adhodgecomedy-blog

[volivolition]

DAY 3: RHETORIC - You – against the atom, the charm and the spin. Where the whole world failed – matter failed to bend to human will; human will failed to get out of bed and tie its laces – you alone, single-handedly, will rebuild the dreams of the working class. You are The Last Communist.

[faneposting-my-beloved]

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Collector's Edition Artbook had no quality control*

*based on the Divine Ascension files, I don't have friends with Collector's Edition to confirm if the errors made it to print (assumption: they most likely did) I got photos, and they did make it to print. An essay by a person who spent three years in graphic design school Larian's lack of care for details highlighted in radiant examples.

1. What even is the PDF layout

This needs to be manually separated since this is not how you print out pages. There needs to be a vacant space in the middle for binding. This is why you usually see e-books page by page instead of doubles. 2. Gotta meet the quota somehow...aka wasteful use of space

The chapter layouts of the Artbook are probably the biggest sin to ever commit when putting a book together. All style over substance. The art is great, but do we really need a whole page dedicated to the chapter's number and title? The characters AND chapter title would fit on a single page. Instead the space is wasted on...two random characters and a transparent man in a hood? You sacrificed TWO pages for them, clearly they must be important? What is their story? Their names? Is the hooded-man on the white background the answer that we want? People LIKE and WANT to know what they're looking at. This is why every museum object has a little plaque with description! The white space could be spent on a caption for the bigger photo [e.g. 'Wizard concept art', 'Zandalor and Tenax'] or a foreword to the chapter or, if none of this was meant to be included, simply CUT TO THE CHASE AND BRING THE PAGE OF THE FIRST CHARACTER YOU WANT TO INTRODUCE. Every professional will recognize this procedure. When you don't have enough material for required number of pages you have to...improvise (this is a bad evaluation coming from the commissioner to begin with). In the artbook we have 6 chapters with 2-page nearly vacant introductions. 6x2 has us 12 pages covered. 12 pages bringing little to no information about the world it presents and I haven't even counted the rest of the artwork pages that say absolutely nothing... 3. WASTE, WASTE, WASTE!

Chapter 1: Characters DALLIS Seriously, nothing more to add! Because she was an afterthought character and we won't tell you anything about her!

Oh, so we can have a tidbit of information about a minor character? Sucks to be you, Dallis...

So...have they forgot to put in anything for Alexandar...? He is the Divine's son but you can't read it all from his pretty face! (And no mention that he was originally supposed to be older and this art was edited/re-drawn?) At least they like Malady enough to put in something about her. Imagine being so irrelevant the designers don't even bother to name you. Almost like Dallis. 5. Really...no placing decorum Do you know how we read books? From left to right (or the other way round in Japan). Hence any information you wish to begin chapter with should be placed on the left side for the reader to get a hold of the information quicker. As shown here:

The factions layout is set with the first page, the formula is now an expectation for the reader.

It does repeat for the Purged Ones, cool!

Base information is set on the left page, additional information and quotes can be added on the right page, all neat and dandy.

Until this layout gets broken in the next faction. Main (and the only) information is on the right page and in the form of a quote from a concept artist? Human/Purged One tidbits weren't labeled as quotes, so they must have been 'general information' we expect to get with every faction, right? Nope, remainder of the factions only gets singular quotes (with lizards having literally NOTHING written!) while humans have several columns in their chapter. Not only is this disappointing but also unreliable. You really do like your humans, don't you Larian? [I reached the photo cap so here's the rest]

6. Plain errors

Apparently daggers are axes for lizards. Oh those cultural differences... (Or someone forgetting to edit the copy/paste captions)

Ah, also don't forget about my favorite paintings from the 'Paintings of Rivellon' chapter made by a human very Rivellonian artist Larian Studios (they could've made it into a separate chapter really) Ghoul? Ghoul(s) Also thank you for including outdated/irrelevant info! I cry everyday. Overall I rate this Intern's first project out of hundred(s) of dollars you spent to buy the Collector's Edition