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Art Work for traveller

M

Murph

SOC-14 1K
There should be only a few artists allowed to do the Traveller art IMHO:

William H. Keith (bow in the direction of Pennsylvania)
Mike Vilardi
Blair Reynolds
David Dietrick (sp?)
Liz Danforth.

Whoever did the crappy artwork in T4 should be forever banned from doing any artwork for Traveller.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Murph:
There should be only a few artists allowed to do the Traveller art IMHO:

William H. Keith (bow in the direction of Pennsylvania)
Mike Vilardi
Blair Reynolds
David Dietrick (sp?)
Liz Danforth.

Whoever did the crappy artwork in T4 should be forever banned from doing any artwork for Traveller.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The Crappy stuff was mostly Chris Foss. Bleah!

However, the pencils by Elmore were very nice, and IMHO, perfect for the rococo look I've always had for the millieu 0.

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-aramis
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Smith & Wesson: The Original Point and Click interface!
 
Add Rob Caswell to the list please!
smile.gif



Doh! And Tom Peters....

[This message has been edited by Vargas (edited 29 May 2001).]
 
Heresy alert: I'm not really crazy about most of Bill Keith's Traveller artwork. Sure his drawings of aliens and animals were great (much better than T4 Alien Archive, f'rinstance) but his humans and action scenes (e.g. the covers of The Traveller Book and The Traveller Adventure) never did much to inspire me and actually reinforced the '1970s in space' rap that Traveller occasionally gets stuck with. I prefer David Dietrick, Rob Caswell, and most of the folks doing artwork for GT.

I don't have anything against Chris Foss' work per se, but it was a terrible fit with Traveller, and seeing the same few (already-recycled) paintings recycled over and over again didn't help. Those Elmore drawings in the T4 rulebook were pretty lame; to me they looked more like skethces for paintings rather than true finished works. I liked the interior artwork in T4 Emperor's Arsenal and Emperor's Vehicles, but don't recall the artist's name.
 
Frankly I really enjoy technical-looking sketches, the kind you see in sci-fi movie concept art books or, for example, the manual for Sierra's Homeworld computer game.

I like this kind of artwork because it leaves some of the details to the imagination, but can still be very dynamic in composition.

I'm not a big Elmore fan; way too many Dragon(tm) covers from the 80's come to mind...

-fcs
 
I don't agree with some arbitrary notion that only certain people can produce art for certain things. Who makes the art is of little importance and if someone in the middle of unheard of comes up with something perfect for the citizens of the imperium then why shouldn't that be used? Maybe we need a place to submit and view artworks and get some comments on that? Or is such a thing already in place? I really hope the picture that pops up at www.travellerrpg.com isn't the front cover of the book... please tell me it isn't.
 
No that's not the T20 cover, but what don't you like about that pic? It's the cover of the Classic Traveller Reprint: The Basic Books (1-3) btw.

Personally I like it alot! Of course I am biased, having commisioned it to be done.

Hunter
 
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by hunter:
No that's not the T20 cover, but what don't you like about that pic? It's the cover of the Classic Traveller Reprint: The Basic Books (1-3) btw.

Personally I like it alot! Of course I am biased, having commisioned it to be done.

Hunter<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

My personal favourite Traveller art was the minimalist block colour peices that you found in the late CT work (Box art on Tarsus and Beltstrike are good examples). But art is different for everyone. You can't please everyone (or even most people I'd imagine), so just make sure it doesn't suck and it'll be fine.
 
I agree on both:

1) The artwork on the reprint cover is somewhat 'comic book' style. But I like that style (and others of course). I thought composition and the representations were well done.

2) I like the minimalist b/w work also. David Deitrik's (forgive me if I spelled his name wrong) Vargr poster and some of his covers were incredible! But I also thing that the reprint cover is just as good, in a different style.

The fellow that did that cover was Steve Bryant who is acting as our art director. He has previous experience working in the MT and TNE lines with GDW.

The T20 book is going to be 256 pages so there is a lot of room for artwork of many styles. The main concern I have is that the artwork is 1) Good and 2) Fits with the section of the book it is in.

Hunter
 
Of course most of the LBB's had little or no art in them at all. Works for me.

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Dave "Dr. Skull" Nelson
 
Can we agree that the artwork in T4 was pretty shoddy?

The artwork in CT, and MT (incl DGP) set the standard IMHO.
 
It's not line-art, but Jesse DeGraff's 3d images in the GURPS Traveller books are awesome.

IMHO they are defining the "look" of Traveller the way William H Keith did for the earlier versions.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dominator:
It's not line-art, but Jesse DeGraff's 3d images in the GURPS Traveller books are awesome.

IMHO they are defining the "look" of Traveller the way William H Keith did for the earlier versions.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Absolutely. If you can find some way of convincing Jesse to produce pictures for you, it will go a long way toward showing a modern look to a classic SF RPG.
 
I must say that when Artwork appears in Traveller, if there is any text in the image, I prefer it to be in Vilani script rather than in English script like in Gurps Traveller.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BenBell:
I must say that when Artwork appears in Traveller, if there is any text in the image, I prefer it to be in Vilani script rather than in English script like in Gurps Traveller.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I disagree, since the dominant language in the Imperium is Galanglic, most writing should appear in Roman script.



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Dave "Dr. Skull" Nelson
 
Agree here. Also make the covers mirror that of the original LBB/The Traveller Book. Minimalist, it makes a statement all its own.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by DrSkull:
I disagree, since the dominant language in the Imperium is Galanglic, most writing should appear in Roman script.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
 
Art, a funky kind of individual taste thing. You'll never get consensus on what is good art. Heck I know folks that think the T^4 art was the kats' peejays.

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mark ayers n2s@qwest.net , philosopher serf, editor of n2s; the journal for an empty mind
 
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Murph:
Agree here. Also make the covers mirror that of the original LBB/The Traveller Book. Minimalist, it makes a statement all its own.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can't agree more. One of the most annoying things (for me) about MegaTraveller when it came out was the fact that the rule books had pictures on them. That was something other RPGs did, not Traveller.

One of the things Gurps Traveller did right was stick with a black cover with red and white text on it. The minimalist covers are perfect for the kind of RPG that Traveller is. It's very "blankness" evokes something that's hard to explain. Once you've put a picture on the cover, you've shaped the look of the setting in the players minds. That's easy for fantasy (a longswords and chainmail don't change much...), but for SF it can be confining, IMHO.

That having been said, there is excellent artwork out there. Although I gather he doesn't do non-Pagan Publishing artwork anymore, Blair Renolds is the all time master of Traveller art IMHO. The shot of the banking air/raft approaching a city in _Flaming Eye_ defines the air/raft for me.

He's closely followed by William H. Keith, David Dietrick (how do you spell his name, anyway?), Mike Vilardi, Brian Gibson, Jesse DeGraff, Tom Peters (and a few others whose names are escaping me).
 
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