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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6036322" data-attributes="member: 2067">For me, neutral-leaning-to-bad. A red dragon can have big claws (why not), but the size of the claws shouldn't be what is attention-grabbing about it. Lockwood's more elegant digits imply a more careful, precise, considered gait that helps convey a sense of an un-hurried mind. Yeah, maybe, but that isn't exactly relevant to me. A red dragon's attacks will kill you dead regardless of if it can also kill you with wings or not. When I think "sinuous," I find it's incompatible with "shorter...more muscular...more compact...thicker."I mean, a boa constrictor is a powerfully muscular creature, but being sinuous implies an elegance and water-like quality to it. A boa constrictor is muscular, but it's also very very long and very very flexible, and that is what makes it sinuous to me. Shorter, more brutish red dragons don't work for me because it works against the idea of them being concerned with wealth and power and control. It draws more attention to their physical abilities of claw/claw/bite/buffet/buffet/tail than it implies plots and narratives beyond the combat-scene pose. For a white dragon, a more physical, buff, stocky bearing is perhaps relevant -- white dragons are the savages and brutes of the dragon world. For a red dragon, that hypermasculinity and physical presence is a distraction from what should, IMO, be important: the evil intent of the thing. Not hostile. Not necessarily aggressive or violent. But thoroughly wicked. Red dragons are <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard" target="_blank">magnificent bastards</a>. I don't get that from this illo. I get "Rargh, I'm angry and violent, grrr, snarl."Things that would help:1) Muscles should flow more smothly than bulge. More snake, less George Foreman.2) Smoother scales. Not so jagged and rough, but sleek, seamless, almost flesh-like.3) Pose. It should not look like an animal, with an animalistic "DID I JUST HEAR THAT?! RARGH!" pose. It should be more confident and methodical.4) Mouth. Shut it. Are you a drooling savage or one of the most profound powers on the material plane?5) Claws. More hands, less paws. More svelte, implying control and manipulation. More Mr. Burns less Mr. Woofs, the neighbor's big shaggy great dane.6) Wings. Less "bringing them in," more "extending them out." Red dragons are rarely tense or excited, they're confident and intelligent, they put their wings wherever they want, not hide them out of the way. Some of that works against the explicit goals that he gave the artist, so I get that he was trying to give a counter-point. But I'd much rather have one of the pinnacle threats of the D&D game retain the idea of authority. Look at the body language on display. Big Red is all turned around, surprised, nervous, tense, alert, spooked. Lockwood's Red is doing what IT wants. It doesn't react, it makes YOU react to IT. It's not scared or confused.Body language communicates a lot about a creature. And while "GRR, I'M A MONSTER, RAR!" works for some monsters, it doesn't for all of them. For the Red Dragon, I don't think it works.</blockquote>

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