SyntheticGerbil Posted March 24, 2009 Author Share Posted March 24, 2009 Hooray! Someone else has finally read it and agrees with me. It's nice to own, for sure, but it's a wasted opportunity Most definitely. I don't think another book with company art, especially early art, is ever going to come out. It's kind of sad that Rob Smith had all this access to major art works, and only pick and chose a few, some being questionable, many being labeled artist unknown. Too much rings sloppy writing and research, but none of this really makes the purchase of the book a waste. That's what's weird about this. One thing: It was a single comment and if it's true then I feel sorry for Barwood -- it's not really a knock. Well this is my fault for posting this at work and not going through the book to make sure. I remember the quote as annoying Hal Barwood, and the book made it seem like Grim Fandango was just this sort of pet project that went over budget and was annoying the whole company. Again, I'm posting this at work, and I'd have to go back and check, but I got the general feeling that the writer had a bias towards sinking money in a game like that but was more than happy to talk about all these multitudes of Star Wars games that were cancelled but SURE to be innovative. I really got the feeling that this book was written by someone who jumped on the Lucasarts bandwagon because of KOTOR, Rebel Assault, or Dark Forces II, because there's all this enthusiastic talk about innovation, hurdles that had to be crossed, and original ideas when it comes to Star Wars content from '97 on, yet he shallowly covers the early titles. Is it because it would be silly to print a hardcover book if it were not padded with 100 more pages not really pertaining to close to LucasArts history? Okay, before I ramble some more, I guess I'm just going to go home and post some things that bothered me with the book as reference, just because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thrik Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 It is a bit annoying. While I do like the book, there's clearly a big missed opportunity here and presumably there's loads of additional concept art and such for Mojo's choice games that the author had access to but didn't include. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyntheticGerbil Posted March 24, 2009 Author Share Posted March 24, 2009 Where did you hear that from? My dream book would be just a book containing all the original art that was scanned for Monkey Island II and games afterwards in full, all original character concept giving each artist full credit, page spreads of things like the Zak McKracken Newspaper and Maniac Mansion bulletin Board, all promotional artwork found in the Adventurer and elsewhere (except the Sam and Max comics since those are in the new Surfin' the Highway Jake had a major part in putting together), and showing whatever storyboards there are to be had. I have a few for Curse of Monkey Island in the Prima strategy guide that came with my game long ago, and there's the really rough ones for Grim Fandango and CMI in the Rogue Book, but eh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thrik Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 I didn't hear it from anywhere, it's just some relatively reasonable speculation. If he had access to such a vast archive of the original art, presumably there's a lot more of it there that he would have passed over. Unless LucasArts just cherry-picked the ones they wanted him to include and sent them over? I don't know how it worked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATMachine Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 There is clearly more art in the LucasArts archives than was included in the book - one of the publisher's ads for Rogue Leaders contained an additional Steve Purcell concept painting for the MI2 box cover that wasn't included in the finished book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laserschwert Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 There is clearly more art in the LucasArts archives than was included in the book - one of the publisher's ads for Rogue Leaders contained an additional Steve Purcell concept painting for the MI2 box cover that wasn't included in the finished book. Got a pic of that? And by the way, did you get my PM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATMachine Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Got a pic of that? And by the way, did you get my PM? Got your PM and sent you one of the scans - but I had trouble removing all the dust specks in the image as they come from a printed page in a magazine and the dot pattern makes it hard to hide injudicious use of the clone stamp. I know you are something of a Photoshop guru so I'll leave that work to you. As for the unseen MI2 box art concept, here it is. The image wasn't scanned in by me so I don't have access to a higher-res scan but here you go: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laserschwert Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Thanks for the scans, they're perfect!! As for the MI2-image, yeah, I remeber seeing it as well... man, it's a shame for the missed opportunity to bring more adventure-artworks out of the archives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_Q45 Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Now we need a new special book! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Megakles Posted June 3, 2009 Share Posted June 3, 2009 Now we need a new special book! I would love a book that it just about Monkey Island. Rouge Leaders was good but I want more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_Q45 Posted June 3, 2009 Share Posted June 3, 2009 What I want is a book about MI. A story. Like a roman to SW Republic Commando. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laserschwert Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 What I want is a book about MI. A story. Like a roman to SW Republic Commando. You know, the English word is "novel" not "roman" ;-) But, oh, what a coincidence, I've just got these babies printed a few days ago (the texts are taken from LucasArts Fiction): I admit, the back covers were a rush job, just to get the thing printed as quickly as possible... Unfortunately the service I had these printed at (epubli.de) didn't allow to design a spine, and so it's just text, which size depends on the page-count... not too nice. Each book starts with the game's logo... ... followed by some copyright stuff and a table of contents. The first page of "The Secret of Monkey Island". I've included the chapter screens from MI2... ... and MI3. Plus I've decided to include MI2's post-credits lines. I'm definitely gonna get the other novels printed too, and probably rework the covers of these ones as well. I'll try to contact the authors, and if they don't mind, I'll upload my PDF-files here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_Q45 Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 @Schwert Uh, sorry. