Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Larry technically draws a more " realistic" portraiture , but his work is fucking BORING. Even that poor sad sack Sutherland was more interesting.

Mrk wrote:Larry technically draws a more " realistic" portraiture , but his work is fucking BORING. Even that poor sad sack Sutherland was more interesting.

De gustibus...

I like the Otus B/X covers better than the Elmore ones, but I think the latter are better for a mass-market product aimed at kids, for whom Otus is a bit too weird -- when a kid sees those covers does he actually want to be those strange-looking figures? I dunno. Part of this also is sentimental nostalgia -- the Elmore-covered red box was my first D&D product, and I used to spend hours studying that cover, imagining myself as that character in that scene, imagining what happened next, trying to figure how much treasure there really was, and so on. That cover really engaged my nine-year-old imagination. (And FWIW a couple years later the original PH & DMG covers did the same, whereas the revised Easley covers were just pretty pictures).

T. Foster wrote:I like the Otus B/X covers better than the Elmore ones, but I think the latter are better for a mass-market product aimed at kids, for whom Otus is a bit too weird -- when a kid sees those covers does he actually want to [

So your saying generic is good then because it's better to target the mass market for more profitability? If everyone thought like that we wouldn't of had RPG's in the first place and we would be playing some boring shit like Bridge or Go Fish!

That's what was so cool about the early artists in the first place is they cut against the grain. There stuff didn't look like it was designed at Milton Bradly or HASBRO the way D&D looks now and has been for the last 20 years.

E.O. forever....

Mrk wrote:So your saying generic is good then? That it's better to target the mass market for more profitability?

In a game that's targeted as the mass-market (as the 1981 and 83 D&D sets were), sure. We had the family-friendly mass-market version of the game to sell to kids and get them hooked, and then we had the more forbidding Advanced game with its big words and tiny print and quirky/idiosyncratic art style for people who'd taken the bait of the boxed sets and were ready to move up to the harder stuff. Mass-market look for the mass-market version, stranger and more individualistic art for the quasi-occult "dangerous" Advanced version.

TSR's mistake was that they didn't follow through with this -- they slapped new, generic mass-market-friendly covers on the AD&D books too and made zero differentiation in style between Classic products and Advanced products except by the accidental fact that the interior art of the AD&D books was still the weird 70s-era stuff and some stores still had old copies of the earlier/quirkier AD&D modules (A4, D3, S4, WG4, etc.) sitting around. But if you take an AD&D module published in 1984 (say DL1 or N2) and compare it to a Classic module of the same period (say B8 or CM1) there's no discernable aesthetic difference between them, which is a shame.

I'd have loved it if TSR had used Elmore and Easley on Classic products but continued to use Otus and Tramp on the Advanced line, had they continued to sell the latter in headshops and the former in toy-stores.

Its hard to pin down a bad Tramp pic. I can't recall offhand if he ever did a bad picture.

Otus is a master of misses. So close and he blows it with a fold of the arm or too large of a head, etc.

Sutherland is good when he is good but when he's bad it just seems off.

Elmore doesn't have any good images anymore whatever his hand was he overplayed it so much that its almost sickening to behold. Its all in the context of SNARFQUEST.

Easley isn't about D&D he's about playing too much D&D, drinking paint and then puking it into a form.

Caldwell? Honestly? Is like ren fair fantasy illustrated by the people who made troll dolls.

Parkinson is technically good and its clear but something gives a feeling that this isn't visualized right. You know what I mean? Certain elements look like toys.

Wham is hands down a non-failure to me and woefully undersung as a master of fantasy roleplaying art. These line art weirdlings of his should have been spread out way more than they were.

T. Foster wrote:[
TSR's mistake was that they didn't follow through with this -- they slapped new, generic mass-market-friendly covers on the AD&D books.

Which is what the did exactly after they kicked out Gygax and started going for the boring shit covers that we STLL see to this day. Sure, I can understand using new artists, but the one's they picked ( with the exception of Parkenson * ) are completely dull. If the didn't want to use E.O. or Dee for a new cover then they should of gotten someone EVEN better then them and who really kicks ass like Richard Corben or Frazetta. A Corben Red or Blue Box cover would of been incredible.

