Black Library fiction The End and the Death - Volume III

[Noserenda]

Feels like they are getting worse with each iteration to me, the Adrian Smith original is still the best, well, except Horus, but then he somehow always looks bad in every version! :D 

[Nagashsnee]

Meh, define an entire era of 40k art this will not. Its fine, perfectly fine, wish they would have gone with wounded emperor just placed on the throne tho. 

[SalamandersBro]

55 minutes ago, Petitioner's City said:

I think this is my second favourite of Roberts's three extant versions of the scene

 

Favourite:

 

 

Second:

 

 

Third:

 

My wife always teases me about how much excess or over done the armors are. We both chuckle. I love these 3 pics. They represent that awesomely. 

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

46 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Feels like they are getting worse with each iteration to me, the Adrian Smith original is still the best, well, except Horus, but then he somehow always looks bad in every version! :D 

 

Are you sure, you mean the original one? I agree that Emp's posing (like the whole arrangement of the scene) is better than the static neo-Smith or overly dynamic BL, but come on - it's not only Horus, just look at poor Sang and his receding hairline!

 

 

[Noserenda]

23 minutes ago, Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla said:

 

Are you sure, you mean the original one? I agree that Emp's posing (like the whole arrangement of the scene) is better than the static neo-Smith or overly dynamic BL, but come on - it's not only Horus, just look at poor Sang and his receding hairline!

 

 

Im sure nobody looks their best after a few months of war and a good choking from dadd-uh-their brother :P 

I do prefer the scattered white feathers, but its nice to see him :D 

[Dornfist]

2 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

And we have a cover.

 

It's fine. Nothing spectacular really. I kind of prefer the older ones especially dead Sangy in the frame. I do love the space battle and how jacked up Terra looks like though.

[skylerboodie]

As the other four versions are all here, it seems a shame not to include Adrian Smith's other one too, for ease of comparison purposes:

[Kastor Krieg]

The feathers. The feathers...

[N1SB]

Does anyone know if there was a Digital Wallpaper for The End and the Death Vol. 1 please?  Like a bigger version of this without the Warhammer Community watermark?

 

 

I searched, didn't notice an actual Digital Wallpaper for this or Volume II either.  Just curious, really like this artwork for some reason.

[Aramis K]

What's the lore on those ship designs out the window? 

I associate those 'chaos' design, the wider arrowhead shape, with Gothic - are they crusade or heresy standard and the ram prow imperial designs the newer ones?

[Cactus]

53 minutes ago, Aramis K said:

What's the lore on those ship designs out the window? 

I associate those 'chaos' design, the wider arrowhead shape, with Gothic - are they crusade or heresy standard and the ram prow imperial designs the newer ones?

They're obviously based on the Imperial and Chaos cruiser models from Battlefleet Gothic. Which makes them terribly anachronistic for this period but hey-ho. They'll be covered by the back cover blurb anyway. I'm not going to rag on Neil Roberts for not going the extra mile and designing some new ships. He might not have that much artistic freedom anyway.

[Nephaston]

3 hours ago, skylerboodie said:

As the other four versions are all here, it seems a shame not to include Adrian Smith's other one too, for ease of comparison purposes:

It's certainly a classic but I can't unsee the weird angle of Big Es right leg, especially once you consider how long those steps need to be for his left foot to have enough space.

So the right foot is not only three steps up, but also two full step lengths away and tilted so it looks like its pushed against the incline of the background stairs adding to its wonkyness.

[Taliesin]

6 hours ago, Petitioner's City said:

I think this is my second favourite of Roberts's three extant versions of the scene

 

Favourite:

 

 

Second:

 

 

Third:

 

 

 

Gotta agree that first one remains the best one. Just looks excellent , nothing wrong with it and much better than the other renditions.

 

 

3 hours ago, N1SB said:

Does anyone know if there was a Digital Wallpaper for The End and the Death Vol. 1 please?  Like a bigger version of this without the Warhammer Community watermark?

 

 

I searched, didn't notice an actual Digital Wallpaper for this or Volume II either.  Just curious, really like this artwork for some reason.

 

Now this one, the cover for volume 1, is superb. I also really like the cover for the second one.

 

38 minutes ago, Nephaston said:

It's certainly a classic but I can't unsee the weird angle of Big Es right leg, especially once you consider how long those steps need to be for his left foot to have enough space.

So the right foot is not only three steps up, but also two full step lengths away and tilted so it looks like its pushed against the incline of the background stairs adding to its wonkyness.