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Tingler Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 The word 'wow' comes to mind! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_Q45 Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 I´m just thinking about the Rogue Book, lately. What was the reason? And why now? It´s a theorie but could it be that this was cuz for the SEs, TOMI and so on? I mean there were concepts in it. And for example the concept arts of MI 2 can make it into the MI 2:SE... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyntheticGerbil Posted July 13, 2009 Author Share Posted July 13, 2009 Haha, I think some guy just wanted to write about Star Wars games and had to include the adventure games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Longcat Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 I'm definitely gonna get the other novels printed too, and probably rework the covers of these ones as well. I'll try to contact the authors, and if they don't mind, I'll upload my PDF-files here. That would be sooooo cool man! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThunderPeel2001 Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 You look like you know your stuff, LS... how is it possible that you didn't know you couldn't print to RGB? It's very confusing. I would have literally been fired if I didn't know that... but you clearly have a professional's knowledge and skill otherwise. Do you know about 40/40/40/100 and ink coverage and stuff like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Tingler Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 Can anyone recommend a good English site that prints books like this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s-island Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 Wow, you printed chariset's fanfic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plamdi Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 How much did those cost? I WANT I WANT I WANT! Can you upload the files you sent them, pretty please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laserschwert Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 You look like you know your stuff, LS... how is it possible that you didn't know you couldn't print to RGB? It's very confusing. I would have literally been fired if I didn't know that... but you clearly have a professional's knowledge and skill otherwise. Do you know about 40/40/40/100 and ink coverage and stuff like that? I've probably been in some kind of brainstew-mode, as OF COURSE I know you can't print in RGB. I think I just meant that PosterXXL converts any images you send them into RGB, so it wouldn't make sense to send them CMYK-images. Anyway, I've gotta admit that although I know my ways in Photoshop, I know nothing about professional printing (40/40/40/100? Never heard of it...), as that's never been part of my job (I work as a 3D- and video-guy). Hobbywise I don't necessarily have to deal with CMYK, as I can simply print an RGB image and my printer and Photoshop deal with the rest. That said, back on the book topic. The prices were: 10,48 € for MI1 18,12 € for MI2 8,92 € for MI3 12,04 € for MI4 23,43 € for Grim Fandango (but they seem to have lost my order of this one... hope that'll get fixed soon) 7,20 € for Zak McKracken 10,01 € for Full Throttle I'll post some photos of those other ones when I find time. Regarding the PDFs, I still have to rework them a bit, plus I wanted to make better covers, but I'm not sure about that yet. The problem though is, the files were prepared for that specific online printing service (ePubli.de) at the size of A5, a rather untypical format in the US (I guess). So having them printed at a different size would probably not work without the danger of something important cropped off. The alternative would be to actually order the books at ePubli, as they ship to most EU countries. Strangely they don't ship to the USA, although they ship to Canada. Might be a mistake on their page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Tingler Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 That's really cheap! What's the best way to making PDFs? Do you need to buy some Adobe software or is something available freely? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laserschwert Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 There are several free PDF-printers available (once installed you can pick them as your printer, but instead of printing to paper, they print to a file). CutePDF for example. ePubli have another one on their site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plamdi Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 I've probably been in some kind of brainstew-mode, as OF COURSE I know you can't print in RGB. I think I just meant that PosterXXL converts any images you send them into RGB, so it wouldn't make sense to send them CMYK-images. Anyway, I've gotta admit that although I know my ways in Photoshop, I know nothing about professional printing (40/40/40/100? Never heard of it...), as that's never been part of my job (I work as a 3D- and video-guy). Hobbywise I don't necessarily have to deal with CMYK, as I can simply print an RGB image and my printer and Photoshop deal with the rest.I don't understand myself how a CMYK printable image is prepared professionally (considering that you can only view RGB on-screen). The really important thing I keep in mind is that black-levels are far more diverse in print and whites are less. That's one of the problems of the JPEG format - typically it likes to compress black areas more than white areas ... which is fine for screen, but not for print. You can get a good CMYK print from an RGB image ... but as for fully optimizing the print quality by converting to CMYK and tinkering with that - it's certainly something a hobbyiest like myself is incapable to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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