frankthedm said:
GREAT!!! Omnislash is fine, as a bad joke. Hell, if Capcom made another D&D arcade game, It would be fine there. But in a book for the Tabletop RPG, The Caves of Chaos landscape is the only one of those two to belong.
Back in 2nd edition they had lots of landscapey sort of shots and lots of what I have to think of as "static action" images -- That is, the characters are engaged in some sort of activity, like fighting, but have no sense of kinetic energy.
If I may steal a few pics from that thread
over there, compare this Action Scene in 2nd edition...
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..to a late 3rd edition Action Scene.
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Those wizards don't look like they're in motion. Their cloaks and hair billow dramatically, but there's no sense of inertia to them. In the second, by comparison, you can almost feel the impact of that attack. They don't actually have to be in combat to feel it, though...
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Even though she's not actually moving, it has a sense of energy that's lacking in the 2nd edition image.
Now, on the other hand (or really the same hand), I'm not a big fan of the "I'm a heavily armored fighter dude standing in front of a blank background!" art that I've seen a lot of in 3.x.
I suppose my wish would be to keep maybe 50% of the good 'action pose' art, and replace the rest with landscapes, using landscaped backgrounds for the "class example" art. Taking the R&C book, for example --
this is far preferable to
this. I know sometimes you have to go with the unobtrusive background for page composition reasons, but I prefer the background that gives your characters some sense of place.
Also,
this dude totally looks like Bruce Campbell. Maybe more like back in the Evil Dead or Hercules days than now, but we all get older.
