What was so magical about 1E/OD&D art?

[Glyfair]

One thing I've noticed recently is I tend to prefer black and white art over color art (at least for interior illustrations). Today most art falls under two categories. There is the high-end full color art, and the low end black & white art. If a company ends up using B&W art it is usually not quality art (there are exceptions). The good art is often buried in pages of poor art (the Creature Collections come to mind here) or buried in "layout" (borders and such) that obscure the art.

 

[MerricB]

But, arguably, Keith Parkinson was one of the frontrunners of 'new fantasy' art--especially with his extreme attention to the background.

Parkinson is excluded from tx7321's original post, as he's one of the Dragonlance team (along with Caldwell, Elmore and Easley), who did such amazing work. tx7321 deliberately calls out pre-Dragonlance art.

Personally, I think some of the colour paintings for Dragonlance were the height of D&D art.

This is not to say that later paintings are bad. 3e art is similar to 1e art: there's a wide variance in quality.

I really like this picture from the 3.5e book Frostburn
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/fb_gallery/83586.jpg

(It's even better in the book, btw).

Cheers!

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I think this is reading too much nostalgia in. Good art is good art. Some of the 1E art was good. Some was not. Some 3E art is good. Some is not.

 

[Pants]

Toda all the pictures are the same style

Uhhh.... what?

Say what you want about the art, but this honestly doesn't make sense to me.

Today most art falls under two categories. There is the high-end full color art, and the low end black & white art. If a company ends up using B&W art it is usually not quality art (there are exceptions). The good art is often buried in pages of poor art (the Creature Collections come to mind here) or buried in "layout" (borders and such) that obscure the art.

I dunno, I've found a lot of really crummy, 'glossy' full color artwork that just looks bad. Really bad. What I find interesting is that full-color artwork can either be amazingly awesome or just ugly as sin. Black and white, on the other hand, will very rarely, go as low as some of the worst full-color art I've seen. It also very rarely hits the same highs as some of the best full-color art.

The Tome of Horros II and III have some really nice B&W art and nothing cringeworthy that I can remember.

 

[Glyfair]

Black and white, on the other hand, will very rarely, go as low as some of the worst full-color art I've seen.

Check out the Dobyski art from Runequest if you want to see how bad B&W art can get (probably the worst art ever produced in a professional RPG product, or non-professional product).

 

[Pants]

Check out the Dobyski art from Runequest if you want to see how bad B&W art can get (probably the worst art ever produced in a professional RPG product, or non-professional product).

Should I just remain ignorant?

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Parkinson is excluded from tx7321's original post, as he's one of the Dragonlance team (along with Caldwell, Elmore and Easley), who did such amazing work. tx7321 deliberately calls out pre-Dragonlance art.

I was responding to the link that Klaus posted...pretty much saying what you are saying to me.


I would post more but I'm under the impression that tx7321 is not looking for a relative discussion but a series of differing reaffirmations.

 

[Xyanthon]

for me, the art really grabbed my imagination. I used to flip through the books and pour over the illustration (well, actually I still do). For whatever reason, David Sutherland's works probably speak to me the most. I know some of his work can be tecnically pretty crude, but there is just a love for the subject matter that really comes though to me. Sutherland, Otus, Trampier, Wham, Laforce, Darlene, Dee, Rosslof, and the rest all had a sort of unabashed glee to them. I still can sense that now. They were for the most part not as polished as the art now is but it is magical. There are great artists now, but for some reason, they don't capture the same feel as the 1e artists for me.

 

[Anson Caralya]

1E art means two different things to me. First, I've got a great deal of nostalgia for the Erol Otus work; it's odd and distinct and even though I never imagined my characters or the monsters to look that way, it was an element of what set D&D apart for me. What others have said about the absent backgrounds and light level of detail captures it well. Second, there is the work of Easley and others that for me peaked with Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth -- I absolutely love that module, and the artwork is an integral part of that. Even though Otus did the cover, the majority of the artwork is realistic, fully detailed, stylized in some way. What got me was that the artwork as a whole presented a very nice mix of the action a party in those caverns would encounter -- such as the back cover, where the party appears to be resting, unaware of nearby green slime, and in the new monsters section, where a miniaturized adventurer languishes in the Prison of Zagyg, and the party examining the doors to Drelzna's chamber before entering. Goosebumps just to think about it.

 

[billd91]

Love the picture of that intellect devourer and Emirikol the Chaotic.

Interesting to note that a major proportion of the art on the list comes from one artist. I think that probably has something to say about our views of the art through the editions. If a particular artist's work floats your boat, and he or she is associated with a particular edition, I'd bet that edition is the one that you think has the best art overall.

Back in the earlier days, I think a stronger stamp was placed on the game by a particular set of artists. There are so many more to pick from these days, having had bits and pieces appear here and there in various source books, adventures, Dungeon and Dragon magazines...