Daniel Solis

Art Director tip: You can prevent tangent lines by adding a lighter secondary stroke around the foreground characters. (Example: Action Comics 1034, Christian Duce.)  Without this outline, the panels would directly intersect Superman directly, which may muddle the perspective. Most often, I see this technique with a light stroke alone, without an extra black line as Duce has demonstrated here. Either is fine, depending on the job. Image Description: Close up of Superman. His pose breaks through his panel and overlaps a bunch of other panels. A light outline around his body prevents the lines of those panels from intersecting him directly.

Yesterday on BoardGameHour, the discussion focused on writing and formatting rulebooks. I'm no writer, as you might be able to tell from my rambling blog posts, but I can speak a little bit about the basics of how to organize images and text on a printed page. For that, we come to one of my favorite tools in graphic design, the grid . You might be familiar with the idea of a grid being something like this , but in graphic design the grid is more like a waffle. Like syrup, your text and images fits into the cells while keeping the borders clear. The idea is that you do not see the borders of the grid, only the cells. Text and images span these cells vertically and horizontally, but the grid keeps things looking nice and organized instead of a jumbled mess. Here's a quick overview of what grids do, some examples, and a downloadable template I made just for you! What do grids do? Wrangles lots of different elements onto a page. Grids let you organize body text, heade...

One of the most perplexing challenges of tabletop graphic design is how to design a whole deck of cards with variable text, stats, images, and borders. Fortunately, DataMerge makes that much easier as I describe in my SkillShare course . But there are some advanced problems that still pop up even when you've mastered DataMerge: Namely, inserting icons into any part of the text. I discussed one method of doing this a few weeks ago , but that relied on using a pre-existing dingbats font for your icons and making bizarro GREP styles. As of that post, I hadn't found a reliable and easy to use font creator that flowed seamlessly from Illustrator to TrueType to InDesign. Well, I'm happy to say Icomoon is the app I've always wanted . You can upload your own SVG vector files, assign keywords to them as ligatures, and save them as TrueType fonts. When you type your keywords with this font, it's automatically replaced with the icon you've chosen. All you need to d...

Since working on the Firefly RPG and a number of other projects, I've been searching for a lot of artists lately. In that search, I've come across some common obstacles that make my job a bit difficult. Bear in mind: My job is giving artists jobs, so any help I can get in that quest from the artists themselves is very much appreciated. Here are some tips from me to all artists out there. What I'm Looking For Consistency is most important for my line of work. I'm usually hiring a single artist to make a whole series of images, so keeping a consistent style is paramount. Breadth and diversity is a byproduct of that first point. I like to see that you've depicted different subjects, diverse people, all with a consistent style that tells me you could deliver on art direction. No cheesecake, please. If the first thing I see in your portfolio is a bunch of boudoir pin-ups, I'm moving on. Even if you can do more than that, putting cheesecake up front and c...

If you're a game designer, chances are you'll stumble across a word or turn of phrase and think, "Hey, that would make a really cool game!" Heck, that's the whole idea behind Pitch Tag. But there are a few things to ask yourself before you marry yourself to one name in particular. Is it searchable? Google your game title plus the words "game," "board game," "card game," and "app." Search Engine Optimization has no legal bearing, but probably has the most practical impact on your day-to-day business as a game designer. You want a title that won't tread on existing identities in the same space. Ideally, a search for your title alone should bring up your game's page, or its Kickstarter page, or its entry on BoardGameGeek. Unique spellings and made-up words are often used to maximize SEO, but there is a risk... Is it easy to say and spell? Granted, this is relative to your language, but a lot of business h...

I've been playing Ascension on iOS for a few months and in that time I've had a lot of fun... Until the endgame, wherein I discover all my efforts have been in vain as my opponent has doubled or tripled my score. I can deal with consistent loss in a game, but consistently losing when I think I will win is frustrating. This speaks to the value and purpose of endgame scoring in general, I think. As all modern gamers would recognize, hidden endgame scoring keeps all players engaged until the very end. There's always this chance that you'll beat the odds, because you've had a clever engine building for the whole game. There is a lot of dramatic fun in pulling back the curtain to reveal your grand idea, even if another player ends up beating your score. When designed well, these endgame mechanics can be learning experiences for players to try again with a slight adjustment to their strategy. However, they can also appear to be black boxes, capriciously deciding a ...

Looks like my RISK: Legacy post got some traction on Google Plus and BGG . What's funny is that the key attributes of Legacy mechanics are something that most traditional RPGs take for granted. In-game choices having persistent effects in future sessions? Pretty standard stuff in the RPG realm.  Granted, that process usually doesn't involve destroying the actual object. I think "destruction" is a misnomer in this case. Yes, you do change the game, but whether you consider that "destruction" is a matter of perspective. When I design a new game, I prune off many paths in the process. What Rob Daviau has done in RISK: Legacy is stop juuuust shy of that point in the process. For example, in the very first game, you have a choice of two faction power stickers to put on your faction card. The one you don't choose is torn up and thrown away. Is that sticker destroyed? Yes. Is the game destroyed? No. The players are simply making the last decisions a...

