Artists' Guidelines

Several artists have expressed interest in creating artwork for Urbis. I'm very flattered by this, and in response I have created these guidelines to make their work easier. These will likely be refined and changed in the future, so make sure to check back here from time to time...

What is Urbis?

If you came to this page from an external link (like my DeviantArt Gallery), you might not know what exactly Urbis is.

Urbis is a fantasy world for role-playing games I have been developing for nearly three years now. It uses many of the common fantasy tropes, races, and ideas about magic, but it presents a world that has moved beyond the stereotypical Western medieval fantasy world. Instead of living in scattered rural communities, most people live in vast city-states with populations of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people. Instead of regarding magic as something rare and mysterious, society has embraced it and uses it as a form of technology. The general atmosphere can be compared to that of Earth's Industrial Age and the "Steampunk" genre, with magic instead of steam driving an ongoing Industrial Revolution.

There is much more to be said about this setting, of course, and you can find most of it here. At the time of this writing, I have written approximately 75,000 words about this setting, and more is planned. Eventually, I plan to publish this setting as a PDF file and sell it on RPGNow and similar online vendors. But before that happens, there is much to do yet - completing the first draft, playtesting it, getting it edited, layouted - and purchasing good artwork for it.

So, what kind of art is appropriate for Urbis? I'll get to that in a moment. But first...

A Disclaimer

I have heard too many horror stories about gaming companies and unpaid artists, and it would also be unfair to you if you were creating artwork under any sort of misconceptions about this project. Therefore, the following must unfortunately be said:

If you create any artwork for Urbis at this stage, then this in no way constitutes any obligation between us. I will only commission art hire artists, and make the final choices for what art I want to include in the finished project once I have a clear overview of what I do and do not need - and once I feel confident that I can pay for any art I commission. Not before.

I will gladly put up any good art you create on my website - and remove it as soon as you ask for it. You retain all rights to it, and the only thing I can offer in return at this stage is a link from the image to your art gallery.

I am sorry if this sounded harshly, but I do not want to think that you will get money out of this when I can't yet make any promises about that. So please don't be too disappointed if, in the end, I do not choose your art after all - or indeed, the whole project collapses and never gets published. I don't want all your work be for nothing - so for the moment, please only draw something if you enjoy the challenge of doing so, without any regard for possible compensation.

Appropriate Art

Now that that bit of unpleasantness is out of the way, let us concentrate on what kind of art would "fit" into Urbis. First of all, read through the main site to get a good feeling for the world in general - that will make your work a lot easier and (hopefully) will give you plenty of inspiration for your art. Then consider one of the following categories:

Urban Landscapes: The cities of Urbis are grand, with soaring buildings and fantastic architecture. In general, they will vaguely resemble the cities of 19th century Western Europe (though different regions will have different styles of architecture), only on a grander scale - magic can compensate for many of the limitations of conventional 19th century architecture. Above all, the Nexus Towers will soar, gigantic magical constructs bathed in eldritch light which both make the cities possible and all too often prove to be the bane of the poor as well. Individual people, if they appear at all, should be dwarfed by the surrounding scenery.
Keep in mind that despite their resemblance to Earth cities, the cities of Urbis are ultimately based on magic, and not technology. While street lanterns might look similar to the gas lights of old London, their source of illumination is a magical light stone, not gas. While there are trains and trams in this world, they will be drawn by golems made of stone or iron, not coal-powered locomotives.
Street Scenes: Here the buildings fade into the background (though they will always loom large) and the people and how they interact with their environment become the focus of the picture. The most common inhabitants of the cities are humans, but there are also elves, dwarves, hobgoblins and stranger beings. Feel free to work out your own concepts, whether dirty back alleys in a dangerous slum, overcrowded apartment houses filled with the urban poor, busy market scenes, or elegant plazas where the rich and idle stroll by.
Anything Else: While the cities are the main focus of the setting, they are far from its only part. There are jungle plateaus, blasted landscapes, desert nomads, deep oceans, and long-forgotten ruins. Just look at the regional descriptions, and if anything inspires you, don't hesitate to draw it! In fact, since Urbis is still in the development phase, if you come up with a cool concept for a picture that you think might fit into the world, I might change the world to make room for your concept! The same goes for any older pictures you might have created and think they might fit. Just email me, and we can discuss the details.

Art Resources

Urbis didn't appear out of thin air - I was inspired by a variety of sources, and these sources might help inspire you as well.

