Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Original Polyhedron Art

As I noted in my post about issue #3 of Polyhedron, the newsletter contains a lot of original art by TSR's stable of artists. According to its credits page, here are the artists who contributed one or more pieces to the issue:

Most of those names should be familiar to aficionados of early '80s TSR Hobbies. The other two that might not be familiar are Bell and J.F. Mentzer. Bell is Greg Bell, who did a lot of the illustrations in the little brown books of OD&D. J.F. Mentzer is not, as I initially thought, Frank Mentzer, whose full name is Jacob Franklin Mentzer III, but rather his father, Jacob Franklin Mentzer II, as we'll see shortly.

The first piece of artwork I'd like to share from the issue is a depiction of an ice devil by an unknown artist.
Who's the illustrator? To me, it looks like it could be Dave LaForce, but I am uncertain of that attribution.

Next up is this excellent Lich by Darlene:

Darlene also contributed this portrait of a wizard that I rather like.
This party of adventurers is definitely the work of Dave LaForce. His signature is clearly visible on the righthand side of the piece, along the magic-user's staff.
Here's the piece attributed to JFM II, as you can see in the bottom lefthand side of the illustration. I'm not entirely sure what it's meant to depict, though it calls to mind the fairytale of the Frog Prince. In any case, I rather like it, if only because its style is so clearly different from that of the other artwork found in the issue.
And finally there's another Gamma World piece by Erol Otus:
These are less than half the original illustrations appearing in the issue, but they're the ones that stood out as being especially worth of comment. Should there be interest, I may post more examples of this artwork in the weeks to come. For now, I thought it sufficed to draw your attention to these, all of which caught my eye as I was reading.

14 comments:

  1. Ice Devil looks like Willingham to me. The eyes.

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    1. It could be Willingham but the body, specifically the legs and feet, look like Jeff Dee to me.

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    2. The stance and the way the ribcage and musculature are rendered, especially the leg muscles, as Adam says: that's all classic Jeff Dee.

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    3. Agreed. Not impossible that it's Willingham either, but looks more Dee to me.

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    4. It's a bone devil, not an ice devil.

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    5. Yes, it's definitely a bone devil. My brain ...

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  2. The first one is either Jeff Dee or someone else trying to look like Jeff Dee.

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  3. At a guess I'd say that Darlene's wizard was inspired by comic book artist Frank Thorne cosplaying a wizard, which he invariably dud along with a bevy of various Red Sonja or Ghita cosplayers, which included none other than the illustrious Wendy Pini.

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  4. I'd really love to see a decent scan of the elf in Polyhedron No. 1, on page 7, along with the Centaur on the cover and Bell's art on page 3...

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    1. This seems fine, although you'll need to zoom in for teh smaller pieces:

      https://archive.org/details/Polyhedron155/polyhedron%20001/mode/2up

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  5. I'd like to see what Trampier contributed.

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  6. Are you sure is a Ice Devil? To me it seems a Bone Devil (skeletal visage, and scorpion tail), but perhaps I'm wrong

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  7. I've never seen that Darlene lich! Very cool. Chiming in with others that the bone devil looks like Jeff Dee to me. Please, please post all the illustrations from these. I've always been curious about these Polyhedrons for the classic artists.

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