And a quick question for y’all. I’m considering selling a couple of PDFs of character portraits, say 10 images of each class, various poses.
Is this something you’d be interested in? What price would be fair ($2, maybe?) Any preference for layout – I’m thinking one character per page with a full length pose, a character-sheet friendly head-shot and a counter of the same. Maybe a fold-up mini too.
Any ideas gratefully accepted.
DAZ Studio, no postwork.
I can’t say I’d be too interested in the full length poses, or even images of character classes.
What would be nice is small images of various monsters (in ‘generic minion’ and ‘boss’ styles) that I could print onto moo stickers ( http://www.moo.com/products/stickers.php ) and attach to plastic bases to use a cheap miniature substitutes.
I’d probably pay $2 for a pack of 15 different monsters, if there were a couple of there that I planned to use in an upcoming game.
Thanks, David, that’s a great idea.
Maybe I ought to stand by me own words and release a set of Keep on the Shadowfell stand-up renders ……. :D
greywulf – you’re usage of DAZ is very nice; but I have a question. being a technical type, i downloaded DAZ, but found that the base software did not come with any models. Am I missing something? Or can you create new models from scratch using DAZ? It seems like they have a business model where you download the app for free, but then just about everything else is an addon. How easy was it for you to learn how to use their software and – have you used Bryce for landscape? Sorry for the flood.. maybe you should blog about this? =D
I would pay $2 for just about anything, but full length images i think would not be a good route for character portraits. Maybe avatar style headshots, or smaller art that is licensed through creative commons so that other bloggers could reuse the images. Either that or you could release a few generic archetypes and then offer a service like: $50 and I’ll make you four custom portraits of your character at levels 1, 11, 21, and 30. Just an idea. I have no idea how much work that would be.
jonathans last blog post..Welcome to Carnivalia (+ a few tiny blogger tips)
@Jonathon, they’re such good questions that I’ve already answered them, here :) (apologies for the botched image sizes. Imported content from my old blog and I’m too lazy to fix).
In short: DAZ Studio has two download options: one with no content, and one with a few pretty good pieces to get you going. In the post I’ve linked to there’s more links to (lots) more free content too.
You’re right about DAZ’s business model. Getting the app for free is a great teaser to encourage you to buy models, but it’s not the only route to getting figures light etc.
There’s no shortage of good (and bad) free stuff available ShareCG is a good place to start for the free stuff.
DAZ doesn’t have a built-in modeller that you can use to create your own figures – it’s designed as a posing and rendering engine, and a darned good one at that – but DAZ also sell Hexagon, which does just that. Personally though, I’ve never found a need to model something from scratch – it’s always been possible to find or adapt to my needs.
DAZ Studio is no more difficult to use than Photoshop, say. It’s as complex as you want it to be, and most of the time (for simple renders) it’s just a case of select a model, clothe, tweak, pick the lights and camera angle, then render. For example, my Tiefling took all of 15 minutes to set up, and 20 minutes to render – and most of that render time was spend on the hair. Hair /always/ adds to render time.
If you’ve any more questions ,just ask. I could always turn the answer into a blogpost :)
Hope that helps!
Avatar headshots, eh? Hmmmmm. OK, I’m still thinking. Thanks for the input.
And yes, I’ll happily do custom work for $50 :)
Stand up renders of standard monsters would be sweet. KotS set has been done by Fiery Dragon. Although theirs aren’t stand up, they are free. How about maybe get a set going for Scales of War adventure path in Dungeon Magazine? Looks like it might become popular. Might be too specific though.
The consensus seems to be more toward monster images rather than character images so far. That surprises me; I thought Fiery Dragon and Precis Intermedia (I love their Disposable Heroes!) had this all sewn up.
So, to recap: monster paper minis or avatar-style headshots + minis.
Anything else? I’m lovin’ the input, folks!
Personally, I like the idea of using actual 3d mini’s for my PC’s. If the player isn’t happy with the way his/her ‘avatar’ in the game looks, then it affects his/her play style. I’ll let them pick out of my collection or hopefully they buy their own after they roll their character. Gives them an investment in the game itself that way.