I am definitely buying the LevelUp Bestiary when it comes available, but I will be honest and tell you that the dragon art shown so far as really turned me off and made question my purchase plans. However, your excellent monster design/lore and art like the couatl and grick preview have swayed to stay in the purchase column.
Disclaimer: I am looking at this art from the lens of my experience as a digital artist myself, so I fully admit that my opinion is just my opinion and not objective fact at all, especially when it comes to subjectivity of art.
The reason the dragon art doesn't sit well with me is because it looks like they took their rough pencils, and just added a few layers of color beneath the pencils layer, and then sparingly added a few dabs of hue/saturation in random places.
I can't recall that ever being done in digital art. 99% of colored digital art follows one of the following:
1. rough pencils, (then add an inking layer, but not always), then add layers on top of that for color, lighting, hue/saturation, etc, eventually hiding the pencil layer completely.
2. rough pencils, then a new layer on top for inking/line work. Then all color/lighting/hue/saturation goes between the layers. So you see the color and the line work, but not the rough pencils.
Point being, you really don't see the rough pencils layer in finished digital art.
Maybe with some watercolor, but I can't think of anything else. And while the dragon art might not
technically have the pencil layer showing, it looks like with the way the lines are done.
Again, this may be intentional, and may be their style, and be what Morrus wants. I'm just saying that doing it that way is not the norm. And that's why it throws it off for
me. (again, not speaking for anyone else)
It it as good as WOTC? Yeah, I guess so. Only because WoTC has some really questionable art as well that has widely been criticized. There is a lot of art I do like in Level UP (including some of that in this preview). So while I haven't seen anything that rivals work like Tyler, overall Level up has some good art, and some I don't like. Just like WoTC in that regard. That's just one of those things you have to accept as an AD. No matter what art you include, people will like some, and people will dislike some.
But I agree with you, I like it better than the MM death knight. The same with the levelUp couatl too.
