Worst art in an RPG book thread.

[J Arcane]

I guess it wouldn't be the RPGsite if every thread didn't devolve into a D&D edition war.

[Cole]

What, 4 pages in and no mention of MRQII?

Granted, it's no contender for "worst art ever" in a hobby which boasts the OD&D LBBs and the cover to the AD&D 1e MM, but there are some mighty eyesores in this otherwise excellent book.

I have to admit I cracked up at some of this, especially:

I'll get that bitch a phylactery. Bitches love phylacteries.

"So, Dante Alighieri, Conan, Sub-Zero and Oogh the Neanderthal meet in a tavern..."

The picture isn't that good, but that sounds like a solid RQ adventuring party to me.

[Aos]

snip.

I don't like any of them; is that okay?

I like the stuff Ben posted, though.

[Melan]

This is the point in the discussion where I would link to Brilliance and dross in RPG artwork, an essay originally published in Imazine #37. Unfortunately, since Imazine has vanished from the face of the Internet, and I have failed to contact the author, you will have to do with selected quotes.

Brilliance and dross in RPG artwork
by Matt Stevens

...

Pabulum and professionalism

Like most roleplayers, I think the majority of rolegame artwork is crap. On the other hand, and again like most roleplayers, I think at least some rolegame illustrations are fairly good. But when we get down to cases and try to separate the best work from the shit, I find I often disagree with many roleplayers. Most rolegamers, it seems, judge artwork on the basis of its realism and professionalism. They condemn the amateurish scribbling of the early rolegames, comparing them unfavourably to the slick colour prints of today.

I'm not sure that rolegame artwork is getting any better – in some ways, I'd say it's actually getting worse. The problem isn't the skill of the artists, which has improved greatly over the past 25 years. Unfortunately,  professionalism alone isn't going to produce great works of art, and we have to recognize that if we want to promote greatness in the future.

We could argue for months over what makes a 'great piece of art' great. But for the sake of argument, I'll say that a great piece of artwork intrigues the spectator. It should catch her attention, fascinate her, show something she never saw before. This 'something' can be an unusual subject, something fantastic or surreal. It can also be a strange juxtaposition of commonplace objects, or mundane things portrayed in unusual ways. It can even refer to a perplexing expression, a look that resists easy interpretation. A great piece of art should provoke interesting questions, without providing simple answers to them.

I don't know if there's been any truly 'great' roleplaying art, but some of it has been strikingly inventive, even if the vast majority has been bland and unimaginative. The problem, unfortunately, is that as roleplaying artists have become more professional, and the industry has grown more commercially savvy, bland, corporate pabulum is becoming even more prominent than it used to be.

It's important for us to recognize that much of today's rolegame art is worse than bad. It's ordinary. The quality of draftsmanship has improved mightily since the late 1970s. Clearly, there are lots of people in the industry who know how to draw. This makes it all the more tragic when they produce work of little or no value.

Take the artwork in 3rd edition D&D Player's Handbook – please. An illustration by Todd Lockwood is reproduced above. It's a picture of a dwarf with an axe, a shield, a bow and a shitload of armour. This dwarf is given a name, 'Tordek,' but it's unclear why he's different from the thousands we've seen elsewhere, from Lord of the Rings calendars to DragonLance paperback covers. He's a generic short, stocky guy with a beard. So what?

Wizards of the Coast spent thousands to give us a Player's Handbook with full-colour illustrations of Tordek and his fun-loving friends, but it's unclear what, if anything, we're supposed to get from them. Todd Lockwood obviously knows how to paint the human figure. His draftsmanship compares favourably to an old tsr artist like Darlene Pakul [sic], who drew that notorious bat-winged succubus in the first Dungeon Master's Guide. But Darlene's plump, cowering demoness titillated thousands of teenage boys. 'Tordek' will never titillate anyone. You could replace his portrait with a photo of a tractor or a piece of cabbage and no one would notice the difference.

...

Transcending naturalism

You'll almost never see rolegame artwork that transcends a rigid naturalism. We may talk about creating a 'new art form,' but our art is decidedly reactionary. We act as if the 20th century – or hell, even the late 19th – never took place.

It's too bad. While one could make an argument for naturalism in rolegame art – one could say it helps make the fantastic seem real, a vital role in a roleplaying product – one could also argue that naturalism can never completely mirror the worlds of our imagination, and a freer approach may be more evocative of other worlds and other cultures. At the very least, in our efforts to evoke alternate realities, we should draw upon whatever sources of inspiration we can find. By ignoring all Western art after 1850 (not to mention the indigenous traditions of Africa and the Americas), we've cut ourselves off from a huge visual vocabulary. Those who transcend the limits of naturalism should be commended for broadening artistic possibilities.

Some of the earliest art in roleplaying games was more inventive in this respect. Consider Erol Otus for example, an old favourite of mine. His work was crude, sometimes even revolting, and I would never claim that he was consciously attempting to 'transcend naturalism.' He probably couldn't have penned a 'realistic' work if he wanted to, his technique was far too primitive. Still, I find that many Otus drawings catch my attention, and stick in my mind far longer than other early rolegame artists do. His style evokes the exotic and the macabre in a way that few other artists can match. His depictions of the Cthulhu Mythos in Deities and Demigods (see previous page) fascinated me far more than the much more professional illustrations in the Call of Cthulhu rulebooks, and I believe it's because his folk-art grotesqueries suited the Mythos far better than later naturalistic works.

