What were they thinking? The RPG art cringe thread :D

[Omega]

I dunno, whenever I think of WFRP it's usually bigass beaded dwarves cleaving orc skulls with giant axes, it's not THAT.

Old and even not so old GW art was by the same artist who did alot of the FF books. I'd have to look up the name but some of his colour art is in the same style. Been ages.

[Omega]

Ten times the bream did swiftly skip,
And like a clap of thunder
It smote old Sweed upon his head,
And tore the beast asunder[/i]
- "Tale of the Fishskippers," by Harkin Fishskipper[/center]

Good lord you are right! Ok, that makes the piece, while still hideous, at least awesomely hideous.
It even looks a bit like a Bream.

[Ghostmaker]

All this and nobody's discussing Battletech and some of its... uh... stranger choices for uniforms?

(My personal favorite is still the Clan Hell's Horses crewman who's wearing platform boots and a weird full-face mask.)

[nope]

Much of the art from the core GURPS 4th edition books tends towards poor but in particular, GURPS Magic for 4th edition. Pick any piece from in there and almost without exception, it will be embarrassingly bad.

I understand why SJG wanted to go full-color with everything 4th Ed, but most of the new art is just ugly and uninspired. It's pretty disappointing to me since I loved all the unobtrusive but creative Dan Smith (smif) art that permeated the 3rd edition books (and as an added bonus, the sheer bulk of art he contributed provided 3rd edition with a visual+stylistic consistency that 4th edition art simply doesn't even come close to achieving).

All that being said, most of the GURPS line has cover art ranging from acceptable to pretty good, and occasionally great. So at least they mostly got that part right.

[Omega]

This one?



If its a tank pilot then the helmet makes sense. Probably from the "VR Enhancment" spillover from the cartoon. The platforms could be just a style to emulate hooves. Or maybee they have some funky purpose? Krenskey liked Disco and it never died?

[Bren]

The platforms could be just a style to emulate hooves. Or maybee they have some funky purpose? Krenskey liked Disco and it never died?

That made me laugh.

I thought he was too short to reach the pedals without an assist. Of course both could be true.

[Ghostmaker]

This one?



If its a tank pilot then the helmet makes sense. Probably from the "VR Enhancment" spillover from the cartoon. The platforms could be just a style to emulate hooves. Or maybee they have some funky purpose? Krenskey liked Disco and it never died?

That's the one. LOL. The crested helmet at least makes SOME sense, but platform boots? Seriously?

[Trond]

This one?



If its a tank pilot then the helmet makes sense. Probably from the "VR Enhancment" spillover from the cartoon. The platforms could be just a style to emulate hooves. Or maybee they have some funky purpose? Krenskey liked Disco and it never died?

My head immediately went here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhO_jnKl4pk

[Trond]

Wasn't there also a Star Wars sourcebook with some absolutely clumsy art on the cover? I seem to remember caharacters running up some stairs with light sabers or something.

[David Johansen]

Much of the art from the core GURPS 4th edition books tends towards poor but in particular, GURPS Magic for 4th edition. Pick any piece from in there and almost without exception, it will be embarrassingly bad.
So at least they mostly got that part right.

I think 4e got the art 90% right.  GURPS should have clean, realistic, believable art.  But on Magic, I'm pretty sure they just said "people will buy this for the rules or they won't buy it at all.  The art is irrelevant to sales of the book in question."

[oggsmash]

Much of the art from the core GURPS 4th edition books tends towards poor but in particular, GURPS Magic for 4th edition. Pick any piece from in there and almost without exception, it will be embarrassingly bad.
So at least they mostly got that part right.

I think 4e got the art 90% right.  GURPS should have clean, realistic, believable art.  But on Magic, I'm pretty sure they just said "people will buy this for the rules or they won't buy it at all.  The art is irrelevant to sales of the book in question."

   I really like Gurps 4e.   I prefer it for any genre game.  I think the art is terrible.  Every so often I see a bit of art that looks pretty good, but wow, some of it is just really dull.  I guess that is the real issue, it doesnt do much to inspire an idea, or if a random person picked up the book and flipped through it, a hook of some kind.   I think the art is not good.  All my players think it is not good.  I thought DF was a definite uptick in the art, and it has been a while since I have been through every book (I have every hardback book, except Thaumatology, I got it in soft back) so maybe my memory is jaded.

[Aglondir]

Wasn't there also a Star Wars sourcebook with some absolutely clumsy art on the cover? I seem to remember caharacters running up some stairs with light sabers or something.

Player's Guide to Tapani

[Omega]

Looks like some of Holloways paintings. Or another RPG artist with that style. Some of his body placements were... off... to say the least.
Odds are that is one of Doug Shulers pieces. He did some for Dragon Storm too.

[Reckall]

This book is called "Viking Age" (not "Sexy Fantasy Vikings" or some such), and the art pieces on the front and back really give me a lot of confidence in this product.

At least they fixed the problem in their later books....

If you go there:

http://www.avalanchepress.com/valhalla.php

...and scroll down, after the list of out of print wargames, you can find thumbnails of all this series of books and a description for each one of them. The artist was a certain Lorenzo Sperlonga. The owner of the company is the infamous Mike Bennighof, holder of a doctorate in history from Emory University.

"Infamous" because of the excellent ideas that he had for his wargame lines - and by how he always torpedoes himself with shoddy manuals, poor playtesting and sheer ineptitude (when he was finally convinced to create VASSAL modules for his games he forced the player to "buy" them for $0 from his site, instead of just loading them on the VASSAL site like every other fucking wargame and boardgame company does).

Anyway, their 3E line was actually an unexpected success - with editions in other languages and stuff - and, Mike being Mike, sent the company into deep trouble when the 3E bubble burst and no other plans were in place. Somehow, they survived.

[Blankman]

Much of the art from the core GURPS 4th edition books tends towards poor but in particular, GURPS Magic for 4th edition. Pick any piece from in there and almost without exception, it will be embarrassingly bad.
So at least they mostly got that part right.

I think 4e got the art 90% right.  GURPS should have clean, realistic, believable art.  But on Magic, I'm pretty sure they just said "people will buy this for the rules or they won't buy it at all.  The art is irrelevant to sales of the book in question."

It wouldn't hurt it to be good art though. Most of the new art for the edition is bland and uninspired. All the good pieces seem to be recycled from earlier editions.