I blame the art director. Welcome to my ignore list.Really? You calling it generic and lumping together a couple decades worth of art styles wasn't disparaging? Huh.
I also went to art school and I can see the difference.I think it has become a fairly generic aesthetic myself. WoW looks D&D looks MtG looks etc. I am really keen on art, went to art school and have an eye for seeing the "errors" that make a style. Even in late 1e/2e one could see Elmore and Easley and Parkinson and know the artist was different. Nowadays I couldn't name any of them, I don't see cues that indicate they are different, nor do I see signatures etc. it's like Continuity Comics where EVERYONE drew exactly like Neal Adams. When I open something like OSE, DCC, or other games though I pick up and see a unique visual style to define the games while allowing the artist to come through as well. It doesn't feel churned out.
You're flatly wrong here, I'm afraid. This a very different style to, for example, the cover art for the 2024 PHB we've seen, and we've also not seen enough 2024 art to say this is a "house style", especially as it's very different to current 5E art. It's possible that could be true, but you don't have the evidence to say that, and I think it's unlikely.I think they are talented artists working in a preferred house style which is why I compared it to Continuity Comics, where Neal Adams trained artists for comics work.
Small side note, we have not seen any cover art for this yet: we've seen the Fighter and Wizard splash page art, the Champion inset art, some Backgrounds, and a silver dragon.This a very different style to, for example, the cover art for the 2024 PHB we've seen
Let's not forget that in the TSR days, they actually HAD an art department. As in most of the art was done in house. So, yes, of course anyone who played back then can start to recognize the artists. After all, you saw the same half dozen or so artists, not just repeatedly in a single book, but, in virtually every single book you bought back then.Back in 1E/2E, you were often looking at like, I dunno, a double handful of artists - often a product had just one to five artists on it - like Dragon Mountain with Jaquays as the cover artist and DiTerlizzi, Easley and Elmore as the interior artists (but like 80% DiTerlizzi IIRC). AD&D used this same few artists over, and over.
Can you please point me in the direction of those?Small side note, we have not seen any cover art for this yet: we've seen the Fighter and Wizard splash page art, the Champion inset art, some Backgrounds, and a silver dragon.
Sure, here they are from the PAX East panel: the Fighter image with the Dwarf is the equivalent to the Wizard image in the OP here, and each Subclass will apparently get an inset image similar to this Champion:Can you please point me in the direction of those?
Again I didn't blame the artists, I mentioned the art director. Have a good day.I also went to art school and I can see the difference.
Specifically with this one, I kept thinking "This is very 2017 MOBA or CCG", and so I looked up the artist (Billy Christian), and lo and behold, he did a ton of art for Legend of the Cryptids, a 2017 CCG.
This is a style that's got a lot of relatives, sure, but if you flatly can't see that there are different artists with different vibes working on this kind of thing, then, that's on you, not on the artists. It's no more generic than the previous 5E art, or even the 3E art, and I hate to say it, but it's possibly less generic than the weirdly forgettable 4E art.
1E/2E art is a little different because it was actual painters doing actual paintings, with somewhat lower average levels of stylization for the major panels (but not that low, c.f. Easley etc.), and it was a much smaller number of artists. I think that's part of the problem you're having. Back in 1E/2E, you were often looking at like, I dunno, a double handful of artists - often a product had just one to five artists on it - like Dragon Mountain with Jaquays as the cover artist and DiTerlizzi, Easley and Elmore as the interior artists (but like 80% DiTerlizzi IIRC). AD&D used this same few artists over, and over. So you quickly came to recognise them even where their styles might be superficially similar (and some were). Now we're looking at situations where frequently books have fairly vast numbers of artists providing much smaller numbers of pieces of art - sometimes just one - and so it's harder to spot the differences.
You're flatly wrong here, I'm afraid. This a very different style to, for example, the cover art for the 2024 PHB we've seen, and we've also not seen enough 2024 art to say this is a "house style", especially as it's very different to current 5E art. It's possible that could be true, but you don't have the evidence to say that, and I think it's unlikely.
Mod Note:Welcome to my ignore list.
The word "clericus" is not the same word as "cleric". But if we are talking derivations, the root word is the Greek klērikos. It is a word that was in use long before the medieval period, and is still used to describe people who work for the church today. There is nothing medieval about it.Clerics and the King’s Service in Late Medieval England
Clerics and the King’s Service in Late Medieval England by Virginia Davis
"Men described as “clericus” span the full gambit from having received the first tonsure, which carried with it no commitment to an ecclesiastical career..."
“…the wide range of meanings encompassed within the medieval and catch–all term “clericus”.”
Gygax loved REH, swords and sorcery and myth. So a lot of his stuff is ancient-world influenced - not medieval. But as a businessman he was pretty rubbish, and when he lost control the the company the aesthetic was changed to something more broadly appealing (see Dragonlance for example). They dropped the pretence of 1950s Hollywood medievalism inherited from Chainmail for something with more contemporary appeal, and D&D has reflected the culture of it's time ever since. That's how it's managed to stay popular.At this point if I don't get at least a few sentences telling all and sundry that Gary Gygax was completely full of it
Care to take a second guess? Because unless you're playing a full caster, very little of D&D gets into the level of superhero fantasy until levels which very few players ever get to play at, and frankly even at that point any "superhero moments" are limited.The whole point of modern DnD and the reason why it's so popular is literally the superhero fantasy. It's why there are floors for things like stat rolls, why a lot of the game systems include redundancies for negative stuff, etc.