I can't speak for Celebrim, but I do share the same sentiment. I don't like the fact that based on the depiction, it looks like the giant would be crushed beneath the weight of all that metal armor. For me, "it's magic" doesn't cut it as an answer for why the giant isn't straining under all that weight.
Agreed.
Actually, my first thought had little to do with the absurdity of carrying a small destroyer on each arm, other than indirectly. It was that the fire giant had just left himself in a position where a smaller race -- say, dwarf, well known for fighting giants -- could easily skate between his shields and legs and shoot a crossbow bolt at his under-armored nether regions. Give him a dwarf or two on each side, and they can wolf pack him in no time flat because he can't actually turn quickly enough to face them, but trying to do so would require moving the shields into an unusable position leaving him even more open. He makes a mighty cool looking snow plow, but he's a bit absurd as anything other than a sitting duck in combat. That can all be chalked up to the WotC team having a dumb idea and the artist just doing what he was paid to do.
As far as the art goes.... I'm not a particular fan of the no background thing. It's fine, if the image is set with text around it, but always looks horrible, stand alone. You can get away with it -- and it often looks cool -- if it's a stick and ink sketch, but that's about it.
That aside, the coloring looks flat and weird. The helmet doesn't look like it's sitting on a head so much as the face looks like one of those 1980s He Man toys that had the face printed on the helmet. The braid looks like it's either glued to the cheek guard or is floating is space in front of it (again, the artist seems to have a problem conveying depth). If the left armor were consistent with the shape of the right, there's no way the giant could hold the shield that close. The right shield appears to be shaped differently than the left because the bottom flairs up in back, indicating the front is closer to the ground, but the top also appears to be leaning back. I hadn't consciously realized just how much difficulty the artist had with perspective until I started trying to figure out why the picture looked "wrong", but it's pretty far out of whack. Even the shadow is off a bit: only the shields cast a shadow, but the the left shield shadow angles back, across the giant, while the right shield shadow comes more or less straight down (possibly forward, just slightly). Meanwhile, the actual objects (giant, shields) appear lit as though the light source is directly in front of them -- with the lower body lit slightly from the giant's right (look at where the shadow is) and the head area slightly from his left (his right boot actually seems to be lit by a night light mounted on the inside bottom of his left shield) and the braid must be lit by the firelight from his nostril because it's well lit even when it should be shaded by the collar that's lit from the side.
Finally, if you want something else, I have no idea what the armor is made of. The spiky top and jutting collar, as well as the juggernaut motif, make me think it's metal. The ragged edges at the bottom make me thing leather or even cloth. The ridges imply that it's layered, but I'm not sure what lays like that -- strong, distinct ridges at the top but sloppy, worn ridges at the bottom. Once you throw the weird gray into the mix, the overall impression I'm left with is that he's wearing some sort of spider silk. That's kind of a cool idea, in a fantasy world, but it really doesn't gel with the rest of the vibe.
Could I do better? Probably not, especially in color. But, I'm not trying to sell my stuff to the biggest RPG on the market. This is
not what I'd use as a promo picture. It really belongs on a second or third tier Kickstarter game. The artist has some ability, probably enough enough to warrant pursuing a career in art. Unless D&D is such a rounding error for WotC/Hasbro that they're now using it to farm future talent for illustrating Magic cards, they shouldn't have used this picture.
