D&D General Defining your campaing through art? Or how I learned to embrace anime elf ears (image-heavy)

[Mecheon]

Question: can anyone explain to me why just about every non-Human is depicted these days as having increasingly long pointy ears?

Pointed ears have long been a sign of something magical going on with someone. Just a longrunning thing

Add in the fact that elves are the stereotypical 'yeah sure they have pointed ears' race, and therefor elves end up with the longest, pontiest ears

 

[oreofox]

I have looked through various images over the last decade or so on the internet to get inspiration for my setting. Old Elmore-like art, to anime, furry, and so on. Finding certain images while looking for others have made me change some things I had originally seen as "set in stone" when it came to my setting. Removing the green skin from orcs, dwarves with metal-like skin, changing "sun elves" into something that wasn't golden- or red-haired white people (thank you Dragon Prince from Netflix), etc. A lot of my setting has been influenced by the art I have came across from amazing (and some only-ok) artists, and I couldn't have been happier.

Glad to see someone else who was a more "purist" in the art get inspired by non-Western depictions of fantasy races.

 

[Oofta]

Pointed ears have long been a sign of something magical going on with someone. Just a longrunning thing

Add in the fact that elves are the stereotypical 'yeah sure they have pointed ears' race, and therefor elves end up with the longest, pontiest ears

It's one thing to have Spock ears, it's another to have ears that are verging on parody. It's kind of like with Superman's powers. At one time he could leap tall buildings with a single bound (literally, he initially couldn't fly). Then it got to the point where he just flies around the galaxy at apparently faster-than-light speeds and is moving entire solar systems to a different sun.

I mean, we've gone from this - noticeably pointed ears that could be covered with a hairstyle in the PHB

To these ears which to me are cartoonishly large.

I guess I just prefer my D&D art to be a bit more grounded.

 

[Blue]

I'm a very visual person, so I strongly embrace art.

I have a rather full folder of cool fantasy people art. Years ago I picked a bunch of them and printed them out 9 to a page and cut them up. I keep an envelope of them with my DMing supplies, and when I need to improv an NPC I pull out a small handful and quickly pick one that looks like it can play the roll. Since it's not a "perfect" fit, it often suggests otehr aspects and makes the NPCs more memorable and original.

I'm currently running two games. One online and one in-person among extended family that were in our pandemic group. For both of them I do a lot of pictures. But something I found - I have now three fantasy people art folders. One general, which is where I go looking for characters to play and such, but I also have smaller ones for each of those campaigns because they each have developed their own art style.

One of them goes realistic and serious. The other is more stylized and allows more whimsical art. Mind you realistic doesn't bar fantastical, just requires it to look like real fantastical. I have a subfolder for when they were in the feywild (well, faewild in that setting) and I have lots of completely fantastical pictures, but are done in photorealistic styles. (Or are photos, lots and lots of talented people out there doing costuming, makeup, contacts and prosthetics like ears or wings.)

 

[Voadam]

One would think Halflings (a.k.a. Hobbits) would have non-pointy ears but the points have been growing in the art as the years go by.

B/X is from 1981 with pointy eared halflings.

 

[J.Quondam]

Something I really appreciate about the vast availability of art online is that it's (comparatively) easy to find styles and depictions to bound pretty much any campaign vision, whether grounded or gonzo.
Personally, I gravitate to shorter campaigns in a wide variety of systems and campaigns. It's become so much easier to present worlds (or even particular versions of worlds) at the table than it was even just 10 years ago. Really, you can illustrate pretty much anything nowadays-- and that's incredibly helpfully for those of us who are, umm, woefully artistically challenged.

So a HUGE thanks to all those artists out there who showcase their work online. Whatever their medium or style, they really deserve support in whatever way that means: donation, buying their merch, supporting patreons, commissions, or even just a simple credit.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Love this thread! I'm a little disappointed that some folks despise the big elf ears... they've grown on me, as I find it adds to the idea that elves are alien instead of just "pointy-eared humans," but that's just my take.

The three most interesting art styles of seen that I've been drawn to this year are from Witch Hat Atelier, Monstress, and Demon Slayer. All do an incredible job of merging the cute, gonzo, with something truly unique and even grounded in its own way.

 

[Mannahnin]

Love this thread! I'm a little disappointed that some folks despise the big elf ears... they've grown on me, as I find it adds to the idea that elves are alien instead of just "pointy-eared humans," but that's just my take.

While I don't mind big-earned elves, I've found myself going kind of the opposite way the last few years as I've read more original Irish and Norse materials. Seeing the fairie folk as much more human in appearance. The pointed ears and the beardlessness, for example, not seeming to be consistent elements in the old tales.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

While I don't mind big-earned elves, I've found myself going kind of the opposite way the last few years as I've read more original Irish and Norse materials. Seeing the fairie folk as much more human in appearance. The pointed ears and the beardlessness, for example, not seeming to be consistent elements in the old tales.

A fair interpretation... it's just my view that I want to the non-human races to feel a bit more that just a different culture or race, but that they're an entirely different species that engages with the world in a totally unique, non-human way.

Nowadays, I even find Lord of the Ring's elves a little too much like humans, and standard D&D treats elves as much more like humans in culture than LotR does. Now I'm drawn more to Warhammer/Age of Sigmar takes on these races, which lean into the whole gonzo otherwordly natures of some races. They're Sylvaneth for example leans heavily into Wood Elves literally being part of nature.

 

[Lanefan]

B/X is from 1981 with pointy eared halflings.

View attachment 139418

Huh. Could that have been done, I wonder, as part of the attempt to make them a bit less Hobbit-like and thus avoid running afoul of the Tolkein estate and their enthusiastic legal team?

I ask because the obvious inspiration for Halflings is and always has been Hobbits; and Hobbits are in essence small Humans with a less-indistrial society.