The Art Critique Trip

The fantasy illustrations I encountered as a kid inspired me to pursue a career in the visual arts. Books like Spacecraft, 2000-2100 A.D.: Terran Trade Authority, The Flight of Dragons, the covers of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Analog, all manner of cool LP album covers, and, of course, comic books, fired my imagination. One work of art stands out among the others. When I first beheld the cover of the Wizard microgame back in the late 1970s, it captivated me more than any other game illustration I had seen to date. The composition by Clark Bradley was active, the poses of the figures lively and convincingly rendered, it had a dynamic range of both color and value contrast, and, of course, it showed what the game is about: casting spells against your enemies. As I’ve said elsewhere, I wanted to be that wizard.

So, I set about teaching myself to draw, and I went to art school on a talent scholarship. After graduating with a BFA in Painting & Drawing, I was somehow, amazingly, able to parlay my nearly valueless degree into a career as a museum curator, and so I have been fortunate to have been able to spend pretty much my whole life making and working with pictures.

The Beginning of the End, or The Promised Land, 2004, 12 x 36 inches, oil on panel, by the author

This installment of Musings is devoted to my rambling about the images in The Fantasy Trip, a game which I’ve enjoyed since 1977 and have been playing a great deal of lately.

The cover for TFT’s first release, Melee, went through rapid evolution, from a striking monochrome scene by Liz Danforth to a color illustration by Clark Bradley. This latter one is less successful than the artist’s Wizard cover mentioned above and discussed in detail later. The action is contained in a hazy, vague space that more calls to mind a refined brunch in a conservatory more than it does a gladiatorial arena. A main focus of the composition is a swordsman holding a blossom-like buckler with an arm that confusingly looks like it is wrapped in buffalo hide. Even ignoring the male gargoyle genitals on unabashed display, it is easy to see why Metagaming commissioned a new cover by Roger Stine. His retains the simplicity and dramatic posing against imposing lithic structures of Danforth’s while adding color and a female protagonist in the wings.

Classic Melee covers by Clark Bradley, Liz Danforth, and Roger Stine

Just as I loved the Wizard cover, I was also very happy with the art for its counters. They were generally graphically strong so as to be easily readable, as were those from the game’s slightly older sibling, Melee, although those were drawn by a different artist, Danforth.

Counter illustrations by Liz Danforth, Clark Bradley, Pat Hidy, and Roger Philips

Other TFT releases from Metagaming had less satisfying counter art. While I love, love, love Pat Hidy’s black-and-white illustrations for TFT (and I mean really love), the decision to just repurpose them for counter art was unfortunate, since their detail didn’t translate to the smaller scale at which they are difficult to read. If Hidy had simplified the same dynamic poses, it would have made them graphically stronger at that tiny size. Similarly, the line art Robert Phillips contributed to TFT looked great on a page, but its pictorial economy, reminiscent of Flaxman’s Greek myth drawings, was ill-suited for counters. Perhaps you can see what I mean the above photos of the counters from Melee, Wizard, Death Test, and Death Test 2 (note: my DT counter sheet looked more like the photos over on Boardgamegeek).

As good as Pat Hidy’s black-and-white work was in The Fantasy Trip, his color covers were somewhat clumsy by comparison. Nevertheless, the illustrations for Death Test and Master of the The Amulets were dynamic, and made up for much of their shortcomings through pictorial narrative ambition. Despite their weaknesses, these pictures powerfully evoke a sense of unfolding story, and that’s important.

Cover illustrations by Pat Hidy

The illustrations for the microquests were made by several artists, resulting in no unified aesthetic and some spotty results. Hidy’s action-packed compositions stand out amongst them all as the most dynamic, with Stine’s Unicorn Gold as the most lavish. The cover of Grail Quest is a complete oddball, which is perhaps fitting for the game’s distinct subject.

