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Originally posted by sno4wy

Hey all,

To begin with, I can't claim credit for the idea, as it was something that Elaine Cunningham commented on in a FR Facebook group. :P As I deeply love the realms and its myriad of characters/creatures, as well as happening to possess a decent amount of artistic ability, I wanted to more seriously investigate the marketability of this concept.

Namely, how desirable do y'all think would be something like a Forgotten Realms themed coloring book?

Apparently, recently, coloring books for adults are starting to catch on as a fun and therapeutic thing to do, although I don't know much about them beyond that. What seems to separate an "adult coloring book" from the ones traditionally created for children is the level of detail put into each line art (content too, but this wouldn't be that type of coloring book. ;P).

Other than being a creative outlet, I could see DMs using these templates and adding different colors to what a particular creature comes in in order to provide a visual for an original spin-off from a traditional creature. As this project would be a huge undertaking since a great degree of detail would be required in each image, I figured I'd pick everyone's brains on the matter before embarking on it.


So the question is, would a fan-made compilation of images in this style be something that you'd buy from the DMs Guild? If so, what would you be willing to pay, for what number of pages (assuming 1 image per page)? Who or what would you want to see featured in such a work?

Thanks in advance for your feedback! :D

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Originally posted by sno4wy

Hey all,

To begin with, I can't claim credit for the idea, as it was something that Elaine Cunningham commented on in a FR Facebook group. :P As I deeply love the realms and its myriad of characters/creatures, as well as happening to possess a decent amount of artistic ability, I wanted to more seriously investigate the marketability of this concept.

Namely, how desirable do y'all think would be something like a Forgotten Realms themed coloring book?

Apparently, recently, coloring books for adults are starting to catch on as a fun and therapeutic thing to do, although I don't know much about them beyond that. What seems to separate an "adult coloring book" from the ones traditionally created for children is the level of detail put into each line art (content too, but this wouldn't be that type of coloring book. ;P).

Other than being a creative outlet, I could see DMs using these templates and adding different colors to what a particular creature comes in in order to provide a visual for an original spin-off from a traditional creature. As this project would be a huge undertaking since a great degree of detail would be required in each image, I figured I'd pick everyone's brains on the matter before embarking on it.


So the question is, would a fan-made compilation of images in this style be something that you'd buy from the DMs Guild? If so, what would you be willing to pay, for what number of pages (assuming 1 image per page)? Who or what would you want to see featured in such a work?

Thanks in advance for your feedback! :D

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Originally posted by Irennan


I'd buy it more for the art than anything else (line art can also be enjoyable), although I'd far prefer a full artbook.[/br]

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Originally posted by Irennan


As for the characters that I'd like to be featured, any character that hasn't appeared often in artworks would do. If the creation of a series of these booklets is an option, you could make them thematic. For example, one about the ''rulers of Faerun'', with a picture of the Masked Lords--some of them (that are known to us), like Khelben, Piergeiron, Mirt or Laeral unmasked-- for Waterdeep, a picture of Azoun, Filfaeril, Alusair etc.. for Cormyr, and so on. Then you could make one about powerful wizards, known rogues/assassins... you get the picture.[/br]

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Originally posted by Irennan

EDIT: Be aware that if you upload art on the DMGuild, people will be able to use it for their work without asking you the permission to do that (as far as I can see, at least).[/br]

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Originally posted by Delwa

I would totally pay for such a colouring book. Regardless of page count, I'd be most likely to immediately purchase something in the 1-5 dollar range, something in the 6-10 dollar range would probably be bought within the quarter, and anything higher I would wait for reviews to see if it's really worth it. As for page count, I dunno. Fewer the pages, the less I'm likely to buy. I do sketches and Photoshop art myself, so I understand the effort that can go into making something like this, so it'd really depend on how detailed the images are, and how much I liked the artist's particular style. If I really like it, I'd probably still pay up to five bucks for just two or three images, since I can print the pdf and recolor them as many times as I'd like.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

What I'd recommend is drawing the art in vector format first, or making sure you save it in some format like TIFF, so that if people just want to use something simple like ms paint and the paint bucket its not a hard effort. You probably already know this though, being an artist, whereas I'm definitely not and can only do simple line art.

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Originally posted by sno4wy
An artbook would definitely be cool, but isn't it the case that unless it's an official WotC product, it's not legal for anyone to sell items that feature WotC-copyrighted characters, creatures, content and all manners of material, even if those items feature original works of art? I've seen people sell their original fan art of other franchises without repercussions, but my impression has been that Hasbro is a lot more stringent than most in disallowing any fan made products of its franchises being sold for profit. Is that the case? I mean, wouldn't even something like a kickstarter/indiegogo endeavor for an original artbook violate a bunch of their policies? :C

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This is actually something that I'd really like to do! However, to have a series assumes that the first product is successful, or even viable for that matter. XD So far, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest, but then again, I haven't asked anywhere but here.

