The discipline that makes good adventure writing, describing only what's observable, being specific instead of generic, anchoring details in your world rather than generic fantasy tropes, is exactly the discipline that makes good art briefs.

A brief that says "a scary demon in a dark dungeon" gives an artist almost nothing to work with. A skilled artist will produce something competent and generic, because competent and generic is the only thing that description supports. A brief that says "a four-armed fiend, lean rather than bulky, expression more amused than enraged, it enjoys this, standing in a chamber where the torchlight doesn't reach the corners, one hand extended in something that looks almost like an invitation" gives the artist something actually to interpret.

Specificity is generosity. The more specific your brief, the more room the artist has to bring their skill to bear on the details that matter, instead of guessing at the details you didn't specify.

Reference images, existing art that captures something close to what you're looking for, are useful for communicating tone, style, and general composition. They're not useful as "make it like this but different," because that framing puts the artist in the position of imitating someone else's work rather than creating their own.

Use references to communicate feeling. "This piece captures the kind of dread I'm going for" is useful. "Copy this composition" usually isn't, both because it can create problems around derivative work and because it doesn't let the artist's actual strengths come through.​

The first version of any commissioned piece is rarely the final version, and that's not a failure of the process, it's the process. Build revision rounds into your timeline and your budget from the beginning, rather than treating revisions as an unplanned extra cost.

Two revision rounds is a reasonable standard for most commissions. The first round catches the big things, composition, overall direction, anything that fundamentally doesn't match the brief. The second round catches details, specific elements that need adjustment as the overall piece nears completion.

Artists who know revision rounds are built into the process from the start will plan their own time accordingly. Artists who are told "just send the final" and then asked for three rounds of changes after the fact will, reasonably, feel like the scope of the work changed without their agreement.

A cover illustration, an interior black-and-white piece, and a map are different disciplines with different considerations, composition for a cover needs to work as a thumbnail and at full size, interior art needs to support the surrounding text without competing with it, and maps need to be functional first and beautiful second.

Match your artists to the work that best fits their strengths, and clearly communicate the functional requirements. A gorgeous map that's hard to read at the table has failed at its job regardless of its quality as art.

The art across Chaotic Chronicles' published work, created by Aegis Studios and team cartographers like Daniel Craddock and Victor McCool, reflects this collaborative process.

Explore the published books at chaoticchronicles.com and see the results.