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ph34r wrote:The old art was for the most part totally awful.

I think it was more the case with the first edition stuff, they had so many pieces of art to do to fill rulebooks etc. and had to draw in stuff from all different artists (hence the rather eclectic mix of styles and materials).

I agree that some of its not as technically 'perfect' as modern GW art, but it has a hell of a lot more character. Look at the cover of the 40k compendium (or it might be compilation? I always get confused - the one with BA fighting genestealers) and compare it to the new BA codex. Absolutely incomparable, although I recognise these things are subjective, I would put money on the 20 year old book cover trumping the modern one for most people.

And as Chromedog says, the modern stuff is all spikes and screaming bald men. I understand the need to keep the vision of the fantasy universe within tightly confined borders, but the downside of this is that it cramps the style of the artists, so we just end up with piece after piece which is just a slight variation of the previous one, and something instantly forgettable.

The thing is, it's possible to cherry pick pieces of old art which were obviously done in a short peried of time, then put it next to that Horus/Emperor piece which is blooming fantastic and obviously had a great deal more time and effort on it. But, a couple of you guys are posting the awful stuff and selling short everything 'old' I feel. So, I would like to post a few of the better ones so the younger members on here don't get the conception that all of it was bad. And, like others have said there was a lot more freedom for the artists, so a lot of it was more memorable.











This was one of my favorite pieces of artwork when I was a kid, it's just so evocative.

Haha great! For anyone sufficiently geeky, that 3rd one down is actually the background of the 4th edition BRB! Look closely

Got a few more, these are some of my personal favourites:


I'm pretty sure the original of this was in standard mono but the only one I could find was this one with a red hue.


This one I feel has got a certain 'sinister' aspect to it, I feel almost afraid for the Emperor in this drawing! For all it's brilliance, the modern painting is lacking this factor, instead it is more like a car showroom, with a ferrari and porsche displayed side by side and showing their wares. I think this has got much more of a 'diorama' feel about it.



The original Space Marine box artwork. This was from a time when GW used to commission work from different artists, I think part of the reason there was such a divergence in the representation of the universe at that time. You can see how the conception of a marine has changed since that time - not a sword or look of righteous indignation in sight, these are the 'Sardakur' of 40k, desperately blazing away as they get blown to pieces.



I'm pretty sure this is one of Adrian Smith's early pieces. There was a ton of stuff that came out for the Tyranid Attack boardgame, with some of it making its way into the 2nd edition rule books. Again a really evocative piece of art, you feel really terrified for these scouts and what they had to face! The guys in this picture closely resemble the models of the time, even down to the sergeant (the guy with the pauldrons being waylaid on the floor!)



This kind of stuff doesn't age - you could put it in the next 40k eldar codex and it wouldn't look out of place. Simply beautiful in my book, this is the reason so many veteran collectors fell in love with the Eldar, and think WD127 was the best of all time. Again, I think Adrian Smith did this one.



Cover from 2nd edition Space Marine, sadly the resolution of this shot is much lower than the actual thing. I think it perfectly captured the scale of the combat going on, and what epic was all about!

I will post some more later on, as long as bandwidth allows!

Haha yes that is well documented. But watch the movie - what is Al Pacino doing at this point? Desperately blazing away with his gun, and against overwhelming odds. You could say the artist chose the subject to copy well!

But how many of the (especially younger) viewers would be aware that it's from a, what, 35 year old movie now? It's become wider knowledge now, but I remember some years ago on other forums that it had to be pointed out to most people about the resemblance.

And does it detract from what an awesome piece of artwork it is? (which I guess I am trying to say is the important thing!)

Wow.. just goes to show how subjective stuff is! I absolutely love that piece of art, aside from all the technical stuff.

Can I ask if you disliked it before you realised it was based on Al Pacino?

Ah I love that picture. It's worth pointing out as well to the younger viewers on here that some of these scans have lost a lot of their original resolution.

Here are a few more:








This one, from GW's own site, many will recognise as the cover to the Deathwing expansion for the original Space Hulk game. The two above are both Christopher Fangorn (he was also well known for doing the 'Redwall' fantasy series book covers). Deathwing also featured, IMO, the best short story ever written for 40k! It was republished in the 40k anthology of the same name several times, I'm not sure if it's available now?





