Art Evolution 5: Cristina Dornaus McAllister
In my ongoing Art Evolution series, I explained my plan to collect ten of the greatest fantasy role-playing artists of all time for a shared project. They were to illustrate a single character in their most recognizable style. So far, the list has included Jeff Laubenstein, Eric Vedder, Jeff Dee, and David Deitrick with this week adding the first female name to our list of esteemed artists.
The ‘Space: 1889 Lyssa’ was in the bank, and by the this time I was seeing there was a kind of universal key involved in the process. I needed a perfect combination of money, sincere flattery, and being as genuinely personable as email allows to sway this pool of talent. Artists are a funny lot, as are writers for that matter, and I’d begun to get the hang of corresponding with them. I’d also started a rather fine collection of art and the more I got, the more I understood that I needed a venue for what I was trying to accomplish. Still, my project was in its infancy, and I figured as long as I was making progress with my list of favorites, why not ride it out and worry about the details later.
Looking over the latest images, I came to the conclusion that David, like Jeff, was a gem in my eye but had moved out of the industry’s limelight a decade ago. Although popular and recognizable in his day, the RP art world had moved on. It was something I noted a great deal in my list, and as a person with deep feelings toward the work these men and women created, it was a tough pill to swallow.
October films come in two flavors for me: Universal and Hammer. I have affection for almost any Gothic horror films these studios produced during their Golden Ages (1930s and ‘40s for Universal, 1950s and ‘60s for Hammer), even the lesser entries. The studios have such opposite visual approaches to similar material — the black-and-white shadows of Universal, the rococo lurid colors of Hammer — that they create a perfect Yin and Yang for Halloween, a Ghastly Story for Whatever Suits Your October Mood.
It begins with an imp, some dwarves, a stolen set of bowling balls, and a cigar-smoking dragon in a flat newsboy cap. It gets stranger from there, sprawling through an epic of long-jawed mudsuckers, oddly literate stonedrakes, bad puns, bounty hunters, and some of the most spectacular color comics pages you can imagine.
have been several attempts to do this sort of thing, most of which have had short life spans (anyone remember the 
It’s the first of October and that means the countdown has started.