East of Caldwellia, West of Elmoreon

In recent discussions of vanilla fantasy, my friend Paul (owner of the long-hiatused blog, Dungeonskull Mountain) and I have bandied about the idea of an "80s fantasy" world. While we perhaps don't share exactly the same vision for that, both of us agree that famous D&D artists of mid-1e to 2e eras--particularly Clyde Caldwell, Larry Elmore, and Keith Parkinson--play a big part in that.

The visuals are clear and distinct, but is there a setting in the work of these artists distinct from just generic D&D?

I'm not entirely sure, but I think we can say make guesses as to what elements it may have and what elements it does not.

Glamorous Not Grotty
Glamorous might be a little strong, but hey, alliteration! Anyway, we are certainly not in the Dung Ages, or any version of gritty pseudo-Medieval verisimilitude.

Complicated Costumes and Culture
Compared to work of Frazetta, Kelly, or Vallejo, the clothing of the characters has a lot going on: fur trim, feathers, scales, etc. This tends to be true even when female characters are scantily clad. It's all more renfair that Conan. This suggests (to me) more of a high fantasy world than a sword & sorcery one, and an interest in visually defining cultures that doesn't get into the heavy worldbuilding of a Glorantha or Tekumel, but is definitely of the "needs a glossary at the end of the book" level.

Dragons & Drama
There are an awful lot of dragons. I mean,  they're showing up all the time. And often characters are confronting them in a way that suggest they are big, powerful heroes, not the type to die pointless in holes in the ground. The another name for high fantasy is epic fantasy, and that's what these images often convey.

A Touch of Humor
Despite the epicness and high drama, things are seldom if ever grim. In fact, from adventures posing with the tiny dragon they slew, to a muscular female fighter manhandling an ogre, a bit of humor is pretty common.

"I Faced A Tyrannoclops!"

Last year, I posted about an Atomic Age riff on Operation Unfathomable. It was a good enough idea to get a second post--with new art, with illustration by Nik Poliwko.

Another Visit to the Alex Toth Casting Agency

Need a different look for an NPC or a weird monster of some sort? Check out the model sheets and concept art created for Hanna-Barbera by the late, great Alex Toth:

Cyclops:

Dragon, Four-eyed:

The rulers of the cat people:

A wizard and his pets:

A wizard with a nose piercing and fairy lackeys:

The Genre of D&D Art?

Jason "Dungeon Dozen" Sholtis and I were talking the other day, after we both watched Eye of the Beholder, the new documentary on D&D artists (which you should see too). Jason was skeptical of the idea (mentioned in the documentary) that "D&D art" was a genre, instead viewing it as part of the wider field of fantasy illustration. I put forward an argument, that he found at least somewhat convincing, that D&D (or rpg) art, might at least constitute a subgenre of fantasy art, and that it could be identified by its tendency to emphasis certain traits across several editions. Here are the traits I came up with:

Prosaic or Humorous Scenes
While fantasy illustration is no stranger to humor or protagonists that are less than competent, but not large than life, these sorts characters are depicted in a higher proportion of D&D art.

More Detail on Monsters
Monsters in much traditional (pre-D&D) fantasy illustration are best described as "phantasmagoric" or fanciful, charitably--and perhaps even outright goofy. D&D monsters are not always anatomically or realistically considered but they are generally detailed and usually dynamic.

Placing the Viewer with the Protagonists
The eye of the viewer is often positioned as if they might be a companion of the pictured protagonists or at least a close observer, rather than viewing the action at a remove. The primary focus then is often placed on the antagonist (or monster) rather than the heroes.

Emphasis on Small Groups Rather than Individuals or Clashing Armies
This one is obvious due to the "party" structure of rpgs, and it is perhaps the one most frequently supported by the art. The party is often displaying teamwork.

Anyway, I think those sort of make the point. I do think there are some others regarding costuming and composition of scenes, but these are the ones I feel most certain about. Of course, there is a lot D&D art that don't show these characteristics and there is some non-rpg fantasy illustration that does. These are really about tendencies, not absolutes.