Finally, Thrudd was always one of my favorite parts of WD when I was a kid. Not sure if it's possible to read this properly, you may need to zoom.

Now, a selection of work from one of my favorite artists, Les Edwards. There is a ton more of his stuff at his website, see here http://www.lesedwards.com/index.php
I used to have a book with his art in, GW released one with a selection of everything, not just the GW art (as well as another artist, I forget his name) but I left it in the store I used to work in but the dullard manager they had there later lost it :(

I love the style of this guy, you can tell it's late 80's from the use of oils, but it doesn't detract anything from the style.

Enjoy


Cover from an old WD.


As above, you can see how the conception of a marine has changed since this painting.


He did a selection of the Dark Future artwork.


This one was the actual cover from the game.


This one will be close to many hearts, the cover from the Realms of Chaos book.


The 'Heroquest' box game, another favorite of many people.


A cover from WD, I'm not sure if it was used on anything else?


And finally a cover from the expansion pack.

I shall sacrifice yet more bandwidth for a couple more pics


Cover from the Warhammer 40,000 Compendium, which was an addition to the original Rogue Trader.


Both of these really show the different conception of marines back then.

One big thing which you can notice the difference with: The dead marines! Modern artwork (I say 'modern' but really anything second edition onwards) seemed to make marines immortal. The 'dead' marines in most modern artwork look like they may be lying down to rest for the most part, and you could certainly not say conclusively that they are dead. Now look at the marines in the pictures above; those guys are fethed! Melted from the inside, or even a fire inside his skull. Ain't no way either of those guys are going to be getting up from that one, even the guy at the top is probably only being rescued by the medic so his progenoids can be harvested So 40k is indeed grimdark, and more in some ways nowadays, but not as much as used to be for the guys with large shoulder pads!

A few more, this time from John Sibbick, who painted perhaps one of the most famous 40k images of all time. For many people, I think this first image is a representation of what 40k is all about - the dark future, where mankind is fethed, but is going down fighting





A couple of the band 'Bolt thrower's' covers featured GW art



The original cover, but a minimized version of this guy stood next to the White Dwarf logo for many years after.

kevlar'o wrote:more adrian smith

In the spirit of the thread, here are some of the older ones he has done and people might not be aware of:


Another pic from 'Tyranid Attack' (has anyone got a scan of that one with the RT style Nid warrior fighting the Striking Scorpions? The warrior is picking up one of them by the arm. I believe it was Adrian Smith also, but sadly I can't find it anywhere, and it's an awesome picture).


Orc Freebooters





Necromunda pic



From the days before photoshopped pictures with the weapons upside down, the old rhino box cover

OK, here are some from Mark Gibbons - most of these go back to 40k 2nd edition (or from codex releases from that edition), and it's amazing how good they still look today:

I would thoroughly recommend a look at his website (he has done a great deal more art than just GW) and they even have some old GW pieces for sale (I would buy the avatar if it I had $1000 ) http://www.redknuckle.com/














This one is one of my favorite ever pieces, I played around with the resolution on these, but sadly I still couldn't get them close to the original.

Do you mean the one with the howling guy with crazy hair (I'm not sure if he was a bloodclaw?) or the space wolf terminator? Both pieces were by Mark Gibbons.

To resurrect this thread, here are some old pieces from the 1st edition epic game (where the whole 'Horus Heresy' concept was created). I love these, with oodles of little marines blowing each other up, and think they are wonderfully characterful!









I will see if I can get hold of my copy of the 2nd edition epic rulebook, that had some real crackers in it also.

bushido wrote:There seem to be a lot of rose colored glasses running around in here. People just picking up the hobby today will probably feel the same way as a lot of you do 15-20 years from now.

For me personally, there were two pictures that defined 40k: the cover of the 3rd edition rulebook (with the black templars) and the cover of the old Sisters of Battle codex (the woman with the white hair and hazard stripes on her pistol).

If either of those pictures were published today (or pretty much any of the ones posted in this thread) they would probably be met with the same derision the current Blood Angels codex cover receives. And then later on, people for whom the BA codex was the first taste of the 40k universe will claim that it "had character." That's just how nostalgia works.

