The Art of Ian Miller

The Art of Ian Miller

US $34.95 ($25.24 at Amazon)

160 pages

The Art of Ian Miller is a collection of Ian Miller's artwork stretching over a long period of time and includes over 300 pieces. It includes both color and black and white artwork. A quick way to get a glimpse of what's inside, is to do a google search like this one.

I can't tell you when I first encountered the art of Ian Miller. I know that it was either through the books of Steve Jackson's Sorcery, the tabletop game Warhammer, or reprints of H. P. Lovecraft's work that I found in used book stores. In my mind, I associate Ian Miller with imagery of 80s Warhammer and the chaos gods in particular.

The book starts off with an introduction by Brian Sibley before getting into the work itself. Broken up into different sections, some much smaller than others, it includes the following:

Maelstrom: A collection of images inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's story, "A Descent into the Maelstrom." This section is black and white.

Dragons: Ah, Ian Miller doing dragons. Some of these are images that hail from the Tolkein Bestiary. I found that fascinating as I don't associate Ian Miller with Tolkein, as opposed to say, Games Workshop. This includes black and white, as well as pen work in red and other colors.  The double page spread of what appears to be a phoenix surrounded by dragons is in full rich color and rewards multiple viewings with its numerous intricate details. 

Men, Monsters & Machines: A collection of a variety of pieces, many of them that look like they came straight from Warhammer. I say this because of the odd faces, leering and snarling on shields and helms.  There are a variety of styles here ranging from pen and ink to full color, including more work for the Lord of the Rings animation. 

Castles & Kingdoms: One of Ian's favorites is apparently the old Gormenghast Novels and he has several works of his take on the castles, as well as Arkham, the fictional city in Massachusetts. Another bit that comes through, is work he did for an animated feature by Ralph Bakshi called Wizards. Another bit that intrigued me as I knew nothing of Ian's involvement with Ralp or Wizards up to this point.

Dreams & Nightmares: To be honest, I'm a little confused as to what makes a piece fall into Dreams & Nightmares as opposed to Men, Monsters & Machines. Is it more of a dream like state? More of a "Well...", a gut feeling if you well? 

One of the problems is that for the double page spreads, the art doesn't handle it well because of the immense detail that Ian brings to his work. For example, the double page spread of Cthulhu on page 48-49? There's quite a bit not necessarily lost, but the flow is immensely interrupted.

Another problem? Despite the size of the book at 9.3 x 12.5, it's too small. This is because Ian is relentless in his use of lines for detail. You could easily have this book at twice the size and still spend hours studying one picture. His use of repetition and patterns is everywhere. 

For under $30, under $26 if you use the Amazon link, the art of Ian Miller can be yours to study.

For those already familiar with Ian, do you have a particular favorite? For those who already own it, any illustrations that are you quintessential Ian that are missing?

Ultimate Combat

This is just me poking some fun at Ultimate Combat. Recently in a Shackled City game which my friend Tom is running, my barbarian King was killed by a trap. Part of the actual problem was the bonuses when raged and when using a two handed weapon. My math skills were not putting all of the bonuses to their highest numbers.

Eeek!

So after King died and our NPC expert trapfinder died, one of my friends who is a maestro of making characters crafted for me a ninja. But no trapfinding skills. Still, it did inspire me to flip through Ultimate Combat myself.

Personally I think Wayne Reynolds is one of the better artists we have in the industry but this cover is terrible.

The samurai on the right facing his enemies, the yeti or what have you on the left semi-facing their enemies and the core fighter thinks that this is an episode of You Think You Can Dance just standing there in the middle of the page making the action too dense and adding nothing of value to it. Who is he looking at? His blades aren't in position to actual strike anything. Worse still, he has the flailing arms thing going on.

We all appreciated Wayne making Orcus have short stubby arms. I mean sure he was the demon prince of the undead but not only was he in the first 4e Monster Manual and therefore a punk, he also had short fat arms.

Fire giants also have this horrible genetic curse. Terrible. It's why their always so pissed off. Imagine never being able to wipe your backside with your stubby little arms? Anger management isn't going to do the trick.

Seriously man. Wayne needs to take one of those little sticky pads, write no backwards flailing arms on it, and then move on.

I also challenge Paizo, if you ever reprint Ultimate Combat, take the fighter out of the center of the picture. You'll have a stronger illustration with a moment of tense potential conflict instead of some moron busting his movies in between two warring forces.

