Stormbringer artwork

[Afgud]

Fifth edition Stormbringer has some awesome artwork (pages 8, 45, 110, 157, 187, 234 (the picture of Doctor Jest) are very beautiful), as well as some rather crude and uninspiring pieces. Some of the pictures seems to depict an Elric that looks at least fifty years old, while other simply aren't that well drawn. In general, 5th edition has better art than Elric!, but much worse layout, making it unnecessarily thick.

[Eldren Rogue]

first edition illustrations, there were the best ever made...

No argument there, the first edition had some stunning artwork, the following editions suffered by way of contrast, and some things were just inaccurate. (The pic of Gaynor comes to mind... which is a guy with an open face helm and a normal, human looking face. Looks like they just grabbed a human warrior type at random for the pic.)

The old AD&D Deities and Demigods which included the Elric and Cthulu sections also had what I thought were some great renditions of the characters.

Sorry to hear that Chaosium is jerking Michael. Too bad... I like their materials. Clearly they have been having financial issues for awhile, though that's no justification.

[runequester]

Chaosium have always had somewhat mediocre artwork. Its funny that the GW version is mentioned as having worse art, since, in the case of Runequest, the GW version was generally better :)

[Mespheber]

I regret Frank Brunner's first edition illustrations, there were the best ever made...

[VeteranOfThePsychicWars]

I liked the art inside the new Stormbringer game book.

I think it's terrible for Chaosium to not hand over the proper royalties or ask for approval from him though.

Chaosium artwork

FYI to everyone, I'm Chris Appel, illustrator and FORMER cover artist for some of the Chaosium books. I posted some old art from the Chaosium days in the gallery (Berry Sizemore indicated it might get moved, so you may have to search a bit.) There are some concept sketches as well as alternate versions of two covers that I did. These have been on my site in the past, but I'm cutting back on the older pieces displayed there. This seems like a better place for them.

[fireclown]

Scans; etc., et al

Hey Man

What do you want scanned? For real.

-Fireclown

Any chance that you could post some scans?

[Random Goblin]

Nope; no scanner.

[Typhoid_Mary]

Any chance that you could post some scans?

[Random Goblin]

Did you parents have any trouble dealing with Chaosium? It would be very interesting to hear from them on any of this. Any chance you could interview them and post that here?

I don't remember. I'll ask.

[David Mosley]

Re: Stormbringer artwork

Mr. Moorcock seems to be pretty unhappy with a lot of the artwork in Chaosium's Elric games.

I will say - from the stand point of an (dis)interested bystander/consumer - that I felt a lot of the artwork in the Games Workshop edition of Stormbringer :

[broken link]

was pretty p*ss-poor. Pete Knifton's artwork was particularly diabolical in my opinion (not just in Stormbringer, btw, but most of the stuff he produced for GW).

Knifton wasn't the only offender among the artists who worked on that project, so I do honestly feel that GW's (then) usually pretty good Quality Controls (which featured in most of their own proprietary games) sadly fell widely short of the mark on that particular book. :(

[Whiskers]

Did you parents have any trouble dealing with Chaosium? It would be very interesting to hear from them on any of this. Any chance you could interview them and post that here?

[Whiskers]

That was part of the arrangement. Mike was supposed to have veto on the artwork.

[Random Goblin]

Well, he's mentioned artwork specifically a couple of times. :(

[Dead-Air]

Wow, you're mom does game art as well as your dad? That's really cool! I think Michael is more disgusted with Chaosism for not giving him a cent in years and claiming the exclusive rights to his creations in gaming, than with anything to do with the art in the game.