You are correct on some counts (some of the old artwork was tosh, especially around RT) but I also think because GW used to outsource to professional artists the 'cream' of it, the examples I and other people have posted on here (cover of 1st and 2nd edition epic, the Christopher Fangorn Space Hulk stuff, Les Edwards' Heroquest stuff etc.), was better I think.

On your second point, you're right - although there wasn't the internet community around back then, I remember there was actually a bit of derision directed towards the 2nd edition boxset when it came out. It was certainly a busy piece of art, but technically it paled in comparison to some of the oil-based art that had come before it (if you remember it had come out just after 2nd edition Epic, with that incredible Ultramarine/Titan cover - really the scan below doesn't do this justice compared to how it looked on the box, the resolution was much higher). In that sense, people seemed to have warmed a bit to the 2nd edition boxset over time.



I would still argue that the old 1st edition Compilation cover was better than that of the new BA dex however

Totally agree with you there!

Think 127 is possibly one of the greatest ever issues of WD, and that artwork is the reason that many began a lifelong love of Eldar and their imagery.

Some great pictures there MeanGreenStompa Totally know what you mean about the Les Edwards pic, some of his stuff was really disturbing, and absolute nightmare fodder for any 12 year old with an imagination!

Next up, here is some art from the 1st edition Space Hulk Expansion 'Genestealer', done by various artists





"I'm sorry, I forget you said you wanted it alive!"



Chaos genestealer cults, one part of the lore that didn't make the transition to the modern era.






There used to be a number of quite awesome genestealer cult armies in 40k, this shows the various generations of hybrid. A few dedicated enthusiasts even run them nowadays with home made rules.



Pretty sure this guy used to do 2000AD art as well.



Uh-oh.

Yep you still see the occasional Genestealer cult army, and they haven't been 'squatted', it's just that there is no official rules representation for them any more. I think the last one was Gav Thorpe's set of rules going back to 3rd edition, although I may be wrong with that one.

A few years ago Games Day UK had a massive model display game with hordes of cultist troops (I think loads of GW stores had to convert models for it), so it is still definitely supported as a concept and an established part of the Nid background, even though you can't get special rules for Magus' driving around in limousines any more

Ah thanks for posting that pic of the eldar and the nids Grim.Badger, I had asked if anyone had a scan of that earlier in the thread

Thanks for posting on this thread again so I can give it an exalt

zedmeister wrote:Exalt from me - lovely jubbly. The older art looks more bleak but not in a GRIMDARK sort of way. And they're still using a lot of old art in the modern books from what I've seen. Also glad to see they've got Paul Bonner back doing artwork (did he ever leave?). He did so much to shape the early visions of the Orks from Waaagh and Ere we go. Quite a lot of it showed scenes of Orks in day to day life that you do really see these days. I Loved the picture of the Ork sitting on the snotroom "finkin'"!

Zedmeister, don't suppose you know what artwork he is doing these days?

I agree about the change in fluff with regards to the orks. They used to be much more of a separate culture of their own, closer to brutish humans in some ways, with their own society and way of life. Now they are much more bestial, and in some accounts do little more than drop from a mushroom screaming and run towards an enemy and die. Certainly, the concept of them sitting still, or not killing each other, for long enough for them to board a starship and form any kind of organised attack seems more and more outlandish in the current background.

Although it's completely down to personal taste, I think I probably prefer the older background simply because there was a lot more depth to it!

SgtSixkilla wrote:

I think that to miss the old art over the new art is a powerful case of nostalgia-bias, because any objective observer can tell that the quality, artistry and "soul" of the new artwork far exceeds the old stuff.
.

You should have been here a few pages ago

I would argue it is still deeply subjective (I mean, how can you say something has any kind of 'soul' and say it is an objective judgement??), but in any case thanks for the new pictures. And, fortunately enough people did like the artwork at the time that we still have a 40k around nowadays and even more artwork to enjoy

SgtSixkilla wrote:

Importance and quality are two different considerations. I never said the old art wasn't important. I said it looked silly and childish. Personally, I don't think old religious art is very good or of high quality. It may have been compared to other art at that time. But we're not at that time. We're now, and we have to compare it with what we have now. And compared to current warhammer art, the early stuff just can't compete. Unless you have nostalgia-bias, that is. Which was my entire point.

