D&D 5E Toward a new D&D aesthetics

[Mournblade94]

There is nothing wrong with it.

They are just chilling at a campfire, the bruiser looking type is reading a book. Another person is making some sparkly cantrip magic absently. Another is roasting a sausage on the fire. You can see a sword is there but not even being carried.

It is just a quiet moment.

I consider that a lighter feel than a lot of D&D art where there is action or people ready for action.

That was nearly all of Elmore's art though. From 1st and 2nd edition. Not all of it but much of it. Very light situations.

Actually Elmore's art seemed to have calm with danger:

 

[Mournblade94]

its probably a hot take, but I think what we call beefcake/cheesecake art, the fake-oil paint style with ridiculous attires and action scenes, would still be viable if they'd just bring more diversity in terms of body shapes, genders and skin color. Give us a muscular woman choke-slamming dinosaurs in a sorcerer's tower to save a hairy dude with a bald head! The appeal of that genre (at least to me) is ''perilous, over-the-top-dramatic adventuring made sexy'', not ''sexy adventuring''.

Closer to a multicultural, diversity-positive, van paint job at a Manowar concert for retired WWE wrestlers than a Danielle Steel for grungy teenagers vibe

You mean like this one that inspired a whole campaign setting?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How about this angle: D&D (or at least Basic D&D) has always been for children/pre-teens, but what society deems suitable for kids of that age has changed. Old "for kids" was more mature than today's "for kids".

Yeah, I don't buy any of that any more than Hussar does. That is, you are correct that what society deems suitable for kids (of any age, not just that age) changes over time...but there was absolutely some stuff people would have been scandalized by then that is (somewhat...) normal today and vice-versa.

E.g., consider when Sesame Street made the choice to actually discuss Mr. Hooper's death on-camera. Though the overall response from parents was quite positive (for good reason; the actors' genuine emotions are quite moving, and they deal with a very difficult topic very honestly, something far too rarely done with children), it was a hella ballsy move at the time. Entertainment for children has always been at least partially sanitized in every age, and has always had subversive stuff slip through anyway. Consider Rocko's Modern Life or Spongebob Squarepants, both shows that got away with some very adult jokes, or Avatar: the Last Airbender, which despite being marketed for pre-teens dealt with some EXTREMELY emotionally-heavy stuff like survivor's guilt, child abuse, collapse of mental health, pacifism vs violence to protect others, grief and how one processes it (who hasn't teared up at least a little hearing Little Soldier Boy?), etc.

Some things acceptable today would never have been acceptable in children's entertainment of the 80s (like having a happy, stable relationship between two men). Some things acceptable in the 80s would not be acceptable today. The same thing will be true of entertainment 40 years from now vs that of today.

Hell, it's not even uniform across current cultures! There are things I've seen meant for showing on family-friendly TV in Europe that I found genuinely scandalous (as in...actually having cartoon nudity and implied beastiality), and was pretty much told I was just being a prudish, Puritanical American for having any objections to it.

 

[Voadam]

These images have almost nothing in common...? I do not at all see a common style here.

I get that you do not see it at all. You are focusing on different stuff.

I see a trend and so do some others. Some, like you, do not.

The first three are somewhat bright colors, for example, but so wildly different in style and tone. First is mildly impressionistic, second is almost like stained glass and resembles a more colorful take on Art Nouveau. Third kinda sorta resembles the first, but is aiming for a pretty high degree of "realism," not in the sense of not being fantastical (what with the butterfly pegasus and all) but in the sense of aiming for minimal stylization and presenting things with most fine details represented as though accurate to a real physical body, especially in the foreground and the central pegasus figure. (The people driving the carriage and the tree are examples of lower detail, but still overall striving for a "this is what it would really look like" vibe, particularly with the attention paid to the humans' hair and the pegasus's mane.)

The fourth and fifth though are completely different. Desaturated, relatively scruffy/rough, featuring comparatively mundane scenes and ordinary clothing. Just about the only things that unite all of them are:

1. They aren't "real is brown," as TVTropes would put it. This is a bit weak because the fourth and fifth images actually do feature some of those characteristics (desaturation, shifting toward a monochromatic or dichromatic palette) but they have at least some ways they defy that trope so l'll grant it.
2. They feature people being happy or positive that do not look like they're exhausted, dirty, or unwell. This isn't universal since image 2 doesn't have people in it at all, but again I'm willing to count it for that purpose.
3. It features a variety of (nonsapient) species and (sapient) ancestries and ethnicities.

That's...pretty damn thin in the similarity department. The first three images are certainly colorful and most of the ones with sapient beings have a high degree of non-humanoid characters...but given non-humanoid are a solid chunk of player characters now (e.g., even if you lump subraces together, the most popular races in 5e are human+variant, full elves collectively, half elf, dragonborn, and tiefling) that seems to be a mere matter of accurately reflecting what people are already choosing to play.

