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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 3713570" data-attributes="member: 18">All artists attract criticism and praise. Generally, more talented artists and illustrators with a more distinctive style attract greater volumes of both. A good example of this is Tony DiTerlizzi, an artist who many regard as brilliant, and who has forged a successful career for himself outside of gaming with The Spiderwick Chronicles, demonstrating that his art clearly has a broad appeal. However, when he worked on the Planescape books and other TSR products (I first remember his art in the '93 Monstrous Manual - it totally blew me away), he attracted a large amount of criticism and people saying things like "I wish they'd gotten [fill in typical late-'80s TSR artist] to do this!". Some of my first "debates" on the internet were over DiTerlizzi's work (which I defended with the vigour of youth, I can assure you).WAR gives me a bit of a taste of what it's like to be on the other side.I don't like WAR's work. It's not that I hate it, either. I just don't enjoy it, and almost every time I see a piece I think "I wish [insert Brom/DiTerlizzi/Lockwood/"Sam Wood"] had done that instead...", especially covers. I just find it doesn't suit my general aesthetic sense. His limbs are too curved, heads too pointy, the mouths he draws look wierd to me, and so on.Yet, I understand, now, at least, after artistic training myself (which I hadn't had a lot of back in '93-94), and from being on the exact other side of this, that none of this makes him a bad artist, and in the end, I managed to put up with Easley's art in 2E for a decade, so I'm pretty sure I can deal with WAR's for another few years.Hey, maybe it's just familiarity, but I'm even beginning to like some of his pieces. The new Monstrous Manual cover looks fantastic, as does the DMG cover (though ironically I hear they're the ones not finalised, so there's still time to make them so ugly I sigh every time I see them WotC! Again, I dealt with than in 2E and 2E Revised so...). The PHB looks 'orrible, but then again, I hate "sexplate" with a burning passion, so I'm biased.</blockquote>

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