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Episode 1: Being a "Draw-er" with Amanda Kahl
126 Plays1 year ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by illustrator, writer, and game designer Amanda Kahl, of Age of Night and Skirmisher Publishing, to talk about how illustration, art, and printing take place in the game industry.
Influences in art and design, as well as common pitfalls, traps, and mistakes of layout, art, and printing are all discussed! Along with Alan's forgetfulness of the word "illustrator".
LINKS:
Skirmisher Publishing
Age of Night
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Amanda Call
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm Alan Barr, and this is Radio Free RPG. Welcome to Radio Free RPG. I'm your host Alan Barr, and I'm joined by artist, game designer and game writer, Amanda Call. Hi, Amanda.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello, thanks for having me, Alan. It's my pleasure. Amanda and I go back several years where we've been involved in actual plays, streaming online, mostly on victory condition gaming, as well as Amanda has done some art for various projects for my company Gallant Night Games. So Amanda, tell us a little bit about yourself.
00:01:00
Speaker
So I am a freelance illustrator, mostly for tabletop games. I'm also a self-published comic artist and writer, creator. I've been working in the tabletop gaming industry as an illustrator for like 12, 13 years or something like that. I don't remember precisely when I started. It's been a while. You're an illustrator. You're not here to do math, right? No, exactly.
00:01:28
Speaker
So where is most of your work found if folks wanted to look at some of the art you've done?
00:01:37
Speaker
So, my webcomic is available online at ageofnight.com, and that's spelled like the time of day, not like the guy in the armor, not like Gallant Knight. Too many nights. Too many nights. It's confusing. I also have a portfolio site, which is woefully out of date, although I actually have that on my to-do list for this weekend is updating it. So, maybe by the time people hear this, it'll be up to date.
00:02:01
Speaker
Probably. I'm not very quick either. That's at amandacallart.com. I keep that pretty simple. Excellent. And if I recall correctly, a majority of
Collaborations with Skirmisher Publishing
00:02:10
Speaker
your RPG art comes out through Skirmisher Publishing.
00:02:13
Speaker
That is correct, yes. I've had the longest term relationship with Skirmisher out of everybody in the tabletop gaming industry. They were the second, first or second company to ever hire me. I think it was like them and Gorilla Games were about at the exact same time almost, but they were one of my very first companies that I ever started working with and we've had a beautiful relationship ever since. And at this point,
00:02:40
Speaker
I'm more than just an illustrator for that company at this point. I'm part of the core development group. We have weekly meetings where we work on play testing and writing and design and development. That company tends to be more like an actual game design collective than a place that just hires me. Well, that's a wonderful position to be in.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. I really appreciate it. I appreciate
Importance of Illustrations in RPGs
00:03:10
Speaker
having that kind of friendship and that kind of like really reliable steady stream of work, because no matter what else comes up, anytime that I finish something for skirmisher, there's always something else ready to go. That's great. So let's talk about illustration. Yeah. So arguably, more than anything, when it comes to tabletop role playing games, an illustration is the first thing somebody is going to encounter.
00:03:37
Speaker
Right. It's on the cover. You can see it from a distance before you can see the title a lot of the time before you can see a designer's name. The art is that first impression. And I know they say don't judge a book by its cover, but we all do it and we all know we do it. Oh, absolutely. So art is.
00:03:58
Speaker
the first impression an RPG is going to give somebody. So let's discuss what you have learned over these little more than a decade, indeterminate amount of time.
Art Direction and Feedback
00:04:13
Speaker
What do you have learned about the art of RPG illustration? So what do you think about when you illustrate? We'll start with the cover. Let's talk about a cover.
00:04:24
Speaker
Covers are like entirely. I don't I honestly don't do a ton of covers. It's a very high pressure type job as far as illustration goes. I imagine. Yeah, because it is. You want to be selling the whole game. You want to be selling what this game is going to give you for an experience. So you're kind of trying to capture like the entire tone of what what is this game supposed to be for the players?
00:04:52
Speaker
And to a certain extent, that's what you have to do with everything you're trying to represent. Like, what is, what does the game designer want you to imagine? What is this world that you are going to be playing in or the experiences that you're trying to evoke? Everything has to do that when you're illustrating for games. But a cover specifically, it's like you have to get all of, you can't just get a little piece here and there. You have to get like, here's the broad strokes. Here's the entire like, I want you to see this game and immediately think this.
