Link

BIG troll.

Just saw this. I'm indifferent. On a whole I would say that the art has not been SR4's strong point so far, but it's been on an acceptable level at least. Mostly we see generic fantasy art like this new cover, though. Shadowrun has too many artists, and only a small number of them has a style that you can relate specificly to Shadowrun.

The games that have the best art style has one artist do all the colour panes and only has a couple of artists do the rest of the illustrations. Best, most atmosphericly correct and fateful art of all rpg's I know of at the moment: Drakar och Demoner (from Sweden). Link. They use almost exclusively Paul Bonner for covers, and the only other artists you will see artwork from are Tapia and Bergting (and one more with a similar style I believe). To me, this way of doing it creates a much more concistent atmosphere for the game.

Another example (also from Sweden) is Mutant. Link. There we have another game with a great graphical design that is concistently upheld because it's the same guy doing all of the covers, and only a couple of others joining in for illustrations.

Though I realize that it may be a question of rate of publication, the fact is that both of these games have had more books published for them than Shadowrun lately.


<edit> Note that I'm not saying I would like Fanpro to sign on Paul Bonner too or something. I really didn't like what he did for Shadowrun in the past. What they should do is to let a selected few artists work for a long time with the game so they could come up with an art style that works, then stick with that. As it is now the vibes you get range from fantasy kitch galore to comic book actiontoon to dirty cyberpunk.

The cover looks technically very good (as RK Post usually does). But the troll's gun is wider than the girl's torso...

I don't like the cover very much (the troll is to huge), but the interior art looks fine

My favorite artist
SR1, 2, and 3: Jeff Laubenstein
SR1(?) and 2: Tim Bradstreet
SR3: Steve Prescott, Larry MacDougall, Mark Zug, and Peter Bergting.

There hasn't really been any artist outta SR4 that's grabbed my attention. Although it has been a while since I've looked through the book.

must say i dont have a problem with mixed artists. it just shows the diffrent impressions you can get if living in a SR city...

hmm, i have a feel i have seen that "hungry spirit" before. if not the exact same image then atleast the theme...

edit:

found it! page 177 of SR4 of all places!
all to similar...

I like the cover art.

Not sure if the although i'm confused as to why the girl with the guns is combating a Helicopter with a pair of pistols.

Either that or she's posing.

i think in the sr4 core book there is a picture like that spirit in the awakened section.

I don't think she is fighting the helicopter with pistols, I think she is trying to shoot the finger off the troll!

I love Chad Sergesketter's Taxi driver though. Nice, simple art.

The troll is fine in scale if you go by the book and the woman is slightly below average size with the Troll on the high end of the scale.

All in all I think this is a good batch of art. No riggers with "Breast Daisies."

Still doesn't top the Trolls emerging from the shadows in the SR4 Black Book.
I think it's at the beginning of Game Concepts.

I don't like the cover art, but the inside art is very nice.

Cherry art!!! Very nice.

OH, and sorry to see that "Gates Way" still has a high rat population 70 years later.

I really like the feel of Ed Cox's stuff there. He seems to capture the "gritty reality" of the SR world.

I've never really felt Brom's work was meant for shadowrun. He hit Darksun on the head though, but not shadowrun.

Liked all of it (the cover a bit less maybe, but covers follow their own guidelines, y'know... ). The last one, with the AR, was especially well drawn IMO.