MM2 art gallery- AWESOME!

[frankthedm]

Yep, it's a dire tiger alright! At the very beginning of 3rd Edition, I liked the idea of the "dire" class of animals . . . but with every illustration since of a spiky bear or spiky tiger I've really started to equate the word "dire" with "stupid-looking".

Agreed. I was very happy when the new Dire wolf mini was free of bonespurs. Dire animals should look fiercer, not be coated in random barbs of bone.

I'm just happy that these are both uncommon minis, because I'll want a few of each. And yeah, it's definitely cool that the "dire" versions of a creature a just bigger, and don't have the funny spikes and etc that they had in 3rd edition. I can see what the designers were trying for with those, I just didn't like the results.

Maybe for a fiendish creature they can work, but as far as minis were concerned, they usually got represented as ugly spike-chunks. The Blessed Hunter's bonespurs did not look that bad, but a celestial lion really should not be spikey in the first place.

Thankfully those body barbs got bumped off in an 'accident'. A real shame

Armor spikes better watch their back too

Sadly my hopes were crushed when i saw the bonespurs were back in the 4E monster manual. Apparently, the DDM concept art was just Ron Spencer not drawing the spikes on the dire wolf or dire tiger.

 

[Shemeska]

Runecarved Dragon was the copper dragon in Draconomicon. The other is new.

The Warforged Titan is straight out of the Eberron Campaign Setting.

The Nothic is from the Miniatures Handbook.

The Steel Predator looks like it's from a later-day MM. They were designed originally for Lord of the Iron Fortress.

I'm still surprised at the amount of recycled artwork in 4e books, major core books even. It's been that way in every 4e book I've seen, and it's just jarring to recognize artwork that was often used for a specific concept or even a specific NPC to be reused for something often rather different. Some of them are sourced from less prominant 3.x books, but it's still offputting.

But if they're trying to cut back on costs, the art budget would get hit since it's probably some of the most expensive portions of any book. And as I've been led to understand, Hasbro has designated the D&D side of WotC as a profit center, so the art budget would probably be one of the first things to see cuts for savings if they have to work within the money they generate.

 

[lutecius]

I thought thee Colossus was a direct shout-out to Mono Tiki Tia

yeah, now I'm waiting for the rest of the manual to get unmasked.

I understand where you are coming from, equating evil with physical ugliness is not fair way to look at life. But, it's nothing unique to this new D&D book, or even to D&D in general. Human mythology and religion worldwide has a long-standing tradition of equating spiritual ugliness with physical ugliness. In fact, the beautifully evil fey stand out as truly insidious because they buck this trend!

That's why I think cute fairies, hot dryads and beautiful angels make more interesting opponents. There are plenty of ugly monsters already. Pretty+mean is a refreshing combination. It also makes the PCs pause before going into hack&slash mode.

dwarves (ruggedly handsome)

No, really no. Some male dwarf players may think so, but... no.

Agreed. I was very happy when the new Dire wolf mini was free of bonespurs. Dire animals should look fiercer, not be coated in random barbs of bone.

Sadly my hopes were crushed when i saw the bonespurs were back in the 4E monster manual. Apparently, the DDM concept art was just Ron Spencer not drawing the spikes on the dire wolf or dire tiger.

Count another vote against the bonespurs (I've never heard of anyone who liked them now that I think of it) but to be fair the spikeless bear on this last picture looks just as silly.

 

[Shemeska]

Count another vote against the bonespurs (I've never heard of anyone who liked them now that I think of it) but to be fair the spikeless bear on this last picture looks just as silly.

I don't care for the bonespurs in any edition. I immediately think of a rabbit with Shope Papilloma virus, or something similar.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I don't care for the bonespurs in any edition. I immediately think of a rabbit with Shope Papilloma virus, or something similar.

Jackalopes!

I am neutral on the bonespurs myself. Personally I would prefer them going with more sort of mutation style for dire creatures. Since more interesting looking, more unique abilities and is something other then just, "me bigger and meaner!"

 

[Kunimatyu]

I figured out what's so jarring about the ants -- while ants sometimes DO have 4 segments, the 3rd is usually very small, and only has one pair of legs. The artist got that backward, so we have exceptionally freaky quasi-ants.

This whole "realism" thing is probably why we don't have carnivorous dinos in the MM anymore -- if you look at the Drake entry, the big red one is clearly supposed to be a T-Rex stand-in, and the green one to the left is a "raptor" stand-in.

It's probably a wise move, because unless you get an actual paleoartist to do the dinos, they'll come out looking really weird. The 3.5 pic with a T-Rex stepping on a horse was pretty rad, though.

 

[Fifth Element]

And as I've been led to understand, Hasbro has designated WotC as a cost center, so the art budget would probably be one of the first things to see cuts for savings.

What leads you to believe that? That's not what a cost centre is. A cost centre is an admistrative department, like HR or R&D, that is not evaluated based on the profit produced, because it cannot produce profit but is still necessary for the operation of a company. WotC sells product. They are therefore a profit centre. Or an investment centre, if they're evaluated that way.

 

[darjr]

The thorax of an ant is composed of three segments. There are ant species that have one of those exaggerated.

Even so, I must agree, I would have preferred a more canonical ant image.

 

[Shemeska]

What leads you to believe that? That's not what a cost centre is. A cost centre is an admistrative department, like HR or R&D, that is not evaluated based on the profit produced, because it cannot produce profit but is still necessary for the operation of a company. WotC sells product. They are therefore a profit centre. Or an investment centre, if they're evaluated that way.

Not my jargon, so I was a bit off in what I said above, I'll edit it here in a minute.

As I've been told, the D&D side of WotC was designated a profit center by Hasbro. This was said by someone on the DDI side of things to me, so if their understanding is wrong on that, I'm only going by what they told me. They mentioned it in context of it causing budget issues on that side of things, on top of the Hasbro-wide hiring freeze for all but critical positions.

 

[Hussar]

Dunno if it got mentioned, I missed it on my read through, but the Kenku is a reprint as well.

Count me in on not liking bone spurs. Ick. I wish they'd redesign the animal somewhat instead of just adding spikes. A dire tiger (or sabre toothed cat) doesn't look anything like a modern tiger really. It's closer to a bear, with honking big fangs.

I think you could simply take real world examples of a lot of these animals, and they're different enough to be recognizable as "dire" without spikes.

Didn't they learn in 3e that spikes are not a good thing?