What were they thinking? The RPG art cringe thread :D

[Lurkndog]

I think a primary source of inspiration before the arrival of the World Wide Web would have been movie costumes, and various magazines and reference books about movies. As well as the work of previous generations of fantasy artists.

[Bren]

Yes, due to the internet. My point was at the time, whoever gave that artist the direction would have been limited to what materials they themselves had or could have directed the artist do view (because there was also the issue of you couldn't have just emailed an image back in the day). Perhaps cavalier boots are something easy to find even pre-internet. But to use your example, if it were me, I wouldn't have had any jack kirby images because I don't collect or read comics. I would have had whatever history books are on my shelf. This isn't an item I've ever given art directions on, so I am not sure the difficulty. The idea is just it isn't necessarily just the artist (and in this particular case, I don't know what direction it falls in). I do know even with the internet finding good model images is always one of the most difficult parts of art direction.

I remember that god awful Elric picture, though I don't recall the exact year that appeared.

Certainly the internet makes it easy to quickly find lots of images without ever leaving your chair. And of course I already knew that the Captain America from 1960s and 1970s wore cavalier boots and that Jack Kirby was one of the artists then. To provide an example to an artist in that time one direct them to look at a comic book rack, which back then were in many local drug stores, and find a picture of Captain America or suggested a viewing of the popular 1973 movie The Three Musketeers (the Lester one) or it's sequel the following year (or any of the many other versions of the Three Musketeers or other cape & sword films that were aired on TV) and seen several pairs of cavalier boots. Failing that, the artist could check out the childrens' section of the local library for a picture book version of The Three Musketeers.

Or the artist could have used another artist's work for inspiration...like the boots on the cover of this paperback from 1976.

They are not quite cavalier boots, but I think they are a much nicer design than the fugly bell-bottom boots.

[horsesoldier]

I think a primary source of inspiration before the arrival of the World Wide Web would have been movie costumes, and various magazines and reference books about movies. As well as the work of previous generations of fantasy artists.

A good artist would have had and still has tons of reference books. Emphasis a good artist.

[Trond]

I'm actually surprised at how few of the images in this thread really make me cringe. C'mon people! (make that sound like Joe Biden )

Anyway, I couldn't find a larger version of this weird butt-pic that has often been commented on, from Powers & Perils.

[Trond]

....not to mention this one. Why is the guy naked you ask? Because it's a poorly drawn rip-off of a Tarzan illustration by Frank Frazetta

[Reckall]

In the mid-'80s a Polish publishing house put out "Gondor", a mini-game created by Richard Berg about the Siege of Minas Tirith. That was a bit strange, since, under Communism, only "The Fellowship of the Ring" was officially translated in the Soviet Union and its sphere (amazing, I know, but that was the way it was).

Anyway, this is the art (by itself not even bad) on the instruction booklet for the first edition. Here we can see Eowyn "with her shield and her left arm broken, without her helmet, and just after she passed for a man..."

Notice how "the book was not available" is not the answer: there are too many elements from the original scene and the Lord of the Nazguls is cool. There were, however, photocopied, unauthorised, editions of the second and third book in the trilogy in the Communist countries (some of them translated by hand!) so, who knows what they kept and what they cut?

[Reckall]

Anyway, the game was successful enough to warrant a second edition. They were even more unlucky with the art... It is easy, here, to see why Mordor lost.

[Bren]

Anyway, the game was successful enough to warrant a second edition. They were even more unlucky with the art... It is easy, here, to see why Mordor lost.

Now that's so bad it's laugh out loud funny. 

[Ghostmaker]

In the mid-'80s a Polish publishing house put out "Gondor", a mini-game created by Richard Berg about the Siege of Minas Tirith. That was a bit strange, since, under Communism, only "The Fellowship of the Ring" was officially translated in the Soviet Union and its sphere (amazing, I know, but that was the way it was).

Anyway, this is the art (by itself not even bad) on the instruction booklet for the first edition. Here we can see Eowyn "with her shield and her left arm broken, without her helmet, and just after she passed for a man..."

Notice how "the book was not available" is not the answer: there are too many elements from the original scene and the Lord of the Nazguls is cool. There were, however, photocopied, unauthorised, editions of the second and third book in the trilogy in the Communist countries (some of them translated by hand!) so, who knows what they kept and what they cut?

Samizdata. Soviet dissidents circulated a LOT of banned books.

[kosmos1214]

2nd that it's almost surprising at times what people could get a hold of to read and play not just dogs but video games movies tv shows especially in some of the less complain satilites like Poland.

[Reckall]

2nd that it's almost surprising at times what people could get a hold of to read and play not just dogs but video games movies tv shows especially in some of the less complain satilites like Poland.

Back in the mid-'90 I knew this Czech girl, Lenka, who was the daughter of an ex-member of the local KGB branch (I don't remember the name of the institution - it was not KGB). He worked for the division that read everything and decided what was fit for publishing in Czechoslovakia and what wasn't.

She told me that not only their cellar was full of "forbidden books", but that her father's friends freely came to copy and translate them. The Soviet authorities had a lot of peoples acting against them under their very noses, especially in the satellites.

[Trond]

In the mid-'80s a Polish publishing house put out "Gondor", a mini-game created by Richard Berg about the Siege of Minas Tirith. That was a bit strange, since, under Communism, only "The Fellowship of the Ring" was officially translated in the Soviet Union and its sphere (amazing, I know, but that was the way it was).

Anyway, this is the art (by itself not even bad) on the instruction booklet for the first edition. Here we can see Eowyn "with her shield and her left arm broken, without her helmet, and just after she passed for a man..."

Notice how "the book was not available" is not the answer: there are too many elements from the original scene and the Lord of the Nazguls is cool. There were, however, photocopied, unauthorised, editions of the second and third book in the trilogy in the Communist countries (some of them translated by hand!) so, who knows what they kept and what they cut?

That's actually a Frank Frazetta drawing

[Omega]

I did a comparison and the P&P one is a freehand using almost certainly the Frazetta piece as a reference for pose and musculature/shading. And used the panther for ideas to do the lizard.

Bemusingly I am pretty sure Frazetta got the idea for that pose from older art. Though he used live models alot for his references.

[Lurkndog]

Samizdata. Soviet dissidents circulated a LOT of banned books.

They also made bootleg records out of used X-Ray plates. Those things were badass.

https://www.x-rayaudio.com/x-rayaudiorecords/