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Original Post
One of my continual frustrations with the world is that people don't know how to use experts. There are a great many people who are really really good at something who don't get to use that something. Either they have laymen telling them how to do their job, are misunderstood by everyone or have their work deliberately subverted. I think it's really important to listen to experts on subjects that they understand and to give them free reign as far as their expertise extends.
I've got to stop using a game design blog to recommend reading webcomics, but go read smbc, it's a treat. It can be tricky to know how far to trust an expert, with my spinal problems knowing someone is 99% accurate isn't enough accuracy for me, given that my ability to ever walk again is on the line. Still, I generally hold that it's best to let people do their thing rather than trying to micromanage them.
So when it comes to artists I generally try to state what I want clearly and then interfere as little as possible. Even if I wasn't colourblind, I have no eye for composition, knowing when you can't do something is as important as knowing when you can. When we sent out instructions for box art I was happy with giving Ludwin a broad brief. Emalee wrote the base brief and I just appended a list of the laws that the robots might be trying to follow to the email and said "Draw the robots attempting whichever one or combination of these that you reckon would look best." It's scary handing over a part of the project as important as the box art to someone else and trusting them to get it right, but a week or two later this concept sketch came back:
I hope that everyone who's been following this project, playtesting or who just happened by today can agree that this is an amazing direction for the box art. Not only is it absolutely perfect, but there's no way in hell I could have described something better if I'd insisted on a "Draw this here, draw that there" level of description. I feel good about how we approached this part of the project and how it's turning out. That's really all I wanted to say today, I know it's a third a length of the usual post, but I think trusting your experts is an useful message in most walks of life and I really just wanted to show off that sketch.
A collection of posts by game designer Gregory Carslaw, including mirrors of all of his blogs maintained for particular projects. A complete index of posts can be found here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/58777/index
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