Larry Elmore | |
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 Larry Elmore at Lucca Comics and Games 2016 | |
| Born | August 5, 1948 |
| Known for | Fantasy art |
| Spouse | Betty |
Larry Elmore (born August 5, 1948 [1] ) is an American fantasy artist whose work includes creating illustrations for video games, comics, magazines, and fantasy books. His list of work includes illustrations for Dungeons & Dragons , Dragonlance , and his own comic strip series SnarfQuest . He is author of the book Reflections of Myth.
Elmore was born August 5, 1948, in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in Grayson County in midwestern Kentucky. [1] Elmore described his school days by saying, "The rural school I attended didn't have any art program, so I spent my time drawing - and daydreaming. I was a pretty bad student ... I was always getting into trouble for drawing in class. I wish I had a quarter for every drawing of mine a teacher destroyed." [1] He majored in art at Western Kentucky University. [1]
A month after graduating from college, Elmore was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. After leaving the service, Elmore worked as an illustrator for the United States government in the Fort Knox Training Aids Department. [1] Three years later, Elmore turned to freelance work, his art being published in National Lampoon and Heavy Metal magazines. [1]
One of Elmore's friends, a fellow government illustrator, [2] introduced him to the Dungeons & Dragons game while Elmore was freelancing. [1] Elmore joined the staff of TSR, Inc., the producers of Dungeons & Dragons , as its first professional illustrator, [2] in November 1981, and created art work for adventure modules, game books, and novels, as well as paintings for posters and calendars. [1] Elmore created the SnarfQuest comic which appeared in Dragon. [1] During the "Project Overlord" development phase of the Dragonlance setting, Elmore created the concept artwork which was used to promote Dragonlance to the upper levels of management at TSR. [3] : 16 Elmore was in charge of creating a look for the Dragonlance saga, and did many of the early sketches for the series, [1] his first cover appearing on Dragons of Autumn Twilight . [4] British game designer Graeme Davis commented that Elmore "... should get some kind of award for drawing so many dragons and making them all different". [5]
Elmore left TSR in 1987. [2] He has illustrated cards for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, and provided cover art for the MMORPG EverQuest . In 1996, Elmore wrote the novel Runes of Autumn [6] with his cousin Robert.[ citation needed ] Elmore did most of the black-and-white artwork for Marc Miller's role-playing game, Traveller in 1996, published by Imperium Games. [3] : 332
In the late 1990s, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman used Elmore's fantasy world, Loerem, in their Sovereign Stone trilogy. [3] : 351 In the early 2000s, Elmore created new Snarfquest comics for the short-lived magazine Games Unplugged , published by Ken Whitman's Dynasties Productions; Whitman later acted as product manager for Elmore Production, the art company of Larry Elmore. [3] : 351 Elmore provided the artwork for the fantasy world in the Sovereign Stone Game System (1999). [3] : 352 In 2004, Sovereign Press returned the rights for Sovereign Stone to Elmore, and he then licensed the game to the small press company known as White Silver Publishing. [3] : 352
Elmore scaled back his activities in 2006, switching to contract work only, stating, "A friend of mine, Keith Parkinson, who also worked at TSR, died of leukemia three years ago. We shared a studio, and we were always talking about how when we hit 50 we'd be doing our own thing. ... He didn't make it, and I was 57 and still pulling all-nighters. I was tired of it. I was tired of paying dues." [2] His work appears in the book Masters of Dragonlance Art. [7] Elmore released a book of artwork called 20 Years of Elmore in 2005. [8] He has frequently been described as a legend in the fantasy and gaming communities. [2] [9] [10] [11]
In 2013, Elmore raised funding through Kickstarter for a 336-page hardback book of his artwork over his 40-year career. [12]
In 2014, Scott Taylor of Black Gate , named Larry Elmore as #1 in a list of The Top 10 RPG Artists of the Past 40 Years, saying "Elmore not only helped define a good portion of 1980s TSR, but he also got to do the Shadowrun core cover for FASA that was so incredibly popular it reappeared on the 2nd edition and video game as well." [13]
In 1971, before leaving for his Army service in Germany, Elmore married his wife, Betty. He has two children, and currently lives with his wife in Leitchfield, Kentucky.[ citation needed ] He attends fantasy and science fiction conventions held in the United States [6] [9] and Europe.[ citation needed ] He has said that inspiring others with his art has often been more rewarding than the money he earns in his profession. [14]
Dragonlance is a shared universe created by Laura and Tracy Hickman, and expanded by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis under the direction of TSR, Inc. into a series of fantasy novels. The Hickmans conceived Dragonlance while driving in their car on the way to TSR for a job interview. Tracy Hickman met his future writing partner Margaret Weis at TSR, and they gathered a group of associates to play the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The adventures during that game inspired a series of gaming modules, a series of novels, licensed products such as board games, and lead miniature figures.
Tracy Raye Hickman is an American fantasy author and designer of games and virtual reality (VR) experiences. He co-authored the original Dragonlance novels with Margaret Weis as well as numerous other books. He also designed and created role playing game material while working for TSR and has cowritten novels with his wife, Laura Hickman. He is the author or co-author of over 60 books.
Margaret Edith Weis is an American fantasy and science fiction author of dozens of novels and short stories. At TSR, Inc., she teamed with Tracy Hickman to create the Dragonlance role-playing game (RPG) world. She is founding CEO and owner of Sovereign Press, Inc and Margaret Weis Productions, licensing several popular television and movie franchises to make RPG series in addition to their own.
Erol Otus is an American artist and game designer, who contributed art to the fantasy role-playing game (RPG) genre, especially early in the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. He created art for the award winning Star Control II as well as providing the voice for one of the character races, the Chmmr, in the same game.
Gerald Brom, known professionally as Brom, is an American gothic fantasy artist and illustrator, known for his work in role-playing games, novels, and comics.
Douglas Niles is a fantasy author and game designer. Niles was one of the creators of the Dragonlance world and the author of the first three Forgotten Realms novels, the Star Frontiers space opera setting and the Top Secret S/I espionage role-playing game.
SnarfQuest, drawn and written by Larry Elmore, is a fantasy comic strip with sci-fi and modern elements. Its epic fantasy-adventure context, along with its black-and-white art style, quirky humor, twinge of satire, and anachronistic elements, have earned it comparisons to Jeff Smith's acclaimed Bone series. It is the only comic series by Elmore, who is more widely known for his fantasy art paintings. The strip was originally serialized from 1985–1989 in the role-playing magazine Dragon, and, due to its popularity, subsequently spawned several collected volumes, tabletop games, and full-color followups by Elmore in 2000 and 2011.
Clyde Caldwell is an American artist. Self-described as a fantasy illustrator, he is best known for his portrayals of strong, sexy female characters.
Jeff Easley is an oil painter who creates fantasy artwork for role-playing games, comics, and magazines, as well as non-fantasy commercial art.
Keith A. Parkinson was an American fantasy artist and illustrator known for book covers and artwork for games such as EverQuest, Guardians, Magic: The Gathering, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. After designing book and magazine covers for TSR, Parkinson moved into game design in the 1990s, and co-designed the collectible card game Guardians. Parkinson died of leukemia in 2005, just four days after his 47th birthday.
James Paul Roslof was an American artist who produced cover art and interior illustrations of fantasy role-playing games published by TSR, Inc. during the "golden age" of Dungeons & Dragons. As Art Director at TSR in the early 1980s, he was also responsible for hiring many of the young artists who would go on to careers in the fantasy role-playing industry.
Todd Wills Lockwood is an American artist specializing in fantasy and science fiction illustration. He is best known for his work on the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and for his covers for the books of R. A. Salvatore. His art has also appeared in books from Tor Books, DAW Books, and on magazine covers, including Satellite Orbit magazine in 1984–1985, Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact, Realms of Fantasy, Dragon Magazine, and Dungeon Magazine.
David "Diesel" S. LaForce is an American artist who worked on Dungeons & Dragons adventures published by TSR. His artwork and cartography appeared in many TSR products produced from 1979 to 1984 including the classics Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity, and B2 Keep on the Borderlands. LaForce became known for his meticulous and creative approach to adventure maps, and eventually became TSR's staff cartographer. He continued to produce maps for many TSR publications until he left the company in 1997 following its takeover by Wizards of the Coast.
The DL series is a series of adventures and some supplementary material for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. These modules along with the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy of novels, which follow one possible adventure series through the modules, were the first published items that established the Dragonlance fictional universe. The original DL series was released from 1984 to 1986, with the final two modules added to it in 1988. In the 1990s these roleplaying adventures from the original series were collected and revised for 2nd Edition AD&D as the three DLC Dragonlance Classics modules. There were also versions of the module series released in 1999, 2000 and 2006.
Dragons of Despair is the first in a series of 16 Dragonlance adventures published by TSR, Inc. (TSR) between 1984 and 1988. It is the start of the first major story arc in the Dragonlance series of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game modules, a series of ready-to-play adventures for use by Dungeon Masters in the game. This series provides a game version of the original Dragonlance storyline later told in the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy of novels. This module corresponds to the events told in the first half of the novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Its module code is DL1, which is used to designate it as the first part of the Dragonlance adventure series.
Jeff Butler is an American illustrator and comic book artist. He worked with the art department of TSR, Inc. for five years, illustrating products for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game and the Marvel Super Heroes role playing game, as well as Dragonlance novels.
This is a complete list of works by American science fiction and fantasy author Margaret Weis.
The Bestiary is a role-playing game supplement published by TSR in 1998 for the campaign setting Dragonlance: Fifth Age using the SAGA System of rules.
Some people have said, 'you saved my life' ... It gave them a reason to go on, and they picked up art. I've had people come up to me and say, 'I was in high school and couldn't read. I saw your book cover ... (and) liked it so much I learned to read.' Those are payoffs you never dream of, and it's worth more than money.
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