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Scarlet Petal
383006
>>341351
>My personal criteria for quest art: It should be clean, and it should be obvious what's going on even if you don't read the narration. That's the bare minimum for art that actually adds something to a quest.
This is so retarded I don't know what to say. Your 'bare minimum' is probably never met by any quests with images on the board. Doing clean, dynamic art that conveys the action is definitely what all artists doing quests should be aiming for, but you seem to be ignoring the medium that you are viewing in your criteria.
Art doesn't tell the story all by itself unless there is almost no complexity whatsoever. The art adds mood, character, and style to the text of the quest - each part should compliment the other. A quest is more like a comic book than an individual picture and individual story running side by side (and yes, I know that there are some comics with no text whatsoever, but I think you get what I'm saying). It should form a unitary whole.
When there is a drastic disconnect not done for humor, then you do have art actively detracting from the quest - when there is an unintentional mismatch between the art style or quality and the type of story that is being told. Alternatively, if the art is bad and frustrates attempts to understand what is going on, that would obviously also be art that detracts. It has certainly occurred on our board more than once.
I would say that several quests have suffered from one or the other of these problems, but I'd say it isn't even the majority.
>My personal criteria for quest writing: It should be at least somewhat dynamic, and if the second person perspective is used extra care should be taken to not fall into the trap of flat narration.
I think you are ignoring the medium to some degree here as well, especially since your definition of narration that isn't 'flat' is apparently 'extremely purple.' Quest authors have to understand that they are building a story that promotes interaction with an audience. Overly descriptive text can hurt a quest, and in quests where the suggesters are hearing the thoughts of the protagonist, the text should reflect the way that natural people think. The text should be more like a comic than a story because people are going to try to take as much away from the picture as they can. The text should add, not subtract, from what is going on. If the mood, style, and action are relatively clear from the image, long, flowery descriptions will just be distracting.
Unlike what you look for, the author is far more effective if both the image and the text compliment each other and neither are superfluous.
>My personal criteria for quest stories: Show some originality, you're investing your time here, the settings and basic stories should reflect that.
I agree with you completely, 100% here. It seems to me that most of your real criticism is with stories you find uninteresting, unoriginal or bland. That is completely fair. The art and text should compliment the style of the story told, though, and sometimes that will mean simple artwork and childish descriptions for something that is meant to be lighthearted and silly (like the Giganox thing) or more atmospheric artwork with present-tense stream-of thought text (like Gnoll's new thing). I'm not even saying either of these quests are great, but neither has writing or art that detracts from the story they're trying to tell. When you strip things of their context and criticize parts of something that should be intended to be viewed as a whole, you just look like an ass.
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