rogueattorney said:
I expect someone drawing a human to have the end-result look like a human. I don't mind cartoony styles, but I expect some sort of passing familiarity with the shape of real-world creatures, and plausible fantastic anatomy.
Our gaming group found Otus artwork to always, without fail, to be worthy of derision. Sometimes we got hours of amusement from it. Immature? Sure, but then, we were. Looking back on it now twenty years later, I merely note that his "style" demonstrated no particular talent worth mentioning and did nothing to enhance the products it adorned -- quite the opposite, if anything (although of course the majority of people buying AD&D products were not making their purchasing decisions on the artwork; indeed I suppose that's probably still true today).
Ditto for the late Mr Sutherland, although his work was merely amateurish rather than awful. (Not at all uncommon in the world of published RPG material, unfortunately.)
On the other hand, we have artwork like the cover of the original MM2. I generally don't mind Easley, but what was he on when he painted this? I don't know what that giant plans to do with his polearm, but "strike his opponent with it" seems to be the least likely of several options.
I'd like Elmore a lot more if he could paint more than one woman, and if that woman didn't always have crossed eyes.
My favourite artist of that period would probably be Caldwell. Many fine Dragon covers. Although maybe a little too much emphasis on the chainmail bikini, IIRC.
As for today's WOTC artists, I find most of it unobjectionable, although there's not a lot of it that really jumps out and grabs me. It is almost always at least competently done and usually looks professional, and that goes a long way as far as I'm concerned.
