Worst art in an RPG book thread.

[Bloody Stupid Johnson]

OK a couple of things that I at least found slightly disturbing.
First off, the Harlequin class from SenZar. Sorry about blackspace due to scan error.



(Hey Aos...the mimes ARE jealous)

And then there's this one from old small-press RPG Monsters & Slayers. Looks fine on initial inspection...



But on a close look...wtf is the bird doing?

[Patrick Y.]

That picture always made me laugh. Of special note is the half-orc, which looks like some evil wizard cut off a full orc's head, and replaced it with Lloyd Bridge's head. And Lloyd seems really, really happy about it.

[boulet]

Way back in the late eighties Siroz Productions published Whog Shrog. Some guys at my local rpg club tried to recruit players for it but I must say with this kind of art...



...it was a tough sell. It seemed the game was about playing space warriors that kicked dozen asses every second... which is kind of nice but sounds like it's going to get old real quick. I didn't know about an end game where PCs could develop human feelings back then. It might have made me read the book.

[Cole]

There is some serious over rationalization in this thread for what is some awful art.

Why is it so hard for some of you guys to admit any fault on the part of your pet games?

I'm not arguing that there's plenty of bad art in the AD&D/Basic D&D stuff, I just think some of it is also really good.

As for more stuff that's junk, it's not bad in a hilarious way or anything, but I remember around 1995-onward chaosium's art for the CoC and Elric/Stormbringer lines just became horrible. "Little-brother" stuff, especially that they'd do a weird matte grey two-tone for shading. Awful, but I don't know if I want to set up the scanner just to have to look at that junk again.

[Cole]

That guy looks kind of like an X-TREME reboot of Uncle Creepy.

[Cole]

I watched an episode of Magnum PI on DVD recently wherein Magnum made out with the actress who went on to play the mom on 7th heaven. Lovecraft never created anything so horrific as what passed for attractive in the 80's.

Viz. Temple of Doom.

[boulet]

That guy looks kind of like an X-TREME reboot of Uncle Creepy.

Never heard of Uncle Creepy before, now I feel... more knowledgeable!

Irony addition: Whog Shrog was supposed to take some of its inspiration from Philippe Druillet's bandes dessinés and that should have sold me immediately.  

Here are some sample of Druillet's stuff that might illustrate how far the Whog Shrog illustration is from its target.  

[Cole]

Here are some sample of Druillet's stuff that might illustrate how far the Whog Shrog illustration is from its target.  

See now that's good stuff.

[arminius]

Get that good stuff out of here!

I cleave to the idea that bad art isn't just a matter of lacking technique. A lot of the old D&D art was poorly done (some was plagiarized from comics, and still poorly done) but none of it offended me with its horribleness. Whereas I really can't stand a lot of the Elmore stuff.

That Elder Secrets art is impressively bad but even it has a sort of style.

What I thought of when I saw this thread was some of the interior art in Riddle of Steel. This was mentioned before: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=55744&highlight=jackson#post55744

I don't have any scans, though--I sold the game off a while ago.

[J Arcane]

As promised, I've snapped some shots of some of what I consider the worst offenders in the DC Heroes card deck that came with 2e. Sorry about the quality, the iPad 2's camera is absolute rubbish.

Here's the spread:


Right close-up:


Left close-up:


And finally, the most infamous culprit of them all, this is supposed to be Black Adam:

[misterguignol]

Oh man, they caught Batman mid-dump.

[Cole]

As promised, I've snapped some shots of some of what I consider the worst offenders in the DC Heroes card deck that came with 2e. Sorry about the quality, the iPad 2's camera is absolute rubbish.

Some of those poses are really uncomfortable to look at. What is up with Hal Jordan's pose? It has has distressing shades of "Goodbye Horses."

[mhensley]

a thread about bad art and no mention of Gurps 4e art?  The covers were so bad that the fans made a big stink about them until they decided to have a contest to change them from this crap.  Note the girl with the dildo gun.



Unfortunately, the interior art didn't change and is mostly horrible.  And this is after SJ bragged about how good the art would be.

[RockViper]

Most of the 2e Planescape art was pretty bad.

[Machinegun Blue]

Most of the 2e Planescape art was pretty bad.

Get out of here.