00:05:22
Speaker
So in your sort of position at Skirmisher Publishing as part of their collective hive mind of game generation, do you handle the art direction as the trained artist? Are you the only trained artist in the group? Is there more
Amanda's Art Process Explained
00:05:40
Speaker
than one?
00:05:41
Speaker
Um, so I'm the only person with an actual art, like background, like our education background. I do actually, I did actually get an art degree. And you turned it into a job that they said we could never do. Right. Look at you. Uh, yeah. No, I do actually, I do actually have an art degree and I'm the only one with an art background, but thankfully, um, everyone
00:06:06
Speaker
Everyone there usually, whatever they're writing, they usually have a certain amount of autonomy of art direction on it. On their individual product. Right, right. So it's usually like, okay, well, this is what I'm doing. I want it to have this kind of tone.
00:06:23
Speaker
And for anything that I end up illustrating, then a lot of the decisions of how to achieve that gets deferred to me. There's not really a lot of direction that comes from that. It's just like, well, this is what I'm going for. And then I will do my best to execute that. And then we kind of go into just the feedback and refining process from there.
00:06:44
Speaker
A lot of the like product design and direction and that sort of thing. Mike Farhola does a lot of that and Brenda Cass does a lot of that, too. They're the ones who are in charge of a lot of the like marketing and layout and technical stuff for the company. OK, so you also do freelance illustration work for other companies. Yeah. So part of the goal of Radio Free RPG is to highlight the individuals who might not get as much attention in the tabletop gaming space.
00:07:14
Speaker
And, you know, artists and the designers are the probably the two people who get the most attention. Right. They're the most visible. But let's talk about the sort of the unsung heroes of art and that would be art direction. Hmm. Right. Which is a very sort of project management behind the scenes role, but it's very difficult to do and it's very difficult to learn.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yes. So when I started 10 years ago in game design, I had never art directed. I had never told an artist what I want. I had no idea there was a set way to communicate or best practices. I sort of stumbled my way through that learning as I went. So let's talk about that
Understanding Art Specifications
00:08:00
Speaker
concept of art direction, both as an artist and with me as a publisher who also serves as the art director for a majority of my products.
00:08:11
Speaker
What makes for good art direction? I think that's the simplest question we can ask. Yeah, so I mean, communication is obviously the biggest thing. Being clear, getting as much as much information up front as possible as far as what your expectations are and what you are looking for.
00:08:31
Speaker
But then also whatever you're doing, trying to make it constructive as far as what you're communicating, trying to make it constructive and actionable. So I think probably the most frustrating thing I ever find when trying to communicate with anyone is when you're like, okay, well, here's the, you show somebody a piece that you're working on, here's what I have. And they say, yeah, it's not really working for me. Okay, but like how? Sure.
00:08:59
Speaker
I don't know. It's just not that's not actionable. I don't know what to do now. Sure. That's a critique with nothing to follow through on. Right. Right. So for an art director who in the world of indie publishing is probably not a trained artist or if they are, it might not be their primary skill set. Right. A lot of the terms artists use can be confusing.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yes. I understand
Technical Aspects: RGB vs CMYK
00:09:30
Speaker
what a pencil is. I understand what paint is. And I know how to make a line with a ruler. There you go. So if you need really straight stick figures, I can handle that.
00:09:43
Speaker
One thing I've started doing is using a like a Photoshop or Illustrator analog. I will do a quick stick figure sketch of sort of how I see the composition. Yes. And kind of just block it out really roughly poorly drawn. Right. Yes. You know, person goes here. Monster goes here.
00:10:03
Speaker
Oh my gosh. And you know what? Occasionally I get those and people are always like, oh, I'm sorry. This is probably a really insulting, lousy sketch. And I'm like, no, you're my favorite person in the world right now. This is a million times better than you giving me a bunch of vague verbal directions or written directions that would not ever result in me producing something like what you are actually envisioning by showing me this stick figure.
00:10:28
Speaker
So I assume the assumption of over-communicate because you can always ask them to clarify or parrot back is probably a good starting position for a potential art director.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that, so part of the, so part of thing, there is a little bit of a balance because you do want to allow, you want to trust your artist to come up with something. That's why you're hiring them. You do also want to keep in mind if you're not a, if you're not an artist, sometimes one of the things that even, even a lot of artists fall into is you're trying to execute more than one idea at once. Okay.
