Jan 23
Click for full imageRaoul Comments: Hey Tag Wizard! Do you think there are “anatomical issues” with Stumpy, the One-Legged Sidekick?
Published 2007
(Average: 8.31 out of 10)
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Raoul Comments: Hey Tag Wizard! Do you think there are “anatomical issues” with Stumpy, the One-Legged Sidekick?
Published 2007
(Average: 8.31 out of 10)Loading...
(10.00 out of 10) (9.27 out of 10) (9.21 out of 10) (9.03 out of 10) (9.00 out of 10) (9.00 out of 10) (8.97 out of 10) (8.96 out of 10) (8.95 out of 10) (8.95 out of 10)
January 23rd, 2017 at 2:03 pm
Bad Christ! I’m assuming this dream of mine was a nightmare, one of those “sit bolt upright in bed staring straight ahead” things?
January 23rd, 2017 at 2:13 pm
I believe your unknown artist is Cecilia Giménez
January 23rd, 2017 at 2:33 pm
Do dragons dream of tasty snacks?
January 23rd, 2017 at 3:34 pm
Join Plaid Cymru today!
January 23rd, 2017 at 3:36 pm
The Welsh Tourist Board rejected both this artwork and the slogan ‘It must be something in the water’.
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:07 pm
Dude in front is looking pretty smug for a half melted action figure.
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:21 pm
There’s a fine line between vague and creepy… and that title stands on it like a circus artist on a wire.
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:31 pm
I think whoever drew this cover failed to pass their high school art class. This is just plain bad.
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:52 pm
So is Stumpy supposed to be some sort of dwarf/hobbit/two-thirds-scale-human? At first I thought he was just five feet behind the other two and there was a bad perspective problem with black-robe’s arm, but that seems a little too much to be true.
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:56 pm
This cover starts to fall together for me if I imagine Stumpy, not as a one-legged sidekick, but as a one-legged ventriloquist’s dummy, somehow impaled on melt-face’s arm. Then my imagination has something to go on, as I realize further, from the rendering of the mouths, that he’s not the ventriloquist, she is. Now the question is: what’s the dummy actually saying?
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:59 pm
It’s just a jump to the left
And stagger back to the right
You put your hands on your hip
And pull your knee in tight
But it’s the bloody dragon
With the damaged brain…
January 23rd, 2017 at 5:17 pm
Upon closer examination I believe Stumpy is being depicted as walking and his right leg is behind his left leg as he strides forward. So add a “perspective problem” tag to this hot mess.
January 23rd, 2017 at 5:55 pm
I tried to Google “Brad Crist” and it came back with “Do you mean Bread Crust ?”
January 23rd, 2017 at 5:59 pm
Let’s Meet the Author
January 23rd, 2017 at 6:17 pm
@Alice – It’s autobiographical. Stumpy is suffering from bi-pedal disorder.
January 23rd, 2017 at 6:20 pm
@Alice: I read that when I was trying to find a name for the artist and decided not to use a lot of the smart-alec comments I had planned about the author.
Unless he painted this.
But a story about being stuck inside D&D might work: sort of like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5EeeL2U1E (See, the artwork COULD have been worse)
January 23rd, 2017 at 6:29 pm
@Tat Wood—kudos for sensibility, but honestly, just to critique the writing, I think Stumpy wrote that “Meet the Author” blurb. It is quite badly written. Hope the novel had an “editor.”
January 23rd, 2017 at 6:35 pm
@B’mancer: did the search for Bread Crust turn up anything substantive about the artist?
January 23rd, 2017 at 6:45 pm
@B.Chiclitz: from their website, Trafford appears to be a fairly no-frills self-publishing imprint, specialising in books for schoolkids. Editors, beta-readers and in-house artists seem to count as ‘frills’.
January 23rd, 2017 at 6:48 pm
Lets do the gimp walk again? Red dragon looks traced off the cover of the first edition AD&D Monster Manual.
January 23rd, 2017 at 8:31 pm
The authorized sequel to Yeast Lords aka Brutus and Baalzak.
January 23rd, 2017 at 9:46 pm
This would make a killer tattoo.
January 23rd, 2017 at 10:21 pm
Someone’s nads have definitely gone.
January 23rd, 2017 at 11:27 pm
@RayP: your dream, our fantasy. 😛
January 24th, 2017 at 12:30 am
Okay, first off, I don’t understand the title at all — mightn’t it work better the other way around?
