Homage: 1989
Subscribers get this exclusive early look at the completed cartoon homage to Jeff Easley's cover painting for "Spelljammer."
As Karen S. Conlin and I recorded episode 17, talking about among other things the collaborative creative process during the Lake Geneva Days, I worked on a cartoon homage to the 1988 Spelljammer boxed set.
I don’t know that I’d say that Spelljammer was “controversial” per se, but it was the first major D&D release that I remember the folks arguing about at my friendly local game store, and those arguments centered around the product’s subtitle— AD&D Adventures in Space. Some folks were keen to explore this new setting for gaming, others proclaimed the sci-fi had no place in fantasy. Proponents said that it was an overlay you could choose to add to your campaign or not, disparagers said that its mere presence tainted every setting it touched (which, one by one, grew to include ALL of the original D&D campaign worlds).
While working on my interpretation, I again realized that there was more going on in the cover image than I’d ever noticed before. I’d always thought that the light-blue shape behind these adventurers was just a nebula or some other astronomical pattern. But looking closely at Jeff Easley’s painting, it became clear that it was some kind of physical object. A creature? A visage? A machine? I couldn’t tell.
So I asked Jeff Grubb and Steve Winter, who told me it was a spelljamming ship … and after a close look at the image, that it more specifically was an elven man-o-war. So I pulled up visual reference for the ship and finally understood what was going on in the painting.
At first I thought that Jeff Easley INTENDED viewers to have the confusion I did … but then I saw a print of the painting without the title and trade dress, and the ship was much clearer. So now I think the ART DIRECTOR was the one that intended for the cover to be mysterious. I suppose I may never know for certain … but I’ll ask Jeff about it the next time our paths cross.
For my homage, I decided to make the ship even easier to discern. In part this is because I think the design is really cool, and in part because the kind of subtlety found in Easley’s oil painting is very difficult to achieve in a cell-style cartoon image. But I DO think that my version definitely sells the “D&D Adventures in Space” aspect of Spelljammer.
As a subscriber to this newsletter, you’re seeing this art before it is released for general consumption. You also have the option to buy an art print of this or any of the cartoon homages (and if you’re a paid subscriber, you get a discount on those purchases).
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