Choose your favourite set of Scholastic Illustrations.

[King Gillibran]

You will now be able to choose your favourite sets of illustrations from the scholastic range.

The only artists are Robert Ball, Vlado Krizan and Eva Eskilinen.

Remeber these are the Alternate Scholastic illustrations not the originals.

Enjoy choosing your 5 favourite.

[hallucination]

Krisztián Balla’s alternate illustrations to Robert Ball’s Assassins of Allansia are not bad at all. (These are used in some foreign language versions and also the tin man app.) Worth including?

[a moderator]

Why just 16 of the 21 books?

[CharlesX]

This will be difficult as I mainly bought Scholastic new FF and just haven't seen most of these illustrations. Guess I should vote for\will be biased for only the ones I've seen regardless of how good (or bad) others might be.

[King Gillibran]

Aug 31, 2023 12:24:02 GMT hallucination said:

Krisztián Balla’s alternate illustrations to Robert Ball’s Assassins of Allansia are not bad at all. (These are used in some foreign language versions and also the tin man app.) Worth including?

I would have If I had known they existed. Sorry.

[King Gillibran]

Aug 31, 2023 12:24:16 GMT a moderator said:

Why just 16 of the 21 books?

Because I didnt want to include any of the artwork that was from the original series as that would defeat the point. The secon 2 sorceries and Return to Firetop Mountain had the original art. I also didnt want to include the newest 2 books as they have thankfully returned to the quality of the originals and would dominate the poll (Secrets of Salamonis is doing as good as most of the Scorcerys in my other polls.)

[sylas]

I only voted the 3 from Robert Ball. The others are too hideous or insulting to vote through, especially Gates of Death and Creature of Havoc.

[CharlesX]

Voting for Port Of Peril because I've read it rather than it's quality, I don't think I'm supposed to vote for books I've neither played nor seen before. It's pretty mediocre and more 'least-worst' than 'favourite'.

[scouserob]

Aug 31, 2023 12:24:02 GMT hallucination said:

Krisztián Balla’s alternate illustrations to Robert Ball’s Assassins of Allansia are not bad at all. (These are used in some foreign language versions and also the tin man app.) Worth including?

Agreed, I much prefer these alternative illustrations to the ones in my Scholastic copy and the Ian Livingstone Easter egg is pretty hilarious.
Also, it is a green spine rather than a gold flaky one. 👍🏼

It was published by Chameleon Comix, at least in Hungary, though, so I don't think it would qualify for entry into the Scholastic poll.

For comparison some of the illustrations are here:
Assassins of Allansia (Original) at Gamebook News
Assassins of Allansia (Krisztián Balla's) at Official Fighting Fantasy Blogspot

The Decayer
(Left Scholastic, Right Chameoleon Comix)

[hallucination]

I have only approx half of these, so am voting from a limited set. I voted for 2 of Ball‘s efforts, and WoFTM as my fave (least disliked?) of Krizan's (or at least, of the ones i know).

(Dis)Honourable Mentions include Port of Peril and Crystal of Storms: both contain within them a couple decent illustrations (given the style and everything), but among the other illustrations those books contain, they’re not enough to score the book a vote (imo)

I did not vote for Gates of Death's illustrations but perhaps they do suit the book (in a sense). {groan}

[paperexplorer]

I don't own any of the reprints so I can only go off the preview images available in Amazon and... yikes

Island of the Lizard King... that image of the lizard man whipping the dwarf in the mine is next level bad. It doesn't even look remotely lizard like. It looks more like a dog head. The others by Krizan equally bad. Genuinely still baffled by the decision behind getting him to illustrate so much of the series. Maybe he had some incriminating photos of the person in charge.

Caverns of the Snow Witch samples actually looked good to me, I'd be keen to see more as I didn't like the original internal art

Assassins is passable

I wish I could vote for the new ones, I'm only submitting 2 votes here

[paperexplorer]

Actually, it doesn't look like Krizan's art in Appointment with FEAR is a disaster like the others.  He's steered away from the grey shading and horrible faces.  

But this just makes my eyes bleed:

[CharlesX]

paperexplorer I hope this doesn't sound homophobic, but this guy looks like he was from a Pride do, only more camp even than that, crossed with a particularly tatty TV show from 1970. The Puffin original art was fairly cheesy, but looks like Da Vinci next to this.

[kieran]

I think people can be a little harsh on the Scholastic illustrations (or perhaps it's more accurate to say they look on the Puffin illustrations with rose-tinted glasses). Sure the Puffin books had their Iain McCaigs and Russ Nicholsons, but they also had plenty of underwhelming efforts. Robert Ball, Tazio Bettin and Mike McCarthy's works compare well to the average Puffin book and Eva Eskelinen and perhaps even Vlado Krizan are still better than the likes of Kevin Bulmer, Peter Andrew Jones and Nik Spender.