Secondly, before someone huffs in here, we’re not making fun of the author (it’s good to hear he’s recovering), but the artist, who presumably has no excuse for this.
Is Stumpy leaning on Black Robe’s arm to keep from falling over? (He does have two legs, as @Raoul said — perspective problems)
On the positive side: the dragon’s well-enough done that we know what it is, the mountains and clouds are naive but workmanlike, the woman’s completely covered and doesn’t have giant bazooms, there are no explosions, and the font is neither horrific nor blending into the background.
So, considering the money put into this one, plus no years of art school, this is actually less terrible per dollar than anything BAEN!
January 24th, 2017 at 3:33 am
@GSS noob – I also would never tear down someone and their struggles; I think we all agree on that.
I still have to wonder if the guy on the right is a prisoner…he seems to have his hands tied behind him.
Speaking of which…given that no one in this trio seems aware of the dragon zeroing in on the group, perhaps we should warn them with a nice “BEHIND YOU!” What do you think, Tag Wizard?
January 24th, 2017 at 4:14 am
@HBW – I can’t figure out if Hoodie is behind Stumpy or even if the dragon is in the background or foreground. Oh hell. Something’s got to be behind something here. Maybe all four are BEHIND YOU!
January 24th, 2017 at 7:20 am
I’m relatively certain the dragon is behind the others. And at least the woman’s staff and hand are behind Hoodie.
Stumpy, I dunno — he may be from another universe which has different laws of perspective than we do. Maybe he’s very short and standing on a large rock next to Hoodie, or maybe Hoodie’s face is like that from being so close to a violation of the laws of physics.
January 24th, 2017 at 12:01 pm
The Ghost of Frank Herbert was eternally grateful that they left his name of the novelization of the the Dune film.
January 24th, 2017 at 3:20 pm
I’d love to have a snappy comment, but sweet jeebus – that’s simply the worst art I’ve seen on anything in a long time. Must have been a small publishing house with Cousin Merle as the in-house artist.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:47 am
Someone should have told them you do not HAVE to have a full pictorial cover. OTOH who knows what a mess they would have made of something abstract or of poster fonts.
January 26th, 2017 at 8:37 am
@GSS noob.
Secondly, before someone huffs in here, we’re not making fun of the author (it’s good to hear he’s recovering), but the artist, who presumably has no excuse for this.
I hate to break this to you, but the odds that they’re one and the same are pretty darned good…
On the positive side: the dragon’s well-enough done that we know what it is, the mountains and clouds are naive but workmanlike, the woman’s completely covered and doesn’t have giant bazooms, there are no explosions, and the font is neither horrific nor blending into the background.
So, considering the money put into this one, plus no years of art school, this is actually less terrible per dollar than anything BAEN!
Blasphemy! BAEN is most of the reason this site exists!
January 26th, 2017 at 8:03 pm
@Rachel J: Oh, I’m as in favor of BAEN! covers being displayed here as the next gal — all the stuff I submitted a month ago was BAEN!
I’m just saying, whoever did this cover had a much better cost/GSS-worthy ratio than BAEN! does. They spent a lot less and still managed to make it here. And they did it with more original stuff; that woman appears to be over 21.
By the way, in my head, I hear it as:
BAEN! explosion sound
January 27th, 2017 at 1:03 am
I tasked our crack GSS staff to come up with the actual cover artist for Your Dream, Our Fantasy. Based on photographic evidence of the credits for the book, he appears to be Ken Streiff, life long friend of author Brad Crist. This cover art shall no longer be buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Artist.
March 28th, 2017 at 12:11 am
@TW: Ta! The URL in the credits is still active and Mr. Streiff is not only a continuing but improving artist. Fight, Ken! For everlasting peace!
March 28th, 2017 at 12:27 am
Tomb of horrors more like. It should be an Alan Smithee production.
March 28th, 2017 at 4:48 pm
@dswbt: improving, maybe, but I think he needs to stay away from human faces.
March 30th, 2017 at 3:15 am
Okay, Ken’s doing well with scenery and buildings and other inanimate objects, but he still can’t paint people’s faces worth a darn. The one titled “Brothers” is just about as horrific with the faces as this is.
Stick to still lifes and landscapes, Ken.
May 14th, 2017 at 9:44 pm
She is more fantasy than reality, appears he is thinking about her. He should concentrate on his beautiful/precious real life. The question is why she is in his mind?