D&D 5E D&D and who it's aimed at
- Thread starter Morrus
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MGibster
Legend
I don't know, that last illustration is just straight up #%#%# up.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I like a lot of his art. I still prefer 5e's art, but his Astral Dreadnought art is amazing. I'm not so much of a fan of Elmore's art, there's a lot of random people standing around in boring landscapes, but it's not bad quality. Above the average quality of a lot of the early D&D art that I've seen.
I can see that. However, a lot of 5e art (especially the monsters) are just portraits with nothing happening or context also.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
Sure. I just think that a lot of 5e's landscape art is just more interesting and attention-catching than most of Elmore's. Like this:
I think Elmore's art quality is pretty good, his landscape/adventuring party shots just kind of feel more "staged" to me than most of 5e's. Some of them painfully so. Like this one. What are those guys looking at? Why are they standing like that? What's with their poses? Compared to the adventuring party shot I posted above (the one with the fairy dragons and halfling), I just prefer the 5e art. The adventuring party is clearly in the process of making their way through a forest. They're scouting, actively in the middle of an adventure through the wilds. And the colors stand out more than most of Elmore's art. It feels more "real/genuine" to me than just a lot of Elmore's art.
I'm not going to say that Elmore's art style is inferior to these 5e landscape/adventuring party artwork . . . I just prefer 5e's and think that there are a few things in them that they just objectively get better than Elmore usually did (posing, colors, making the landscape interesting, etc).
Attachments
I think Elmore's technique involves (or at least used to) taking pictures of models and then drawing them, reusing them, plugging them into different settings. Where I live in Kentucky isn't too far from where he worked. A friend of mine used to model for him. I don't know which character(s) she represented though.
But yeah, I agree some are better, some are worse. I just don't agree that all of the best art is being done now. There's stuff to like from all eras.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
Definitely agreed. 100% accurate to say. There's more than a few pieces of 5e artwork that I extremely dislike (most of Tyranny of Dragons, some of the Gem Dragons and Draconians from Fizban's, etc), but in my personal taste, 5e has a lot more really good art than bad art.
Parmandur
Book-Friend
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