[CharlesX]

Sept 1, 2023 9:47:58 GMT kieran said:

I think people can be a little harsh on the Scholastic illustrations (or perhaps it's more accurate to say they look on the Puffin illustrations with rose-tinted glasses). Sure the Puffin books had their Iain McCaigs and Russ Nicholsons, but they also had plenty of underwhelming efforts. Robert Ball, Tazio Bettin and Mike McCarthy's works compare well to the average Puffin book and Eva Eskelinen and perhaps even Vlado Krizan are still better than the likes of Kevin Bulmer, Peter Andrew Jones and Nik Spender.

Like we discussed in the Interior Poll 3 thread subject matter has a lot to do with it (I defy a genius to make a bum-faced monster look good!). I reckon both the interior and cover of Crystal Of Storms are above-average.

[kieran]

Sept 1, 2023 10:21:22 GMT CharlesX said:

I defy a genius to make a bum-faced monster look good!

I think Krizan did a good job with the Holy Man though which is possibly an even sillier concept.

[King Gillibran]

In reply to Paperexplorer I wish I could have voted for the two newest as well, but I am pretty sure everyone who had them would have also voted for them which would have defeated the point of the poll. Does anyone prefer any of the scholastic illustration sets to the 40th anniversary books' art?
I reply to Kieran, I would also think that the some of the Scholastic art is better than some of the puffin art. After all my least favourite book for interior art is Starship Traveller. I also would say that Mike Mccarthey is probably one of my favourite illustrators in FF and I desperately hope he and Tazio Bettin (who was really good as well) return to do some more art.
Vlado Krizan was not good I dislike his Gates of Death art almost as much as I dislike the book.
Robert Ball is acceptable and some of his art could easily be very good.
Eva Eskelinen was a real dissapointment and her cover of a cute flying thing and smiling cloud is way way to kiddy. That cover whouldn't look as out of place on a toddlers picture book as it does sitting next to Iain Mccaigs Deathtrap Dungeon. Sorry you are a good artist but the art is not FFs style.

[scouserob]

Secrets of Salamonis and Shadow of the Giants would have been my first picks if they had been included.

[vastariner]

Sept 1, 2023 10:21:22 GMT CharlesX said:

I defy a genius to make a bum-faced monster look good

[kieran]

Sept 1, 2023 12:48:21 GMT King Gillibran said:

Does anyone prefer any of the scholastic illustration sets to the 40th anniversary books' art?

I think an argument could be made for Caverns of the Snow Witch.

[hallucination]

Sept 1, 2023 9:47:58 GMT kieran said:

I think people can be a little harsh on the Scholastic illustrations … still better than the likes of Kevin Bulmer, Peter Andrew Jones and Nik Spender.

I take your point. There are some stinkers in the original range, for sure. And it’s easy to be harsh on the Scholastic illustrations as a set. But proportionately, there were many more good ones in the puffin series. A major sticking point is of course the switch from (what’s the term?) fantasy realism to a shaded-in, animated (cartoon/video game) style. It’s not necessarily that we are stuck in our ways - i enjoy, and i think i can recognise decent illustrations in a range of styles - but nor is unfair to grumble about the scholastic illustrations on stylistic grounds

[nathanh]

I only have Assassins and Storms from this list so I'm not really able to vote sensibly. I think Assassins is bad, but I quite like the interior art for Crystal of Storms, it seems to capture the vibe of the book rather well. I think it works better for that book than something with the "classic" FF style would, even though that style is more to my taste. The back cover of Storms is also really nice. The front cover is a disaster though, and put me off it for ages, which is a shame since it's a decent book that I enjoy reading.

[paperexplorer]

Sept 1, 2023 9:47:58 GMT kieran said:

I think people can be a little harsh on the Scholastic illustrations (or perhaps it's more accurate to say they look on the Puffin illustrations with rose-tinted glasses). Sure the Puffin books had their Iain McCaigs and Russ Nicholsons, but they also had plenty of underwhelming efforts. Robert Ball, Tazio Bettin and Mike McCarthy's works compare well to the average Puffin book and Eva Eskelinen and perhaps even Vlado Krizan are still better than the likes of Kevin Bulmer, Peter Andrew Jones and Nik Spender.

None of those names got 9 shots at it though, they were one and done.  If they did as many books as Krizan, maybe then they would deserve the same ire.

And I'm not saying Krizan is a bad artist by the way, just that he's bad for FF interior art. Some of his colour work is quite fantastic, for example:



But in FF the grey scale is ugly and he's not gone to the effort of details with images.  There is just no character or life to them.  I don't think straight up copying previous art is in his favour either.

