Board games are a lot easier to make than a computer game. I can sit down, build all the parts, design all the mechanics, and do all the art myself. But wow is that time consuming. I worked for a solid month getting Taipan to a playable state for the NaGa DeMon last month. And now I feel like I am floundering. This is a dangerous time for me during the game development cycle. If I don't stay focused I will loose interest and start working on something else. Once that happens I loose all my steam I had for the last game I was building.
I just got a bunch of games and we are supposed to play one of them (Mansions of Madness) tomorrow night. So I cleared off my table and put Taipan in a box with the intent of setting up and learning the new game. As I did this, I thought to myself, this is how all of my ideas end. I put it up with every intent to start working on it again right away, but it never happens. Since I stopped working on Taipan, I already have two new ideas I want to start building. A city building game and an Assassin game.
A long time ago, I was an artist. I worked for Blizzard North working on the Diablo games as an Animator, Modeler, and Designer. At some point I started doing more design and less art and eventually my art skills atrophied. I don't get much opportunity to do art on a regular basis anymore, but my current job is giving me some artistic outlets that has re-fired my old love of doing art. This past weekend I had some free time, so I got to do some art tests. Here is the progression of my art skills coming back to life after almost a decade of cobwebs had built up:
 |
| Early free hand drawing with no reference. (5 minutes) |
 |
| Painting of a military captain from the 1800's (10 minutes) |
 |
| Cheesy girl from Halloween costume picture. (15 minutes) |
 |
| Photo of an actor from a Hong Kong movie (25 minutes) |
 |
| Painting of a Merchant from the 1800's (4 hours) |
I will undoubtably get a bit faster with each new image I do, but I have 60 unique cards that all need art. Lets do that math and assume my current time as an average: 60x4 = 240 hours. Not to mention the game board, and box art. If I were to do all the art myself, based on how much free time I have, it would take me about 240/4 + Flex Time = 60 days to get the game done. I will not have that kind patience and this project will cease to make progress.
I tried some quick solutions where I took pictures I was referencing and automated the process with photoshop. Here are the results:
 |
| Paining of a Captain from the 1800's (5 Minutes) |
 |
| Paining of a Port in Japan (5 Minutes) |
 |
| Paining of a Junk hit by a storm (5 Minutes) |
So now I have the time down to a very reasonable time but there are some problems.
1.) Each on of these images took a long time to find. Color images from the 1800's are just not that common. Most are black and white etchings or portrait paintings of nobility in Europe.
2.) I don't think these look as good as the last portrait I did. The richness of color and cartoony quality of the Merchant I feel looks a lot better than the automated washed out image of the Captain.
3.) And this is the big one. I have no idea where some of these images came from. They could be copyrighted and I could be sued for using them. Board Games already don't make enough money to make a living without having to worry about legal issues.
Dangerous times indeed!
