Yeah.

Did I Waste My Time?

It’s very possible. Yeah, that spread up there? 50 hours.

Let me explain.

I am working on the layout of my game, Blightfall. This is my first time doing layout. I’ve learned all of Affinity Suite to do this. I was told I didn’t have to learn the whole suite from multiple people. I was told Affinity Publisher would be enough. It wasn’t. I’m a sicko.

I’m also doing a lot of this stuff on my own and all of my money has been kidnapped by family/life/capitalism/an addiction to buying TTRPG books. Darn. So while I did hire for some jobs (cover art, intro video, etc.), interior art is all on me. There are a couple illustrations in the book I was able to manage myself, but the rest is photo/artbashing.

That up there? One singular image that I split into two, got rid of the middle and started coloring. The original:

But It’s … Coloring?

I know. I know. You think it would be simple. You think I could use the paint bucket tool and just dump the paint in with a large number of clicks.

But NO. I think, because of the nature of digitizing the art and bleeding paint/ink/whatever, it isn’t pure black against pure white. There’s tones of gray to the transition, and paint bucketing it would look like garbage. Would you have been able to tell? Of course!*

*I actually don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what I tell myself to justify my actions. Let’s take a closer look:

This was my very first bout of ‘coloring’ and you can see the vague borders. I got better at digital coloring, especially because I had to paint on a pixel layer without any borders to stop me from coloring outside the lines, and using a mouse and keyboard. But hot damn, those pixels. At a certain point, I got so detailed and unforgiving that I started modifying individual pixels to get them the perfect color. There were parts that I felt didn’t work well in a color image vs black and white so I edited minute shapes to help with the overall composition. Insane. I eventually had to find a balance, and I think the effort was worth it.*

*I have no idea if the effort was worth it. In the end, those images get shrunk down to fit on a single A5 spread.

Maybe I could have taken it easy? Maybe it would have been fine? I think part of this process is learning that I’m the type of person who expects a high-level of quality, along with all the pros and cons that go with it. So each of those images took 20-25 hours to complete, and I had a whole lot of youtube going in the background while I did it, especially going through the backlog of The Weekly Scroll.

I could have also found some other public domain image, did some minor editing, and threw it on the spread and moved on with my life. Or found an image that didn’t have a million white areas to color. But again, I think I have to accept that this is the person I am.

I do wonder what professional graphic design/layout people do in this type of a situation. Assuming that they aren’t using modern art they paid for, stock images, etc. Are they also obsessive like me? Does it truly add anything to the work? Or are they well adjusted and spending the rest of their time doing other things? I don’t know.

Now, there is a very good chance that there is a way to color those images much more easily (if someone suggests AI, I’m going to throttle them). If you have that information, please let me know, and then bury yourself as I don’t know that my emotional state is secure enough to take that blow without recourse.

It’s Weird to Talk About This

I feel nervous sharing this, even though this will barely be read. Nervous that people will think it’s dumb or self-indulgent. But I also need to get better about talking about the game. No one can hear about your work if you don’t talk about it.

The other issue I deal with, besides expectations for high quality, are the gross, icky feelings that come about from discussing ‘your thing’. It doesn’t feel humble, and borders on crass (for me, not for a well-adjusted person).

As we get close to February, if I get into Backerkit’s Zinetopia, I’m going to need to get a whole lot more comfortable talking about the game. I’ll try not to make it an obscene monument of self-aggrandizement. I still want to talk about other things in the TTRPG space, but I’ve poured so much time and effort into this game that I’m not sure if it can be reasonably be expected for me to not bring it up.

Bear with me. And I love you. Platonically.