D&D General Tony Diterlizzi appreciation thread


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Yeah, the inexplicable animus towards him vs generic or unknown artists totally put me off survivor threads. Madness.

His style is genius, really wish it was used in Witchlight. It might have persuaded me to buy the book.
I don’t have any animus toward him, but his style simply is not my taste and wouldn’t land in my top 5 D&D artists. But I completely understand that is a subjective opinion.
 



I don't know what to call it then, but I see it as just part of the game of getting 'your' choice to the finish line.

If your looking at the thread there are some patterns of behavior that at least seem to me, to be consistent. :)
I haven’t looked at that tread so I can’t really give my opinion on it. It was just that your limited description did not delve into what I would consider politics.
 

ART!

Deluxe Unhuman
I read The Search for Wondla to my daughter years back, and particularly liked his art in that. For instance:

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His website is pretty great, by the way; full of stuff to look at, read, listen to, and watch.
 
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His art was such a striking departure from what came before when he came to prominence with Planescape. It fit the zeitgeist of the time so well, in a way that the mullets, mustaches, and 80s hair other artists were still depicting well into the 90s didn't. Don't get me wrong, I love the works of Elmore and Easley, but DiTerlizzi (and Brom) felt more contemporary to the period. And yet his sense of whimsy also harkened back to some of the even earlier works of D&D art.

Don't get me started on the Spiderwick movie adaptation. They took a series deeply steeped in real folklore and had faeries defeated by ketchup.
 
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If I got into the mind of my character, DiTerlizzi's monsters are not things that I want to fight. He retains the whimsical strangeness of a monster without losing the sense of danger. For example, this observer could be read in a number of different ways


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It looks like a deep sea creature, weird and alien, but not necessarily hostile. A more typical depiction would be almost cartoonishly aggressive, with exposed teeth and an aggressive stance. But this illustration really seems like a random encounter, a creature minding its (alien, incomprehensible) business on its own plane when out of nowhere comes a plane shifting human. He manages to use the single, gigantic eye to create an expression that is in turns curious and predatory, as if the creature is still deciding how to respond. Yet it's also somehow cute and fantastical?

Not that he can't do hostile, as he often does with various lower planar creatures.
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But again with these images, I'm not thinking, "ok let's fight," as I might with a monster in a more traditional action pose. Instead the viewer is more inclined to think, "let's back away slowly...maybe it didn't notice us...now run!"

His NPCs are similarly worth engaging. They are confident, savvy, powerful, and clearly have a lot going on that is not related at all to the PCs. If you were going to sit down with these characters to have a drink, you would have to be both sociable and guarded as you try to figure out what schemes they are up to.

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All together, it worked really well for PS's urban portal fantasy, one that was supposedly a lot more about negotiation and problem solving against forces infinitely more powerful than you. (In fact, I'm not sure the setting materials and adventures ever really lived up to that premise, and maybe dnd is the wrong system, but that's another thread.)
 

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