NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mengu" data-source="post: 5837540" data-attributes="member: 65726">I don't see what's wrong any of these...The first picture in the first post is totally awesome. She defies tradition. She's not a pretty girl with big boobs. She has scars riddling her face and torso, her accessorization (is that a word?) is well balanced, and speaks to the nature of the post apocalyptic wilderness she comes from. Her oversize sword, simply adds to her characterization. She looks pretty bad ass to me.The picture with the "brown ugly dudes" might hail strait from the dungeons of Labyrinth.The backdrop on Chronomancer is what one would expect in an Alice in Wonderland-like world, quite fitting of such a genre.The Eladrin portrayals perhaps make you wonder about the accuracy of a few details like the eyes, but why do I care? It's a pretty picture on a page. To me, it invokes images of a peaceful folk who are ready to defend their land, and I can start building a story around that. So the picture at that point has done its job.The tiefling is basically hellboy for me. As a matter of fact, I built a character after the concept (and yes, I file my horns during short rests, but they seem to grow back after every encounter). The general tiefling image is that of a creature that can bring hell to his enemies. The tiefling was made for those who want to play the bad ass race, and I certainly get the bad ass vibe, particularly from that fiery tiefling. Their anatomy does not bother me. It's a fantasy creature.I like most of the 4e art. I think the black dragon from MM1 is absolutely amazing, one of the best D&D dragons. I found some of the 4e Eberron art to be quite beautiful and descriptive of the setting, like the city scapes, the gnoll fight on the flying ship, and the picture with the Warforged knight/paladin and the artificer chick (which coincidentally is Wayne's work).This is not to say I don't like Lockwood/Elmore/Parkinson style art. I have many favorites among Lockwood's work, and Elmore's style is very fitting for a setting like Dragonlance. But I also love what I'll call the more modern style like Wayne Reynolds, and Jason Engle, and things in between that can go either way, like Eva Widermann.I don't want D&D to be a setting. I want it to have eclectic art. The art for the jabberwocky, the vampire, and the iron golem don't have to look like they are drawn in the same style, or are from the same universe. Jabberwocky might be more cartoon-like, the vampire could be quite dark, grim, and gothic looking, and the iron golem could have a zillion doodads and steampunk elements on it. 4e definitely had some of this going. Looking at MM3, there are certainly different styles used for different monsters (some look like it might be due to a lack of budget, but I'll overlook that for a brief moment, and come back to it). The Cloaker Lord is old school, the Corruption Devil jumped out of Monsters Inc, the Nerra is from the cover of a superhero book, Weavers are from Area 51, the Derro are from the Labyrinth, and the Nymph is from a faerie tale story book. Of course bad art is bad art... Oblivion Moss and Frost Giant say hello, we want new art.If 5e is going to cater to EVERYONE, 5e art, is going to have to cater to EVERYONE. It should not be your 1e/2e remake. I have a player, who started playing D&D with 4e, and when he saw the PHB cover, he pointed at the dragonborn, and said I want to play that! He is still playing that Dragonborn Fighter.Art selection is a difficult topic. When I go through fantasy artist booths at conventions like Origins/GenCon, I find that I have no interest in 75% of what's out there. Only the 25% pique my interest enough to browse through, and less than 10% make me ponder if I would want to own a copy. That means, if I were to select artwork for a product, I would be alienating at least 75% of the people out there, about 15% would be neutral, and about 10% would like what I picked. That makes for a pretty unfortunate product. I'm glad it's not my job.Side note (in case this post wasn't long enough) - I find nothing wrong with the occasional hot half naked chick in my D&D books. I also find nothing wrong with impractical weapons, impossibly heavy armors, unjustifiable anatomy, and anything that might anger the average realist, as long as it is drawn well. I expect I will be the minority on this forum.</blockquote>

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