Armchair Planet Who's Who

I haven't posted an update on this in a while. The project is still on-going, it's just been moving slower of late due to real life stuff for both myself and my collaborator. Here's another piece of art for it, though: another look at Futura by Julian Shaw.

It Ain't Over

A professional trip followed by a family medical emergency left it quiet hereabouts for a little bit. Expect a return to the regular posting schedule soon.

To tide you over, here's a piece of art for the Armchair Planet Who's Who by Anna Liisa Jones: Zota, the evil extradimensional wizard, responsible for the creation of the Aberration:

Domesticated Animals of Zarthoon

While remnants of advanced technology exist on Zarthoon, a world in Centaurus, it exists side by side with the primitive. Many domesticated animals are relied upon by its people. Here are some of the common ones:

Vastidars are beaked, elephantine creatures, of which several varieties exist. This is a dwarf vastidar native to the sprawling Forest of Dhar on the continent of Thurvan. In addition to being smaller, it has a milder temperament than larger species, but you'd better keep a supply of hard-shelled jumbar fruit at hand.

Zurch are flightless saddle-birds. The males are often favored as mounts due to their bright plummage, but the mightiest warriors go for the plainer, but larger and deadlier females. Zurchs prefer a diet of grubs and the like but are indiscriminate eaters.

The hoon is the most loyal of beasts. They some are pampered pets, prized for the variety of patterns in their sleek fur, but most are working animals, defending their masters and guarding their homes.

Armchair Planet Who's Who: Imp

It's great to come back from out of town and have new art to show off. Here's Libby Knight aka Imp, the Teen Devil, by Dean Kotz.

The Tempus Fugitives

The Armchair Planet Who's Who will contain some "minor" characters/teams who are presented with not more explanation than is what in their entry. This is part of the suggestion of a bigger universe rather than exhaustively detailing it all. The Tempus Fugitives are one of those...

They were branded "anomalies"--beings who were dangerous simply because they were outside their proper timestream: Gary Mitchum, taken from a 1950s Earth by a flying saucer crew from an erased future; Ssatheena the Dinosorceress from an Earth of evolved saurian swords and sorcery; Jack "Tex Mech" McCandless, a cyborg cowpoke from a high-tech Old West; Jehana Sun, warrior maiden of a future medieval Earth conquered by aliens; M'Gogg, a hulking Neo-anderthal from a post-nuclear war world. They promptly escaped from the "Big Hypercube" maximum security prison and now survive as temporal soliders of fortune.

Art by Agus Calcagno

More Supers Art

This is Agus Calcagno's rendition of the Abhumans, which I haven't got around to coloring yet. I have colored their headshots, though:

More Armchair Planet Who's Who Art

I just got these pieces this week, and I have been too busy to color them, so here they are in their line art glory:

These representatives of that race extradimensional dealmaker and powerbrokers known to superstitious folk as the Devils as rendered by Jason Sholtis.

And here are members of the hidden race of variant humanity that inspired the legends of elves, dwarves, goblins, and the like: the entourage and exiled royals of the astonishing Abhumans! Art by Agustin Calcagno.

The Aberration!

I had hoped to show an example of the layout for the front (fluff) and back (game stats) of the pages in the Armchair Planet Who's Who today, but unfortunately, I was only able to get the front page finished to my satisfaction. Hopefully, I'm have the back page with ICONS stats up in a post later this week.

If you'd like to see the Marvel Super-Heroes rpg stats for this guy, you can find them here.

More Superhero Art and A Table of Contents

This first piece is still a bit of a work in progress (coloring-wise). It's the Cosmic Knights by Dean Kotz, of which Earth's hero, the Cosmic Knight is but one.

We're playing on two "issues" of characters and stats. Here's the projected contents of the first issue done up in the appropriate style. It may be subject to minor changes.

