Found on a Floppy: Clyde Caldwell Dragonlance Artwork
Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2019 5:49 pm
Upon my arrival home from a long family campout at Fort Worden (an epic spot), I was greeted with some large boxes on my doorstep. They contained some Amiga objects pulled from an estate sale in Wisconsin, after the original owner had passed away. I'll speak more about what's in those boxes at a later date.
But as is my way, my attention first went to the disks. I knew I was getting a small loose stack, half of which were originals. But to be honest, I'm often much more interested (and surprised) by what I find on the disks with hand-written labels.
This stack did not disappoint.
On one disk there was a label of "Raytraced Objects". Curious, I popped it in. I was excited to see the program "View ILBM" was included. This always means there's some potentially cool images to be found. And before I dove into the Raytraced images, I saw that there were two image files in the root, sort of thrown in there.
One was titled "Legends".
Here it is:
This image was used on a TSR Dragonlance-branded calendar in 1987.
My guess is someone scanned that calendar and cropped off the borders and logo. I've found an image of the calendar, and you can see parts of the painting are indeed missing especially along the bottom.
Apparently this image was also reused for a jigsaw puzzle that same year (of course!) but oddly no AD&D module or game art that I can tell.
When I first discovered this image on the floppy disk I had no idea where it came from. I then pinged my brother, who has been into D&D longer than anyone I've ever known. He's still an active DM, if that helps, and is two years older than I am. Back in the 1980s I'd spend all of my money on video games. My brother spent all of his on D&D related books, lead figurines and gaming supplies.
In any case, within two minutes he had the answer. I asked him how he figured it out so fast.
Garth:
He continued:
But as is my way, my attention first went to the disks. I knew I was getting a small loose stack, half of which were originals. But to be honest, I'm often much more interested (and surprised) by what I find on the disks with hand-written labels.
This stack did not disappoint.
On one disk there was a label of "Raytraced Objects". Curious, I popped it in. I was excited to see the program "View ILBM" was included. This always means there's some potentially cool images to be found. And before I dove into the Raytraced images, I saw that there were two image files in the root, sort of thrown in there.
One was titled "Legends".
Here it is:
- Legends, by Clyde Caldwell (1987)
- Original image of the calendar cover design from 1987.
- Jigsaw puzzle box of the same "Legends" art.
In any case, within two minutes he had the answer. I asked him how he figured it out so fast.
Garth:
I then followed his lead and discovered that in Hungary of all places the image had been used as cover art for a novel.i have the power of google. i thought it was a video game cover, but didn’t find it. then realized it must be Raistlin, then the kender, and the calendar popped up as i narrowed the search.
He continued:
Pretty crazy! What a trip to find this on a disk. The ray-traced images in today's terms were very crude. But this right here is a gem to preserve, and admire.if it was in a calendar it was sure to have been used in other places prior to that — a novel cover or a module cover, or even a dragon magazine cover. they reused images for sure.
