Worlds and Monsters Art Gallery

[Zamkaizer]

Much, if not all, of the line art is for the miniatures game, so what we see here is not necessarily representative of what we'll encounter in the Monster Manual. Notice, for instance how Wayne Reynolds' sketch of this demon was, in fact for this art in the book of Vile Darkness.

William O'Connor, Steve Prescott, and Wayne Reynolds' sketches certainly are nice though, as are Howard Lyon's full-color illustrations. I could do without the Githyanki Real Doll though.

I truly wish they had labeled the illustrations though. And what's with the tiny image size?! It annoys me to no end that, despite the difference in size between a book and a card, the illustrations featured on Magic: The Gathering's site are, on average, substantially larger than those on the Dungeons & Dragons site.

 

[arscott]

I'm a little bit disappointed by the dragons. With talk about the dragons occupying a variety of different monster roles, I'd hoped they'd have greater differences in body structure. I also liked the feathered wyvern and am sad to see it go away.

I like the troll. It's topheavy and cartoonish, but it's a look that works well. It's a good physical expression of the personality that I envision a troll to have.

 

[pukunui]

There's an interesting tidbit with regard to the art direction in World & Monsters.

They mention that they are explicitly moving from a preponderance of "character in action" shot that we see in 3E to more landscape/scenery shots.

So apparently, we are going to get less this,

and more of this,

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about this art direction change. While scenery shots are nice, it is things like the former which I'm willing to bet actually get people (younger and older) saying "How do I do that/I want to be that guy" which makes them actually interested in the game.

The cave of chaos picture is more of a "What's the story behind that/Why are they there?" which wouldnt actually get people interested in the game itself....

For the record, I much prefer the latter (which I think is by far one of the best pieces of art from the entire 3e catalog) to the former. I find landscape type stuff to be much more evocative than action shots. The lack of landscapes was one of the first things I noticed, and complained about, with 3e. I missed all the old contextual fantasy art that was so prevalent in 2e.



@ those who said the art's not CGI but digitally painted -- my bad, that's actually what I meant. And you can tell. Some of the stuff looked traditionally done to my graphic-designer-in-training eyes but I showed it to the more experienced department head (who is also one of my d&d players) and he scanned through both preview books and said that pretty much all the color art was done on a computer. Most of it is done well but the ones like that castle landscape with the duplicated skull & shield are really obvious (if you look closely at the strokes, theyve got digital layering/transparency and are all the same thickness - eg. clearly done with a photoshop brush).

Anyway ... I don't think WAR does his stuff on the computer, does he? Even if he does, it's still really good, and his stuff is going to be on the covers of the core books, at least. I wasn't too impressed with William O'Connor's stuff, so I hope he was just the "preview" guy and won't have too much stuff, if anything, in the actual product.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Beautiful stuff, especially the landscapes. I liked the vrock, I think it's a Ron Spencer. What's the female with leaves for an arm? A nymph? A morphing dryad?

 

[Doug McCrae]

On the background/no background issue it depends on what the art is trying to do. A monster pic for example doesn't need any background, it's purpose is solely to depict the monster.

 

[Sir Sebastian Hardin]

Eventhough I am all for 4e, the art in this book (the monsters, not the landscapes) is in average worse than the ones in the Monster Manual 1. The new hobbo sucks, as the dryad. Very, very few ones are better than their 3e versions.

The landscapes are really cool, though. Priceless!

 

[Incenjucar]

Unfortunately, with the whole minis thing, it's entirely possible that monster design will at least be somewhat dependant on what makes a good mini. :\

As for action scenes and so forth... those are fine. Especially when they're amidst scenery.

You can have an epic battle raging IN epic scenery.

Comic books do it all the time.

 

[Zamkaizer]

Beautiful stuff, especially the landscapes. I liked the vrock, I think it's a Ron Spencer. What's the female with leaves for an arm? A nymph? A morphing dryad?

I think those are beetles...

Anyway ... I don't think WAR does his stuff on the computer, does he? Even if he does, it's still really good, and his stuff is going to be on the covers of the core books, at least. I wasn't too impressed with William O'Connor's stuff, so I hope he was just the "preview" guy and won't have too much stuff, if anything, in the actual product.

We'll have to agree to disagree about William O'Connor's work. Concerning Wayne Reynolds work though, all of it is done with acrylics, with some digital cleaning-up by Wizards' graphic designers.

 

[lutecius]

Beautiful stuff, especially the landscapes. I liked the vrock, I think it's a Ron Spencer. What's the female with leaves for an arm? A nymph? A morphing dryad?

the bug-lady by WAR should apply to the "find the anime" thread

are those leaves? i thought they were beetles or roaches. wasn't there some guy who morphed into vermin in 3e?
visually, turning into a swirl of leaves would be a nice evasion manoeuvre for a dryad (unless someone catches them all and makes some fire)

i like the vrock too, i hated the skeletal/insectoid 3e look.

 

[pukunui]

Beautiful stuff, especially the landscapes. I liked the vrock, I think it's a Ron Spencer. What's the female with leaves for an arm? A nymph? A morphing dryad?

It's a lamia, according to the W&M caption.

We'll have to agree to disagree about William O'Connor's work.

Um, I guess so. I just don't think he draws people very well. At least not faces or arms. And it looks like he didn't get the memo that tieflings are supposed to have small tails ...

Concerning Wayne Reynolds work though, all of it is done with acrylics, with some digital cleaning-up by Wizards' graphic designers.

Thanks.