D&D 5E Art direction and 5th edition

[Herremann the Wise]

I'm definitely a fan of more realistic, less stylised art. My favourite artist for Dungeons and Dragons is easily Jeff Easley (I'm surprised he has not received more comments but heh). That MM2 cover is my absolute favourite.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Morrus]

I'm definitely a fan of more realistic, less stylised art. My favourite artist for Dungeons and Dragons is easily Jeff Easley (I'm surprised he has not received more comments but heh). That MM2 cover is my absolute favourite.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

It's the DMG cover that does it for me. Sometimes I feel the current cover artists are given the literary equivalent of an instruction to "include 16 'Action' words".

 

[Will Doyle]

How about artists like Ian McCaig in the Fighting Fantasy series? He had me ever since the original cover of Deathtrap Dungeon....
http://www.gamebooks.org/gallery/figfan06o.jpg

Iain McCaig is scarily good. He works in Hollywood now: interestingly enough, he designed the look of Darth Maul. Last I heard he was working as a concept artist on John Carter of Mars.

His FF illustrations were a big reason behind my early interest in RPGs.

 

[Kaodi]

Yes, that DMG and PHB were what I meant to refer to. I prefer the accompanying picture for the MM1 to that for the MM2 by far though. Different strokes, I guess, even among the similarly minded, .

Looking at some of the old artists work, the thing is a lot of their paintings have the right style. It is more a question of whether they could be persuaded to do less cheesecake and beefcake, and just generally be less lurid.

 

[rogueattorney]

Erol Otus' artwork IS D&D to me.

But I imagine the art direction will be - and should be - whatever is most likely to get a 13-15 year old boy to open the book.

 

[Lum The Mad]

Erol Otus' artwork IS D&D to me.

But I imagine the art direction will be - and should be - whatever is most likely to get a 13-15 year old boy to open the book.

Porn?

 

[Elf Witch]

I would like to see more realistic artwork. I am so sick of enormous weapons that would be impossible to use or even carry. They make the swords so long that you could not carry it at your waist because you would trip over it and your arms would never be long enough to get it off your back.

I would also like to see more variety in female adventurers not all woman have double D breast nipped in waists and big butts.

And how about some realistic armor and clothing. No one is going to go adventuring in silk robes slit everywhere.

 

[Stormonu]

Art styles shift over time, but I'm guessing that we're never going back to that which makes the average 35+ year old gamer nostalgiac--whether the Elmore/Easley/Parkinson/Caldwell days, or the period before with Dee/Otus/Sutherland/Roslof/etc. Ain't gonna happen, folks. I can't say that I mind, really, although I suppose I prefer both phases to some of the recent stuff.

I wouldn't be so sure. Wasn't it an Elmore cover that drew a lot of people to buy a certain 4E product recently?

Also, the Dungeon Crawl Classics successfully employed a lot of the old artists to do module artwork, so people will buy into that old art style. I think its just a matter of the designers buying into bringing those artists back.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I want an all Erol Otus edition. I don't know that I and there or four other weirdos would buy it, but it'd be the best ever.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm all for:

* realistic weapons; i.e. no spikes, hooks, and protrusions. Realistic size and *weight* (I'm looking at YOU, hammer group). Dark Sun gets a free pass on that.

* realistic armour; i.e. no spikes, hooks, and *ahem* protrusions. Less of the ragged piecemeal look designed to show off muscles & bare flesh. How about armour that looks like it might actually stop an attack?

The artists they used for AD&D were, by my way of thinking, head and shoulders above the new batch of artists. Not that the new ones are necessarily awful, just that their style is not terribly iconic to D&D. I get why they get used. WotC wants to attract new, young buyers, fine. They can't (or won't) afford to pay the old veterans, fine.

The articles that came out pre-4e talking about the world, the monsters, etc, gave me high hopes that we'd see some nice city/landscapes, scary monsters, etc. What a letdown. Not as bad as the 3.x books, but still not great.

But it's all subjective anyway, right? So whatever. I know what D&D looks like to me, I know what my campaign world looks like, and no amount of crappy artwork in new books can take that away.