Illustrations by Roger Stine, Dave Deitrick, Robert Phillips

The low point for TFT art came with the cover of Dragons of Underearth by Denis Loubet, which, one could argue, wasn’t technically The Fantasy Trip. The stiff figures, colored like they belong to the jaundiced world of The Simpsons, are posed like poorly-articulating action figures and dressed in ridiculous jewels and scraps of clothing, the most substantial of which are their weirdly hefty boots. Is it me, or does the female figure’s sullen face bear some resemblance to Scarlet Johanson? Loubet, to his credit, has improved since then. He also produced the vastly superior cover for Lords of Underearth, another metagaming release that was compatible with, but not actually part of, the TFT line.

Illustrations by Denis Loubet

A few TFT releases from outside Metagaming Concepts were the campaign setting books The Forest-Lords of Dihad and The Warrior-Lords of Darok. These sported color covers that were typical of the industry at that time. The black-and-white interior art, however, tended to be a cut above, with dramatic compositions by artists with a flair for line and graphic storytelling.

Illustrations by V.M. Wyman, Wallace Miller, and unknown (possibly Pat Hidy)

When Steve Jackson reacquired the rights to TFT in order to publish the Legacy Edition, those for the original illustrations were not included. Consequently, the LE has all new art. As a nod to TFT’s history, some of it was clearly conceived of as homage to the original; for example, compare the covers of the old and new In the Labyrinth.

Illustrations by Roger Stine and Brandon Moore

The new art by Brandon Moore reinterprets Stine’s original illustration right down to the palette, in an appreciated gesture to old grogs like me. The fact that it fails to improve the classic cover shouldn’t be held against Moore; it might be too much of a task to fairly ask of an artist. In the original, characters inhabit their own fantasy world unified by an aesthetic consistency, whereas the remake has aesthetic dissonance due to its reference to different historic cultures. Stine hints at action to come, inviting the viewer to imagine the outcome even as swords are drawn and incantations begun. By contrast, Moore shows the gory details of an unlikely moment when sword, mace, and magical attacks all strike home simultaneously. Where older art creates an atmosphere that invites the viewer’s participation, the newer merely depicts a scene, adding detail that winds up making the picture busier instead of better. That isn’t to say that the art is bad; it is at least as good as most game art, and if Moore didn’t hit a home run with this one, at least he swung for the fences and got on base.

Another Legacy Edition homage to early TFT art also falls a bit flat, despite being created by an artist with chops. To see how, we have to look at the original first. Wizard‘s second edition sported a dramatic new cover by Roger Stine, with a sorcerer incapacitating a swordsman by imprisoning his face in an eldritch sphere. The composition is captivating and surprisingly active for being so vertical, with one figure behind the other and their respective hands, contorted in arcane gesture and pain, frame the central orb like menacing spiders. This is the cover that comes to the mind of many grognards when they think of Wizard.

Illustrations by Roger Stine and Rick Hershey

The new illustration possesses less graphic flair, with the artist spending his talent detailing the warlock’s face and hands but leaving the victim of the spell a vaguely depicted afterthought and everyone’s robes unconvincingly rendered. The picture would have been greatly improved from the application of a few of the basic rules for draping folds laid out in Bridgman’s Drawing the Draped Figure and the suggestion of who the victim is in relation to the wizard.

Vying for worst TFT illustration prize is the Legacy Edition Wizard cover, which fails to compete with the older art in any way. The original Wizard cover by Bradley had masterful elements:

Ilustration by Clark Bradley

a wizard in a dynamic pose; a DRAGON!; spooky figures as secondary characters; an active composition that moved from the wizard’s face through the bolt shooting from his finger up to the dragon, then down into the robed spell-casters and back up to the wizard. It also had compelling negative spaces, and a visually interesting area that held the title text while supporting the space of the drama. It had a simple palette that implied a full range of color. The picture implied a critical moment in an unfolding, unresolved story—a story I want to know more about every time I look at it. The new illustration has a woman with poorly rendered hair and puffy lips striking a lackluster pose and gazing at her own magic with the bored expression of a fashion model. The composition has no motion (or emotion) whatsoever—

Cover illustrations by Roger Stine and Brandon Moore

the eye is grabbed by the glowing eldritch tendrils at the end of her hand and it stays there. Everything except the text is blue and the background is a void without a hint of setting. There is no story here to prompt the imagination. I shouldn’t complain; at least they aren’t done in the ubiquitous BESM style, and they are more accomplished than much of the art from early D&D editions.

