D&D General When Did Digital Art Become A Thing?

[Zardnaar]

The initial 3e rollout (Masters of the Wild, Song and Silence, etc) we super lackluster, but the later splats were pretty good. Incarnum, despite mechanically being a sign of no longer caring, was a visual bop.

Yup that's what I meant. 3.0 was OK at the time the cover. 3.5 was better imho.

Overall cover art was worse than late 3E imho.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yup that's what I meant. 3.0 was OK at the time the cover. 3.5 was better imho.

Overall cover art was worse than late 3E imho.

Of course now, we save the good covers for the more expensive alternate versions.

 

[Zardnaar]

Of course now, we save the good covers for the more expensive alternate versions.

Same price here.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Same price here.

I can't find an Eberron RFtLW for under $90

 

[Zardnaar]

I can't find an Eberron RFtLW for under $90

Alt cover? I paid $75 NZD for mine which is $45iah usd iirc.

That was a few years back near release. Didn't pay cash either it was functionally free but that was it's retail price.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

3x's covers were awesome. They looked like magic books.

Personally, I always thought they looked like really really bad, tacky molded-clay imitations of actual grimoires and such, up to the point where they stopped bothering trying to make them really look like books because they would insert a picture into the center of the leather frame for no reason at all.

That's why, even though I didn't care for some of the 4e cover art, I vastly preferred 4e's covers. At least they were just a picture of a cool thing, rather than a painfully kitschy pretense of being a leather-bound grimoire.

 

[Zardnaar]

Personally, I always thought they looked like really really bad, tacky molded-clay imitations of actual grimoires and such, up to the point where they stopped bothering trying to make them really look like books because they would insert a picture into the center of the leather frame for no reason at all.

That's why, even though I didn't care for some of the 4e cover art, I vastly preferred 4e's covers. At least they were just a picture of a cool thing, rather than a painfully kitschy pretense of being a leather-bound grimoire.

Go look at them now. I would argue 3.5 has aged the best of the phb covers.

3.0 not so much. And do you like WAR art?

2000-2012 was overall low point very early D&D at least has an excuse.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Go look at them now. I would argue 3.5 has aged the best of the phb covers.

3.0 not so much.

I literally just did. The 3.5e PHB cover looks like a bad clay model pretending to be a real book cover. The 3.0 PHB isn't better. Both don't look like metal. They look like clay or plastic formed into an imitation of metal.

And do you like WAR art?

Not particularly; I did say I wasn't really a fan of the 4e PHB cover, just that I preferred it more than what I consider the really terrible PHB/DMG/etc. cover "art" that we got from 3e.

However, I love several artists that were employed widely throughout 4e's run, such as William O'Connor (love most of his work), Jason Engle (ditto), Ben Wootten (not super prolific but damn good at what he does), Steve Argyle (c'mon, you can't tell me his depiction of Bane is anything less than epic), Anne Stokes (her eladrin really sell how alien the "high elf" archetype should be, while still being ethereally beautiful, and I like her dragons), and Eva Widermann (there's a...smoothness to her art I just really like.)

Having WAR covers was pretty much par for the course for late-2000s early-2010s TTRPG books. He was friggin' everywhere, to my chagrin. He does do good work, but much of his stuff is just waaaay too overwrought.

2000-2012 was overall low point very early D&D at least has an excuse.

Whereas for me, I found 3e at best a mixed bag, while 4e was mostly good (other than Mr. Reynolds' work, which I am not particularly keen on), and 5e has gone back to being a mixed bag but for very different reasons. Some 5e art is really quite excellent. Some of it is painful to my eyes and soul.

And I just...I don't get the love for artists like Elmore or (especially) Erol Otus. I really really don't. As in if I'd been around at the time the latter's work was in vogue, it would have actively reduced my interest in playing D&D. When folks heap praise on it for being what made them think of fantasy, I genuinely just...don't understand. I doubt I ever will.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Personally, I always thought they looked like really really bad, tacky molded-clay imitations of actual grimoires and such, up to the point where they stopped bothering trying to make them really look like books because they would insert a picture into the center of the leather frame for no reason at all.

That's why, even though I didn't care for some of the 4e cover art, I vastly preferred 4e's covers. At least they were just a picture of a cool thing, rather than a painfully kitschy pretense of being a leather-bound grimoire.

I actually hated several of the 4e covers, particularly the "pose" style they used on the PHB and others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Go look at them now. I would argue 3.5 has aged the best of the phb covers.

3.0 not so much. And do you like WAR art?

2000-2012 was overall low point very early D&D at least has an excuse.

1st printing 1e is still my favorite PHB cover. Adventurers actually being adventurers.