You may recall my last post on the freelance market around Kickstarter . There I mentioned Lyndsay Peters of Dragon Chow Dice Bags . She works with a lot of Kickstarter projects these days. So many that she now has a reputation as a go-to source for high-value pledge tier rewards. The problem is that sometimes, Lyndsay finds out she's hired for a project after the Kickstarter launches. For one reason or another, the project creators assumed she was available without further confirmation, with no further details on estimates, quantities, or timelines. So far it's been fine, but eventually Lyndsay will get roped into a project she doesn't want to do or she won't have time to do. How embarrassing will it be for the creator to have to say "Sorry, we actually can't offer these super-awesome dicebags after all." This little anecdote shows how fraught the burgeoning semi-pro economy can be for a freelancer. I worry about inexperienced project creators ge...

For independent or DIY game designers, there haven't been many affordable options for printing card games until recently. I decided to try out SuperiorPOD mainly because their pricing structure was clear, their interface was easy to use and their templates were super-helpful. Here are the results of two separate card orders. These cards are pretty thick and sturdy. They're not matte or linen, which would normally be ideal for game cards, but they still shuffle extremely well. Above, you see the thickness of a full 108-card deck, which is the largest deck SuperiorPOD offers on their website. The first order printed much brighter and yellower than I intended. That order was printed from a print-ready PDF (PDF-X 2008 Protocol). I suspect some of those vector elements just rendered unexpectedly. In the second order, the files were simple flattened TIFFs. Larger file size, but also simpler to render. As you can see, the reds, grays and oranges are mostly the same in bo...

FULL TEXT: FEEDBACK LOOPS IN GAME DESIGN as observed by Jesse Catron, Jay Barnson, Kyoryu Design: Daniel Solis (danielsolis.com) In a feedback loop, the output affects the input. POSITIVE FEEDBACK AMPLIFIES the output and tends to destabilize the system. For example, the runaway leader. One player takes an early insurmountable lead. In Settlers of Catan, the player with the most productive settlements will generate the most resources, which enables him to build more settlements and gain even more resources. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK DIMINISHES the output and tends to stabilize the system. For example, a “take-that” mechanic that gives trailing player’s more opportunities to constrain the leading player’s efforts. In Settlers of Catan, players are less likely to accept trades with the leading player. The leading player is more likely to be targeted by the Robber. Balancing feedback loops is an important skill for all game designers. DECK BUILDING [ + ] You can use low val...

I've certainly had an educational weekend. Right now I'm laying out three card games: Zeppelin Armada, Velociraptor! Cannibalism!, and Belle of the Ball. I'm kind of using Belle as a training ground to become a more efficient card game layout-er, 'cause damn that's actually a really a fun job. What wasn't so fun was manually inserting every digit and icon directly into the layout. It was prone to typos, misalignments and subtle printing inconsistencies. I knew the big guys at WotC couldn't be setting up their Magic cards this way. Perhaps there's a way to automate this process? I have some experience working with print houses who do what they call "variable data." It goes by several names, kind of like the Devil. Indeed, the central feature of variable data turns out to be spreadsheets. Not quite Lucifer, but close. I followed Adobe's datamerge tutorial . I managed to figure it out thanks to several video tu...

as observed by John Stavropoulos ( Source ) TOOLS The actual components of play, like character sheets, cheat sheets, boards and bits. TEXT The actual documented rules and how they are presented, including exact wording, procedures and game terms. RULES The parameters of play as best recalled by the players. Less formal than text, but more formal than the basic design intent. INTENT The assumptions of how a game would be played, often expressed directly by the designer with minimal formal documentation. “Dice,” “Pencil” symbol from The Noun Project collection. “Paper” symbol by Tom Schott, from The Noun Project collection. “Quote” symbol by Henry Ryder, from The Noun Project collection. “Note” symbol by Brendan Lynch, from the Noune Project collection. “Pawn” symbol by Kenneth Von Alt, from The Noun Project collection. “Dialog” symbol by Dima Yagnyuk, from The Noun Project collection. This graphic is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. So, a lit...

After describing the organic " wabi-sabi " style of card game design I used in Belle of the Ball , I got some comments on boardgamegeek expressing a preference for more symmetrical deck design. Mark McEvoy : "I'm of the camp that prefers the symmetrical systematic approach because then you can be certain that specific combinations exist / are unique / are not disproportionately plentiful in your deck." David Boeren : "If there is ever a time where the different elements interact with each other then I do not want them randomly assigned. That makes it harder to balance and it makes it hard on the players who now have to remember a lot more about the deck to avoid bad play decisions." Sure, I see the appeal. But speaking as a designer, it's way too easy to get sucked into a death-spiral of perfectly symmetrical mandalas. These precious crystal structures are such fastidious distractions for OCD perfectionists like me. The example...

