D&D 5E (+) What Do YOU Want In D&D Art?

[doctorbadwolf]

Pretty simple. It's a plus thread about art! Don't trash other people's preferred art, don't argue about it, just talk about what you like and what aesthetic DND would have if you were the art director.

For me, I would definitely have a few different aesthetics for different parts of the core books and different books, but in general I'd use that big wotc budget to pay for more hand-painted stuff, make room for sketches and other marginalia, and I'd definitely use iconic characters in basically every product. I'd likely only hire one or two big names, though, and it would otherwise be artists that haven't gotten a break yet whose work feels good for what we're working on.

For some examples:

Big name pull would, if I was very fortunate, would be Jon Hodgson (The One Ring by cuble7, others), for stuff like this:

and this

To give the wilderness a feel of mysterious, often creepy, dangerous, beauty, especially in the context of peoples like the Forest Gnomes and Wood Elves.

And then art for a scene in a major city might be more like this

and this!

Another major note, each iconic character would have an artist who is "in charge" of that character's art, with the overarching overview of the art direction.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Jon Hodgson should do all illustrations for anything requiring illustration in life!

But more seriously, I wish WotC would steal the art department of Free League, their art are always super consistent and thematic, compared to the D&D that is more often going in all the directions, while being well made.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Those are pretty much all good pieces, though my tastes in art are somewhat eclectic. It's hard to pin down specific artists or styles.

Overall though, the stuff I like tends to be/have:

• Generally high-contrast: bright and fairly saturated colors standing out starkly
• Fantastical vistas. Floating islands, bright-white shining cities, forests with fantastical creatures flying about, ancient ruins suspended in air or hanging over dangerous locales, etc.
• High-action, but not too busy. Clear action lines and a sense of motion or scale or depth.
• When not action-focused, showing mundane joys and life's little moments, whether fun or frustrating.
• Reasonably well-detailed, but not obsessive. I like enough detail to soak up but, again, not so much that it becomes busy.
• Diverse color palettes. I'm so completely done with the "real is brown" trope.
• Many different races and identities. I like fantastical races and nontraditional roles, and feel recognized when they show up.

It's cool if you can do stuff like having some continuity across different books, e.g. "iconic" characters as others have mentioned above. Not strictly necessary, but neat if you can work it in without undue effort.

 

[humble minion]

It's profoundly impractical, but from a purely results-based perspective I'd love to see a bit of a return to the 2e practice of having a single artist do the lion's share of art for a given setting. So hire Elmore to do ALL the Dragonlance art, or Brom to do ALL the Dark Sun art etc. (For setting books at least - things like core books and more general resources and monster books etc are fine with a mixed aesthetic)

I just think for setting books, having a single artist really stamp their distinct style on the setting adds to the immersion and makes the setting feel more unique and distinct. The raw quality of most modern in-book art is streets ahead of what it used to be, but each book is kind of a visual stew of different styles. For settings, i think a unified artistic vision really adds to things.

Unfortunately, it's a massive workload to put on the shoulders of one artist, especially these days when books are much thicker and more art-heavy and full colour than they used to be. TSR burned out Brom by overworking him on the Dark Sun line, you don't want to do that again. And not being an artist I don't know how possible it would be to hire Artist Z and say 'hey, in this book we're using art that emulates Elmore's style, can you do a piece like that'?

Edit: I'm not saying just to hire back the veteran 2e artists to do everything. I'm saying it'd be nice to appoint a lead artist whose work and style will define the look of the setting and will predominately populate the book.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Those are pretty much all good pieces, though my tastes in art are somewhat eclectic. It's hard to pin down specific artists or styles.

Overall though, the stuff I like tends to be/have:

• Generally high-contrast: bright and fairly saturated colors standing out starkly
• Fantastical vistas. Floating islands, bright-white shining cities, forests with fantastical creatures flying about, ancient ruins suspended in air or hanging over dangerous locales, etc.
• High-action, but not too busy. Clear action lines and a sense of motion or scale or depth.
• When not action-focused, showing mundane joys and life's little moments, whether fun or frustrating.
• Reasonably well-detailed, but not obsessive. I like enough detail to soak up but, again, not so much that it becomes busy.
• Diverse color palettes. I'm so completely done with the "real is brown" trope.
• Many different races and identities. I like fantastical races and nontraditional roles, and feel recognized when they show up.

Yeah, I love this. I would love to see stuff with epic fantastical vistas and regular folks who live in those fantastical places, like Netherdeep does with the orc chef in front of the horizonback turtle.

But yeah, all of that. 100%

It's cool if you can do stuff like having some continuity across different books, e.g. "iconic" characters as others have mentioned above. Not strictly necessary, but neat if you can work it in without undue effort.

Yeah absolutely. One thing they did really well in 4e was that dwarves had clear material culture that was distinct from others and consistent across books, for instance.

Combine stuff like that with iconic characters and places and recurring types of little vignette scenes, like "shwarma after the battle" type scenes where beat up and tired iconics are eating steaming food wrapped in some sort of dark green leafy thing with a kobold chef cleaning up in the background, or having drinks at a coffee house with little sand pits in the center of each table where a genasi server can prepare fresh coffee in the heated sand and at another table a grill is set over the center and strips of meat and veg are being cooked like Korean Barbeque.

Show the kinds of cultural elements that help people really dig their fingers into the where and who and how of their character's backgrounds and the places they visit.

Edit: I'm not saying just to hire back the veteran 2e artists to do everything. I'm saying it'd be nice to appoint a lead artist whose work and style will define the look of the setting and will predominately populate the book.

I think a good compromise here would be to do what movie studios have done to very good effect in (sometimes otherwise truly terrible overall) movies, and hire an artist who "gets it" to both make art for the setting and act as the lead artist for the book, acting much like the lead designer on a project, but specifically overseeing the art, and help them build a team of artists to work with primarily.

Collaberation between disparate visions with an overarching theme and someone who can set boundaries and requirements for the team to work within is one of the best models for making excellent art that humanity has come up with. IMO, often much better at it than encouraging solitude and unfettered indulgence of one's individual vision, but that's a whole thread of arguments.

 

[cavetroll]

I don't know that it is "for DnD" but for fantasy I like Broms art

 

[payn]

Those examples in the OP look great. I like scenes of adventures in progress. Less action figure pose stuff, less cartoony too. The only thing that has ever really bothered me in D&D art is 5E halflings.

 

[Malmuria]

Luka Rejec, Ultraviolet Grasslands

 

[OB1]

What I want most from published D&D art is variety. I've been inspired by so many different artists and styles through the years, picking up an old or new book and flipping through pages when I've got DM writer's block. For example @doctorbadwolf your example above of the angel statue by the waterfall just clicked something for me in the latest campaign I'm working on that has my mind racing to fill in details.

 

[Blue]

What I want in D&D art I don't think is often shared opionion: I want less of it. What they have is good to fantastic, but I don't need full page illustrations all over the place. When I've seen a piece of art a couple of times it has little additional value, while as a reference the contents of the book retain value. So for me we need enough art to give a feel, but we are well past that point and into high-expense page-stuffing with limited value to me.

So I'd like to cut it down to maybe half or a third of what they have. Have a gorgeous cover. Want every race and class to have a a main and a few minor images? I'm with you. Magic items and gear? To a point, or maybe B&W sketches. But we pass how much I want and I enjoy it once or twice and then it is just filler pages for me. I'm not even saying this to decrease the cost of the book - pay the creatives more.