Black Gate

The Art Evolution project is now in full swing, with every era of RPG art — beginning in 1979 and ending in 2009 — represented in the previous articles here.

My ‘High Draconic Lyssa‘ by Easley was complete, and Tony DiTerlizzi was encouraging me to join Facebook because he thought I could connect with other artists on the site.

I reluctantly did so as Tony had also become a mentor as the process grew. He was always asking questions, wondering why I wasn’t including names like Brom and Tim Bradstreet.

Jeff Laubenstein thought the same thing, but they hadn’t seen my overall list and I couldn’t put out spoilers. I mean, I was asking myself how big could this thing really be? Each new artist I included seemed to want another artist involved that was their inspiration or friend. I pushed such considerations aside and continued with the plan I already had in place.

I intended to ‘domino’ Easley into Larry Elmore, but Larry was a tougher cookie because he had what I called a ‘gate keeper’, which is to say a personal assistant who monitored his email. I wasn’t getting anywhere with her as I put out feelers, but I did get a hint about contacting Elmore from a random Easley email.

Jeff was headed to Illuxcon in Pennsylvania. Elmore would also be at the convention, so I asked Jeff if he might mention the article to Larry and see if he was interested.

This was another step in the waiting game, but I was heady with my current string of success. I wanted to push the envelope, and that meant going for the pinnacle.

The ‘evolutionists’ I currently had were huge names, but none were currently appearing on mass market RPGs in 2009. I wanted a current champion of the industry, and for that purpose there was only a single name that stood out, Wayne Reynolds.

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Art Evolution continues, this week’s image coming from a member of the later days of TSR. The character is yet another in a shared project representing a single figure created in many famed RPG artists most recognizable style. The project began here.

So I now had five, the newest of which was an ‘L5R Lyssa’. Half my list down and seemingly half to go, assuming I could flesh out my article with other greats I’d fantasized about since I wore parachute pants.

Sitting back, I took stock of all my memories on gaming, tried to picture the art that moved me the most, and I came onto some really profound names like, Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, Tony DiTerlizzi, Wayne Reynolds, Todd Lockwood and Erol Otus just to name a few. Yeah, this was getting very real very fast.

These people were more than RP artists — they were industries unto themselves. Wayne Reynolds doesn’t take personal commissions, Jeff Easley’s email isn’t exactly public knowledge, and Tony had transformed from TSR ‘pit’ artist to award winning and New York Times best-selling children’s author and illustrator.

What these artists brought to anything they were involved in was profound legitimacy, something I had very little of at this point. Still, I needed something binding, something tangible to offer up to these artists. I was a writer with no credits to my name, but I could still list myself as a ‘freelance’. That was a truth, and it is always better to provide honesty than fiction, especially when dealing with an established and intelligent clientele.

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In the first installment of this series, I explained my plan to collect ten of the greatest fantasy role-playing artists for a shared project to illustrate a single character in their best known style. For that one I chose Earthdawn and Shadowrun artist Jeff Laubenstein.

And now the Art Evolution blog series continues into Week 3, after last week’s contribution from Exalted artist Eric Vedder.

OK, so two down and I had an ‘Exalted Lyssa‘. As pleasing as that was, I still needed more ammunition before I started blind solicitations.

In another stroke of ‘luck’ I was already a horrible failure as a writer. As such, I’d spent time marketing a wretched book I’d written in 2006 that I’d worked with Jeff Dee on some illustrations for.

To me, Dee was a must for the article, all of his work at TSR a kind of Holy Grail of RP art.

My imagination still wonders if the zombie on the cover of T1: The Village of Hommlet has grappled or bit the unfortunate warrior pictured there.

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Last week I kicked off the Art Evolution blog series, explaining my plan to collect ten of the greatest fantasy role-playing artists for a shared project to illustrate a single character in their best known style. For my first installment I chose Earthdawn and Shadowrun artist Jeff Laubenstein.

With Jeff Laubenstein and a ‘Shadowrun Lyssa‘ in the fold, I took stock of my list and imagined how I would gain other universally recognizable names. I determined that each name carried a ‘weight’, a kind of industry standard validity recognizable to other artists.

Remember, I was working this alone, without a single writing credit to my name, so I had to find legitimacy where I could. Understanding that, and without a previously established friendship with the lion’s share of these artists, I needed a greater combined ‘weight’ of already contracted artists to approach the next heavier weighted contributor on my list.

At this point I only had a single artist signed so I went back into the few art connections I’d made during my time trying to market my other writings. Like most struggling writers in their publishing infancy, I believed there might be a shortcut or magic bullet to getting published. J.K. Rowling couldn’t buy bread before Harry Potter, but she went out and purchased a lovely red transparent folder to place her Potter manuscript in before she sent it to a perspective publisher.

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