Elric: The Balance Lost

Over at Comixology right now, 5/1/2013, they are having a sale on some Elric comics. I already have these in trade form but bought the electronic editions anyway. I figure I'm more likely to be by my tablet then by my collection anyway.

Reading them over again, I'm struck by how good the variant cover artist, Francesco Mattina is. The strength of his painting alone could make me want to run a Dungeon Crawl Classic or even support the new Luke Crane game on Kickstarter.

When looking for inspiration, don't forget the material you may already have read. Don't forget the images that inspired you. We live in a near golden age of visual medium that hosts images from modern art to those done hundreds of years ago. Don't allow inspiration to pass you by because you need those old styling again.

Another nice thing is how the writer is able to take different parts of the whole Million Spheres and other bits that Moorcock has woven about in numerous previous books and make them, if not into one seamless whole, into something that is passable. If you're a fan of the old Elric mythos and want to see The Three Who Are One again, this is a good sale for you.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Art

Dungeon Crawl Classics gets a lot of 'play' from the old Internets. It's already gone through a printing and two special edition covers. While offered a PDF for review purposes, I opted to wait until there was a sale as my reviewing patterns, thanks to my old job consisting of working seven days a week an an ill mother have converted to a new job that I'm still learning and a still as yet ill mother.

But a sale?  I figured that it probably wasn't going to get any less expensive than the GM's Day Sale. Ah, then I can just poke around when I want to and not have to worry about it. One of the things I did first was 'page' through the PDF.

Let me say that art is highly subjective. Some are going to love one specific type of artist over another, one specific type of style over another, and so on. Overall, the whole book feels like a 'retro' effort with some emphasis placed on modern design. I say some mind you.

In terms of art, the company wasn't afraid to use full page spreads which to me, is a good thing. The bad thing is that in going to 'capture' that old school feeling, it's all internally black and white. Not necessarily a bad thing but this isn't an inexpensive book. On the third hand, for a PDF, I wouldn't want a full color book. It's so armature when companies put out these PDF's that are saturated with color and would look great as a professionally printed book, but as a PDF take forever to open, flip between pages and even thinking about printing it makes you shudder and lose 1d6 SAN. If only there were a way to include multiple types of files so that you could have one for printing and one for on screen reading... hopefully one day... one day...

Anyway, I like the cover. It's a simple piece in that it's the lone adventurer getting ready to enter the unknown. Good use of color. The similarity between the cape and outline of the door makes some nice symmetry.

The first interior full color piece is also like a trip on acid but a pretty one. Full out dungeon crawl madness there brothers!The gods, one from law, chaos, and neutrality, waiting in the upper left hand corner as a group passes through some strange dungeon with massive worms devouring and attacking the party. Great stuff. I had to point out to one of my friends the neutral deity had a tentacle coming from his mouth. He thought maybe it represented something from the sea, while I was thinking of the Twain's mentors and the weird things they often had hidden under their cloaked hoods.

When it comes to those full page pieces, Mullen does several I enjoyed right off the bat. His style is of the 'old school' vibe. For example, there is a picture of a dragon that appears to be possessed by a demon burning a group of adventurers not with his fiery breath, but with fire shooting forth from his hand even as some strange type of winged minions wait for orders while a fighter type is commanding more soldiers into the fray.

Another great Mullen piece is a wizard among his patrons, or what I assume is a wizard among his patrons, those who grant him his dark powers. It's a great piece as all these strange and alien things of anathema wait on the cloaked stranger's words.

Another nice nodd to the old school bits are the various joke comics. Some feel that newer editions of Dungeons and Dragons take themselves too seriously. I can see it but I'm not quite so sure every book needs a Bigby's Back Scratcher bit in it. Here it works well because it's part of the genre they're trying to capture so when you see such jokes, they work.

Some bits though? Well, on one page talking about languages, you have this dark picture on top taking up about a quarter of the page and it's an intense looking situation but then on the bottom right hand corner you have a clear line illustration of some dude that looks like he's be the morning page delivering the news before getting a tomato in the face. It's distracting and cuts into the flow of the text even thought it's not a bad picture, it just doesn't 'jive' with the rest of the page in my opinion.

Another example is the table with the cleric information. We get a break down of the cleric names from first through fifth level, one for law, chaos, and neutral, and another one of these clear lined illustrations. It's already in a box separate from the rest of the text. There's already a table there. Would too much white space be a problem? Possibly. Maybe some more cleric names as opposed to random cleric?

