Skip to main content

Favorite RPG Artists

What I Like in RPG Art

Tony DiTerlizzi

Probably best known for his work on Planescape in the 90s, his use of exaggerated anatomy, DeTerlizzi has gone on to his own post-DnD career, illustrating a ton of books that don't have game rules in them.

Jez Gordon

Dynamic, heavy scratchboard illustrations with both a strong sense of mass and motion. Jez is one of the newer artists I have noticed. Not to mention his work as a cartographer and a designer of great-looking books.

Russ Nicholson

I encountered Russ Nicholson's art both in the Fiend Folio and in pages of White Dwarf back in the 1980s. Russ' intense line work, dark and moody texture and generally grungy feel struck me deeply as hitting an aesthetic that better reflected the sword and sorcery (e.g., Robert E. Howard) and the dark fantasy (e.g. Micheal Moorcock) I liked in my teens. As my tastes have evolved, grungy, dirty and complicated still has been part of my favored art aesthetic.

Erol Otus

What initially turned me on to Erol Otus was his work in the Fiend Folio depicting the Cthulhu Mythos as well as some spot illustrations, but a lot of his work over the years with TSR and Arduin made me love his clean lines, freaky people, and non-traditional fantasy characters as well his deeply disturbing take on monsters.

Liz Danforth

Editor and main artist for Flying Buffalo's Tunnels and Trolls, Liz's black and white work, in particular, has a strong sense of texture, with her use of hatching, fine line work, and realistic expressions and appearances. Her work reminds me of fantasy book illustrations when that was a thing in fantasy novels, and creates a strong sense of what to me embody the literary roots of swords and sorcery.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monster of the Week: Gluttony Beast

Monster of the Week, May 12, 2020 They just keep coming. Gluttony Beast When someone lives a life using others' suffering to become wealthy, becoming gat off the work of others' labor and suffering, the cries of the oppressed are sometimes heard by the gods or the spirits of the magic realm and the oppressor is punished rather than being allowed to die. Such cursed individuals lose all of their faces but their mouths; their bodies become gelatinous masses of adipose tissue their libs become a mass of soft, slithering tentacles, and their intelligence becomes subsumed by hunger to eat riches and wealth and overcome by a desire to live in their own filth. However, the gluttony beast quickly becomes a curse to the communities in which they are reborn as well. They are ravenous, foul, and spread a miasmic and dolorous stink over the land, which poisons and sickens the land. They themselves are surprisingly quick. Though blind, their sense of smell helps them find pr...
1 comment
Read more

Monster of the Week: The Grey People

Monster of the Week, May 5, 2020 In honor of the Mexican victory over the French in the town of Puebla in 1862, I'm going to post a monster like I would any other Tuesday The Grey People The Grey People appear in large urban crowds as inconspicuous, bland people who blend into the masses, usually hooded and cloaked with emotionless faces and almost colorless features. Their blandness is almost supernatural, and the specifics of their faces are almost headache-inducing if anyone looks at them directly. As a result, they disappear into a crowd, and people forget seeing them. The Grey People fear being discovered. If anyone begins to investigate them, the Grey People first try to disappear. After that, they begin to work on eliminating the threat, escalating from threats to attempts to kill the threat directly. In the process, those investigating the Grey People find that people do not remember these beings, and deny their influence.
Post a Comment
Read more

Monster of the Week: Hangman Tree

Monster of the Week, April 28 I'm as surprised as you are that I keep publishing these things. Hangman Tree When a person is hanged unjustly, the psychic wound of that injustice marks the world. If the person being hanged unjustly is both magically gifted and willing to call on the dark powers to avenge their suffering, those dark powers are more than willing to grant the wishes of the supplicant and gain more presence on the material plane. These dark powers take the blood and the remains of the sacrifice, their rage and hatred, and the rage and hatred of the mobs that killed them and combine them with the earth itself and their own dark nature. From the ground where the body of the unjustly killed is buried or left to rot, the earth gives birth to a twisted, leafless tree. Eventually, the tree sprouts long filaments with eyes on the end of them, a great maw cracks in the trunk, and a misty gas issues from the tree. The misty gas first summons animals, whose blood feed...
Post a Comment
Read more