00:11:07
Speaker
And so people will say, I want this illustration and I want this thing, that thing and that thing happening in it. They tell you like half a dozen different things they all want happening in like a quarter page illustration. And some of them are openly contradictory. And that's also just a lot to be going on in a small illustration. And so I think that
00:11:27
Speaker
figuring out what's the most important thing. What is the most important thing you want in this illustration? This has to get across this information, has to include this type of character with this type of equipment. And I want it to evoke this type of mood. They need to be doing this particular thing.
00:11:47
Speaker
And then, including other references as far as like touchstones of mood, of style, if you have particular things that
Artistic Influences and Education
00:12:00
Speaker
need to look a certain way, include reference if you have it.
00:12:03
Speaker
Like I love when people send me like their Pinterest, you know, vision boards or whatever for their project where they're like, this is this is the vibe that I like or I like this character. I like this character style of armor, but, you know, do your own riff on it. You know, giving those jumping off points of like, this is the vein of what I'm looking for. Now, please do what you do with that. Sure. So one thing I have sort of
00:12:30
Speaker
learn as an ad hoc rule and probably isn't a real rule. But I try to limit the subject or action when I do an art piece to one scene or sort of individual per quarter page. Yes. And I find that that tends to work OK. That that is a good rule. Yeah, so that's a really good rule, like I said, of simplifying your idea because
00:13:00
Speaker
You can't you can't cram that much information into a small space. No, I see some of these comic book covers with all these characters on them. And I'm like, that looks so hard to do. Right. Well, it doesn't it doesn't read very well, like the person who is viewing it there. They have that so much information for them to try to parse visually. It doesn't come across as clearly and it doesn't have the same kind of impact.
00:13:27
Speaker
Right. So thinking about comics and RPGs, which you you do both. Yeah. Now, you said you were an illustrator for Age of Night, but don't you also write
Creating 'Age of Night'
00:13:40
Speaker
it? Yes. Yes, I write and draw Age of Night. I at this point, Age of Night is a one person show.
00:13:48
Speaker
So you do all the lettering, you do the uploads, all of it. I do everything. I have a friend who helps me maintain my website. Like he built the structure for me. And when something breaks, I go help me. Sure. But but I do all the other like.
00:14:08
Speaker
uploading, I do, I write the whole thing, I draw the whole thing, I do all the lettering. It's done entirely traditionally too, so all the lettering is actually done right on the boards. But I did have a collaborator really early on in the process, the creative process, where I had my friend Matt Woodle was, helped me to develop the initial concept, and we had envisioned it being a collaborative project.
00:14:34
Speaker
So we developed the initial concept together and developed some of the basics of the world and the characters and wrote the first chapter. And as soon as I started actually drawing pages, he was just like, no, I'm good. I don't really want to do this. Well, at least he realized his bandwidth early.
00:14:56
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I appreciate. I didn't like rely on him being a part of the actual production process. And then he bowed out. So I still acknowledge his contribution in every like on the website and in every printed volume of like, yeah, he was part of the concept development, but I never actually involved with the actual making of pages and hasn't been involved with the writing since the very beginning. So so you said you work entirely in a physical medium.
00:15:24
Speaker
For Age of Night, yeah. For Age of Night. Now, for RPGs, do you do those? All the illustrations entirely physical too? Or do you do a mix of digital and traditional? So I always draw and ink everything traditionally. Everything is drawn on paper and inked on paper. Wow. Yep. And I've never gotten used to actually drawing digitally. I don't like it.
00:15:50
Speaker
the tactile response. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The whole tactile thing of it. I just don't. I just don't like it. I don't enjoy it. So I I do a lot of digital coloring primarily because that's what clients will request because they are saying that they want that look. I always offer if you want something in color and I do a lot of black and white work. So sometimes it is fully traditional because I'm just doing it in any way.
00:16:20
Speaker
But i do always offer if someone want something in full color i can do it digitally or i can do it traditionally i am comfortable finishing it either way and i show them examples of both of them they let me know what they prefer so do you find one to be faster to work with the digital versus traditional.
00:16:38
Speaker
Um,
Challenges in Writing for RPGs and Comics
00:16:40
Speaker
it depends on what I'm doing. I've, I've gotten faster at digital at this point. Um, just cause you don't have the limitations of like, if I'm, if I'm coloring something in, uh, like on paper, I have to actually like physically take my hand and fill in every space. Whereas on a computer, I can just be like, click select.