But hey, speaking of old school art, one of the artists is Jim Holloway, a real old school artist whose works range all over the industry but include TSR. Jim does some great stuff here but, and this is going to sound weird, his art isn't necessarily 'old school' outside of it being well, original old school. If you compare him and Mullen for example, completely different styles and while both solid, I'd still say Mullen's is far more old school to my eye. Mind you for me it's not an issue but I can see someone whose knowledge of OSR is from forums wondering what's up with all the different styles of art.

Lastly, when discussing nods to old art, ranging from style and you know, actual artists of the time, there are also several homage images to the original book and its a nice nod to the AD&D you might have played once upon a time.

Now I just need to start reading the book eh?

And that's another impressive thing. There is a lot of art here. While I think the book could actually use some purging and removal of art to make it a cleaner looking book, especially on the old PDF side, if you don't like one particular style of art, there should be more than enough variety to keep you going through the book.

The Art of Jason Engle

So I'm painting a miniature that comes from the old company, Magnificent Egos. They didn't necessarily make a big splash but they had some great figures. Some excellent assassins.

 

 They were even doing miniatures for the d20 game Oathbound as well as Monte Cook's Iron Heroes. I'm a bit unsure about what happened to the company, but they became Valiant Miniatures and even went to a resin or plastic casting way before it became the in thing to do.

One of the artist they had on hand for the visuals included Jason Engle. While looking for an upclose of one of those assassin miniatures, I stumbled across his deviantART galley. I know art is highly subjective and if you don't like Jason's style, then his art gallery probably isn't going to move you much, but there are some great named scenes in there and some potential names for different things in the campaign.

Sadly, I did not find what as I was looking for, as Koyote, the second miniature here, the painted one, really only has that one painted example and while I could have searched a bit more or hunted down some other painted examples, I didn't want to spend a ton of time on something I was just doing to knock out a few more rogues in my collection.

Heck who doesn't love a place called the City of Twilight with such colorful characters eh?

Let's Talk About Kickstarters

I've back a few kickstarters so figure I'd pop out and talk about why, my impressions, and a few random rants.

It Came From The Stars:  This was the first one I did. I just asked if it's going to meet its initial completion date. Answer? No. Here's another kicker, I backed at at a level that's supposed to provide me with everything the company does this year. Uh... they haven't done anything. They're working on 'making it right' but this one sets off the 'vibes' detector. Still, it looks cool which is why I backed it in the first place and I've got some hope. The updates they have provided feature some great art and I like Pathfinder so here's hoping.

King For A Day: Jim has done a lot of great stuff. Toolbox is one of the best supplements out there period. He did a lot of good stuff in terms of what you get from the actual pledges. However, "I've been busy finishing freelance projects for clients who actually pay me (weird, I know) and as soon as those are put to bed (around end of this month), you'll get more updates from me, here." Uh... here's me being an ass on the internet. If you're going to treat a kickstarter like some part time get to it when you have time thing, then you really need to make that as clear as possible. Now mind you, it could just be Jim saying that he's working on some material and he doesn't mean it to sound like "that pay him" as opposed to the people on the kick who are you know, paying him but it just sounded off to me. This is part of the problem with the dreaded 'internets' where language isn't as clear as it could be. But again, Jim's done some great things and the hope is high again. Hell, he increased it from 200 to 300 pages!

Blackwater Gulch: Not the first miniature game I backed, which I'll get to in a minute but let me point out what seems to be a very 'real' thing to me. The guys doing the miniature games are doing a lot of communication with the crowds. They are showing 'real' progress of models, of painted models and have a lot of stuff going on. This one added a ton of things as they went through their levels and I'm impressed with what I've seen so far.

Bushido, The Ito: Okay, not a kickstarter and still in process but again, the miniature guys are showing a lot of movement very quickly. Lots of art and models being shown off here and the rewards have some quickly visible tangible effects. Good stuff so far.

Deepwars: The first miniature project I backed. I like a lot of the concepts and figure there are a lot of figures here that can pull double duty. One of the things that was impressive, is how well the company appears to be taking care of the backers from the initial pledge. Mine started off with three factions and got kicked up to another starter set when they hit one of their goals. In addition, like with the other miniature companies, a lot of previews, a lot of material coming out. Pretty sure this is going to be awesome.

