For early color artwork Willingham would be our 1st choice, Dee would be 2nd. Darlene and Wham while we love their artwork are mainly known for b&w artwork and I think they really want a color print. We picked Fields because his art is outstanding, just take a look at his western/indian paintings on his website. Trying to keep the print cost down will bring more people into the project so if we could get Willingham or Dee that would be great.

bbarsh wrote in ACAEUM Limited Edition Art Poll:I am not sure why Tom Wham would simply be excluded, either. If the goal of this project is to produce old school limited edition art, I think Wham is a perfectly acceptable choice. He is as old school as it gets - at least compared to those on the list. I like his work. To me, a grand piece specifically for this project, would be compelling. When I flip through old D&D products and see a Wham piece, a smile almost always crosses my face. There is something about it that takes me back. When I see an Elmore piece, I see a grand illustration with incredible detail. It rarely makes me smile.
Now if the focus of this project has drifted from old school to artsy, well, Wham is out. Of course he can't compare to Elmore, Caldwell, etc. I assume that is why Fred F. was added. I have no idea how he fits the old school mantra, but so be it. I do not consider late generation 2nd Ed. AD&D art very old school. In fact, I find most of it to be commercialized art.
My personal preference is a piece that invokes the game from the early days. I like the nostalgia of the game. That does not mean I hate the Elmore/Easely/Parkinson art phase. But to me, that is not as classic as Sutherland/Trampier/Jaquays/Darlene/Otus/Willingham/etc. I am sure I am drawing a fine distinction, but there it is, anyway. There was a transition from one "style" of D&D art to another. As the game expanded and grew, the "level" of art changed with it.
As I voted, I am in regardless.

The art committee does have to go with what would be considered mass appeal, as we have to sell 65+ of these.  It was our feeling that while Wham had a certain cachet and definitely a fan club (I love his games especially Search for the Emperor's Treasure, which is one of my all-time favorites), he just wasn't a fitting subject for the art project. Personally I'm not interested in a large Wham piece for my wall, and since I'm not being paid I would find it difficult to work the time I have to for an artists whose print I wouldn't display (or perhaps even buy).  

My personal preferences would be the "heroic" fantasy type artwork that often graced the covers of Dragon Magazine or modules.  While Fields and DTerlizzi are excellent and above average artists I also don't associate them with "old school" type projects, and I understand Fields work is very, very expensive to purchase or commision (as in "break the bank" expensive", so inquiries to him might be moot anyway).  

In general, the committee reached an impasse in that there are really a very small handful of artists left to choose from that evoke the "old school" standard, and rather than keep going round and round we thought it was better to see what other opinions might be.  

Personally, I'm a huge Tim Truman fan and the fact he's now accepting commissions for the first time in decades got me excited, but from inquiries here and else where it seems no one remembers who he is, what he did, or have much of an interest (baffling to me, honestly).  Again, we have to get 65+ collectors to put out the dough, so we are stuck doing artists we hope the majority of people here are familiar and interested in, which doesn't seem to be the case with Truman (or Wham). Willingham is another of my favorites but is probably even LESS remembered than those two and did most of his TSR work out of the fantasy genre.

Also, this list is by no means exhaustive, some artists that are still active might have been discarded for various reasons (for example, being extremely difficult to work with) that people might not know about, so a few names that you might have expected to see we have already considered and rejected due to reasons we cannot elaborate.

Mike B.

Yeah, a picture like this doesn't belong on the wall of a serious D&D collector. I'm just glad I'm not a serious collector.

Or we could commission two artists at once to come up with a theme and then each one of them could take a different side to tell of the same story.

looking back on this thread more, wouldn't it make more sense to make new polls/split it into two threads? One for "expensive" prints and one for less expensive prints? Are we sure that on this current poll when someone checks the box "I'll buy a print regardless" that they'd seriously consider dropping $200-$250+ for a print? I'm not trying to throw cold water on this, but are we going to be able to get 60+ people to commit to that level? And a year or more down the line if that's how the schedule works out? Even at $150, I think it's going to be very very difficult.

At least if the polls/thread were split into two, that way you could see who's interested in buying a print comparing the less expensive artist choices versus the more expensive ones.

Also, you could fit in many more specific artists on each poll that people may check off (for instance Tom Wham or Tim Truman) to more accurately guage. I'm seriously open to any of the early artists.

Lastly, has anyone approached Larry? I honestly can't imagine he's going to have time, assuming he would consider taking this up. He's seriously got so much on his plate right now for the foreseable future. Yes, I love his work and it would be awesome to get him, but having him on the list could really be pie-in-the-sky, and it possibly takes away votes from another artist.

At a certain point you get to diminishing returns with polls....you are just parsing the information into smaller and smaller chunks but actually getting less and less information....counter-intuitive, but that's what happens.

Also, for a lot of these people we actually don't know what they would charge....for example, I have no idea if Darlene would be interested in doing any commissions at this point for any price(she's retired, so she says) so anything in that regard would be a guess. We have an idea of what some of the others would charge (and actually have a quote from a few) so it's hard to break it down to "XXX artist needs this amount" when we really don't know for sure until we ask.

Mike B.

I know it is not PLEDGE now. but I am 99% interested just depends on cost...  

I was extremely happy to participate in the previous LE Art... and over the moon when it finally arrived and very pleased.

yours best regards
Seany

Sea-to-sky-games wrote in ACAEUM Limited Edition Art Poll:As an aside, is the committee committed to different artists each time?

Yes, for now.  Part of our reasoning is that each project takes, or has taken, at least a year, and many of these classic artists don't have decades to live.  We've already lost some great ones.  

benjoshua wrote in ACAEUM LIMITED EDITION ART PROJECT - TRES BIEN:

mark1107 wrote in ACAEUM LIMITED EDITION ART PROJECT - TRES BIEN:So what's going to be our fourth project?
Also is there an original art this print was based off of? How much is that worth?

The fourth project has not been determined.  It's possible there will not be a fourth project.  Clyde Caldwell is too expensive.  There are many other classic artists loved by Acaeumites, but few that command the level of interest we found in art created by Erol Otus, Jeffy Easley and Larry Elmore.  It's one thing to propose an artist and get ten or even twenty additional interested people and another to propose someone and find sixty-plus people interested.

If the current committee members decide not to do a fourth project, keep in mind there's a few others here that would be willing to tackle it.