D&D 5E Full Wraparound Cover Art For Ravenloft

embee said:

If they were looking AT Strahd, it would just be the backs of their heads, which would read as "Strahd Squares Off Against Two Randos."

The artist wanted to make sure Strahd was on the front cover but also have the castle in the art. So the head positioning is due to wanting characters and setting to be recognizable and present.

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Yeah, it's a cheat of the kind artists use fairly regularly; it just wasn't executed well enough in this case. The artist failed their Sleight of Eye check.

If you cover up Esmeralda, the cheat works. You can't see where Van Richten's eyes are pointing, so even though his head is not turned toward Strahd, your brain naturally assumes he's looking at the most obvious thing in that general direction.

But Esmeralda's eyes are visible, and they are very obviously aimed away from Strahd... and they are also turned in a direction that lines up with where Van Richten is facing. So not only does she look wrong, but her presence makes us think Van Richten is looking at the same thing she is, and now he looks wrong too.

It would have been better to have Esmeralda looking the other way. Then we would assume Van Richten was looking at Strahd and she wasn't.

Laurefindel said:

There, one ugly ms paint fix coming up!


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That fits so well that I hope this was the artists original intent and then a suit came buy and said, "We gotta put star of the show on the front cover!"

Von Ether said:

That fits so well that I hope this was the artists original intent and then a suit came buy and said, "We gotta put star of the show on the front cover!"

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I kinda feel it was more strad was just photoshopped at the suits' order instead. Like they were looking up at the castle ready to storm it before and the suit was like "we gotta have vampires on the cover".

Well, this looks like another 5e book I'll sit out.

Suitably generic for me just meh. Not exciting or claw my eyes out.

Probably get the alt art cover.

Still don't like the long-haired Strahd. Stephen Fabian's version is how I will always envision him.