00:17:04
Speaker
flood tool. I suppose that does seem faster. Right. And then, you know, if I'm working in like a wet medium, I have to wait for stuff to dry at different points. And I suppose edits are probably easier digitally too. If they're like, we need you to tweak the color, you can just go change that.
00:17:26
Speaker
Exactly. And actually that doing that actually informed the way that I do all of my digital coloring work at this point when I was still not very when I was still like not at all good at digital coloring. But people were asking me to do it.
00:17:41
Speaker
I had a whole methodology that was very slow and was not very conducive to edits. And then at a certain point, someone was like, hey, I want to have you do an illustration of this character, but I'm going to use them as sprites almost, where I'm going to just reuse them a bunch of times, but I want them in different colors. So take that same character and then just change their armor color a bunch of different ways.
00:18:10
Speaker
very mortal combat for those who want a dated reference for color swapped palettes. And so then I I developed like a completely different way of coloring in order to make that easier. And that's now what I use all the time. And it goes a lot faster. So wow. And ended up working. I until I had started publishing and was doing my own quote unquote art direction.
00:18:36
Speaker
Uh, I did not realize all the steps and work that go into making art. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I took art classes in high school and middle school and I was a decent draw artist. That's the word. Wow. I'm a professional podcast. Drawer. I'm a writer. I know words.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so, well, I experimented with those mediums and I was competent for, you know, somebody who only did it for class for two semesters a year. Right.
00:19:16
Speaker
the way art is produced in a class versus how art is produced for the real world or sort of commercial or physical consumption is very different. There are things to consider like ink coverages and what colors are printable. And those aren't things a lot of people who aren't artists know about or think about or consider.
00:19:39
Speaker
Right and that's I think something that I run into occasionally is from an art direction standpoint that I find frustrating is that I'll ask people like what are the specs for this image? Sure. When I'm creating it like what and by which I mean what size do you want it what aspect ratio do you want it because it doesn't make sense for me to produce something at
00:20:05
Speaker
to produce something at like the size of a standard sheet of paper, eight and a half by 11. If you're going to reproduce it in the book as an image that's going to end up being like a one inch square. Sure. That makes no sense because whatever I do, a lot of that detail is going to be lost. The composition probably won't lend itself to being that small. It'll look muddied because it's too detailed.
00:20:26
Speaker
Right, because it's too detailed for the size that it is. And sometimes I'll ask specifically, what size is this going to be reproduced at? How big is it going to be? What aspect ratio is it? Is it a factor of two by three? Is it a square? Is it one by one? What is that? And a lot of times people give you answers that they think are helpful and they're not.
00:20:54
Speaker
Not to call anyone out, but do you have a anonymous example of something like that, maybe? Yeah, so I've gotten people that will be like, oh, yeah, it's a it's a full page illustration. And I'm like, which I would assume is a like a letter size. Right. Right. And eight point by by eleven portrait. Sure. That's a reasonable assumption. And then they stick it in a nine by six book.
00:21:21
Speaker
Okay, which smaller, but you probably won't lose as much detail as if they got even smaller. Nine by six is not the same aspect ratio. It's a three by one ratio, or two by three, sorry, it'd be two by three. Right. Whereas a letter size is not. Right. What, the three quarter aspect ratio roughly? Yeah, yeah. So that's- And so it warps it, or else you have bleed and you lose the edges.
00:21:47
Speaker
Right. They have to crop it weird or they have to put like a little white or black bar at the top or bottom or whatever stuff like that happens all the time. And sometimes it's that, and I try to, if I'm actually involved in the production and project planning stage, then I try to figure out really early on, like we need to decide early on what is the final form factor we're working with here because everything visual is going to have to be built off of that.
00:22:13
Speaker
That makes sense. Yeah. So that sort of thing. And also a file, oh, file, file formatting. That's a fun one too. Are we talking like, is it a JPEG? Is it a TIF? Is that what you would say? Yeah. Cause I'll ask people like, Hey, what do you want for a file? And they're like, uh, you know, just send me a file. And I'm like,
00:22:34
Speaker
but what do you want for a file? What does it need to be? Historically, I've used TIFFs for people who scan in their art. For some digital art, we get Adobe Illustrator files or whatever, which we can export as, like a JPEG or a PNG, all of which seem to work as long as the resolution is fine.