Dwimmermount :I like a lot of stuff going into the product in terms of maps and play aids. Their bonus for various stretch goals were incredibly stingy in my opinion and the stretch goals were like double and triple the initial funding goals. Updates have not been frequent but they've been doing other stuff on Google + and I really haven't been paying too much attention.

Midgard Tales: This is just me but I wish there were more options for getting involved in Open Design without some of these levels charging you to ask for your ideas. I'm not into the whole scene as far as that goes. The product looks interesting and I'd like to buy it but working and having a real live keeps me out of deep involvement in these things. The guy behind this has been doing these before Kickstarter showed up so I'm sure that of all the RPG ones, this one is as close to a done deal as you can possibly get.

Tectonic Craft Studios: Another one of the early miniature supplements I backed. Lots of updates, lots of information, lots of visuals. Looks to be a good bang for the buck assuming it comes out. Pretty happy about this one again.

Order of the Stick: I backed this one for the unique PDFs as I already own most of the books with the exception being the collection from the days of Dragon magazine. One of the most successful kickstarters around.

Steampunk Musha:More Samurai but this time with some Steam Punk and hey, it's for Pathfinder. Looks like it's going to hit some impressive goals. It's another one on the 'good' side of stretch goals and rewarding those who back it. Too soon to see which way the wind is blowing here in terms of updates.

Adventurer, Conqueror, King Player's Companion:  I missed out on the initial book but heard a lot of good things about it so went in for the Companion level where I got the first book. Which I did. So hey, one of the first things I've gotten out of the Kickstarter projects eh? Looking forward to the book.

Recreating My Melnibonean Art: I'll be honest and that I supported this one out of pure nostalgia as I actually own the original Deities and Demigods. 'Nuff said.

Zombicide: Some fantastic perks for the buyers, blew through a ton of its stretch goals, is by a well known miniature shop, has had a ton of reviews and information. Again though, miniature based. I'm seeing a pattern here.

Overall most of the kickstarters were willing to cough up some decent wards. The Dwimmermount seems the least useful for that venue.

Miniature companies seem to provide a lot of updates of actual stuff getting done. I suppose with other written material its not as easy.

Updates after the kick starter tend to wind down. Companies should really work on reversing that trend cause it's much harder to get buy in and go, "Me sorry" then "Hey, remember how awesome I was at updating things around last time? I've learned a lot and its going to be better this time around!" People want to know where they're money went. They want to know what your doing. They want to know whats going on.

A sponsor should NEVER have to ask, "So... uh... where's the project" when the due date is going to hit. Rather, even if it's late, you need to be front and center and revise and update and offer people a refund right there and then.

Gee, it's not wonder I'm working ten hour days, six days a week eh? Damn you kickstarter!

The Art of Gerald Mendez

When looking at sources outside the European feel, one of the things that some people may feel are a trap in art, is the popular subjects. For example, there are many Mexican resteraunts that features artwork with Mayans and Aztecs on them. I've linked to a few of them on my Facebook page because they are great pieces, some of them actually having a Frank Fazzeta look to them.

This may mean though, that traditional fantasy is missing artist who have different heritage. To that I ponder why that matters though. If there are artists of various nationalities doing their things and making a living at it, why do they need to draw elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings? Why can't they enjoy their medium?

When looking at someone like Gerald Medez , you may find yourself thinking that he's already an artist doing work for Wizards of the Coast or other players. Some of his work would look right at home in the Player's Handbook or other resources.

But... and this gets back to my comments about keeping the recent Kickstarter for the Prismatic Art collection.... just because Gerald Mendez has a Hispanic background, does not make him an artist that doesn't practice cheesecake style art.

Which circles around to my opinion that having one art collection of non-sexualized women done by women is a great project and having another project of various art, not necessarily of Mexican Elves and African Dwarves, but art created by people of various ethnicity, is another project. Combining the two doesn't have to be an 'issue' but keeping the mission purpose, the focus, and the value of each type of art can be made more useful to those different applications.

Anyway, Gerald does some great illustration and if you're looking for some great pictures of various fantasy and modern and some interesting mash ups, you should check his web site out. Popeye says so!

Does Not Thinking Prismatc Art Collection Has a Purpose Make Me Racist?

I've backed several kickstarter projects. I'm always interested in seeing what's happening. So when I saw mention of Prismatic Art Collection by several people whose opinions I respect, I checked it out.

Hmmm.... it rubs me the wrong way. Mind you its already funded and it looks like there will be some great art that comes out of it but...

"In geek culture, there are plenty of Lukes, but not enough Landos or Leias. "

I'm not saying its an incorrect assumption. However, is it necessary to tackle both racism and sexism in one product? Maybe hitting one then the other with the appropriate group of artist might be the way?

Even more off to me though, is that when you look at the list of illustrators, while there are a lot of de womens, I'm not seeing a lot of diversity in other avenues. Sure, I see some that have the traditional Oriental Adventure styling art there with that Eastern Dragon sample and other bits but really, Samurai and other elements of the east are missing in geek culture? Uh... no. Let me be clear here, there are a lot of solid artist on that list. For example, Amy Houser. Kick ass artist. My concern isn't with the talent present.

But when you've got people who are not native to the culture telling you that there needs to be more of it, I raise an eyebrow.

And it could just be that I didn't page through each and every artist bio. It could be that 99.9% of the rest of the individuals aren't white.

But me? I get... annoyed when white people tell me how they're expanding the horizons. I remember some hub about DC comics and their portrayal of women and minorities. I recall some Internet backlash. I also don't recall anything being really done about it. Hell, I believe some of those heated titles are some of the best sellers. Still, it's something that I've discussed with blog masters like the lord of the Crom blog site who loves him some Red Sonja when talking about many of the visuals for Jirel, one of the first woman warriors of fantasy. She usually winds up in the cheese cake variety despite her armor and weapons as described. But it sells right? Ugh.

I remember 3rd edition had some buzz about trying to integrate more ethnicity into the character portraits and because it failed they took revenge on the fighter. Heaven forbid that say take Shango, whose an African god that's even made comic appearances (yeah Firestorm!) and make him part of the core pantheon. Perhaps even make the dreaded African Throwing Knives into something in the Player's Handbook as an Exotic Weapon? Perhaps a licensed Imaro setting? Nah, we'll just kill the fighter. That'll show 'em.

Comics and art about minorities and minorities as illustrated aren't going to solve the problem if the minorities themselves aren't the ones doing the production. I live in Chicago. If you want a city contract, regardless of ethnicity, creed, or ethos, you better have some pull and you better be ready to pull out all the stops. If that means calling racism into question then that's what happens. But it's keeping people working.

Anyone can draw minorities and women. If you want such art, and now maybe it doesn't meet this kick starter designers goals of what is already out there but I'd start with stuff like Imaro by Charles Saunders and with some of the links he has on Facebook, go from there.

Minority creators are more important than minority artwork.

Or am I out of my element here?

On another note, is it just Internet buzz? I had Aeshiba, Greek Africa, way back in the 80's. It was one of Gary Gygax's Greek Africa bits that was generic fantasy. I also had those Dragon magazines that had kits and monsters for 2nd edition. Hell, I own Nyambe.

But see, when you talk about stuff like Nyambe and all the 'good' of the setting, and it is a good setting, it's not such a seller that it could be supported. Last time I looked I don't even remember seeing a Pathfinder version. Is it more Internet noise? Where are the buyers?

Ditto for fantasy. Night Shade Books reprinted the first two books of Imaro and Charles went the Lulu route for the last two and some others besides. Good stuff but so different than the earlier material... it went from sword and sorcery to epic... anyway, I've already talked about those books on this blog so I'll refrain.

And I apologize for my terrible artwork but it's been about ten... maybe fifteen years since I took up a pencil in anything resembling art style and I have no Photoshop or other decent software to do the touch ups that this needs but I'm just saying, anyone can draw anything.

Meet AZUBUIKE or at 20000 Names would say, "An African name, meaning "he has much strength," from Ibo azu "many; very much," (a)bu "be, happen," and íke "strength." (Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria: English-Ibo, Ibo-English Dictionary, Thomas, 1914).
Azubuike Oliseh, a Nigerian soccer player. (Wiki) "

The Art of Ray Harryhausen by Ray Harryhaussen and Tony Dalton

Half-Priced Books continues to be a gold mine for the imagination. The Art of Ray Harryhausen was $14.99 and I had a coupon so it's overall price was embarrassingly low. On Amazon the sucker goes for $50 but they have a decent discount. The thing is though, the book I have was a stack of 'em so that tells me these are overstock sales.

Anyway, the book is filled to the brim with goodness. There are pictures of the various models Ray created, black and white illustrations, full color paintings, movie panels, and all sorts of awesome within.

