As someone who both ran a RPG line and, a few years later, a comic book series, I would have refused the second illustration strictly because the art is bad.
Out of curiosity, what would you say makes the second picture "bad" and the first "good" (or at least acceptable)? I ask from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about art theory, and sees only two pictures both done with a technical competence I certainly couldn't deliver myself.
I am certainly not a fan of the style of the second painting vs. the first, but a difference in taste is not the same as a criticism of quality, I think.
Just want to comment that the first picture is from Everquest, where you can play a dark elf or a catman or a lizard man. Positivley "New School" gaming there.
These are the first things that come off my head. Generally speaking, Parkinson's work shows a guy who has mastered his talent and knows to convey the spirit of what he is illustrating in the best possible way. The second image is done by someone who apes better artists, but who still has to understand that cramming everything together and failing at the basic use of colors only shows how he still has a long road in front of him.
Certainly. The second image has a "collage" look, where everything looks like it's been cut out of a magazine and pasted onto a background.
But then, a lot of art from older D&D is pretty bad. Or pretty good, depending on the piece. Quality isn't a defining trait of old school.
I agree. I was simply comparing those two pictures.
However, when "old school" artists are as good as Elmore or Parkinson, they are, IMHO, often better than nuSchool. Only a few days ago I opened up the Basic Set (Red Box) and famous illustrations as the one for the Cleric are hard to see these days:
Some 4E artists were technically good, but the request was to produce illustrations with the POW underground, "superheroically" tilted, stunningly crammed and with vanishing points in the next timezone. Like the game they worked for, they became laughable fast.
Here, for example, we have an illustration by Ralph Horsley. I guess it depicts a cool scene - once you have worked four days to decipher it: