Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Btb, 50% of cloud giants are good and 50% are evil. So which is the good twin and which is the evil twin?





This one was new to me. Is there a thread somewhere with a master list of all such art & their sources?

This is from Maidens, Monsters, & Heroes - the fantasy illustrations of Henry Justice Ford, a book I picked up earlier this week at Halfprice Books. It has a ton of killer fantasy art. I'm surprised more of it didn't end up in AD&D. Or perhaps more did, I don't know, this book only has a fraction of his work. I had never heard of him until I chanced upon this book in the fantasy art section.

There was a long thread on Dragonsfoot showing numerous sources, but this is a new one for me!

I know the "There is no honor among thieves" illo from the Dungeon Masters Guide was a copy of a classical image.

Here is one of the threads I had in mind: AD&D 1E Interior Illustrations

There are several threads like this over on the Acaeum, and I've read that equivalency before, too, although (after a quick query) it doesn't look like it was over there for this one.

I know it's business and all, but it breaks my heart a little to see that Tramp so blatantly stole that image.

- Wheggi

Wheggi wrote:I know it's business and all, but it breaks my heart a little to see that Tramp so blatantly stole that image.

From what I understand (per Dave Sutherland via Paul Stormberg), the MM was very rushed for art, and there were problems with Tramp not completing all of his assigned pieces on time. Which is why DCSIII did all of the dinosaur illos in 24 hours (! !). So, Tramp and Sutherland were clearly cutting corners as they needed to do so, and that may account for the odd Tom Wham or Jean Wells pieces in there too.

I'd like to see more of Ford's art. I'm not a fan of old public domain images in OSR stuff, because they don't fit very well, but Ford's art is the most D&D of any old tyme art I've seen. And since Ford lived 1860-1941, I would guess much of his art is in the public domain.

The short bio in my book says he was a very prolific fantasy illustrator, so I've only seen a small fraction of his work. I wonder how much of an impact Ford had on DAT and DCS. Check out the head of this monster (taken from a larger illustration) - is it just me, or does this monster's head look like something DCS would draw?

grodog wrote:There are several threads like this over on the Acaeum, and I've read that equivalency before, too, although (after a quick query) it doesn't look like it was over there for this one.

You're probably thinking of when it was noticed here:
http://recedingrules.blogspot.com/2011/ ... overy.html

Being public domain art the original could actually be used for OSRIC, could it not?

Matthew wrote:Being public domain art the original could actually be used for OSRIC, could it not?

An excellent point, Matthew!

Matthew wrote:Being public domain art the original could actually be used for OSRIC, could it not?

Excellent suggestion.

Speaking of sources....I always wondered if the bear Totem in the Field Museum in Chicago was a source of inspiration for the PHB cover.

This image is copyrighted, so you'll have to click the link:

http://www.pbase.com/yardbird/image/96806053

I have a picture of the same totem I took with my phone last year after garycon. It is from a different angle (the front), but it has similar lighting to the PHB cover. I'll see if i can dig it up.

EDIT:

This isn't my pic, but look at the lighting, and look at the eyes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanleylie ... /lightbox/

Very interesting, Rich! Thanks for sharing that.