Ooooo, this one's going to generate some buzz on the interwebs. Zack and Steve at SomethingAwful.com take a swipe at:
Original D&D
-Rognar-
Note: Don't worry, they save the last parting shot for 4e
Merry Christmas from Blackmoor!
18 hours ago
4 comments:
The OD&D art deserves to be ripped.
That the art was bad, was the least of its offences. Even worse, many of the images were (to put it kindly) poor tracings of existing comic book art.
Love the banter in their posts!
Man we think alike!
Dare I say, it makes my art look "not terrible".
Okay, maybe that's an overstatement.
Good call, Paladin. I never thought to trace (heh) those drawings to Jack Kirby or Jim Steranko, but now that you've pointed out the comic book thing, it's all I can see.
Those were bad drawings, though. I used to think it was part of OD&D's charm. These days . . . not so much.
Don't get me wrong... it's part of OD&D, for better or worse. It reveals that it was very much a hobbyist effort at the outset. With no money for art, it's unsurprising that the original illustrations are what they are.
You can see the beginnings of a more professtional art approach, starting with Blackmoor (Greyhawk was still pretty bad) which really started to improve with the last couple of supplements. The only one I can't recall artwork for is the Swords & Spells supplement, which was supposed to replace Chainmail as the mass combat system
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