Thursday, March 3, 2011

Wayne Reynolds Has His Moments

I ain't no company man, but...



And yeah yeah yeah, I know how you prefer Frazetta or Erol Otus but my house has many mansions and there's room for post-anime-kubert jr.-esquisms in it. And I guarantee half my players will be like "Oh, I wanna be her", especially Nightcrawler's sister up there.

And before anybody starts moaning about the "unrealistic proportions" Mandy would just like to say:


27 comments:

John Matthew Stater said...

My favorite modern rpg artist, mostly for the attention to detail.

Aos said...

I like WAR quite a bit, really.

John Evans said...

I've enjoyed his work since I started seeing it in D&D 3E books. He seems willing to take on all the crazy stuff. Like the templates—"This is an insectile ogre, which means it's an ogre, but it's actually an INSECT; it has four arms, chitinous exoskeleton, and could you possibly illustrate that it can climb up walls?". And he drew it.

Anonymous said...

Lady in the white dress / robe / thingy? I WANNA BE HER. As long as I can have a pet that's way more dangerous and evil than a tiny dragon.

Zak Sabbath said...

@replayable

yeah.
having your own dragon is like having a pony. Just 'cause -it's- cool doesn't make you cool.

crowking said...

It's not so much the quality of Renolds art ( the man indeed has skills) but the connotations associated with it and how it reminds me to all the things I dislike in the Hobby these days(grumble, grumble)...

mordicai said...

I like Reynolds quite a bit; in my mind he's at the forefront of the "well okay if your character is carrying all that & the kitchen sink, I'm going to effing draw it that way" movement.

The Cramp said...

But you can pull a rope, you can kill a cow as well as any other fucker can?

Anyway... You might not care at all to know, Wild Nacatl (the pouncing jungle cat amazon) is one of the best pairings of metagame effect to image in Magic. In game the card is the fastest (highest power to cost ratio) creature ever. It punishes people who are unprepared, hesitate about what they are going to do, or fail to get their feet under them, utterly. Then you look at the art, and your like "yup, she totally does that."

Zak Sabbath said...

@thecramp

guess i just need the bang

trollsmyth said...

OMG, you're right. She's totally Nightcrawler's sister!

Big fan of Reynolds here, but then, I'm also a fan of Elmore, so my tastes are already deviant by the standards of the OSR. ;)

I'm not at all surprised by what TheCramp says about the Wild Nacatl piece. WAR has a way of cutting to the heart of a thing with his art. That wacky combo of black humor, rampant silliness, ultra-violence, and gear fetishism that's pretty universal in our hobby? Wayne gets it.

Ursca said...

Wayne Reynolds has actually done a fair amount of less OTT stuff for companies like Osprey, the military history reference book company.
http://www.waynereynolds.com/Osprey1A/13.jpg

Both ends of the scale, I guess. Osprey's probably as realistic as you can get in the world of pictures-of-dudes-hitting-each-other-with-swords business.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Ursca

hmmm... judging solely by that one picture, he has no talent for not-over-the-top.

Digital Orc said...

Dynamic angles. Love it!

Adamantyr said...

Good stuff. One thing about the new editions, they got some superb artists. (Although I like the classic stuff too... my particular favorite was the illustrations in UK4 "When a Star Falls", has a nice asymmetrical fantasy feel to it)

Also re: Mandy, who could argue against THAT?!

Adam Thornton said...

That second Mandy picture has a heavy Joel Peter Witkin vibe to it. Thumbs up.

Jeremy Deram said...

Is that first picture a world of warcraft troll? I love world of warcraft trolls! Mandy's boobs aren't too bad either.

Unknown said...

gotta agree, his military stuff is a bit bland. hen again, Osprey (who make great books themselves) tend to keep their art a bit generic. Nothing however, compares to Paul Ivanovits' " Fury of the Goths".

http://tinyurl.com/48sj5kx

huth said...

While we're posting cool WAR stuff.

hmmm... judging solely by that one picture, he has no talent for not-over-the-top.

You're... not wrong. Still, sometimes he's got a good eye for stuff.

crowking said...

Talking about Baby Dragons, with Game of Thrones and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, hitting the big and little screens this year, I'm sure one of the girls ( probably KK) will say, "my next character is going to be a mix between Lisbeth Salander and Arya, with a baby dragon like Daenerys and she's kinda shitty like Cersei,".

(Note: hands down, all four characters are some of the best females ever written in literature. So I wanna play a character like that too! ).

velaran said...

'And before anybody starts moaning about the "unrealistic proportions"':
Um, what? Reynolds isn't known for drawing Beach Ball Boobs; he tends to render perfectly spherical knockers(oftentimes on display via an open neckline, even on some of his *armored* figures.) And props to Reynolds, his guys don't seem like their juicing too hard! :-) His action shots don't really convey that element of risk and danger to me, personally, but some others seem to like the posed, posturing look ok.

'hmmm... judging solely by that one picture, he has no talent for not-over-the-top.':
The art on his website would seem to confirm that. I think that's his whole deal.

Justin Alexander said...

Well played, Mandy. Well played.

Unknown said...

So ... with a blatantly fake boob job, Mandy has anything to say at all about "unrealistic proportions?"

Tell you what, Mandy, could we see the pre-Nip/Tuck shots and check out that question again? Thank you ever so.

Zak Sabbath said...

@ravenswing

Did you just say Mandy has a boob job?

Mandy has not had a boob job. Those are what real tits look like. If you have never seen real boobs, I feel sorry for you.

If you would like, you can provide your email address and Mandy can provide you with time-stamped photos from any year you choose since she was born illustrating the progress of her boobs.

___

Now comes the part of this exchange where you:

-apologize for being a dumb douchebag or else

-say "I still don't believe you, I have sent my email address to zak z smith at hawt mayle dawt calm so you can send me photos illustrating that Mandy's boobs are real since I am too stupid to know that already."

MacLeod said...

The perkiness made me wonder at first but I guess all that is cleared up. =)

Anonymous said...

I believe that Mandy has not had a boob-job, but I would still like that pack of photos... you know, just to be sure I don't waver in my belief...

shupahpeshoh said...

i hate when people moans about
women with big breast in fantasy illustration
not knowing that this comes since the early stages of the fantasy art
take the example of the sword and sorcery book cover illustrations

Zak Sabbath said...

no matter how old the practice is, the moaning is still irrelevant and bigoted