Some Art from An Upcoming Superhero Thing

No stats today, but here's some spiffy new art for a planned supers project:

The villainous Dungeonmaster by Chris Malgrain, and

the Champion's wizardly mentor by Jeff Call.

More to come!

Damselfly!

No stats today, but here's a new piece of art by Dean Kotz with colors and logo by me for my supers thing in the works.

The microverse of Zurrz-Zann is home to a technologically advanced, regimented society. Zurrz-Zann was at peace for many years, until an emerging insectoid intelligence on Earth breached the dimensions and fomented insurrection. Xazandra Zaantarz was a junior law enforcer, sent with her partner to Earth to stop the psychic attack. The two eventually became lovers and a crimefighting partners as Dragonfly and Damselfly. 

When the society of their homeworld took an even greater turn toward authoritarianism, Damselfly chose to stay on Earth and was branded a traitor by her people.

Superhero Logos

I've been working on a supers project with a couple of collaborators that will hopefully be a comic and rpg thing. It's necessitated (or at least allowed) me making logos for the various characters in a Bronze Age/early Modern Age style. I thought I would share a few of the ones I have made for the heroes, the Super-Sentinels. Unlike the villians, these needed to look like they might have been on the cover of a comic.

Ray Logan would have burned alive on re-entry when his spacecraft malfunctioned, if he hadn’t been saved by the COSMIC ARCHONS. Their power healed him and bonded him to a suit of armor, making him one of their paladins for intergalactic justice, the COSMIC KNIGHT!

This one uses a font by Iconian fonts (one of my go-tos) as a pass, but then I gave it a perspective reminiscent of one of the Legion of Super-Heroes logos or Neal Adams' iconic X-Men design. It seemed fitting it should have Starlin-esque cosmic telescoping.

Kelli Cross was a college student, but what she was really into was roller derby. When she discovered her grandfather had been a costumed crime-fighter during World War II with a set of magical roller-skates that supposedly came from an extradimensional imp—well, it all sounded pretty hard to believe, but skating and fighting crime just seemed like the thing to do!

This one was inspired, obviously, on the classic Ira Schapp logo for the Flash. I am not completely happy with the speed-lines. Schapp made it look so easy!

Son of a spelunker and an exiled princess of the underground city of Sub-Atlan, Roy King uses the technomagical harness and gauntlets to swim through rock like it was water. He protects the underground from the surface world—and the surface world from the dangers of the underground—as the SUB-TERRAN!

This one was inspired by the logo of a DC Hercules series, but with roughened, rocky letters as seen on a number of Marvel 70s logos. There are a lot of rocky or stone fonts out there, but none worked well with the extreme perspective, so I had to use a plainer font (by Blambot, I think) and roughen it myself. It had to be done in stages to get the final thing. 

This character was originally going to be called the Subterranean, but that was too long to fit on anything but the plainest "book style" logos, so I had to shorten it.

Work in Progress

Coloring the sketch of our Land of Azurth adventuring party by Steve LeCouilliard.

Operation Unfathomable by Blacklight

I shoulded the proof of concept version of this cover before, but here's the mostly final version of cover of the DCC Conversion of Operation Unfathomable:

Completely Unfathomable Covered

Jason Sholtis and the rest of Hydra are still at work on the various Operation Unfathomable stretch goals. Jason and I have been bandied about cover ideas. Here's the latest (and possibly final, but you never know) for the omnibus Completely Unfathomable based on classic bubblegum card packaging:

Operation Unfathomable Cover Aprocrypha

During the Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter and run-up to publication, I did a number of cover mockups, as brainstorming and placeholder images. Here are some of those, most of which are unlikely to grace a product. 

Remember these are mockups, not finished products. They were not complete in some cases.

First up, here's the Jason Sholtis artbook that was one of the stretch goals we didn't reach:

We thought about blacklight covers (or covers with the black vibe) for the DCC conversions:

Finally, here's an unused design for the Player's Guide recalling old Boy Scout merit badge pamphlets: