High elven artistry

[Mystriss]

Related maybe? IDK...

Either way, reading this thread triggered my photo-mem and spit out the following blog site, which had a blurb regarding WHFRP artwork: http://fightingfantasist.blogspot.de/20 ... ep-in.html

5 - Stock artwork.

WFRP has John Blanche pictures of flying galleons (p352 and p353). These do not appear in any part of the WFRP imaginarium, nor indeed Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Much of 1e's atmosphere that leeches out of the illustrations is stuff that simply does not exist in WFRP, like the armoured Mona Lisa standard banner with moon-faced (literally) friend (p357). This is because so much stock artwork was used that GW had commissioned for other projects. If you are bored on a rainy Sunday afternoon try and count how many times bits of the box cover from The Tragedy of McDeath turn up scattered amongst WFRP's page furniture.

WFB 3 is an even worse offender in this respect as it's rulebook appears to be a reference manual to GW's art assets with a fantasy wargame sneaking in wherever white space can be found.

So a picture of flying galleons was shoved in because it looked cool without any real thought as to whether it fitted in with the game.

(COOPS INTERNET COROLLARY - Somebody, who is unique amongst the internet-connected demographic of Planet Earth will now comment to the effect that all their WFRP games involved flying galleons therefore Coop you are as wrong as ****).

This means that, surprisingly for GW, there isn't a huge amount of art direction in the WFRP project other than that if Blanche or Ackland drew it, it's fine and it doesn't cost us anything. (40K Rogue Trader seems to extend this attitude to cover anything Pete Knifton drew).

This means that the look and feel of WFRP The Rulebook Only version is something of an accident, The Enemy Within was something else. Nobody shoved a picture of a John Blanche flying galleon into Mistaken Identity because it looked cool.