Tears of Envy is no more.
If you didn’t know, Tears of Envy is the brilliant graphic artist who designed the tiles for all the Dwarf King’s Hold series as well as the upcoming Project Pandora. She’s also worked for loads of other people designing logos and board art as well as books and other graphics. Quite apart from her undoubted skills as an artist, she’s a lovely lady with a lively and somewhat eclectic mixture of interests.
She’s not fallen under a bus or been abducted by aliens, instead she’s been snatched up by Games Workshop to do her thang for them full time rather than working for the rest of us as a freelance artist. Good for them; bad for us.
Personally it’s a mixed blessing, because it means that she’ll be up in Notts for a game or two rather than at the other end of the coutry. On the other hand, we now have the rather tall order of finding someone else who can live up to her graphics if we want to do any more Dwarf King’s Hold or Pandora tiles. The lengths Workshop will go to undermine me!
Anyway, enough whining. I just though this might interest a few of you, and explain in advance why things might have to change in the world of tile games.
Good luck Tammy!
Quirkworthy 
Well I’m glad she hasn’t fallen under a bus!!! Tis a shame when a freelancer disappears from the pool of talent you draw on. But, as I’ve found out in other walks of lief, this is the risk you take when you start to ‘rely’ on certain freelancers. There’s always the possibility someone will realise how good they are and snaffle them up permanently. I’m sure there are other great artists out there though.
No, no, there are none. I looked everywhere 😦
Bugger. I hope you get it sorted out. The artwork on tiles for DKH was one of the plus points. Really characterful.
It is. I’m sure there must be another artist out there to do this and we’ll find them. However, what will be a big challenge is to find someone whose style dovetails sufficiently neatly with Tammy’s as the idea will be to allow mixing of sets at some stage.
Having said all that, if we were going to have to lose Tears at any stage, between DKH 3 and 4 and Pandora 1 & 2 is probably the best juncture for reasons which will become obvious if these subsequent games ever happen.
Or rather; there are none who are doing what she was doing, right at this moment in time…
I thought it was going to be a bit more tragic from the headline! Remind me to have a chat with you about this when I’m not in work!
Congratulations and well deserved as Tammy as done some superb work. I hope she enjoys her time with GW. It seems the hunt is afoot then, one of the things I love about the DKH series is the overall look of the game and the artwork, naturallly, was a big piece of that. As King Richard repeatedly used to say……..’Chiswick…Fresh Horses!’ 😉
Can horses do graphics now? I can’t have been paying attention to the recent bioengineering news ;P
Bad news for us all if GW are trying to snatch the Mantic artists…
Bad news for her as well, as she won’t be free to earn more money, and she’ll have to follow the tyrannical lead of the wicked witch of the financial world and her green snatching claws…
I do hope she leaves this crappy company soon.
Whatever you do don’t hold back with your feelings. Feel free to express yourself!!! 😛
I guess what joining a large organisation like GW offers is stability and knowing what your next pay check is going to look like. I can see how that’s appealing… even if you do have to worship at the alter of God money to get it. Just to be clear I understand and share your sentiments.
Oh, I’m not exactly a communist…
I have no problem with salaries !
However, one has to see what the master is to this future slave : GW is the great Satan if there ever was one… We’ll have to bow to Quirkworthy’s advice and knowledge of their devious practices, but from what I can tell, all the good creative people have been consistently fleeing this company for years.
So… I do hope they treat her right…
GW aren’t evil. There’s nothing wrong with wanting money, no one is forcing us to buy their stuff! It’s just they make bad calls and decisions in order to gain a quick profit whilst not looking at the long term game.
The can change though! All their army books and codexes have really tried to be balanced (Grey Knights being a grey area…). Maybe, just maybe, there will be no price hike this year. Maybe, just maybe, the new 40K boxed set will be £40.
Maybe…
Just remember GW make quite a poor profit from their actual miniatures, something like a million or two, which isn’t great for a company like that. A lot of that money is reinvested in the production process. *this information might be outdated as I read somewhere, in 2011 GW’s profits increased by 40%… somehow. Though how much of this was from their IP etc, rather than the miniatures is unknown. The rights to Space Marine gave GW £2.6m… and then there’s the price-hike.
Poosh… Are you seriously thinking there will be no price hike this year, just when they’ve started actually calling it officially in their e-mails to retailers the “annual price increase” ?
Seriously ?
It’s like expecting the Pope to say “after all, contraception is completely fine with our God”…
Actually Elro, that is in the latest errata for the Bible.
And usually we get the bashing for our additional bock to the bible…. hmm…
Btw, the price hike is already on its way, no luck there, as always it starts with hidden hikes (price goes down, but so does the number of miniatures in a box) and mid-year we will see the open hike.
And GW gets quite some money from their licenses (Which makes me happy, since I work on some of their licences, which in turn earns me money.). What worries me is: It is quite a substantial sum and I wonder what happens when licenses earn them more money than their actual product.
Btw, working for them as a freelancer is not that bad, since their business practices with freelancers are quite sound (if you can read fine-print and understand it there is not much to worry about). There are way worse companies in our business (for which I would work only if advance payment is made).
Working for them as emplayee depends. Retail-wages are a joke when compared to other brand-stores, and packaging is acceptable if you are looking for a students-job during the breaks. Creative staff depends in which position they hire you. But don´t expect to have too much influence.
On their most recently half yearly report they listed their profit as £6.5 million and their royalty income £2.6 million for a total profit of £9.1 million. If I was responsible for running GW and maximising it’s revenue I’d be all about farming out the IP. I wouldn’t stop until every McDonald’s happy meal had a cheap plastic Space Marine in it.
I don’t know if they’ll ever go away from their core business but I can see it being an increasingly smaller part of their overall operation. Marvel and DC have stuck with monthly pamphlets as the core of their business even though TV and movie adaptations and various licensing deals generate much more money. I can see GW reaching that point.
Yup. Me too.