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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3225386" data-attributes="member: 2268">I think many people simply don't (or won't) realize that the appreciation for a piece of art is something made up of so many interwoven factors, not just the piece of art itself, and that it will always, if it made a big enough impression back then, will drag ALL the associated feelings and emotions with it. There is so preciously little objectivity in the human mind after all, and much less about what good artwork is.Myself, I was "spoiled" by Elmore's work on the BECMI D&D editions that were published in Germany when I was a kid, and those pictures, together with Caldwell's and Easley's, defined the look of D&D for me and my friends. When I got a look at the AD&D 1E Monster Manual from a classmate, my first impressions were "Huh, some of those guys doing the pictures really should practice more before selling their stuff." Yes, I laughed with the cartoons in the 1E books, and the griffon from the MM made it to my letterhead (hey, I was a teen), but a lot, like the Mind Flayer, made me go "THIS is supposed to look scary?" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> And to this day, I prefer the 1E MM with the Easley cover to the "original" cover, which looked like my plastic monster toybox set up on a lawn, even though I own both by now.So, you can call me insensitive, but to me the artwork of AD&D 1E doesn't hold that much inspiration, Otus' artwork looks plenty goofy to me, and I'm sure there would be plenty of parallels if you compared who loves which artwork to who prefers which edition.And not to sound snobbish or anything, but Lockwood's art is pretty good, too. His dwarf, for example, ranks higher in my mind than that of Elmore in the Basic Set. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /></blockquote>

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