Another early rolegame artist who deserves a mention is Professor M A R Barker, the visionary behind the world of Tékumel. I'm not particularly fond of Barker's later work, in Swords and Glory for example, which are often little more than pin-ups of topless babes, rendered in a dull naturalist style. His more ambitious works in Empire of the Petal Throne, however, deserve lavish praise. Check out the illustration on the previous page. You might respond with knee-jerk hostility to the naked woman in the corner, but it shouldn't blind you to the power of the work. The masks, which seem to float in the darkness, are an imaginative touch, and there is a palatable sense of horror and dread to the scene. It's unfortunate that so little work in today's rolegames can match the power and imagination of this primitive, 25-year old sketch.
...
Evoking other worlds

Good work can be done in a naturalist style, but it requires more than just the ability to draw realistically. Most rolegame artwork is mediocre not because it's naturalistic, but because its subject matter is dull. That portrait of 'Tordek' (previous page) is typical: Someone posing with his weapons. Just about every rolegame illustration is either (a) a portrait of someone with a weapon, or (b) a combat scene. Thank the Gods for creature catalogues and monster manuals, because they're the only reliable sources of imaginative artwork in the field today.
...

To restate the author's points in my words: Elmore ("Norman Rockwell in Krynn", as rogueattorney put it on Dragonsfoot) and the likes of Boris Vallejo produce artwork which is the geek equivalent of bodice ripper cover illustrations (of course, it could be said that Dragonlance is the geek equivalent of a bodice ripper -- complete with ripped bodices, even), or kittens playing with balls of yarn, or Kinkade's bucolic villages and snow-covered homes. They are technically proficient, easy to digest but do not offer anything beyond the superficial.

Frazetta, on the other hand, was a genuinely talented and visionary artist who happened to work in commercial genres. His work is good not because it has detail, but because it is full of furious energy, passion, and a masterful use of colour and light. His works have another hidden layer: coyness behind beauty, desperation behind brutality, and menace behind lush environments.

Artists who had worked for old RPGs were a different sort: they were a more random assortment, mostly not very good technically, but when they were on, they were on. Also note that nobody is really bringing up Greg Bell as an example of a great illustrator, or art from the AD&D Monster Manual II as examples of good illustrations. The pieces that are brought up are Trampier monsters, Otus covers, maybe David Sutherland's DMG cover with the City of Brass on it. And I would say that beyond the resonance of nostalgia, they are the ones that have something more to them.

[Melan]

I think your nostalgia is getting in the way.

I think the rose-coloured glasses fallacy is getting in yours, Ace. :teehee:

[Nicephorus]

from Brilliance and dross in RPG artwork:  "much of today's rolegame art is worse than bad. It's ordinary."  states the overall issue well.  But his example of Tordek is poorly chosen.  The illustration isn't supposed to show how Tordek is different from other dwarves.  It's supposed to communicate what the hell a dwarf is in D&D, so it's showing a typical dwarf.  
 
However, it is part of a general shift from action scenes to portraiture, which is simpler to draw due to lack of backgrounds and easier to resize without the whole scene being scrunched.

[danbuter]

I think the rose-coloured glasses fallacy is getting in yours, Ace. :teehee:

Oo, a fancy term for nu-uh!

[Cole]

Oo, a fancy term for nu-uh!

Well, "nuh-uh" is about the right response to the "it's just nostalgia" card.

[misterguignol]

Less talk and more pictures, you fuckers.

Anyway, this is hardly the worst art to happen in the history of rpgs, but it's always bothered me:



You'd think that the fact that all vampires in Ravenloft are blue-skinned would be a dead give away.  

Seriously, why is Strahd a fucking Smurf???

[Cole]

Less talk and more pictures, you fuckers.

Anyway, this is hardly the worst art to happen in the history of rpgs, but it's always bothered me:



You'd think that the fact that all vampires in Ravenloft are blue-skinned would be a dead give away.  

Seriously, why is Strahd a fucking Smurf???

Artistic license? Heh, I generally think of it as vampires turn the weird undead colors only when they hulk out with satanic power, but, on the other hand, it is D&D, there are lots of reasons you could be blue.

[islan]

Maybe it's just the artist's easy-way-out for doing a night scene.

[misterguignol]

Artistic license? Heh, I generally think of it as vampires turn the weird undead colors only when they hulk out with satanic power, but, on the other hand, it is D&D, there are lots of reasons you could be blue.

Well sure, but in a campaign setting that often boils down to the characters trying to figure out which NPC is the monstrous villain, having them be a big blue bastard kinda gives it away!

[misterguignol]

Maybe it's just the artist's easy-way-out for doing a night scene.

Heh, note that the Stevie Nicks-looking chick in his arms has not turned blue in the moonlight.

[Cole]

Heh, note that the Stevie Nicks-looking chick in his arms has not turned blue in the moonlight.

Maybe Barovians display sexual diporphism, like peacocks or something. "That Nicolae, the miller's son is such a handsome fellow, and so blue!"

[Philotomy Jurament]

...the Stevie Nicks-looking chick in his arms...

You mean Elmore Blonde #2.  (Elmore chicks are kind of like the standardized food colorings listed on ingredients labels.)

I dislike the posed nature of many of Elmore's pieces.  There was one piece of his that I really liked, though.  It was a knight on horseback coming towards you, with a couple of orcs or something running or trying to get out of the way.