[sylas]

Here's an example of how the Scholastic art stinks. One lacks any character, imagination or even skill to produce, while the original shows great detail, drama and personality. But aside from how well each image is rendered, we can see that the Vlado (or anyone working for Scholastic) has not read the book at all. It's a straight rehash of the original and not a very good one at that. I'm surprised it isn't plagiarism at this point. Even then, there's still one further nail in the coffin in that the original image depicts an extremely important detail that Vlado has completely ignored. The rhino-man on the left is Old Twenty-Nine, a character identified by his number and one you can interact with allowing you to turn to a secret section of the book. Since the Scholastic art missed this, there's no way a new reader will ever get to read those secret sections due to the link being gone. So not only is the art terrible to behold, it also destroys the intent of the original, and that is unforgivable.

[a moderator]

The last couple of posts make me wish I could give negative votes.

[evilwizard]

Sept 1, 2023 8:19:02 GMT CharlesX said:

I hope this doesn't sound homophobic, but

As you felt the need to mention it, it does.

[evilwizard]

Sept 3, 2023 0:07:03 GMT sylas said:

View AttachmentView Attachment
Here's an example of how the Scholastic art stinks. One lacks any character, imagination or even skill to produce, while the original shows great detail, drama and personality. But aside from how well each image is rendered, we can see that the Vlado (or anyone working for Scholastic) has not read the book at all. It's a straight rehash of the original and not a very good one at that. I'm surprised it isn't plagiarism at this point. Even then, there's still one further nail in the coffin in that the original image depicts an extremely important detail that Vlado has completely ignored. The rhino-man on the left is Old Twenty-Nine, a character identified by his number and one you can interact with allowing you to turn to a secret section of the book. Since the Scholastic art missed this, there's no way a new reader will ever get to read those secret sections due to the link being gone. So not only is the art terrible to behold, it also destroys the intent of the original, and that is unforgivable.

The artistic merits of the illustrator hired on the cheap aside, he has clearly been given instruction to take the original art and for the most part replicate it in a basic, watered down and reductive manner. So the fault lies with whoever gave the brief and decided to ignore any essential details that may be needed - so when the artist was told:, "opposite 329, copy the central skeleton", its not his fault if the helmet of the dead dwarf in the foreground said "TURN TO 399 AND ADD 1 TO WIN!" as he was told to ignore anything outside of the brief, and wasn't being paid enough to care.

The whole series is an utter shambles and I wouldn't be surprised if it quietly vanishes next year...

[CharlesX]

Sept 3, 2023 0:46:38 GMT evilwizard said:

The whole series is an utter shambles and I wouldn't be surprised if it quietly vanishes next year...

Even if the series might not be on the top of the game and the market is 'deeply niche' instead of 'quite popular', I've a feeling Jackson and Livingstone will continue to write FF because they love doing so - Sir Ian has written a lot, Jackson clearly put effort into SOS, and even Scholastic have raised their game about artwork.

   In specific reference to the art - you can see the rhino-man has number 3, so presumably the artist would have been very willing to write an alternate number if he had been told. Just like the room with the cape, which the text mentions has no handle but the artist didn't know.

[sylas]

Sept 3, 2023 8:48:02 GMT CharlesX said:

Sept 3, 2023 0:46:38 GMT evilwizard said:

The whole series is an utter shambles and I wouldn't be surprised if it quietly vanishes next year...

Even if the series might not be on the top of the game and the market is 'deeply niche' instead of 'quite popular', I've a feeling Jackson and Livingstone will continue to write FF because they love doing so - Sir Ian has written a lot, Jackson clearly put effort into SOS, and even Scholastic have raised their game about artwork.

   In specific reference to the art - you can see the rhino-man has number 3, so presumably the artist would have been very willing to write an alternate number if he had been told. Just like the room with the cape, which the text mentions has no handle but the artist didn't know.

About Scholastic raising their game about the artwork, this was only made possible due to Ian putting pressure on them for improvement as Ian wasn't happy with the grayscale art either. IIRC Ian said at the Fest that he 'enforced the matter' (or something to that extent) and we got what we got for the 2 new books. So bravo to Ian! Granted, if the series had started like that it would've been great but at least we seem to be heading in the right direction now.

[evilwizard]

There are some individual pieces of the Scholastic artwork that would be good if they weren't poor imitations of the original artwork, though he exception to this is Caverns of the Snow Witch, where the art is far better than the original. The Yeti in particular is a good example of this as it looks like a large, threatening, violent monster and not a confused cuddly toy.

I do like the art in Crystal of Storms but the style doesn't really fit fighting fantasy, it is more suited to poster art and more esoteric works. If Black Vein Prophecy and The Crimson Tide were ever reprinted though, I'd quite like to see that artists take on their art.