I've decided to postpone plans for kickstarting my dice game Utara. Here's why. Utara's biggest problem is that it calls for so many custom dice. I thought I could manage it as a small outfit thanks to new tools like Kickstarter. That opened up opportunities for high engagement and distributed costs. Those would compensate for high up-front production expenses of custom dice. That expense was just from the relatively affordable option of laser-engraved dice. Each of those would cost $1.10 to make at a quantity of 2,000. Pricey, but at least it followed the model of similar novelty products like Mathematician's Dice and Writer's Dice. We figured a goal of ~$4,000 would get us where we needed to be. The trick would be focusing on the novelty and flexibility of individual dice, rather than the game Utara. We'd need to develop more properties using one, two or three Utara dice, but at least it could be done. As I sought feedback on the tier rewards, it beca...

Folks asked if I could share some best practices on crowdsourcing content as a part of a Kickstarter campaign. Ooh boy, yeah. Crowdsourcing is a very fun way to engage your backers in the project. It's like a giant mad libs. I've incorporated crowdsourced content into Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple (letters, characters), Happy Birthday, Robot! (examples of play), and soon Utara (island names). There are a few basic tips I've learned. 1: Survey your real estate. "We're releasing a role-playing game with a random citizen generator. Want to be listed as a resident of our world? Pledge now and join up!" What are you offering and how much of it can you offer? If you can, offer examples of the context in which your offering will appear. For example, if you wanted to include a d100 random citizen generator in your game, you could offer space in that list for high-level backers. Limiting the availability increases the value of that space. As the spaces ge...

In the spirit of transparency, I wanted to share a basic overview of costs for the Writer's Dice kickstarter campaign. Many thanks to my wife Megan who's been keeping track of this info. Our costs consider the following: • Kickstarter's cut • Amazon Payments' cut • Final product dice • Prototype dice • Baggies • Address labels • Padded envelopes • Mailbox rental • Shipping A total cost of $4375 . That's rounded up slightly to consider the stragglers we still need to ship out. The amount does not consider things like any returned packages (extra postage), printer ink, mileage, and our time/labor. We haven't found out the costs of North Carolina sales tax just yet, which Kickstarter doesn't have a way of calculating. Also, the amount of postage for parcels went up a bit before we were able to send everything out, which raised the overall cost of shipping somewhat higher than we expected. We probably could have saved a tiny bit of money by not...

I wanted to use a nice cartoony font for the masthead of Pop and Locke's Last Heist. Blambot is always a great source for very well-done fonts in a variety of comic book styles. Nate Piekos has been in the business a long time and it's hard to beat the price for his fonts. I used 12 Ton Goldfish . It looks great, but there is a common problem with hand-drawn fonts. When you have repeating letters, like the Ps and Os, you can tell they're identical to each other. It's an immediate tip-off that you just used a font without any additional revising to make it work for your purposes. So, I customized the font in a few ways and I thought I'd share these tips. Follow these in order as you customize a font for your logo, title or masthead. But first, before you even try doing any of this I have one tip. Write the letters yourself! Grab a marker, try a few different tips, write them big, small, on paper, cardboard, etc. See if you can't draw the letters and get the...

Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...

As with any project where I hire an artist, I've put together an Artist's Style Guide for Pop & Locke's Last Heist . This is a document I send out to any prospective artists who will work on the project. It lays out the relevant details of the game, including characters, setting, clothes, etc. A style guide is helpful for three reasons: 1) Gathering and organizing all this reference material forces you to clearly articulate the visual aesthetic for your game. You might have some image in your head, but you need to share that with others and looking at the same document can help. 2) Searching for this reference clues you into a handful of illustrators who you may initially contact for estimates. Even if you can't hire them, they might know others who will be a better fit. 3) Once artists are hired, they won't have to work from a blank slate. Again, using a common source of visual inspiration saves you both time once you start working together. You c...

So you've heard my usual advice for making a Kickstarter video . All that still applies. Here was my strategy for this video in particular. I was greatly inspired by Trey Parker and Matt Stone's lesson to NYU writing students in which they shared their technique for outlining a plot. In their lesson, they break out each beat so there's always a "therefore" or a "but" in between. That makes a naturally flowing sequence of events. It's a great lesson and one that fits seamlessly into the main appeal of Writer's Dice, to select the most meaningful words to connect each beat. Normally, I'd start off a Kickstarter video as if it were a short 30sec commercial for the project. This time, I decided to neatly present that writing lesson into a cute tutorial, something like Common Craft or One-Minute Science . Megan and I brainstormed all the ways we could present this lesson: Stop-motion props? Stock art with silly voices? A sketch with actors i...