Homage: 2009
Your exclusive preview of the completed cartoon homage begun during Episode 39
In Episode 39 I had a great conversation with Wolfgang Baur, former editor of Dragon and Dungeon magazines and currently the Kobold-in-Chief of Kobold Press. While that was happening, I began working on a cartoon homage to Wayne Reynolds’s cover for the 2010 hardcover Adventurer’s Vault 2.
This is the fourth image in this series celebrating classic pieces of D&D art to feature a glowing but basically mysterious treasure (the previous three being 1985’s Unearthed Arcana, 1992’s Forbidden Lore, and 1993’s Book of Artifacts). I never realized this was such a strong motif running through D&D cover illustrations.
This cover, however, marks the first time a tiefling has made an appearance in one of these cartoon homages. Tieflings are interesting because prior to 4th Edition, they were not a particularly common Player Character race. They’d been around in the game for a good long time, but they weren’t especially popular. Some have said, and I think it’s true, that the popularity of the Blood Elves in World of Warcraft was a major factor in tieflings being promoted to a “core race” for D&D.
In any case, they’ve certainly proved popular with players and cemented their position among the core concepts of the game in future editions. And they’re definitely fun to draw.
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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