What would you say is the artistic throughline for these images, apart from a loose pattern colorful, positive, and diverse? Because those three alone are hardly worthy of complaint.

As I said before what I see is "a trend to the lighter and more kid friendly."

It is not a complaint, it is an observation of the impression of the art that I have seen recently from highlights and examples that seem a change from the armed adventurer or menacing monster action art I tend to think about with D&D.

The humanoid diversity is not particularly striking. AD&D and such was more humanocentric but that does not particularly stand out as the change in tone. More that there will be pictures of scenes of a city market full of friendly humanoid scamps with no villains and no weapons or armor. Not a Baba Yaga type dark faerie goblin market. This seems a shift in tone to be more in line with the 5e PH character art of halflings

than say the 5e PH character art for Half-Orcs.

D&D oscillates in tones and styles and focuses with a lot of diversity going on at various times. A bunch of 2e was kid focused in the D&D it presented and its art such as a line of Greyhawk adventures including Child's Play and Gargoyle. 2e's Diterlizzi art for planescape was a lot of children fairy tale style. A lot of 2e was also wildly different in tone and art such as Brom with Dark Sun and Stephen Fabian in Ravenloft or stuff like the Guide to Hell.

 

[Mournblade94]

I get that you do not see it at all. You are focusing on different stuff.

I see a trend and so do some others. Some, like you, do not.

As I said before what I see is "a trend to the lighter and more kid friendly."

It is not a complaint, it is an observation of the impression of the art that I have seen recently from highlights and examples that seem a change from the armed adventurer or menacing monster action art I tend to think about with D&D.

The humanoid diversity is not particularly striking. AD&D and such was more humanocentric but that does not particularly stand out as the change in tone. More that there will be pictures of scenes of a city market full of friendly humanoid scamps with no villains and no weapons or armor. Not a Baba Yaga type dark faerie goblin market. This seems a shift in tone to be more in line with the 5e PH character art of halflings
View attachment 154194than say the 5e PH character art for Half-Orcs.
View attachment 154197


D&D oscillates in tones and styles and focuses with a lot of diversity goingTh

That Halfling is probably one of my least favorite art depictions in D&D History. I really don't like it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why would you show a giant version of that?!

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

That Halfling is probably one of my least favorite art depictions in D&D History. I really don't like it.

If Szass Tam was looking to kill him, I would convert myself to a Thayan enthusiast.

 

[Voadam]

That was nearly all of Elmore's art though. From 1st and 2nd edition. Not all of it but much of it. Very light situations.

Actually Elmore's art seemed to have calm with danger:

There is absolutely room for different interpretations and reactions to the same bodies of artistic work.

Chilling at a campfire though does not seem to me to have the element of danger that a vampire with blood on her lips openly leaving a body in a bar full of armed and armored mercenaries who look like they are possibly on the edge of drawing blades on her. The danger seems a distinguishing factor in tone for me. For others the calm of the moment could be the relevant factor for the feel of the art.

Reactions to art and the impressions they give can vary widely individual to individual.

 

[Voadam]

Why would you show a giant version of that?!

The 5e halfling pictures come to mind as examples of peaceful D&D portrayals in 5e from the start.

It is a different tone from a lot of the other portrayals of races and classes in the 5e PH and different from say the action warrior portrayal of halflings in 4e.

 

[Umbran]

It's part of a long term strategy. Kids are the next generation of D&D players, and the project aimed at kids is likely to have D&D themes.

Sure. That's fine. As a company, it is sensible to create a path for customers from one product area to another.

She may not be directly involved in the books, but it would make sense from a business strategy standpoint to start "leaking" the kid friendly aesthetic into the books, as that will be the next generations art preference (because that's what they were exposed to as kids).

And that's where you lose me.

For one thing, the kids who they are trying to appeal to now aren't using the books of now - they'll be using the books of 5 to 10 years in the future.

For another thing, most of us liked kid-friendly art when we were kids, but now have different, and usually more broad, tastes in art. By the time the kids move from the kid-products to D&D They won't be little kids anymore and their tastes in art will change.

I think, ultimately, the point you are missing is that many teens and adults still appreciate cute things.

I just think it's naïve to believe that there is a firewall separating WoTC divisions with no coordination, idea exchange or long term planning between them.

As noted - long term planning would be, "We are introducing a suite of product for kids now - in five years we will want new D&D products to be attractive to those customers we have created." You don't make changes today that you won't need for 5 years. You especially don't need to start changing current products to match styles with products that, as far as I understand it, don't even exist yet! Changing art in today's books to match art in projects that haven't even been released is not "long term planning" it is nonsensical.