The Obscure Cities: The single biggest inspiration are the so-called "Obscure Cities", a comic universe created by the Belgian artists Francois Schuiten and Benoit Peeters. Their fantastic visual imagery was what gave me the idea to create a world centered around gargantuan cities, and I can recommend their works to anyone who is interested in great drawings of fictional architecture. You can see some of their art at this website. If you can read French, you might also want to take a look at Les Cités obscures : Le Guide des Cités, a guidebook to their world with some truly fantastic artwork (I own the German translation - "Führer durch die Geheimnisvollen Städte" - but unlike several of their comics, it unfortunately hasn't been translated into English yet).
The 19th Century: While there is plenty of material on the 19th century on both the web and any good public library, a good starting point is VictorianTimes.Org, and especially their Illustration Section. Take a look at it to get a good grasp of how buildings and people looked like back then.
Dungeons & Dragons: One of my design goals was to adhere to the rules of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game - or rather, the d20 System, which is basically the same thing with the exception that any publisher can freely use it. So when it comes to understanding the power and limitations of magic and technology in Urbis, knowledge of the d20 rules is certainly helpful. You can find the complete Sytem Reference Document - the rules of the d20 System - here. Take a look at the Equipment Section before drawing the equipment of any people - there are no firearms in Urbis, for instance (people mostly use crossbows instead), and if people want more powerful weapons or armor, they tend to create magic items that fit the bill instead of something resembling modern technology.
Also useful is this variant of the SRD - while it isn't quite as complete as the other one, there are links to original artwork of the various creatures in the world in the Monsters section, which might help you with finding inspiration - but feel free to develop your own styles for the monsters if you want to draw them.

And finally...

Have fun with drawing something! These guidelines are deliberately open so that they don't get into the way of your creativity. And if you have any further questions, comments or suggestions, don't hesitate to either email me or post your question on the Urbis Developer's Forum, which I have set up so that anyone can post without creating an account first.

Tentative plans for Publication

If you are curious about what my plans for the art of the completed product are, here is what I have currently in mind. Just be aware that these are tentative and likely will change in the future.

What do I need?

I will probably need the following:

A full page color illustration for the front cover, and a smaller color illustration (perhaps 1/3 of a page) for the back cover.
A color logo for the entire line with the caption "Urbis - A World of Cities".
Illustrations for the various chapters. The exact amounts and sizes are to be determined later, though none of them will likely be larger than a half page. All illustrations should be in black & white or greyscale (both because people need to print it out and because doing the full product in color would be prohibitively expensive. Of course, you may still work with colors when doing your art - just be aware that (a) I can't pay you extra for the color and (b) it still needs to look good after conversion to greyscale).
Page margins: I will need some black and white drawings for the page borders. These should have few large black areas, as I don't want to waste too much of my customers' printer ink on these.

The art will also have to adhere to some stricter guidelines than the website. Keep the following in mind:

No cheesecake: No full nudity, or even semi-nudity. I don't mind it if you want to draw sexy women (or men, for that matter) - as long as they can be sexy while being fully clothed. But besides being inappropriate for the period, nudity is not something I want to have as a selling point for Urbis... ;-)
Anime Art: While I am a big fan of anime in general, Urbis is inspired by Western European history and comics. While some subtle anime influence in the art is acceptable, the more exaggerated features of anime (huge eyes, ultra-deformed characters, etc.) should be avoided.

There is also another type of illustrations that I didn't mention above: Caricatures made in the art styles of 19th century illustrators, but with themes appropriate to Urbis. I will have to work out their exact content, but if you want to know in the meantime how such illustrations might look like, take a look at these period caricatures from the "Punch" Magazine.

What rights will I purchase?

I will purchase all rights - print and digital - for the logo. For all other illustrations, I will purchase the rights to use them for the PDF and any print-on-demand options available for the PDF. I'm currently thinking of some sort of clause that would limit your ability to sell them for use in any other professional RPG product for some time after the publication of Urbis (say, for six months), but apart from that, you may sell the illustraions to others again as you see fit (like the Print Sale options at DeviantArt).

How much will I pay?

That depends on a number of factors, like the size and complexity of the illustration and your experience, and is open to negotiation. However, I need to warn you of the following:

If you are a professional illustator who makes a living from his art, and you live in Westen Europe or a region with a similarly high living standard, then I can't probably pay you enough to make it worth your while - unless you work really fast.

The sad truth is that the role-playing game industry is a niche hobby, and for most writers, their products are work of love first and foremost. Only few people manage to actually make a living from their work. And if I manage to publish Urbis, it will probably only my second RPG-related work, so I'm an relatively unknown writer in this industry.

And my financial goal for Urbis is not to make a loss. Or at least, not to loose too much money.

There you have it. I want to pay you for your work, but I don't know if I can pay you adequately. And this is something you should keep in mind before committing too much time and effort on this project.

When will I pay?

I will pay for the art after I have officially commissioned it (obviously), and after you have completed it. I am not going to make you wait for any hypothetical profits which might out to be purely illusory.

That's it for now! If you have decided to draw something for Urbis after all this, have fun - and a big Thank You!