So I’m a little nervous (I always am this time of year), but we’re powering towards getting Interstellar Operations out the door at the end of this month to print…and if we do that, it’ll be at Gen Con.
In the meantime I thought I’d share the art process for an illustration that will accompany one the fiction sections within the book (aka like all the core line of BattleTech rulebooks).
First, here’s the art notes:
#04 “Pressure Play”
The “Titan’s-Eye View” of a battle in action. In the foreground, four groupings of BattleMechs (rough silhouettes) —two colored in vivid shades of blue, and two more in muted shades of purple—plus a pair of blue aircraft (again, basic forms) streaking by overhead, are doing battle at the outskirts of a small, seaside city. A haze of light surrounds the entire scene, and the ’Mechs seem to be almost ethereal. Numbers and code letters—all in reverse from our perspective—float above each distinct group of units, along with what appear to be video-game style “health bars” (also “in reverse”). It is clear that we are looking up and through the surface of a three-dimensional holographic projection.
Through the haze, standing high above, bigger than mountains on the scale of this battlefield, we see two figures—one male, and one female. Both are wearing light blue LCAF officer jackets, with rank insignia epaulets, but no medals or awards. We can only see them from above the waist, as we are looking at them from the surface of the holo-tank. The male is Caucasian, sporting a red-blond goatee and short-cropped red-blond hair. The female is perhaps half a head shorter than the male, with a darker skin tone suggesting Hispanic or possibly African ancestry, and black hair. She is also wearing glasses, and a headset that includes a microphone and earpiece. She has skewed the headset to leave the ear closest to her male companion open, allowing her to clearly listen to him without excluding anyone reporting through her headset. Both are bathed in the soft glow of the holo-table projection, washing out their colors somewhat, but the male looks thoughtfully at the board, while the female has a more detached expression.
The chamber around them is dimly lit, and thus hard to see through the glow of the holo-tank, but we should get a hint of a command station, with perhaps some workstations behind them, techs seated at them in silhouette, and flat monitors that appear as mere slivers of light barely bright enough to give them any real definition.
From that we get in a series of different takes from the artist it see which direction we like best (depending upon the time involved and artist in question, we don’t always hit this step but instead will get in a single sketch).
Second, the art director makes a choice on which direction to go (after consulting with the line developer):
“Pressure Play”
I love the holotank image from #2, and I’d prefer to match it with the background image of #3.
The further refined sketch them comes in. Now some times, at this stage, it’s a hit out of the park and nothing needs to change and the artist moves on to finalizing the illustration (see the sketch below for one of those).
But often an illustration needs some tweaks still here, so notes are placed directly onto the sketch (as shown above) and sent back to the artist for guidance on how to tweak and proceed.
I’ve sat in the art director chair and just been on the sidelines for a good long time now…and I never tire of watching that process unfold. Of seeing words transformed into brilliant images that fire up the imagination and make us want to play!
When we’ve got final illustrations, I’ll share them right away!
Randall
