Keith Parkinson Tour/Tribute

[Nanyea the Wayward]

SAN DIEGO, CA., FEBRUARY 5, 2007 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, and Sigil Games Online announced today an exhibition with The Art Institutes to bring “The Masters of Fantasy Art – A Tribute to Keith Parkinson” to five major cities across America. The tour will showcase the artwork of seminal artist Keith Parkinson as well as Vanguard: Saga of Heroes™, his posthumous masterpiece. Beginning this month in San Francisco, the tour is scheduled to be on display at The Art Institutes galleries across the country.


“Our goal for ‘The Masters of Fantasy Art’ tour is to highlight the artistry that is integral to the creation of video games, as well as the influences of classical art on the industry as a whole,” said Laura Naviaux, Senior Brand Manager, at Sony Online Entertainment. “By showcasing Keith Parkinson’s work on the new Vanguard: Saga of Heroes online videogame and joining up with The Art Institute, we hope to raise the public’s awareness of computer and graphical arts as a discipline.”


About Keith Parkinson

Trained as a classical artist, Keith Parkinson created well-known fantasy art images and book covers serving as the hallmark art style for the fantasy genre. His early work included book covers for the top-selling Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Gamma World. He also painted covers for best-selling fantasy writers Terry Goodkind, Margaret Weis, and Terry Brooks. Turning toward technology, Keith began work in the video games industry creating artwork for the original EverQuest, an incredibly successful and genre-defining online role-playing game. He later joined Sigil Games Online working as art director to create the artistic vision behind Vanguard: Saga of Heroes before his death in 2005. For more information about Keith Parkinson, or to preview his paintings, log on to http://www.keithparkinson.com

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[Jinbas]

that first pic is absolutely breathtaking

[Brohg]

His Firiona Vie looks a million times better than any box art EQ has ever published.

[Tharkis]

*cough* Keith Parkinson did half of the eq boxes.

The quality art you get on a whole box with multiple characters and on individual characters by themselves is very different usually. Larry Elmore has done many of the more recent ones, from Omens on. Unfortunately SoE stopped comissioning the full wide-pannel spreads for their recent expansions, and at the same time seems to have shortened the amount of time available to get any art done. That said however, one of the very impressive things about the PoR box was the medium, and how Larry Elmore was able to paint the transistioning column of magic in the window like manner and such. Not easy at all for the medium the original was done on.

I own some of Larry's original tracing paper and pencil works from the Omens of war and Dragons of Norrath boxes, beautiful art. Absolutely stunning detail for a pencil drawing. There's more drawing tallent in Elmore's pinky than in my whole body.

The world lost a wonderful artist when Keith Parkinson passed away.

[Eloco]

[Nanyea the Wayward]

[Eloco]

[Huurgh]

Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson are both artist who became famous in the fantasy community during their time with then TSR. You might remember Elmore's work, even if not his name from the original DRAGONLANCE-Trilogy. He defined the look of those wellknown characters. Both also painted a lot of DRAGON Magazine's covers.

Elmore himself is also a fantastic painter of landscapes, if you like take a look at his and note how he painted the snow for example or the small details, like the pig at the giant's belt. Sorry small picture.

I also think most of us do not know his full spread piece for OOW found .

Or DON as seen

Or his DoD piece seen .

What I like most on Elmore art is the worn and used look he uses for his armor for example. A pretty good example of which you can see in the piece. Again note the snow, and small details, like the trail in the snow made by the butt of the Dragonlance.

He does not use it to the fullest with his EQ art, but I assume thats because SOE likes a clean heroic look for their art. Also his FV looks different like many noted, but should we expect or demand, that great artists copy the style of their friends?

Larry Elmore already survived a stroke thankfully, but he is older then Keith Parkinson, and the day he passes on as well will be a very sad day for myself, and I dare say for art too.

so if you are curious now, I invite you take a stroll through his and maybe discover old favorites and hopefully many new ones as well.


Does this post indicate what a fan boy I am?

[Cymril]