00:22:59
Speaker
which to me would seem to be the key case, would be the resolution more than the actual file extension.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and it depends too. What are you going to be putting it into? What program are you using to edit this on your end? I don't know what you're doing on your end, buddy. You got to tell me. Which makes sense. Whereas, for example, I use
Influence of 'Xenozoic' on Amanda's Work
00:23:20
Speaker
the affinity suite of tools because they're a one-time purchase. I'm not a professional, so I need something I can use, but I don't need to pay for something on an ongoing basis. Right.
00:23:30
Speaker
And so I can open things like AI files or I can make edits to JPEGs or TIFFs or PNGs. But if I was using something like GIMP, G-I-M-P, which is a very common freeware image editing program, it doesn't do all of those things. Right. And that's exactly the thing. And then sometimes, too, people will try to do stuff with images that they don't let me know they're going to try to do with them. And then they just come back and tell me, oh, it didn't work.
00:23:58
Speaker
Because they'll be like, oh, well, I wanted to take this character and just have them like free floating on like a on like a colored background. And but then they don't they don't tell me that. So I don't provide them with a transparent file, like a transparent background file. And then they either come back and are like.
00:24:15
Speaker
Uh, it didn't work or they try to transparent to fight themselves and they butcher my illustration. And then no one's happy. Which makes sense. So as an artist. In a freelance position like this, would you prefer that the commissioner of the work generally a publisher, I will soon. Right. Ask you these questions that they don't know.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I'm always happy. Like, I know some people get kind of testy about like, you're a professional, too. You should know what's going on. Like, no, not everybody knows everything. I have blind spots when it comes to technical stuff, especially. There's stuff that I just don't.
00:25:00
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know about technical things. There's plenty of places where my knowledge base is not that thorough. And the best way to find out is to ask. And if it's something that I know the answer to and I understand better than you do, I'm happy to help and make your life easier. Because the other thing is that most people in the game design, like the level of game design industry that we operate in, most of us are not
00:25:28
Speaker
like full-time professionals doing this most of us do not have i mean you are but you are i guess arguably i am
00:25:41
Speaker
or as much as I am, probably. Probably. A lot of people, this is not the thing that they have primarily sure developed as far as their skills go. A lot of them have other completely unrelated day jobs. A lot of them have completely unrelated backgrounds. And so, you know, I don't expect someone whose day job is as an English teacher.
00:26:09
Speaker
to understand everything about image formatting, like, because there's no reason for them to write. Like, that's not a thing that would have come up in their everyday life before trying to embark on this project, which makes sense. So if somebody wanted to learn about this, at least to be, you know, conversationally proficient with the artists they're working with, let's say, what would be some good resources? I imagine there's YouTube channels that might have information
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Are there books? Like, where should they be looking? I mean, a lot of that kind of stuff, you can find a lot of resources available as far as, like you said, YouTube videos. Lots of people upload different YouTube videos on how to use these different programs. A lot of the work that I did on my YouTube channel was actually about effective communication with artists. But I don't update my YouTube channel anymore.
00:27:08
Speaker
Well, maybe you should do a once per year like rehash or wrap up. Right. Of common terms, like, for example, DPI. I didn't know DPI to understand how it relates to printing or the difference between RGB and CYMK. Yeah, I think that- Poor listener. If you don't know what these mean, it's okay. I probably couldn't tell you if you put me on the spot.
00:27:31
Speaker
Oh, I love RGB versus CMYK because I love getting into like the the deep wild weeds of like how how, you know, the actual like science of light and color works and how it's not how you think it does. So DPI is easy. That's resolution or dots per square inch. So when you have a fourth each is referring to DPI. Right. And so the higher resolution, the more DPI, pretty easy.
00:28:00
Speaker
You generally for print, you want a 300 dpi print file because that is what gives you the best sort of printing on the paper. Right. Higher is sort of wasted. Lower can come out looking fuzzy or muddy. So RGB stands for red, blue and green, and it's a printing method for ink coverage or like blending colors. No. What is it? Our RGB is RBG is is the
00:28:32
Speaker
is the way that light behaves. Those are the primary for light mixing. So that's what you see on your computer screen. So if something's in RBG, that's the color that you're going to see on a computer screen, on a phone screen. Those colors, a lot of those colors only exist in light. They are not reproducible in pigment.
00:28:57
Speaker
And so some of your like really bright neon greens and blues, especially, you can't actually produce those in pigment. They will only look that way on a computer screen. And so they're great for PDF only publications, but you, if you want something to be printed, you have to work in and convert your file to CMYK, which stands for, which stands for, yellow, maroon and black.
