, clouds, ravens, but that's fairly easy task. If we will make anything just for the cover, it's against the idea of the project, at least in my understanding. Plus, what a pleasure it is to play and win with the card that's on cover!

Due to massive work, this week I'm a little bit less here, sorry for that, it's like it drains me completely... Not a good thing, and I'm looking for even more of it, sadly.