Case Study:
Gulliman’s Guide to Speed
Only Crits - Vancouver
We were hired to create all the illustrations for a 3rd party game book for Dungeons & Dragons under the open gaming license. Using Midjourney and Photoshop we were tasked to create a cohesive set of images for publication inside the printed book and surrounding promotional materials. Working closely with the creative director, Synthetic Studios took on a role as an illustrator/art director for the image set and brought our expertise in fantasy illustration, as well as experience making AI illustrations to the table.
“The goal of the client was to create a cohesive setting for their book that required not only fantastic illustrations but also a unified, and distinct look.”
The first part of the process of creating each image was the research stage. We used our research to find any images on the internet that were visually similar to what we were looking to achieve with the illustration. Then we wrote prompts combining the images we sourced and our own prompts we engineered.
The next step was to create many iterations of the artwork in order to hone in on what the final art was going to look like. Trying different prompts and getting different results allowed us to find what was working and what needed a little more clarity in the prompt writing.
The next step was to gather a number of finished images that we pieced together with Photoshop in order to make sure all the anatomy/facial expressions/details in the scene were as intended.
In this case, it was the cover page. I decided to go for a more retro cover. With the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons relying heavily on the influx of new users from the popular Netflix show “Stranger Things” and a big move in the tabletop games industry towards OSR, I suggested that we use a retro font to our advantage.
With the use of Photoshop and the rest of the creative suite, we were able to create mockups for the interior of the book very rapidly and let our designs shine in real time.
The project is going to be deployed on Kickstarter in August 2023 so there are no statistics to show the improvements the art has made to the income of the client on the back end however we were able to make an impact already on the front end.
With AI we were able to make promotional materials very quickly and able to alter them in a matter of minutes rather than days to meet the client’s specifications.