This includes images that Ray gained his own inspiration from so you can see and compare and contrast the art styles.

There is so much majestic stuff here, it's hard not to emphasis it.

For example, let's start with the cover. An arabian adventurer fighting a skeleton warrior atop a crumbling stair well admists ruins while the clouds blow behind him. How about a charcoal and pencil illustration of the Hall of Zeus where a massive status of Zeus is surrounded by vast pillars and huge braizers light the temple. All this atop a dias where people walk up and down and look up at their god.

How about something a little more action based as King Kong, in front of a wooded fenced in village, is beating the crap out of a pride of lions, using one of them as a club by the tail, crushing another in his hands, and snarling his defiance at them. No bear baiting here!

There are dozens of great illustrations as well as details about various other bits in the book. It's well worth having on the shelf and well worth doing some internet searching if you're never heard of him before.

When Art Attacks

I'm certainly not saying that the two have any relation to each other, the one being a Frank piece and the other a more recent artist, but the pose certainly seems iconic in and of itself.

Berserk Illustrations file

It's difficult to tell from the tiny cover, linked from Amazon.com, but Kentarou Miura is a fantastic artist. I was hooked into Berserk through the anime. It ends in a... bad spot so to speak, and I wanted to know what the hell happened after the event.

The manga is where I decieded I'd find out. Thankfully, by this time, Dark Horse has picked up the license and was zipping them out fairly quickly.

For several years, I lived in Mount Prospect and we had a Mitsuwa market there. One of the asian stores was a bookstore that had manga and other bits in the original language, region free DVD players, and a ton of anime soundtracks.

Among those treasures was the Berserk Illustratons file. It's a large table sized book, larger than the Warriors and Warlords of Angus Mcbride, but in softcover. I can't remember how much I paid for it, but I was fascinated by it. Kentarou's art, much like George Perez of comic book fame, is meant for large screen viewing. He has a great sense of motion, of detail, and of control.

While many of the illustrations within are the same as the covers of the individual books, having them in the expanded size is nice. Some of them are also new to me and I'd never seen them before.

When I'm in the mood for something of the fantastic and the macarbe, if it's seeing the monstrous Zod in all his transformed glory looking like a fallen angel of beastial might, or sseing the evolution of Guts from a child soldier to a soldier to a slayer of evil, the Berserk Illustrations file is never far from my bookshelf.

Warriors & Warlords: The Art of Angus Mcbride

Art has always been a powerful motivator for me in terms of creative thinking. It has served as a shared medium among friends when I use an illustration to show something instead of explaining what something looks like.

Among those artists whose skills I find to tweak my particular taste, Angus McBride is right up there. I probably first saw his work, as many fantasy role players might have, in I.C.E.'s old Middle Earth line. Angus seemed to do a lot of work for I.C.E. back in the day, even covering their Rolemaster line with a series of great illustrations using the same characters for each cover.

The strength of the art, for me, is that it looks 'real'. While some artist like Wayne Reynolds are popular today, and they do pieces I enjoy, don't mistake that, I find that sometimes the art is so far from the subject matter that it makes it actually harder to relate to the art and the subject as opposed to easier.

When Angus illustrates two miles, the Latin term for warrior, and shows two French miles with mail hauberks and large Norman shield with spear and sword, he also includes a peasant on the side with an axe whose son is arming a hunting crossbow. In the background a bird flies easily while out at sea, gulls swarm around a boat. Some might find it too mundane, too earthly. However, perhaps due to some of my own roots as a fan of older sword and sorcery material, ranging from Conan and Fafrd, I'm okay with not every illustration being some crazy horned woman whose body couldn't exist in the real world due to the exaggerated pose.

The art of Angus is well worth a look, especially if you can find his fantasy based material. The only problem you might have though is that it appears some of it goes in and out of print. The Warriors and Warlords book for example? It's out of print. While it's not deep on details, it does have enough to speak the imagination as well. When players come up with terrible sounding names, a quick look through the historical section shows that we have such naming conventions as Alexander the Great, El Cid, Sala al Din Yusif ibn Ayyub known as The Victorious,  pr Sa;adom.  'Arthurian Age', the ship names Long Serpent or Iron Beard... these are real names. If they can exist, how silly is Rus the Red or something along those lines?

Anyway, if you're looking for inspiration or how things might have been and how they might have looked, The Art of Angus Mcbride should be right up there on your reading list.