00:29:24
Speaker
Oh, you were so close. Magenta. Magenta. Magenta. Aren't Maroon and Magenta the same? Can you tell I'm not an artist? Because I assume they're the same. They are super not. All right. See, I got nothing. I know nothing, folks. This is why I'm a writer or not a drawer. Magenta is like a hot purpley pink. Okay. And Maroon is like a dark brownish red. Yeah, the dark brownish red. Fair enough.
00:29:48
Speaker
So CYMK is the printing color mix you'd want to use because those are the inks that are used to form the colors. Those are the inks that are used
RPG Experiences and Creativity in Games
00:30:00
Speaker
in printing. Those are the primary colors for printing.
00:30:05
Speaker
Adding those together on top of a white background is how you get all of the colors that are possible to be printed. And that's why it's important if you know that work is going to be printed that you work in CMYK even from the very beginning because otherwise you're like, ah, yes, this looks wonderful. And then you go to print it and it doesn't look at all the same because you used colors that don't physically exist in printing.
00:30:29
Speaker
And i assume just for example exporting your file into cymk would adjust it but it's not as good as the art being there from the start exactly and you lose some of that exactly because right will you lose some of the vibrancy and because if you were making decisions like design and color theory decisions based on those colors in.
00:30:50
Speaker
in RBG that can't be reproduced in CMYK, you're actually like, you might end up with something that actually looks completely different that may not harmonize as well that may not just look duller, but may actually just not work the way that you had hoped it would. Interesting. Yeah. See, and these are the things I don't know.
00:31:08
Speaker
Right. So when an artist asked me, I'm just like, it's full of color. It's going to be printed. I don't know to do your thing, artist. You know what? Telling them it's going to be printed is still great. That's great information to have. Excellent. So, you know, we've talked a lot about art, but you also do writing. So let's talk about writing. Unlike myself, who is only a writer, not a drawer drawer. I'm just going to use that the rest of this.
00:31:37
Speaker
So the word drawer is spelled the same as drawer, like in a desk, D-R-A-W-E-R. And so whenever someone says that, I think of a drawer on a desk or a cabinet. Maybe I won't be using that anymore. Draftsmen. There we go. Is the word for a person who draws.
00:32:03
Speaker
That's probably a better word, although I do like the absurdity of drawer. So let's talk about writing. So you both write a comic, but you also do writing for RPGs.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yes, I might start crying if we talk about writing. No, we don't have to. My goal is not to have you on here, to have everybody hear you weep. No, I'm in the middle of writing an adventure and writing the next chapter for my comic and I'm struggling.
00:32:37
Speaker
It is. They are. I've written a comic and I've written many RPGs and they are completely different skill sets and many, many. So very different. So very different. So what do you what do you find is transferable between the two mediums and what do you find isn't.
00:33:01
Speaker
Very little is transferable between them. So I mean, I guess the thing is like just approaching this from a storytelling perspective. They're both different forms of storytelling. You still need to have a clear goal as far as what you want the
00:33:23
Speaker
audience to experience in mind in either of them. You have like a you have a story that you're trying to get them to get through. You have, you know, an emotional arc you want to take them on and what you want them to experience. But the ways that you achieve that are, of course, going to be completely different between the two. And so the most important thing to keep in mind in both of them is what am I trying to achieve here? What is the experience I want the audience to have
00:33:52
Speaker
But, you know, from there, they're they're two very different. Sure. Two very different experiences, because like in an RPG, it's like, OK, well, I have these these road marks laid out for you, these landmarks laid out for you. And I have the different places you're going to go. But what you're going to do when you get there and how you're going to experience that and what decisions you're going to make and which direction that leads you in from there, that's a not in my control.
00:34:21
Speaker
Right. Whereas you can make your comic characters do whatever you want. Exactly. I make obligated to that. No, I make my my comic characters do precisely what I want them to do to an extent. Occasionally, they're like, no, we're not doing that. That's not what we do. So.
00:34:41
Speaker
Speaking of art and writing, you a while ago, at least a year, probably more, posted a comic on Facebook called Xenozoic, I believe. Oh, yes. Xenozoic, which I went out and bought based on your recommendation and read and loved Sipping On My Shell from the next one. Oh, good. It's so good. It's fantastic. And now you said the writer-illustrator was a teacher or a mentor of some sort.
