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

[Flexor the Mighty!]

There was bad art in both eras. While there are stylistic differences in the D&D art today, for me it all tends to blur into a mass of spikes, buckles, tats, and other crap. It's well drawn but I just don't care for its take on D&D stuff in many cases. If asked who my favorite of the current batch are I would have a hard time answering since I don't think I like any of them enough to call a favorite.

I really liked Erol Otus, Elmore, Trampier, & Sutherland. I don't care much for Jeff Dee though. I really wish C&C had been able to get Otus for their line, their main artist is skilled, but he doesn't really grab my attention.

 

[RFisher]

There's some 3e art I like, & there's some classic D&D art I don't like.

As I've said before, it's the art direction--or lack thereof--of old D&D that I think fits the (non-setting specific works of the) game better than new D&D's.

I also don't care of the full-color, full-bleed, every-square-inch-of-page-covered style. It's just overkill & risks making the book hard to read for a lot of people.

 

[WayneLigon]

I mean, do ANY OF YOU GUYS picture these freakish things walking around in your imagination when you play 3E...tattooed covered, mowhawked elves with giant ears...? I think 3Es art isn't meant to be used as a tool to get into the game. If it is, I guess I'm just not hip to it. Of course this could be coming out of video games etc. I don't play.

As a matter of fact, I do. The filthy and plain Dark Ages Look has no real place in most of the things I've run. Body decoration has been used by a lot of cultures other than the staid Northern Europeans, culturally poisoned for centuries by a dull and monotonous aesthetic. I like a Hildebrandt Tolkien painting or some of Larry Elmore's less stiff works as much as anyone, but it's not the be-all and end-all for D&D's aesthetic tastes. Bright clothing in interesting pattens and colors, not brown/green/grey shapeless bags. Unusual armor rather than cookie-cutter utilitarian stuff that turns everyone into a faceless, personality-less drone. That's what I want to see.

They discuss the reasoning behind the various art choices in the early 3E sneak peek articles in the Dragon: it was to send a clear message that things are different now.

 

[tx7321]

Wayne: "As a matter of fact, I do." Well thats fair enough.

 

[Blackwind]

My favorite D&D artists all seem to hail from the 2E era (Merric mentioned these above - Caldwell, Elmore, Easley), and many of my favorite pieces come from Dragonlance. On the other hand, I started playing during the 2E era (first the "Classic D&D" boxed set, then the 2E PHB - and these both had great cover illos) and DL was my favorite setting. Obviously, nostalgia is a factor here, but I also think it was partially the art that attracted me so much to the game. Some posters above have criticized the "technically proficient" 2E art as "stiff". Frankly, I don't see anything stiff about it, and technical proficiency may be underrated. The 2E art often featured smooth, rounded edges and surfaces, and was probably more 'realistic' (given that this is fantasy art) than either 1E art (which I enjoy, even though I don't think it's as good) or 3E art, which seems to be heavily influenced by computer games, anime, manga, and comics. For me, the sheer quality of the art allowed me to really immerse myself in the setting and imagine it more vividly. I don't see too much of that in 1E art, and very little of it in the 3E art, either. If there is any artist working on 3E who is as good as Jeff Easley, I haven't seen his or her work, yet. Exception: there is some darned good art in Arcana Evolved and in Ptolus, but these are not WotC.

EDIT: I just realized that a lot of the 2E art (like the original cover for the 2E PHB) was more 'historical' than the current "dungeonpunk" aesthetic. In 2E, I ran a lot of historical fantasy games using the green HR series. That said, I actually rather like the whole tattoos and buckles thing, and it has probably influenced the kinds of games that I run in 3E. 3E is more explicitly fantastic - what with two-bladed swords and all. In 2E there was a tendency toward historical accuracy that is just not there anymore. If I were going to run a historical game now I would probably use a variant of d20 modern or even Storyteller.

Come to think of it, my favorite D&D artist of all time has got to be Tony diTerlizzi, and I never even played Planescape - I bought the books just for his art. In fact, yesterday I was at my local independent bookstore doing some Christmas shopping for my daughter, and I found this beautifully illustrated children's book. Just looking at the art, I knew I (er... my daughter...) just had to have it. Guess who the artist turned out to be? DiTerlizzi! That put a big smile on my face.

Everything above is IMHO and YMMV. De gustibus non est disputandem and all that. I was just surprised that no one had really come out in favor of 2E art, and I thought I should speak up about it.

 

[MerricB]

In some ways... let's amend that to many ways... the 3e PHB art is a deliberate attempt to break from the past, to make 3e stand out as its own game (and not a generic fantasy game). I know that's been posted in the past. I don't think the attempt was worth making, myself.

3.5e has some exceptional pieces of art. The cover of Frostburn. The cover of Cityscape.

There's art in various books that is quite good. To take a few favourites from Cityscape and Secrets of Xen'drik:

Cityscape:








Secrets of Xen'drik:




I do prefer action or landscapes, though. Pure poses rarely do it for me. There are exceptions...


Cheers!

 

[starwed]

My love of B&W sketches biases me pretty strongly towards 1e. (I hated those blue on white illustrations of 2e...)

I do like that 3e made a pretty good effort to cut back on the cheesecake illustrations. (Although they might have taken it a bit too far in the other direction; none of the female iconics come across as feminine. It's almost like they're saying that being an adventurer == being masculine.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Try to listen to something at least once a week you wouldn't ordinarily.

Especially in the age of the Internet, where you can hear great podcasts of non-mainstream music, as well as radio from around the world, there's no reason for someone to listen to what they liked in college for the rest of their lives.

Check out KCRW.org, Coverville.com and PostModernRockShow.com for good new music that you haven't heard 10,000 times before.

You're only as boring as you let yourself be!

 

[Klaus]

My love of B&W sketches biases me pretty strongly towards 1e. (I hated those blue on white illustrations of 2e...)

I do like that 3e made a pretty good effort to cut back on the cheesecake illustrations. (Although they might have taken it a bit too far in the other direction; none of the female iconics come across as feminine. It's almost like they're saying that being an adventurer == being masculine.)

"Take that back, or I'll smite you in the face!"
-- Alhandra, Iconic Paladin

 

[Mycanid]

There was a scientist on NPR last week explaining that the reason people are so strongly attracted to the music of their youth is because the brain is actually still forming. The neuron pathways (or whatever - I'm just an artist) continue to form until your early 20's, and the feeling of wonder and discovery are related to that. I imagine that if that statement's true, it carries over to artistic appreciation as well.

As someone in his mid 30's, this depresses me: I want my sense of wonder back.

This is really only a partly true statement, IMO. And there have been loads of others before whoever this guy was who have said the same thing. The one who said it most eloquently, IMO, was Owen Barfield.

But this is a big subject in of itself, and perhaps not appropriate to the thread at the moment.

I am a big fan of 1e everything, but that does not mean that I liked all the art that was produced then. As with any "thing", usually in the beginning of the project when a thing is "new" such an ... ambience ... peeps around the corners (if you will) in many aspects of it manifesting itself, one example being art. (I am a fan of Erol Otus' stuff too ... but not all of it.)

But this does not mean that later on another person working on the same "thing" as it has grown cannot himself experience inspiration and/or convey it in what he does. I frankly think more of the art % wise in the recent 3.5 books is poor. But not all. Some of it is simply amazing stuff.

Perhaps an argument could be made that generally there is a greater chance for the freshness and/or newness of a creative endeavor to shine through more people involved in something in its initial years of growth rather than later on - but these are only tendencies rather than boxes, IMO.