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

[pawsplay]

For those who wanted a 3e version of A Paladin In Hell, it's in Fiendish Codex II:

"A Paladin In Hell", by Carl Frank

Personally, this captures none of the magic of the original.

Indeed. First of all, the hellfire around him needs to be blurred so he pops out of the scene, like one of Otus's weird sunsets. Second, we need to be positioned into the action; I don't want the stadium scene view, I want the action positioned to be dramatically active for the viewer. There should be some dynamism betwee the environment and the characters; with a little snipping of scenery, you couldn't even tell he was in hell. Third, those are some boring looking demons. Proper demons make funny faces, barely even emotive so much as just staring, leering, and strange. The gear isn't bad, but the sword and shield should be doing a bit more talking; the sword should not be posed, but drawn in action, while the shield should suggest he is really putting it between him and danger.

 

[Hussar]

Anyone who thinks 3e and Wotc art isn't inspired needs to peruse the Tome of Magic.

 

[Geoffrey]

Here is a good article on RPG art, with special mention of Erol Otus:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/panurge/imazine37.pdf (Go to the last article: "Brilliance & Dross in RPG Artwork", on pages 27-30).

Erol Otus is my all-time favorite D&D artist. I don't much care for his adventurers, but I love his monsters, especially his Cthulhoid ones: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme/kengage/cthulhu/cthulhu.html

Such stuff perfectly captures the feel I try to achieve in my campaign.

 

[Nightfall]

Erol does indeed do good work.

But I honestly prefer Wood and our own Claudio Pozas too.

 

[Klaus]

Especially Mialee! Can anyone point to a single picture of her that is "flattering"? How about "looks like a girl" even?! She is one hideous argument against the notion of "hot elf chick"! And it doesn't seem to matter what artist draws her!

Oh, and I love the 1E art for the feelings it evokes. But I also love the current "dungeonpunk" style a lot and get a lot of "imagination mileage" out of it for my games.

Ask and ye shall receive:

There's also Ron Spencer's picture of Mialee wielding a Prismatic Bow in Complete Mage.

 

[Garnfellow]

I think the old black and white drawings, much like the scant descriptions in the old modules, have considerable charm because their very unfinished nature leaves so much to the imagination. And I don't think this is a 3e vs. 1e thing, either -- the very technically fine color paintings by Easley, Caldwell, Parkinson et al. from late 1e just don't hang in my mind like the old, mysterious, sketched out line drawings by Willingham, Otus, or Trampier. A little ambiguity and uncertainty is always a good thing in art.

But I do think nostalgia also plays a huge piece in all this, though. When I was 10, I had a heckofalot more time to drool over one of Russ Nicholson's many neat illustrations in the 1e Fiend Folio. Now I don't have much time to spend poring over the art in my books -- they're consumables that just get a glance or two on my way to the crunch.

But here's an example of a real apples-to-apples comparison: My first AD&D monster book was the Fiend Folio, and I loved that thing to pieces. And much of that love came from Nicholson's art.

For the last 10 years or so, I've gradually been building up my collection of White Dwarf magazines from the early 80s, and I've got most everything from issues 5-50. Nicholson was a frequent contributer to the magazine then, and one of my biggest treats is to "discover" "new" pieces of Nicholson art. Three missing issues arrived in the mail just yesterday, and one had a bunch of monsters illustrated by Nicholson. Huzzah!

But I've got to tell you, it's not the same. The artist is the same, the mode and medium are all the same, the quality is the same, but these new-found illustrations just don't strike me in quite the same way.

 

[Pants]

My poor perception of 3E art is colored heavily by the Players' Handbook. As a player with only a few 3E books in my possession (PHB, DMG, MM), I use the PHB almost exclusively, and I absolutely loathe the dungeonpunk style. Look at the depiction of the Paladin in the 3E PHB, vs. the paladins of 1E (particularly the paladin from The Rogue's Gallery, whose just slain the black dragon. The latter is far, far superior).

That said, I do like a lot of the 3E images people have posted here, I'm thinking particularly of Merric's picture of the frost giant battle, and the image of the paladin on horseback charging the huge demon in the Complete Divine. These are great pieces of art; I would have loved to have seen more of their ilk in the PHB.

To sum up, I don't think the artists as a whole of the 1E generation were necessarily any more talented than the 3E artists, but I think the artistic direction chosen by WOTC, at least for the core rulebooks, is very poor.

It's too bad that a lot of the art in the PHB really... erm sucks. The PHB, being the book that EVERYONE will have, should have more action poses or at least more interesting poses. The PHB is going to be the book that everyone references when they think of a current edition and unfortunately when there's a boring, static picture of Mialee staring you in the face everytime you flip to the Wizard class, yeah that'd probably put a bad taste in your mouth.

Even Jeff Dee's paladin, which is a static pose (along with having the most ridiculous suit of armor evar) is more interesting than all the PHB art poses because he's DOING SOMETHING. He's not just staring at you, he manages to be interesting even while he's just posing, which is why I like the PHB Lidda pic.

The good thing is that a lot of the supplemental books are filled with fantastic art that, IMO, rivals most anything in prior editions. Here's a few.

From Cityscape:



From Complete Mage:
(even though this is just a pose, it's an interesting one! )


DMGII:


PHBII:




Tome of Magic:

 

[heirodule]

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

Cityscape:

Ugh. That one is awful. It succeeds at what it sets out to do which is highlight the PCs from the NPCs like they were selected for action in an CRPG. Maybe the iconics have really outstayed their welcome. I look at that picture and say "Oh, look some characters interacting... oh wait, its just Gimble and Krusk aagain. Look, there's alhandra in the back."

Even the Devis/Jozan one, which is technically more interesting/better, is marred by the "ah, llook, it's *Devis's* tavern that burned down."

Secrets of Xen'drik:

This one is cool

 

[Nightfall]

Like I said, let's have Claudio do a few more pieces.

 

[danzig138]

Sorry, but there wasn't any magical spirit in the old art. Really, it just wasn't very good or interesting. I think what you're experiencing is your mind playing tricks on you.