I always wanted to do a collection of these: Now here it is:
“Lets put a muzzle flash each gun even though there is no one shooting”
Probably cover artist face the insane demands of their bosses to add more action to it. The image is almost finished .. so what to do? ..
The game series Call of Duty is a perfect aspirant for that position: On Kotaku there was just a new cover posted :
I mean.. look: that guy seems completely relaxed. He’s just holding that gun. But BAM! There it is ^^
To complete that series:
He is relaxed as well and almost directly lookin at me! But “shoots” to the left and the flash is so cautious tiny 😀 hilarious!
Funnily enough: There seems to be another cover variant for the same game. I mean.. ok he looks determined. But the flash is just so pathetic. Looks fake enough :]
Well that’s art departments for you.
“art departments”? What do you mean?!?!
Well its not a single artist that’s doing the pictures specs. But rather a committee that is here’s somene who does the composition one that is responsible for appeal etc etc. Now because the poor artist needs to cram all these peoples wishes into the picture it ends up a bit mismatched. Off course now that there’s a precedent on having a certain look it needs to be copied and flaws start mounting up.
Also actually drawing a gun pointing at you is hard and makes identifying the gun hard so its a sort of lets bend the truuth a bit to get all we need conveyed out into the picture.