D&D General [ART THREAD]Your Personal Favorite D&D Art For a Monster

For the Elmore fans, (I am a huge fan), have you seen this news that WOTC is not using him for future art? He was "fired" is the catchy term being thrown around. He was definitely a huge part of what got me into D&D, incredible artist.

The old B&W Lizardmen and all the TSR dragons (B&W or color) are some of my all time favorites, seen earlier in this thread. Also the Dragonlance novels had a ton of cool B&W and cover art... all excellent. Had borrowed the novels from friends, so I actually xerox copied a TON of the inner page B&W art of the draconians and dragonlord artwork. Hugely influencial to me.



Here are some great ones in the 2e DMGR4 Monster Mythology. Probably my favorite Liches I've run into. The hellhound(?) is also incredible... not sure if it's from another book also, because it doesn't really fit in where they slapped the artwork in this book.

(this lich is also in the 2e Monstrous Compendium I)

Elmore "fired"? Was he even doing WotC art anymore?

His, Roslof's and Parkinson were the three artists that put D&D leagues ahead of other companies. If WotC is "too good" to deal with him anymore, not sure I want to deal with WotC anymore.

TheMercile said:

For the Elmore fans, (I am a huge fan), have you seen this news that WOTC is not using him for future art? He was "fired" is the catchy term being thrown around. He was definitely a huge part of what got me into D&D, incredible artist.

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I think this is a bit of a game of telephone distortion (third hand, or farther?) of someone who went to GaryCon saying that they heard he offered to do the covers for the new books, but was told they wanted a digital artist instead, for "more pop". Margaret Weis apparently confirmed that was Random House's choice.

While a lot of his work on Dragonlance was iconic, some if it is also very much of its time. I started with BECMI and so of course Elmore is near and dear to my heart, but stylistically I do think he's kept in a bit of a rut.

TheMercile said:

Here are some great ones in the 2e DMGR4 Monster Mythology. Probably my favorite Liches I've run into. The hellhound(?) is also incredible... not sure if it's from another book also, because it doesn't really fit in where they slapped the artwork in this book.


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TSR did have a penchant for reusing art. This is Parkinson's The Shadow Lord’s Tower, his cover for D&D module X11: Saga of the Shadow Lord, 1986.

TheMercile said:

For the Elmore fans, (I am a huge fan), have you seen this news that WOTC is not using him for future art? He was "fired" is the catchy term being thrown around. He was definitely a huge part of what got me into D&D, incredible artist.

The old B&W Lizardmen and all the TSR dragons (B&W or color) are some of my all time favorites, seen earlier in this thread. Also the Dragonlance novels had a ton of cool B&W and cover art... all excellent. Had borrowed the novels from friends, so I actually xerox copied a TON of the inner page B&W art of the draconians and dragonlord artwork. Hugely influencial to me.

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The internal chapter start art for the Dragonlance books deserves more credit than it gets. I mean, look at this one:

Mannahnin said:

I think this is a bit of a game of telephone distortion (third hand, or farther?) of someone who went to GaryCon saying that they heard he offered to do the covers for the new books, but was told they wanted a digital artist instead, for "more pop". Margaret Weis apparently confirmed that was Random House's choice.

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Considering how bad the character work on the new trilogy's cover art is, that's a real shame.

Mannahnin said:

I think this is a bit of a game of telephone distortion (third hand, or farther?) of someone who went to GaryCon saying that they heard he offered to do the covers for the new books, but was told they wanted a digital artist instead, for "more pop". Margaret Weis apparently confirmed that was Random House's choice.

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Man, if we lost out on having 3 more covers in his style?

Tragic, especially considering the resulting character's left much to be desired.

TheMercile said:

For the Elmore fans, (I am a huge fan), have you seen this news that WOTC is not using him for future art? He was "fired" is the catchy term being thrown around. He was definitely a huge part of what got me into D&D, incredible artist.

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Considering that he was never employed by WotC makes that seem like something some reactionary said to manufacture outrage. Since WotC acquired D&D in the late 90s, how many times have they actually used Elmore to provide artwork? Not a lot. So, this comes across as just more internet nerdrage over nothing.