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Thanks for the head's up about this! I kinda figured that this would be the case, but would it be completely within others' rights in DMGuild to, say, take one of my images, not modify it in any way and put it in a "document" consisting of only that image plus one additional page (which then in turn may or may not contain a whole lot of content), then charge their own price for it? I doubt anyone would do something like take apart the set of images and repost each one without any additional information attached for free (but then again, you never know with some people :), but obviously, even with the proposed scenario one could technically completely negate the higher price of a graphics-only product and distribute the material for free within the rules of DMGuild. Or am I completely off about all of my worries? >_>

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Originally posted by sno4wy

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Originally posted by Delwa

I would totally pay for such a colouring book. Regardless of page count, I'd be most likely to immediately purchase something in the 1-5 dollar range, something in the 6-10 dollar range would probably be bought within the quarter, and anything higher I would wait for reviews to see if it's really worth it. As for page count, I dunno. Fewer the pages, the less I'm likely to buy. I do sketches and Photoshop art myself, so I understand the effort that can go into making something like this, so it'd really depend on how detailed the images are, and how much I liked the artist's particular style. If I really like it, I'd probably still pay up to five bucks for just two or three images, since I can print the pdf and recolor them as many times as I'd like.

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Thanks for the insight! I've been thinking something in the 10-20 range, with 4-5 images or more depending on the complexity of what's featured. For instance, if one particular set were all about civilized humanoid characters, there'd be a lot of details going into their attire alone, so that set wouldn't have as many pages. On the other hand, if the set was all about monsters, the amount of work on my end would be significantly lower since the whole idea is to allow others to color things in on their own, so the number of pages would be greater for the same price.

I really like the idea of different "series", and if possible I'd like to be able to incorporate requests and feedback into new releases. However, that's looking too far into the future for now. >_>

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Originally posted by sleyvas
I'll encourage you in another direction. More drawings, but make them extremely simple. Right now, variety would be the need. If you can do a simple woman in a dress who looks like she has fire surrounding her hands. Then same with a man in robes. Take the same picture, shorten the robes or get rid of the dress, add pants. Same pictures, make the woman's hair long. Make it short. Put a tiara in it. Put it dancing around her head like there's static electricity and change the fire for "electricity". Take the same heads, and add elven ears (short points and then long points to distinguish half and full elves). You could even do the same bodies with tiefling heads. In all of this, put like big cuffs that a person can put his own symbols in if he wants (i.e. if he wants fire symbols, or elven writing, or Viking runes, or something else entirely).

Maybe some pictures of nothing but simple faces. Make a knight in plate armor with a sword and a male head. Swap the male head for female and add breasts. Swap the weapon on each.

Making human, half-elf, and elf looking characters would be your initial best sells. If those do well for you, then maybe consider a dwarf, Halfling, gnome supplement.

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Originally posted by sno4wy

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Originally posted by sleyvas
I'll encourage you in another direction. More drawings, but make them extremely simple. Right now, variety would be the need. If you can do a simple woman in a dress who looks like she has fire surrounding her hands. Then same with a man in robes. Take the same picture, shorten the robes or get rid of the dress, add pants. Same pictures, make the woman's hair long. Make it short. Put a tiara in it. Put it dancing around her head like there's static electricity and change the fire for "electricity". Take the same heads, and add elven ears (short points and then long points to distinguish half and full elves). You could even do the same bodies with tiefling heads. In all of this, put like big cuffs that a person can put his own symbols in if he wants (i.e. if he wants fire symbols, or elven writing, or Viking runes, or something else entirely).

Maybe some pictures of nothing but simple faces. Make a knight in plate armor with a sword and a male head. Swap the male head for female and add breasts. Swap the weapon on each.

Making human, half-elf, and elf looking characters would be your initial best sells. If those do well for you, then maybe consider a dwarf, Halfling, gnome supplement.

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Wow, these are terrific suggestions! Thanks a lot sleyvas! Now that you've suggested this, I think I got the initial concept backwards. I'm so used to being immersed in artists' communities and feeling insecure about my own work to believe anyone would want to pay for anything "simple" that I may draw. However, you've helped me realize that most people would probably just appreciate having a semi-customizable template for their own character rather than a full-blown detailed portraiture.

I'll see if I can whip a "simple" sample up in the near future and see what you guys think.

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