Sandstorm Art Gallery

[John Cooper]

I'm looking forward to checking out this book.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

That's a lot of monsters.

Sixty pages worth.

don't worry, you're still not allowed....

At least its consistent.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I think the spiky bits on dire animals is just a simple, standardized way to differentiate the dire version from the regular version. Otherwise, how do you make something "dire"? Make it growling? Or bigger? It's really hard to do unless every picture has both versions side by side to compare with one another.

 

[The Shaman]

... although some of the monsters in there are not exactly what I need: sand mephits, sand golems, lava oozes ... please. Not every material that's out there needs one of these three creatures to "illustrate" it.

While arguably it's not terribly creative, I don't mind this so much as 'monsters' like...

There's one piece of art that I have an issue with, though, and that is:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/sand_gallery/87641.jpg

Does this look like it could be from a sci-fi book, or what? Looks like a bulldozer's distant relative ...

I'm sorry, but that's beyond lame.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

The Todd Lockwood piece is nice, but I'm happiest to see several pieces from William O'Connor. His chunky/blocky style really appeals to me, and always has.

Overall, there are some interesting pieces in there, though the overall direction of WotC's art continues to be just a little bit to the right of my taste - I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but there's a stylistic hook that doesn't grab me. It's admirably unified in style, though, and that's a good thing.

Patrick Y.

 

[Gez]

Well, there's the Dreadnaught already in MM2 (not the Astral one!)...

The monster that's beyond lame IMO is the Dire Tortoise, but that may be because Dana Knutson made an incredibly crappy illo for it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

disappointed by the number of humaniod monsters but that is me.

 

[Felon]

Seems to follow the same formula that Frostburn did with their approach to monsters. Very little innovation, just give us some dusty versions of established monsters. A dune hag, a sand golem, a desert giant, dusty mephits, a whole buch of sunburned undead, and so on. A lot of that's already covered territory (sun giants in MMII and sand giants in MMIII, for instance, pretty well cover desert giants).

Anyone spotting any monsters that have a fresh look to them?

 

[Gez]

Maybe the Marru. Depends on how and how much they're fleshed out, they could be the next best thing or totally lame.

I'll just say they have the potential to be interesting critters.

 

[Felon]

Maybe the Marru. Depends on how and how much they're fleshed out, they could be the next best thing or totally lame. I'll just say they have the potential to be interesting critters.

I was just looking at them, and thinking along the same lines.

I like the picture. The names, however, certainly don't connote great innovation:

Marrulurk. Sneak-attacker.

Marrusault. Shock-trooper.

Marrutact. Boss monster. Probably a caster.