List of important graphics & illustrators
Sunday Udom
frp games. Oh, Dear Bwana! Me want to make a poll / flame topic bout
greatest/ugliest illustrators. If Bwana seen discusion about great/awful
laubenstein graphics are, Bwana knows What me wants to do .TIA
Greg Singh
Larry Elmore.
Hands down. Without a shadow of a doubt, Elmore is one of the best artists
in the fantasy genre to begin with, but his work with Shadowrun is
phenomenal. Laubensteins portraiture is excellent, mind you - but a bit,
almost, caricaturish, whereas Elmore's work tells a story unto
itself. Every major piece of his that I've seen stands alone, but also
stands strong beside whatever story it's emphasizing. He has a great sense
of scale, excellent use of colour, and the imagery, while not "fantastic",
is real and believable. A storyteller with a paintbrush, that's Larry
Elmore.
I was fortunate enough to bump into him at Gen Con, signing posters and
lithos. Though I was mostly broke, I managed to scratch up a first-ed
cover poster and got him to sign it. Though it's only a cheap poster, it's
one of my prized artistic possessions.
spruce...@gmail.com
I'd say the Ballanchine brothers; they did the original "Sword of
Shannara," if you want a cheap example.
Very nice work, I think. Even if everyone's too "tidy," by my
estimation.
I mean, look at the Alexander Salkind version of The Three Musketeers
(Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and that other guy,
can't remember his name..Frank Finlay...and Faye Dunaway and Raquel
Welch. Christopher Lee and Charlton Heston).
In that version of Renaissance France, everyone is FILTHY, except
people who are royal or are "social climbers," like officers, and the
like.
Since, I'd say, most adventurers start as lower class (which is the
reason they're doing something hazardous to make money), they really
should be fairly dirty (hiking through wildernesses, hanging out in
slums and taverns with dirt floors [which medieval taverns had]), and
so on.
But, barring that quibble, I love the Ballanchine brothers. They're
real artists who happen to use fantasy as their primary subject. Of
course, there are others, but I just love these guys.
Bradd W. Szonye
> [Larry] Elmore is one of the best artists in the fantasy genre ....
> Elmore's work tells a story unto itself ....
I like Elmore's style and technique, but I wouldn't describe him as a
storyteller. For example, on the first page of his Web gallery
(http://www.larryelmore.com/colorg01.htm), half of the paintings have
purely static poses, portraits of characters at rest. Even the more
dynamic paintings mostly show a scene about to start, rather than
showing the action in progress; while that creates some tension, it's
still weak as storytelling goes. I would personally say that story --
dynamism -- is one of Elmore's weaknesses. His strengths lie more in
characterization and technique.
--
Bradd W. Szonye
http://www.szonye.com/bradd
Andy Luddy
I'm pretty sure that you're thinking of the Hildebrandt Brothers, since
a) I don't recall any other brothers who were well known fantasy
illustrators, and b) that's who did the cover (and interior) art for
TSoS <g>. You might be mixing up the name with Ballantine, which was
the publisher. And that's not brothers, but (originally) husband and
wife (Ian and Betty, IIRC).
The Brothers Hildebrandt did a lot of 70's and 80's cover art, along
with annual Tolkien calendars. They also authored and illustrated a
book of fantasy (or possibly had ghostwritten) named Urshurak. It had
two nations of elves, some orc-like and troll-like things (forget the
names), hard-fighting, hard-partying dwarves, a nation of misanthropic
high-tech amazons, and (of course) a desperate war to save the world.
Probably had potential from an RPG perspective, but at the time (late
70's, when I was still in high-school), with all the illustrations, it
was just too expensive to own my own copy. Their website is at
<www.brothershildebrandt.com>.
--
Andy Luddy
Perform appendectomy to reply
aluddy....@adelphia.net
AlexD
contributing to (or even shaping) the atmosphere of a game (or of a
particular setting within a game), or are you after a list of artists with
the products they contributed to, for the purposes of some sort of "who's
the best" vote? If the former I'd suggest Tony DiTerlizzi for ADnD
Planescape setting, Brom for ADnD Dark Sun setting, and Stephen Fabian for
ADnD Ravenloft setting (though I believe many other artists contributed to
Ravenloft; Fabian is just my personal choice). If the latter, I cold list
several dozen (possibly hundreds!) of artists, along with which
products/settings they contributed to in many cases ... but I think any
discussion of "who's the best" would be fairly futile as this is mostly
subjective. (There's several artists who's technical ability I think is poor
but who are still significant in shaping the atmospheres of the products
they contribute to ... for better or worse!)
AlexD
"Sunday Udom" <sunday...@msn.com> wrote in message
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spruce...@gmail.com
thinking?
spruce...@gmail.com
Naznarreb
espicially for his dragons. Many artists portray as sleek and lithe,
and the wings look like the were glued on at some indeterminate point
behind the shoulder. Lockwood's dragons are heavily muscled (which a
dragon would have to be in order to get airborne) and look like they
more than capable of ripping your shit up without resorting to the vast
array of spells and powers at their disposal. Lockwood did all, or
almost all, the dragons in the Monster Manual
Tamuel
"Sunday Udom" <sunday...@msn.com> skrev i meddelandet
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> I'm looking for list of most important graphics, which illustrate
> frp games.
Apart from the well-known American and English tyupes, I would like to
mention two Swedish artists that are quite popular:
Henrik Tamm
Håkan Ackegård
Justisaur
Couldn't find anything on him, google kept comming up with some actor.
> Håkan Ackegård
A little cartoonish for me, but saw a couple interesting things.
Actually reminds me of one of my favorites Erol Otis. My other being
David Trampier.
- Justisaur