FudgeDumper wrote:And then you look at the art we see today. Look through any recent book and you will see art lacking in all the major categories of the profession. I wonder why?
I agree that the vast majority of
AOS art falls flat for me, and I think alot of that is rushed production that relies very heavily upon digital art, especially digital coloring. Talented artists can absolutely turn around great stuff in a purely digital medium ... but not everyone can, and digital color is especially grievous for me, and part of what gives
AOS the tone that it has (overly bright + lacking in detail).
Another part of this is that my favorite illustrators and artists (in general but specifically comic book and fantastical art) are those doing a high level of detail and/or focusing on more foreboding, atmospheric work. To whit, Adrian Smith is one of my very top, and you will absolutely recognize the influence he had on
GW's Chaos lines from around the time you're talking about:
https://www.artstation.com/adrian-smith He's done plenty of work on other lines before and after Hordes of Chaos - one of the only good things about Chronopia was Smith's art design - but he set a pace and gravitas for Warriors of Chaos (and
IMO CSM as well) that is really difficult to escape.
So yea, I think there's a definite shift in talent working on modern
GW art, in addition to too much reliance upon computer assisted art. And there have been changes in the subject matter as well - not necessarily
AOS over
WHFB, I mean a clear mandate to only represent purchasable miniatures. But even then there's something often missing in current
GW fantasy art that stumbles in telling the story in quite the way the older crew did.
A horrible concoction of digital art, noviceness and disrespect for the material. Why cant GW realize that a small black and white image who barely depict its subject could spark the imagination so much more powerfully then something created with preset brushes and cheated geometry?
EDIT: Yea, bingo on all fronts. My imagination is just very, very rarely engaged with the new
AOS art, which reads more like a poorly colored ad.
- Salvage