I've gotten a couple of emails and comments asking about the artists responsible for the artwork accompanying the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon. In most cases, I unfortunately have no idea who produced those pieces. However, in the case of the second to last illustration, the one showing a wizard seated at his desk, I know the artist is named Todd Oleck. Here's a bigger, full color version of the illustration:
The interesting thing is that the version above didn't appear until issue #47 (March 1981) of Dragon, about a year and a half after it was first used in conjunction with "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" in issue #30 (October 1979).
As for Oleck himself, I know next to nothing about him. He is credited as an artist in several issues of Dragon and also produced a single piece of artwork that appeared in early printings of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide before being replaced. Here it is:
My version of the DMG is the so-called "revised" version from December 1979, so it doesn't include this piece. In its place is the Erol Otus illustration found at the top of this post. Beyond this, Oleck is a mystery to me. I can only assume that, like a lot of people involved in the hobby, he eventually drifted away from it and pursued other things. Still, I'm curious about him. Does anyone else know anything they can share?
TIL there was a printing of the DMG before 1979. I had always remembered that I first played AD&D in the fall of 1979, but could never reconcile that with the December publication date. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThe first printing of the DMG came out in summer of 1979. It may have been available at GenCon. It first showed up for sale in August but a friend had an early play tester's copy earlier in the summer. While folks were looking at it at the MIT games club, I was running my campaign and we had a question that was answered by a quick lookup in the DMG. Hmm, while I sold that DMG in 1990, I got a replacement in 2005 which apparently is a first printing also! It says May 1979 for printing and has the illustration above. My PDF from Drivethrurpg.com is a revised December 1979 printing.
DeleteAlso has a single piece of art on page 14 of Polyhedron #4. Beyond that I don't see anything beyond what you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteGoogle turned up an image on Facebook, similar to his style, of one of the Peanuts gang in the pumpkin patch, having been attacked Alien facehugger style by something that burst out of a pumpkin.
ReplyDeleteSigned Todd C Oleck 2017
He may live in Hawaii.
Thanks for posting this. There's something reminiscent of Don Martin (of Mad Magazine fame) in Oleck's wizard, and that imp (?) Is kind of Wormy-esque.
ReplyDeleteGiven the wide variety of styles (and moods) on display in TSR's golden age artwork, I'm given to wonder whether there was a conscious editorial decision to to move toward a house style in the silver age or whether it was just happenstance that more polished artists (Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, Truman, etc.) happened to apply at the same time.
What a great image. Wonder why they replaced it?
ReplyDeleteThe reason I always heard was that it fit the page space better after they'd done some text editing. The Otus "let's shoot each other" piece looks like it's got a smaller vertical footprint but it's hard to say without comparing them next to one another. Someone out there with both versions want to help out?
DeleteYea, comparing the two pages, the new page has more text on it so less room for a picture. Some earlier text got expanded from a previous page onto page 40.
Delete@Frank Thanks. Nice to have that confirmed.
DeleteI've never seen that DMG illustration. I'd always thought I'd had the first printing. Like an alternate universe, after all this time!
ReplyDeleteI do know the artists for the first and fourth illustrations in the other post: the first is Dave Sutherland and the fourth is Darlene. No idea about the second one.
ReplyDeleteSo I had never heard of him or even seen much from older versions of D&D until today. But he just came into the library where I work and I found this post looking him up after we talked for a bit.
ReplyDeleteHe apperently did that stuff when he was younger. Just had someone give him their card while he was doodling at GenCon, then sent in work occationally afyer that. He had grand visions of making a career in art but from how he talked it sounded like he started going to college for it and realized it wasn't for him.
He is a very nice man who is still very much playing the game and has never stopped. He showed me some custom 3D modular dungeon pieces he's been making recently.
But yeah. He's still playing (cutrently 5e) and enjoying how much time he has to dedicate to it in retirement.
Fantastic news!
DeleteHow amazing that you met him a week after this blog post was made! Thanks for sharing on here. Please let him know about this post so that he might read it and maybe even comment.
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