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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8614924" data-attributes="member: 18">No absolutely not. Elmore was ever-present/unavoidable in '80s fantasy as a whole - if anything his work on DL, whilst skilled, just made it look like "generic '80s fantasy", because he was right of the centre of what was "generic" back then. There are some strong individual pieces but no really differentiated style.DiTerlizzi did some work for D&D prior to Planescape (notably the MC and Dragon Mountain), but his style was still developing, and he's what made Planescape look shockingly different to other products on the market.I don't think the graphic design contributed quite as much as the art, but yeah it definitely helped, as did the colour choices - particularly the aged copper patina colour which was common in PS books - it was notable that later PS books deviated both in not having the DiTerlizzi art and not having the Ruppel colour-scheme (retaining the general approach to graphic design though), and looked like ass compared to the earlier ones as a result. So I'd say Ruppel's colour choices are key for his part of the equation. Ruppel's design as also less idiosyncratic for the mid-'90s than DiTerlizzi's art was. There's White Wolf stuff which looks a lot like Ruppel - there's no WW stuff that looks like DiTerlizzi (rather they had their own idiosyncratic artist, who now appears to have totally vanished - Joshua Gabriel Timbrook - no idea if he's dead, changed his name, locked in a mental asylum, or just quietly/happily working at a video game company or something - and losing him cost their books something, albeit his art style had got a bit... broad... by the end).But you then did a bombing run on your own argument re: Ruppel by pointing out no matter how much he matters, the WotC D&D house style renders him irrelevant. Okay, I agree lol.But it'd be absolutely bizarre to hire the defining artist of Planescape to do work on the Forgotten Realm MtG cards, but not on a Planescape D&D setting. As a I said, it would utterly confirm my assertion that WotC thinks MtG art matters and D&D art doesn't (which, if true, is only true because they refuse to pay for top-notch D&D art so consistently lol), and would point to an updated Planescape as a cash grab, as I said, not even worth the relatively small amount of money hiring DiTerlizzi to do some art for it would cost (and he still loves Planescape, btw, he's been very clear about it!). Especially when we're basically in a '90s revival (finally, after an ultra-extended '80s one).</blockquote>

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