Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Huh. Neat!
D&D General When Did Digital Art Become A Thing?
Zardnaar
Legend
Yeah I remember that art from 4E or revised iirc.
Voranzovin
Explorer
Please forgive my pedantry, but my area of expertise has been mentioned on the internet and I cannot restrain myself!
The Rescuers Down Under was for the most part not drawn digitally--it was drawn on tracing paper, as animated films had been for almost a hundred years at that point. It was colored and composited digitally, which was certainly a huge advance at the time, but while I'm pretty sure graphics tablets existed in the late 80s when production on the film would have started they wouldn't have been very effective yet.
Your overall point is entirely correct though: digital art has been around for a very long time.
Vaalingrade
Legend
Where does rotoscoping fall into this? Because I know that's been around since at least the 70's.
Um, actually...
Rotoscoping was patented by Max Fleisher in the 1910s or so. He did some very early black and white animations using it with Koko the Clown. The technique was only a year or two behind the invention of cel based animation.
Vaalingrade
Legend
Which is exactly why I said 'at least'. Tech is always way older than one would assume.
FitzTheRuke
Legend
@Zardnaar
As has been mentioned here-and-there in this thread, there was a step in between fully-digital art and art that had some level (such as colour) of production done digitally.
For example, in comic books: To my knowledge, the Marvel Epic reprints of Akira were one of the first comics to be digitally colored. This would have been the late 80's. (The original Japanese comics often had the first few pages hand-painted, and then the rest were black and white). IIRC, the artists that formed Image liked how that colouring looked, and had their books done that way too. Then the rest of the industry "caught up".
But... the art was still produced by hand on paper until much more recently. I'm not sure exactly when the switchover occurred, but I'm pretty sure that most comics are done entirely digitally at this point.
As has been mentioned here-and-there in this thread, there was a step in between fully-digital art and art that had some level (such as colour) of production done digitally.
For example, in comic books: To my knowledge, the Marvel Epic reprints of Akira were one of the first comics to be digitally colored. This would have been the late 80's. (The original Japanese comics often had the first few pages hand-painted, and then the rest were black and white). IIRC, the artists that formed Image liked how that colouring looked, and had their books done that way too. Then the rest of the industry "caught up".
But... the art was still produced by hand on paper until much more recently. I'm not sure exactly when the switchover occurred, but I'm pretty sure that most comics are done entirely digitally at this point.
Huh!
That’s like finding out that Abraham Lincoln could have actually used a fax machine to contact a samurai.
Zardnaar
Legend
We were big on comic books here in NZ culturally not much of a thing. Only bought a few Star Wars comics and 80s more British ones eg Buster, Whizzer and Chips, Commando and War.
So I knew what actung panzer meant age 9 or so
Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
I can't say when it first cropped up in D&D art; however, I was making digital art when I was at university in the mid '90s. So I think it has been around a lot longer than you realize. A lot of digital art can look very similar to hand rendered art.To me a lot boffins 3E art was hand drawn but I'm not 100% sure all of it was.
By 4E I think most of it was.
First time I noticed was probably 2005. Specifically Magic The Gathering Ravnica cycle.
Telling Time. Even then I didn't think about it to much.
2001 Hand drawn?
Fact or Fiction | Invasion | Card Kingdom
Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.www.cardkingdom.com
Can look cool but starts looking generic fast for me ymmv of course.
In D&D3.5 covers are digital looking to me 3.0 not sure.
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