00:35:11
Speaker
Right. So Mark Schultz, who did xenozoic tales, also known as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which tells you everything you need to know about it. Mark Schultz, he was a frequent guest at the Savannah College of Art and Design where I got my degree. So they had like, they would have different events throughout the year where they would bring in different professionals to like,
00:35:38
Speaker
offer workshops and do portfolio reviews and that kind of thing. And Mark Schultz was a very frequent guest. He was at several of these. And so I did get to take several of his workshops. He was always extremely kind and extremely generous with his advice and very patient and very encouraging.
00:35:59
Speaker
um and I got to do a portfolio review with him and the thing with portfolio reviews when you're a student being reviewed by professionals and I understand this a lot more now being a professional and looking back on some of my student work is that it's like there's only so much they're really going to be able to tell you because you're still you still have so much learning to do like you still are not as far along in the journey as
00:36:22
Speaker
nowhere near as far as they are but you're not really at a professional level even like a beginner professional level yet when you're still in school and so a lot of their advice that you get from professionals when you're doing these portfolio reviews is very wrote very much like.
00:36:37
Speaker
Oh, well, you need to make sure that you're, you know, practicing your anatomy more. It's like, yes, thank you. I have heard this many times that was maybe not as valuable as it could have been. But Mark Schultz was really great in that he looked through my portfolio and he said, he's like, well, you know that you need to practice just drawing more. You need to practice, you know, anatomy perspective, all this stuff. He's like, you know that already. You've heard that a million times. I'm like, you're right, I have.
00:37:08
Speaker
But then he was like, oh, but you're specifically wanting to work primarily in ink, which is what he did. Like, that's his primary mode of his primary medium. And so he offered me a lot of like, took a couple of my pieces and pointed out specific things that I was doing and offered me a lot of really tailored advice about how I could control the composition better and how I could play.
00:37:34
Speaker
how I could actually use different inking techniques to enhance the compositions and to enhance the way that I directed a viewer's eye around a composition. And I was like, oh my gosh, actual really good feedback. Thank you, Mr. Schultz.
00:37:50
Speaker
So that's great. Yeah. He did end up coming back to SCAD and actually teaching for a quarter, but that was after I had graduated. Okay. So I did ask to sit in on one of the classes. Like I just sent him an email and was like, Hey, do you mind if I just sit in on a class? And he's like, yeah, sure. No problem. So I sat in on a class.
00:38:10
Speaker
where he was doing like a watercolor demonstration for that class, I think. And it was really good. He was still really, really awesome. And I learned a lot just in that watercolor demonstration of like an hour more than I had ever learned messing around with watercolors on my own. And then afterwards, I showed him my first book, my first volume of Age of Night. I was like, oh, hey, yeah, I think I gave him a copy of it. I was like, yeah, you can have this. You know, you were really encouraging to me several years ago when I did a portfolio review and he looked
00:38:39
Speaker
He flipped through it and he's like, oh, yeah, I remember this. That's so cool to see that you actually finished the first book of it. I was like, oh, great. You remembered me. Yeah. For those of you who haven't read the xenozoic, Mark's art is this very heavy black and white ink style. It's very reminiscent to me of early Frisetta or Alex Raymond. Yes, it's kind of a foster
00:39:07
Speaker
Yes, his drawing style has a lot of a lot of similarities with that. And his ink, he has a lot of really heavy black and white ink, but he also does a fair amount of dry brushing to give it a little bit more like softness and depth in some places. It's a very evocative visual style. It's gorgeous. Yes. Zena Zoak was a revelation. I was very glad I picked it up off your recommendation because it sits on my comic shelf and I refer to it frequently. Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
Folks, go read Xenozoic if you get the chance. It's worth it. Yes. You can get a full omnibus compilation of it from Flesk Publishing. It's so good. That is what I got. Yes, the big thick brown covered one. Yeah.
00:39:54
Speaker
I love it. So, uh, we're coming up on time here, Amanda, but I have a couple more questions. One is going to put you on the spot. Nothing malicious, but what is a question you've always wanted to be asked in an interview that you've never been asked. We all have these questions we like answering, but nobody ever asks us. I know I do. So what is yours? No, my brain does this thing where if you ask me a direct question like that, I can't think of it. All right. Well,
00:40:23
Speaker
I'll I'll I'll think of it later and I'll write you a blog post about it. There we go. Make sure to link it in the notes. I kind of sprung that on you. That's on me. Unfortunately, there's no there's no visual component to this. So people won't get to see the face I made when you imagine Muppet. It was disturbingly Muppet like it's true. But you could say that about Amanda in general.
