my thoughts on 4e MM art

[unan oranis]

Overall the art is excellent.

I'll just start with my negatives though;

Tough call deciding which is the worst MM picture in the book, the group of cyclopsesess...es (cyclopsi?), or the group of orcs.

Some of the monsters illustrations are SO bad... Not as bad as the worst of earlier books, yet it is painfully late in the game to be presenting some of this trash as a professional illustration.

Clearly nepotism plagues wotc's artist department. Several do not deserve to be in this book. Every illustration should be of high quality.



Some of the best MM pictures of all time are in here too, and they come really close to having a compelling theme.

Particularly the opening splash on page 4 and the yaun-ti have a sort of heavy-metal meets earl norems he-man paintings vibe going on, and while they might not be at the same level as the githyanki or tarrasque, they do capture generic dnd fantasy really well in my opinion.

If they weren't going to have a stronger central theme, they should have pushed the different styles further. The cartoony slaad are excellent, I would have liked to see a lot more monsters in that direction.

Thankfully there are loads of good-to-great illustrations all-throughout the book, and I am looking forward to years of enjoying them.


I think most people will find it the best looking MM yet, but not by a huge amount (certainly not by the leaps each previous edition has made).


These were my thoughts on just the art. All other considerations as far as the monsters go and the function of the book get a million stars out of a possible five as far as I'm concerned, really fantastic. (a million? ok maybe 5 out of 5).



--

unan

 

[RangerWickett]

I just look at the artists they get for Magic, and look at the artists they get for D&D, and wonder why they can't get more of the Magic artists. I really dug the art for the 3.5 PHB . . . well, okay, I really dug Todd Lockwood, and Sam Wood to a lesser extent. I'm not so keen on some of the new people's styles.

Actually, I had an idea to take the core books and replace all the art with Magic illustrations, just to show that we could make it prettier.

 

[Meloncov]

Actually, I had an idea to take the core books and replace all the art with Magic illustrations, just to show that we could make it prettier.

Magic cards are somewhat more forgiving than book illustrations, due to size. Still, if they brought in John Howe for D&D I'd be very, very happy.

 

[Neil Bishop]

Bad art? Yes, perhaps... but nothing as bad as the rubbish produced during 3.xE by Dennis Crabapple/Cramer/McClain (the soft porn guy who kept changing his name) or Jeremy Jarvis. I'm glad to see those two off the list.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Bad art? Yes, perhaps... but nothing as bad as the rubbish produced during 3.xE by Dennis Crabapple/Cramer/McClain (the soft porn guy who kept changing his name) or Jeremy Jarvis. I'm glad to see those two off the list.

What do you dislike about Jarvis' art? I like it - very much.

Just curious.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Storn]

Magic cards are somewhat more forgiving than book illustrations, due to size. Still, if they brought in John Howe for D&D I'd be very, very happy.

Oh boy. How wrong you are.

Because of their size, anyone who does card art (and while I'm not a magic art, I have at least a CCG hundred cards to my credit)... the thought that goes into making it readable, while doing painting, is SOOO much more difficult than the average Monster Manual spot illo. Of keeping focus in such a small area, to be working in that damnable landscape format. To do something that isn't cliche'd.

They cannot get Todd Lockwood, because he is now doing book covers and making more money. And covers are fun, the appex of a fantasy artist's career.

 

[WhatGravitas]

They cannot get Todd Lockwood, because he is now doing book covers and making more money. And covers are fun, the appex of a fantasy artist's career.

Well, they DO get Todd for MtG cards - three of these cards in the list were released this year... and he often gets high-profile cards (or at least what the developers hope to be high-profile cards).

But yes,good CCG art is hard because you lose a lot of tricks and details, have a rigid format AND have to think about the border colour (if you look through MtG art, you'll notice that they try to fit the border colour to the art, meaning you have a lot of restrictions on the things you have to paint).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Klaus]

What do you dislike about Jarvis' art? I like it - very much.

Just curious.

Cheers, LT.

Indeed, I liked several (though not all) Jarvis pieces. I specially like the Church Inquisitor from Complete Divine (the exorcising dwarf) and several goliath pieces from Races of Stone.

 

[Ruined]

Yeah, I wasn't as familiar with Jarvis' art until looking at the website, but it looks very sharp. He captures form very well.

Maybe the OP was trying to get his quote on Jarvis' website. If you click on an area header, you get a fun quote such as:

"Historically, I've not been a fan [of] Jeremy Jarvis..."
- Serge W. Desir, game reviewer.

Good sense of humor.

 

[unan oranis]

I have to say again; overall I am totally impressed and happy with the 4e MM art... but it is fun to focus on the negatives apparantly...

I am sure that every contributing artist has an excellent portfolio.

The crappy apples in the MM barrel are the result of lazyness, and/or rushed work.

The orc on the extreme left is horrible... awkward, weak and just poorly rendered. You can almost see the artist getting more and more tired as he works from right to left.

On the other hand who knows? It's possible any given illustration was forced to be completed within just a few hours, with conflicting instructions from the art director. I'd be surprised if it were soley the artists responsibility.

Still, I'd like to see the MM held up to the same quality standards as an art book. If I were the big boss in charge of everything, I'd drop the attempt of trying to keep all the styles uniform and outsource to artists by merit, not seniority or whatever they're doing now.

I flipped through a paizo book the other day, and the art was great all the way through which tells me they care about their product.

I *know* the wotc staff care about their product, but a few of these illustrations are *telling* me they dont.

Even my least favorite of the bunch aren't that bad... and a steady increase in quality over previous editions.

--

unan