Who Do You Want Illustrating 4th Ed.?

[bowbe]

Yep, it seems any art that isn't off the cover of a Molly Hatchet album is suddenly "dungeonpunk" or "anime"…

Exactly. Pardon me if I don't think that head shops and van art should still be dictating what fantasy looks like.

and Pardon me...if you don't like Frazetta.

Certainly tastes have changed, but Frazetta is a master far beyond the scope, talent, and training of 99.9% of people working in fantasy art today who owe their JOB to his skills. Ask any of the mentioned artists who their artistic influences for fantasy art are, and Frazetta will be mentioned in a single breath, with Wyeth and a few others that most folks lacking a fine art's education have never heard of (No' not Boris and Julie Bell).

Personally: It was a great honor to have my words published in a text that bore covers licensed from two of his masterpieces.

To add a point tho, nobody else IS Frazetta, nobody else will or can BE Frazetta and all other artists worth their salt KNOW this and quickly go their own route.

So I'm cool with the work of others, or even "newbies" to herald the new age of D&D since Frazetta never DID D&D! If he had we'd still all be playing 1ed AD&D rules and talking about how much they RAWK!

To vote with mhensley... and to be an a-hole in the matter im gonna go with Berlew as well. LOVE OOTS and think he's a very cool, very affable fellow who unlike many artists, is very gracious and approachable. Shared a table with him at an Ennie award show in 06 with him and Keith Baker and our various others. He did an awesome and very self depricating job of presenting the art awards!

Thing is, Berlew "gets" the game and reminds me of the cool/funny comics from 1ed DMG.

Case

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I like Brian LeBlanc's black-and-white work.

 

[Zamkaizer]

Steve Prescott - http://www.rottface.com

Surprised this guy hasn't been mentioned yet - he is responsible for a lot of the best pieces in the Eberron books, and before the "d&d purists" dismiss him out of hand for that association, have a look at the fantastic attention to detail and the superb palettes he uses.

Hey!

Zoltan Boros & Gabor Skikszai, Aleksi Briclot, Matt Cavotta, William O'Connor, Scott M. Fischer, Tomas Giorello, Rebbecca Guay, David Hudnut, Jeremy Jarvis, Todd Lockwood, Jim Murray, Terese Nielsen, Paolo Parente, RK Post, Steve Prescott, Vinod Rams, Wayne Reynolds, Greg Staples, Kev Walker, Eva Widermann, Sam Wood, and Mark Zug.

I've nothing else to say, so here's a picture of a sentient cactus by the artist.

 

[JamesP]

Oops!

*thrashes self relentlessly with cactus branch*

*bleeds*

 

[Lurks-no-More]

When they stop making dungeon punk art, we'll stop calling the art dungeon punk.

I'm still amazed how much people fixate on Hennet. He's one character who doesn't even feature that often in the illustrations. Do you have similar problems with Redgar, Jozan, Vadania, Lidda, Devis, Tordek and the others?

We want our Medieval Fantasy Role-playing Game back. Not this... whatever it is.

You have your Medieval Fantasy Role-Playing game; it's called Castles & Crusades, among others, and I've heard it's quite good, for the people who like that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, a lot of us are quite happy with D&D that isn't pretending it's 14th century Europe... except with polytheism, common and very powerful magic, and dragons, thank you very much.

 

[Fobok]

By whatever name, I hate it, and I really hope it disappears. If I wanted to be confronted with PCs in inelegant, impractical, and visually jarring costumes, festooned with tattoos, body piercings, and spiky hair, I'd play Shadowrun. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect my game with swords and plate armour to have at least a thin veneer of medieval flavor.

Totally agreed. I've hated the art style since day one. I remember the very first look at the PHB, I told my group, (this was before FRCS came out), "This might be what armour in Greyhawk looks like, but not the Realms."

Really, I don't know artists well enough to answer the original question, but I do agree here: Dungeonpunk, or whatever you want to call it, has to go.

 

[Baby Samurai]

and Pardon me...if you don't like Frazetta.

Excuse me, I'm huge Frazetta fan. My brother got me into him through his Yes album covers. I also have several coffee table sized books full of his work. I just think there is nothing wrong with a little variety.

I guess in a perfect world I would have my Erol Otis, Jeff Dees, Elmore, Brom, Reynolds, DiTerlizzi, and a few others I can't recall, but hey, this world certainly isn't perfect.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Do you have similar problems with Redgar, Jozan, Vadania, Lidda, Devis, Tordek and the others?

This wasn't addressed to me, but here's my take:

Not bad.

Excellent. Love it.

This one just makes me laugh.

This one make me laugh even harder.

That one is pretty cool; I like it.

Lame.

Also lame.

Lame.

Not bad.

Not bad, but looks like she's got a cold (red nose).

Outfit is okay, but the hair reminds me of that 2e Medusa.

That's a man, baby! Wrong on so many levels.

Painting Mialee as an aging female impersonator must be a running joke among artists...

Mialee wishes she was this pretty and stylish. You'll never catch this guy in a flip-flops. He's like a male Posh Spice that's into bondage.

I like it, but I can't keep from picturing a red conical cap on this one...

He and Hennet probably hang out...

Where's his sliver platform boots?

I like this one.

I like this one, too.

Cool except for those stars.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Man, I've been thinking about this pretty much all day. I left out a lot of popular choices as I wanted to get some new blood in there. Saying that I'd be given any budget and that my design team consists of 5 artists, these are my choices:

Abrar Ajmal - http://www.aaillustrations.com
John Avon- http://www.johnavon.com
Jason Chan - http://www.jasonchanart.com
Maxime Desmettre - http://www.maxisland.net
Julie Dillon - http://www.maxisland.net (I'd defintely want a female on my team, and Julie rocks!)
Hugh Jamieson - http://www.paintandsuffering.com
Michael Komarck - http://komarckart.com/
Daryl Mandryk - http://www.mandrykart.com/
Torstein Nordstrand - http://www.torsteinnordstrand.com
Vebjorn Strommen - http://home.broadpark.no/~vstromm/index.htm
Justin Sweet - http://www.justinsweet.com/
J. P. Targete - http://www.targeteart.com
Matt Wilson - http://mattwilsonart.com/
Feng Zhu - http://www.fengzhudesign.com/

Yeah, that's more then 5... :\ I would probably hold a run of tests to see who works out the best. One thing that always bugs me about WotC is that they always seem to pick artists that don't use dynamic lighting in their pieces and they look for more straight up illustrators. I made these choices against that philosophy as I think it brings more feeling to the art.

That is some amazing links! Thanks!

 

[BASHMAN]

The pose is cool. The Klingon armor is not.