*Yeah those two covers that he did sucked, but much of his work was dam good. And when it was better then dam good, it was AWESOME.

geneweigel wrote:
Otus is a master of misses. So close and he blows it with a fold of the arm or too large of a head, etc.

All the reason more to love his work...

I never understood why TSR didn't use more art by Denis Beauvais. He did a bunch of covers for Dragon magazine (most famously the "chess" series: issues 83, 86, and 89) but AFAIK only ever did one module cover.

Now, stand back while I throw my match on a puddle o' petrol.

I liked SnarfQuest; thought it was funny as hell. I thought Finn and Wormy were terrific as hell too.

I've got no problem with Elmore. Does his art look like Otus? No. Does it look like Tramp? No. Oh, wait. Otus' and Tramp's art don't look alike either. Doh!

Tramp, Otus AND Elmore are okay in my book, and to somehow suggest that Elmore was in part responsible for the decline of TSR is, frankly, horseshit.

Harbinger of doom my a$$.

The harbinger of doom to come was a bunch of gamers and other people who didn't know business from shinola trying to run a Big Business. The whole lot were clearly in over their heads as soon as D&D brought their moderate business beyond anyone's biggest dream (or worst nightmare).

Now. Bring it.

TheRedPriest wrote:Now, stand back while I throw my match on a puddle o' petrol.

I liked SnarfQuest; thought it was funny as hell. I thought Finn and Wormy were terrific as hell too.

I've got no problem with Elmore. Does his art look like Otus? No. Does it look like Tramp? No. Oh, wait. Otus' and Tramp's art don't look alike either. Doh!

Tramp, Otus AND Elmore are okay in my book, and to somehow suggest that Elmore was in part responsible for the decline of TSR is, frankly, horseshit.

Harbinger of doom my a$$.

The harbinger of doom to come was a bunch of gamers and other people who didn't know business from shinola trying to run a Big Business. The whole lot were clearly in over their heads as soon as D&D brought their moderate business beyond anyone's biggest dream (or worst nightmare).

Now. Bring it.

ITA!

He is connotated with those blank-faced Dragonlance uberfans though....



Seriously, there is a deep-rooted connection between D&D mediocrity and Larry Elmore's art. It is like the curse of the House of Usher that will not be denied no matter what...

"Come, Larry, we can run away and get away from all this. You and me and Aleena... AHHH!!!! Why did you have to paint these mountains so huge and featureless? Theres nothing interesting to hide under! Quick into this gallery...NOOOO!!! THE COVERS OF COMPANION, MASTER AND IMMORTALS SETS!!!! We'll never escape! GAAAHHHHH!!!"

Ooooh.. if only .. if only Tramp had done the Dragonlance covers, then TSR would still be with us today.







No, actually, I get the point that some consider Elmore to be a symptom of TSR's lack of vision/balls/whatever. I simply disagree that his art is uninteresting. He clearly focuses heavily on the subjects of his work, but to me, that is and of itself not a flaw.

Wheggi wrote:

AxeMental wrote:OK so Otus was around and capable of preducing kick ass covers. But that looks like a different Otus (above) then the later one (I recall American Indian looking chicks with feathers on magical staffs, and heavily posed adventuring groups etc. etc. So Otus was a prostitute? Or maybe that was his thing all along...who knows.

Emphasis mine. You meant to say 'Elmore', Axe.

- Wheggi

OK I must have eaten some bad fish today or something. (or possibly the effects of working under the hot Fl sun)! Emlore thats it. My humble apologies to Otus, where ever you are...

Neither Larry Elmore the man nor Larry Elmore's art is responsible for the decline and fall of TSR. However, I think it's incontrovertible that there's a high degree of correlation between the ascendancy of Elmore's particular style of fantasy art and the decline of TSR, both as a business and, more importantly, as a creative enterprise.

For myself, I think 75% of Elmore's "problem" -- assuming one agrees that there is a problem -- was art direction. He's a fairly technically proficient artist and his earliest TSR work, like that Dragon cover, is solid and more broadly consonant with the esthetics of early D&D than his later "supermodels at the RenFaire" stuff so many of us detest.