pastiche vs homage

What’s the difference?

Thinking of what to reboot, I’ve been rereading a lot of my notes for the fantasy comic I’d worked on for a long time. The main protagonist started off as a Dungeons & Dragons character, and the world was a campaign setting. I was surprised by just how much content there was, some of it originally written in the defunct Lotus Notes!

A while back I typeset some of it as a minimalist layout, as a reaction against any sort of fake parchment, ye olde document pastiche. Looked cool, but somehow missed the point.

I hate all the pointless remixes of pop culture, characters from <insert new popular TV show> redrawn in Simpsons style / as corporate logos / as 8-bit pixel sprites, but I love a lot of retro illustrations and designs being done with fake texture. One is pastiche, one is homage.

Riding home tonight I was pondering what style I could use to bring it all together, when it struck me. It was like one of the 2nd Edition rulebooks from the 80s that I loved and were a big influence on me… a great excuse to do some fantasy pictures too!