4E Art Direction--Yay or Nay

[Xsjado]

Variable for me. Some of it is really good and I never though the 3.5e art was that interesting. But there are some questionable pieces as well.

Personally I really like page 297 and the art on the dwarf racial page.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I dislike the idea of re-used art, though. But it doesn't seem very prevalent, judging by the stuff that was already shown in the preview books and the daily art previews by WotC. And if they keep to re-using good pieces, well, I won't complain.

I think at some point they stretched their art budget a bit too far - W&M had an adamantine dragon and completely different angels (see the older minis). I guess that was not the only thing they had to re-commission because the concept changed lately.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Casupaa]

I must admit that I´m a little dissapointed overall with the quality of the art(only speaking of Player´s Handbook though). In particular I think that Anne Stokes art is really bad(look at the eledrin race picture), which is a shame, considering she has some great pieces on her website. Maybe they were rushed? I´m not really fond of the work Lee Moyer, Howard Lyon and David Griffith either.

William O'Connor´s work is a whole different story though. Its really amazing. He has style, and know how to setup a dynamic pose, and his coloring is superb.

 

[RangerWickett]

I miss Todd Lockwood.

I got a little Wayne Reynolds'ed out, so I'm okay with him just doing the covers.

But I'm not a huge fan of . . . well, a lot of the artists they use. The person who draws most of the dwarves with all their angular gear, for one. The artist who did the PHB races section eladrin picture. And honestly, the guy who does, like, all the rest of the art. You know, the one who did the dragonborn PHB races section picture, and the cover of Keep on the Shadowfell (sounds like "Keep Off the Grass"). He's technically proficient, but for about half his pictures I just don't like them.

Also, too much cleavage. Jeebus, I know it's fantasy, but could we be a little less generous with the "stab me in the boobs please" armor?

Worst art? The first big two-page spread in the DMG, with a group of PCs going into a cave full of monsters. It's almost Jeff Easley bad (Jeff Easley does terrible humans and cool monsters).

I will admit, I paid more attention to the art I disliked than to the art I liked.

 

[Fobok]

I absolutely love the art design. Some pieces? Yeah, I don't like, but those are specifics, in general I love the way they're going.

When I first looked at 3e, I couldn't get over how... punkish everything was. Spikes and tattoos everywhere. And this continued in almost every 3e product. I actually had to tell my group 'nothing looks like that', and find other visual aids for equipment. 4e's finally getting back to my preferred style.

 

[Andur]

Variable, unfortunately in my opinion the two extremes are side by side...

Eladarin are gorgeous, elves are umm two dimensional, bland, and look like an Intro to Acrylics Shading piece...

What's funny is the same artist has some of the great two page art done as well...

 

[Plane Sailing]

Going by the R&C and W&M plus some of the bits that have appeared on the WotC site

* I like the direction where we are seeing more 'scenes' rather than just characters

* what's with the artist who gives all his humanoids shiny noses? I find that really off-putting!

 

[Greatwyrm]

I thought the art and layout were very well done. Art is really subjective, but I was impressed.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'm surprised at the amount of reused art in the Monster Manual, but overall the art is very good.

 

[Ander00]

Like any book full of illustrations some of it is hit or miss.

This.

I am seeing quite a few misses, but it's not like third edition books weren't full of those either. Overall, I'm slightly underwhelmed, but there are some pretty nice pictures as well.
One thing I really like about the art direction is the move away from having almost exclusively single character illustrations without context to more actual scenes (although I would count a bunch of the one and a half page spreads amongst the misses).


cheers