Archive Page 38

The Art of the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Game (TSR, 1985) (Part Two)

Published May 7, 2015 Clyde Caldwell , D&D , D&D Art , Denis Beauvais , Keith Parkinson , Larry Elmore , Robin Wood 8 Comments
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“Death to Intruders!” acrylics, by Keith Parkinson

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Music Lover,” oils, by Robin Wood

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“Motherhood,” acrylic, wash, and color pencils, by Denis Beauvais

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“Teamwork,” oils, by Larry Elmore

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“Castle Caldwell,” oils, by Clyde Caldwell

Sources, from top to bottom:

Dragons of Doom (front cover) Endless Quest Book #13 by Rose Estes (1983)
Sabre River (front cover) Adventure Module CM3 by Douglas Niles and Bruce Nesmith (1984)
Dragon #97 (front cover) (May, 1985)
Dragon #98 (front cover) (June, 1985)
Dragon #92 (front cover) (December, 1984)
Dragon #78 (front cover) (October, 1983)
Poster designed exclusively for Sears (1984)
Castle Caldwell and Beyond (front cover) Adventure Module B9 by Harry Nuckols (1985)

The Robin Wood painting is my favorite by far. It’s the first cover she did for Dragon magazine. In the book she says:

I’ll tell you the reason I don’t like to paint dragons—all those scales! I thought I’d never finish! There are five layers of paint on each scale…

She has more to say here.

Beauvais is another favorite of mine. His color schemes and more abstract style set him apart from the reigning realism of the day.

Part one is here.

1979 Lauro Cruises Brochure

Published May 6, 2015 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , Cruise Ships Leave a Comment

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Cruise 79-5

I wish I had the whole brochure, because there’s so much red lushness and awkward grammar:

The Cunard Princess, the most recently built cruise ship. Nobody had ever seen before such a beautiful and functional ship cruising in the Mediterranean and probably will not still for many years.

The Achille Lauro mentioned on the cover of the brochure was named after the original owner of the Italian line and has quite a history, culminating in the ship’s hijacking by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, an incident dramatized in at least two TV movies and one opera. In 1994 the ship caught fire off the coast of Somalia and sank two days later with all hands and passengers safe on shore.

Read more about Lauro Lines here.

Space Mountain Ad, 1977

Published May 6, 2015 Disneyland , Tomorrowland Leave a Comment

Disney 1977-2

Disney 1977-1

I’ve never seen the concept art used in the two smaller windows. You can see a Disneyland Pictorial Souvenir book from 1983 here, and more Space Mountain here.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Ad, 1980

Published May 5, 2015 Ads , D&D , TSR 4 Comments

FF #17 1980-5061

The back cover of Fantastic Films #17.

Fantastic Films #17 (July, 1980): Interview with Richard Edlund

Published May 5, 2015 Fantastic Films , Magazines/Zines , Special Effects/Visual Effects , Star Wars (Original Trilogy) 1 Comment

FF #17 1980-1056

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FF #17 1980-5060

There were a number of interviews with the special effects crew of The Empire Strikes Back in Fantastic Films #17. Here’s the first. It gets pretty technical, because that’s Edlund’s field, but anyone can appreciate what he says about the now famous asteroid chase sequence:

There’s a star background, a far background, and an asteroid background, plus individual asteroid foreground elements. Individual rocks get photographed separately as do belt layers. So all that adds up to about 20 stage elements. A shot like that requires about 100 separate pieces of film…

Notice that Edlund says “he became a hippie” during his early career. Some of the album covers he photographed and designed can be seen at Discogs. A couple of the psychedelic 7 UP commercials he worked on for visual effects pioneer Robert Abel are here and here. A shot of Edlund working on Star Wars is here.

Edlund went on to do visual effects for films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Poltergeist, Ghostbusters, Fright Night, Big Trouble in Little China, Die Hard, and, of course, Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars `Space Fantasy Sweepstakes’ Entry Form (1977)

Published May 4, 2015 Custom Autos , Promotions/Contests/Sweepstakes , Star Wars (Original Trilogy) 1 Comment

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I mentioned the Star Wars Celica last year on Facebook. No one knows what happened to it, although urban legend dictates that the airbrushed beauty collects dust in a garage somewhere, waiting for the day when one special nerd will start her up with a special key (passed down through the nerd’s family for generations) and launch her into the stars to face yet another catastrophically engineered Death Star.

In the promotional art, Chewie appears on the hood, but the final version is a riff on the Star Wars poster by the Brothers Hildebrandt.

The photo below, taken on the 20th Century Fox lot, is a detail from the cover of the October 1977 issue of Toyota Today. The poster in the background is the billboard version illustrated by Tom Jung.

More background and photos at the Star Wars Collectors Archive.

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The Black Hole Book Bag (1979)

Published May 4, 2015 Black Hole, The , School Supplies 5 Comments

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With “lunch money” pouch!

The Lord of the Rings Towels (Tolkien Enterprises/Cannon Mills, 1978)

Published May 1, 2015 Lord of the Rings, The 2 Comments

LOTR Towels

LOTR Towels-2

By the same company that made the comforter. The second towel looks pretty faded. Possibly the inspiration for the 1982 AD&D Beach Towels?

(Images via eBay)

The Lord of the Rings Action Figures Ads, 1979

Published April 30, 2015 Ads , Lord of the Rings, The Leave a Comment

LOTR Ad-2

Great ad dug up by Phil Reed at BattleGrip. New Jersey’s Heroes World was a king of mail-order marketing in the 1970s, and their catalogs, now collector’s items, featured art by the nearby Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.

I found another Heroes World ad below, courtesy of Tom Heroes. These are the only two I’ve seen. As I said in my original post about the ill-fated Knickerbocker line, it had almost no advertising push in a very crowded action figure market. The figures themselves appear to be pretty high quality, however.

LOTR Ad

T-Shirt Designs in the Wild, 1976

Published April 30, 2015 '70s Decor/Design/Fashion , '70s Movies/TV , Iron-on Transfers , Photography 5 Comments

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See more at the Billings Gazette. I totally forgot about the CB radio craze from about 1975 to 1981, although I loved Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard. The Wikipedia article doesn’t mention it, but Glen A. Larson’s B.J. and the Bear was another popular series spotlighting the CB.

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