00:40:48
Speaker
This is true. So, Amanda, we've had many fun times playing role-playing games together. Yes.
00:40:56
Speaker
Specifically, we played some tiny supers. There was our wildly interesting tiny dungeon campaign. Oh, my gosh. I have sort of still repressing actively. That thing went so off the rails. It was when it was good. It was real good. When it was good, it was real good. And and the party was just bound and determined to make it not good.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yes. But, you know, we we've known each other for close to a decade now. We've worked together. We played games together. I appreciate you coming on and chatting with me about art and games and the art of game design and the game design in art, I suppose. Yeah, be poorly poetic about it. Again, I'm a writer, folks. This is what you get. Do you have any questions you would like to ask me?
00:41:47
Speaker
Oh gosh, I mean all the time, yes, but I usually just pester you with them when they come to me. That's true. Do you have any that would be beneficial to our listeners maybe? No, no, no, my brain's doing the thing again, sorry. That's fine, I understand. I'm not helpful in that way. It's okay. I can answer a direct question and then go off for like a 12-minute rant. I'm not good in open-ended questions.
00:42:14
Speaker
Who are some of the artists who were most influential on you? Oh, okay. Just a quick bullet list. That one I can do. Edward Gory. Oh, good choice. Yes, Joe Maduera was very influential in the comic side of things. Also James O'Barr.
00:42:32
Speaker
Oh, I just reread The Crow like a weekend ago. So good. I had forgot how unrelentingly itself it is. Yes, he is also one of the people that I've met in person who was surprisingly, thankfully, incredibly kind and generous and just super nice. That's wonderful. Yeah, he was great. And what are some of the biggest game influences on you and how you like your role playing games?
00:43:02
Speaker
Oh, OK. So I. Of course, obviously, I like most pretty much everyone else got into games with Dungeons and Dragons because that's what you do. Pretty common. That's pretty common. I also was a larper for a long time. Well, that's fun. Any particular kind of lark.
00:43:27
Speaker
I played a lot of Cthulhu live LARP's, but my my friends also had just like a home brew LARP system. And I think the thing that was the most influential as far as that goes is that it really allowed me to just embrace the inherent silliness of the fact that we are just playing pretend. Sure. And to not to not let any kind of amount of self seriousness get in the way of enjoying the experience we're collectively having here.
00:43:57
Speaker
That makes sense. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. I did not know you larped. I larped so much in college and immediately afterwards. I could count on one hand the number of times I've been involved in a larp.
00:44:12
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, we did. And we did a lot of like a very, I guess you could call it like Nordic style LARP's where it was very freeform rules like freeform rules like and also very props minimal like we would for some of the Cthulhu LARP's we would spring on, you know, making one really good monster prop or like a handful of like, you know, fake wounds or whatever. But most of the time we really didn't do like the heavy fantasy garban
00:44:42
Speaker
weapons and stuff because that was just more than we had the time or resources for. Sure. College students are known for rolling in it, so that makes sense. Right. One last question. Do you listen to music while you draw? Yes. Lyrics or no lyrics? When I'm drawing lyrics, when I'm writing, it has to be instrumental. Sure. Okay. Interesting. Well, Amanda,
00:45:11
Speaker
I want to thank you for coming on, for answering my questions, and for being such an engaging guest to speak about art and game design with. Well, thank you so much. I've had a great time. Good. If folks want to find you and your work online, what are some of the best places?
00:45:27
Speaker
So you can find Age of Night at ageofnight.com, which, like I said earlier, is with just an N, no K. You can also find me on the various social medias, usually as either at Age of Night or at Amanda Call Art, which is just my name with the word art after it. And Call is K-A-H-L. That is correct. Okay. The tricky German spelling, sorry.
00:45:56
Speaker
All right. Well, and I believe your print collections of Age of Night are available both on Amazon and drive through comics and drive through RPG. They sure are. They're also available on Skirmisher site, too. Oh, excellent. You've got a few different options there. Excellent. I've read all of Age of Night. I've got all the volumes. At least I did at one point. I think I only is or a fifth one because I went through four. No, you have one through three. I'm working on four right now. OK, then I have one through three. I thought I had. Yeah, I read all the ones I have. Right.
00:46:26
Speaker
I enjoy it very much folks. I give it a wonderful diversionary recommendation. It's great to read on a rainy weekend. Thank you. Which for me is the highest phrase because that's the best time to read. Amanda, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And folks, I am Alan Barr and this has been a Radio Free RPG.