This advertisement appeared in
issue #6 of Different Worlds (December 1979/January 1980). I wonder who, if anyone, was acquired by TSR during this round of hiring. I believe
Evan Robinson said, in my interview with him, that he started work in May 1980, so he's one possibility, though there are others. Which artists started working at the company in the first half of 1980?
My guess is either Stephen Sullivan or Bill Willingham (or maybe both).
ReplyDeleteFWIW (which isn't much) Bill Willingham's wiki page says he got his start in the late 70s to the early 80s at TSR, so he was probably on the payroll before 1980.
DeleteWhoop, correction, definitely on the payroll before 1980. Bill did art for 1979's White Plume Mountain.
DeleteThat's deceptive: While WPM was first published in 1979, Willingham's art only appears in the revised/expanded version that was published in 1981 (the art in the 1979 version is all David Sutherland and Erol Otus).
DeleteHmm, it is one of those modules, isn't it? Bloody variant reprints. Well, he was on several things in 1980, including a couple of issues of Dragon. Might not have been on staff before then, or he might just not have had anything published yet. TSR sometimes had art done well before release, although I'm not sure that was the case here.
DeleteNo idea.
ReplyDeleteElmore, Easley, Parkinson and Holloway all seem to have joined TSR between 1981 and 1983 (at least according to wikipedia), and Rosloff was there from 1979, it seems.
I think Truman and Caldwell started more or less at the same time as Elmore and the other Silver Age artists I quoted above.