Throughout TFT’s history, black-and-white illustrations have dominated the pages between the covers, and Rick Hershey is the artist most featured for the majority of the LE titles. One of my favorites of these is from Hexagram 4:

Illustration by Rick Hershey

While serviceable and displaying evidence of the artist’s ample knowledge and skill depicting anatomy, many of his illustrations somehow come off feeling generic in comparison to those by Hidy and Phillips from the ’seventies and ’eighties; I can’t think of a single one that has seared itself onto my mind’s eye the way Hidy’s dungeon battle did.

Illustrations by Pat Hidy, Robert Phillips, and Rick Hershey

Phillips’s orcs from TFT’s classic era are some of the most accomplished and evocative depictions of that race I’ve seen, saying more with less through stylistic simplicity, and his work is in its element printed large on a page where its economy of line and masterfully hinted detail can be appreciated. One thing in Hershey’s favor is that his work is not sophomoric; I’m turned off by game illustrations that aim to entertain pre-teens with cartoonish poses and slapstick action, and he stays well away from that. If anything, his images tend toward a stark grittiness that is suitable for The Fantasy Trip.

Fans of TFT have enjoyed a steady stream of releases since the debut of the Legacy Edition, each with its own cover. Perhaps the best of these is Brandon Moore’s octopus necromancer for The Fantasy Trip Companion, which wonderfully evokes the spirit of the game with TFT’s most iconic creature. The Old School Monsters cover illustration is the runner-up, but it suffers from being more a gallery of mug shots rather than a picture that suggests any kind of compelling narrative or adventure. To be fair, that’s probably more a product of the project’s parameters than the artist’s ability, which he shows off with his dramatic use of value contrast and rendering ability, and the cover does what it’s supposed to do: it makes you want to buy and read the book!

Illustrations by Rick Hershey, except The Fantasy Trip Companion by Brandon Moore

Steve Jackson Games is not the only company publishing TFT material; Gaming Ballistic, the small but mighty company that has released some GURPS and F20 titles, has also recently published several popular TFT adventures and other support under license. The art, as is to be expected from its having been made by different artists, is stylistically inconsistent, but its quality it is on par for the field and the covers accurately suggest what lies behind them, be it adventure or a pack of rogues. It is clear that the company’s owner, Douglas Cole, is concerned about the visual aesthetics of his products, right down to the counters, and I am grateful for it, particularly because I know that art is expensive and thus tempting to skimp on. My favorite image from this series so far is the cover for The Crown of Eternity, which, despite its subdued and uniform palette, captures much of the spooky vibe of the adventure (which I have played and can attest offers mystery, edge-of-your-seat fun, and ample opportunity for both action and social drama). Cole and his collaborators have some new TFT releases in the pipeline as of this writing, and I can hardly wait to see them.

Illustrations by Ksenia Kozhevnikova, Ben Jan, and Dean Spencer

I’ll wrap things up by sharing that some of the smallest art in the Legacy Edition is among my favorites of what the new releases feature; several of Liz Danforth’s counters are, well, fantastic! They are easy to read, with enough descriptive detail to inspire just like Bradley’s did all those decades ago, but without getting so overly specific that that stifles the imagination. It would be a real treat if Steve Jackson and other publishers releasing TFT products were to give her and some of the other classic-era artists like Pat Hidy more illustration projects. Here’s hoping they do! Great art adds so much to the memories one creates with their gaming experiences, and it often shapes the first impression one makes with a publication. I am optimistic that we might see some of the best TFT illustrations yet as the game enjoys its welcome renaissance.

Enjoy your ’Trip, folks! Maybe we’ll run into each other on the Spice Road.

Legacy Edition counter art by Liz Danforth

The Fantasy Trip is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games. Legacy Edition art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy. Art for Dragon Hunt, The Crown of Eternity, and Character Collection 1 is reproduced by permission of Gaming Ballistic.