I think you really have to look at some of the earlier pages in this thread (3-4): The earlier work by Adrian Smith, Christopher Fangorn, Mark Gibbons, Les Edwards etc. is technically excellent, and I would say better than most of the artwork coming out these days. GW used to spend a lot of money commissioning professional artists (like Edwards) to do art for them, and it showed. I'm not saying all of it, because a lot of it is somewhat lacking (especially in the RT rulebook for example, but then they were trying to collect enough imagery for a brand new rulebook so I think that explains it), in the same way some of the modern artwork (the BA codex, if we want to talk about awkward proportion, or the GK picture for the cover of WD) is not as good as some earlier work.

Not only that, but the older artwork was more prolific, GW employed a lot more artists than they do now, and made more use of new art in both publications and on box covers (I would say photoshopped models are a poor alternative to a well done piece of art, but they are obviously a great deal cheaper). Take a look through the new O&G army book and look for new artwork to see what I mean, it is nearly all regurgitated from previous books.

I admit that this is in some sense because the game universes are a lot more defined nowadays - the artists have less opportunity to break new ground, and GW can be more firm in what direction, and specific area, they want the commissioned artwork to fill. As someone said earlier, most SM art now is screaming bald men, and in that sense I miss some of the sense of wonderment created by those older pieces of art - that you looked at them and didn't fully understand them, and that was what drew you into the universe, and made you want to pick up the book and find out more. Although, this is not so much a criticism of the art itself, but rather the culture that surrounds its creation.

But, thanks again for your posts of artwork - only a couple of the ones you have posted have come up before.

There is another thread in the 40k discussion section talking about ork culture (or 'kulture' ) which made me think of the RT era ork supplements. These books were absolutely packed with information about orks, and I think are a big reason why so many veteran gamers still have a soft spot for orks today.

So, without further ado, here is a selection of art from the 'Waargh the Orks' book. I'm still going through it, so will post more over the next few days!













As a side comment, note the pwnd marine in the picture above. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, a dead marine is something you very rarely see in modern artwork.

More pics coming up over the next few days!

++EDIT++ guys if you quote images, please put spoiler tags around them so people viewing the thread don't have to see the same things more than once!

Some more pics in between more scans from the old ork books. These are some pictures borrowed from the FTW blog, I hope that's OK!
I have no idea why but many of the pictures have either a sepia or other coloured tint to them. The originals were not like that, and I have no idea why it has been done to them. Perhaps copyright concerns? (Just fishing here, really I have no idea).



A black and white copy from the cover of the boxed game 'Tyranid Attack'. This game was made along the lines of other GW boxed games of the time, and featured squads of scouts travelling through the inside of a Nid ship to destroy its internal organs! I remember it being pretty good fun although it has to be at least ten years since I played it last. If anyone has a scan of the colour version (which had lovely vivid colours) I would be very grateful if they could post it!


Also, Mohawks are awesome. 2 things modern 40k art lacks: Dead marines and mohawks

Does anyone have a credit for this painting? It's beautiful



One of said pictures with said tinting. I think the Eldar have had some of the most technically impressive but also evocative artwork over the years.



And it's been too many pages without dwarves in space, let's have some Chaos ones

Sorry it has been a while but some more art from 'Waaarggh the Orks', this is a collage I have put together of Paul Bonner artwork which is found scattered throughout the book (and a lot of the books of this time)



I'm not sure why but the image has been shrunken when I posted it, the originals have got an amazing amount of detail and are higher resolution than this copy.

Awesome stuff 92acclude, that's a much better resolution than the one I managed to find previously

Kirasu, I agree with you to an extent, although I would argue GW has not managed to match anything like that 2nd edition Epic cover box for instance

Hmm that last one is definitely the guy who used to do Kano and the comic strip 'Bad Company' in 2000AD in the early 90's, can't remember his name unfortunately.

2nd one down, I always though the Spider motif and black striped armour with grey fatigues was the Necomundan regiment? Guess I was wrong about that one

3rd one down was the cover from the 1st edition Terminators boxset. Used to be a bunch of termies in there for about 12.99, boy how times change

Great stuff anyway, I'll try and get the final scans from the 1st edition Ork books up soon.

Hmm well that's John Blanche, but where was it first printed?