 

Yeah that Adrian Smith one, not a fan, I actually prefer today's cover to that one.

 

[Matcap86]

Hmn not enthused about this one. Looks way too cartoony for me.

[Vogon]

14 hours ago, Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla said:

 

Are you sure, you mean the original one? I agree that Emp's posing (like the whole arrangement of the scene) is better than the static neo-Smith or overly dynamic BL, but come on - it's not only Horus, just look at poor Sang and his receding hairline!

 

 

 

This one is my favourite too. It may not be technically as good as later versions but for me it defined the era of my starting the hobby and the direction that Games Workshop took the background to the whole universe that still impacts the game today.

A pivotal art piece in my book.

I still have the White Dwarf this first appeared in together with the story of the end. 

 

Cheers

 

Vogon 

[Urauloth]

14 hours ago, Aramis K said:

What's the lore on those ship designs out the window? 

I associate those 'chaos' design, the wider arrowhead shape, with Gothic - are they crusade or heresy standard and the ram prow imperial designs the newer ones?

As far as we know both designs go back to the Great Crusade (at least; they probably have Dark Age origins) as do the designs while look like a mix of the two like the grand cruisers that briefly existed in BFG. Different forges and shipyards made different classes, but all the legions and expeditionary fleets used both the broad design types as well as the ones that ended up getting restricted to Astartes chapters when the Codex was written.

Essentially, thousands of years later, we only see one variety in Imperial service - the slower kind with heavy forward armour and big broadside guns, which suits post-Heresy Imperial Navy doctrine.

(The lore on this has changed or become fuzzy on this over the years, like a lot of things. The BFG rulebook dated a lot of the ship classes in it back to M32 at the earliest, but they show up in Crusade and Heresy era lore later, so that must have been retconned.)

[SpecialIssue]

None of these pics are supposed to be 100% accurate representations of what these two looked like at their final encounter - the inclusion of the other soldiers in the background / around them I think is pretty indicative of that. Rather they are supposed to be impressionist, seen as almost in-universe artwork of the encounter in my eye. John Blanche's work stands as the pinnacle of this, evoking the scribbled, messy mania of a psychic vision of an astropath across lightyears of space and time. W40k is not a clean, small, or bright scifi universe, and its artwork needs to reflect this character.

 

And those themes need to bleed into this scene, and its weight in this universe. Does the art evoke the gothic grandeur of the final encounter between these two gods?

 

I don't think I am looking for action, or movement, or even clarity in the picture, or what their faces even look like. That all brings it down to mortal level, not myth and legend. What I am looking for is the air of gothic grandeur, and Adrian Smith's (like all his pieces) hits these notes the hardest for me.

 

The Emperor and Horus look almost inhuman, unknowable, exaggerated. The darker, rich colours evokes a feelings similar to viewing old paintings done in the styles of baroque or romanticism. Baroque and gothic, are both characterized with lots of intricate detail, and Smith always include almost overwhelming detail on the characters and focus of his images that is picked out starkly and with max contrast, while the backgrounds are relatively simple or flat. It fits the vision, themes and culture of 40k.

 

I think the newer images have too much movement, the wrong colouring and detail to evoke that air of gravitas I would like in an image of Horus and the Emperor. Like all 40k images, I think they would do much better in perhaps greyscale, but their lines and action-orientation still does not lend itself well to gothic grandeur.

[sarabando]

18 hours ago, skylerboodie said:

As the other four versions are all here, it seems a shame not to include Adrian Smith's other one too, for ease of comparison purposes:

this is still my favorite, i had the poster on my wall which came from a white dwarf. i remember the hours we spent here on BnC with the wildest theories about how the big E was the one who killed hawk boy, the angle the puncture wound the convenient blood removing flame sword. 

 

what an era,.

[Nephaston]

5 hours ago, sarabando said:

this is still my favorite, i had the poster on my wall which came from a white dwarf. i remember the hours we spent here on BnC with the wildest theories about how the big E was the one who killed hawk boy, the angle the puncture wound the convenient blood removing flame sword. 

 

what an era,.

But there is blood on Horus' claw. Granted it's hard to see, but the front most claw (the pinky) has red streaks on it.

[DukeLeto69]

 

This IMO is THE definitive piece of art depicting this scene.

[ThePenitentOne]

My fave:

 

 

[beefeb]

On 8/9/2023 at 4:47 PM, skylerboodie said:

As the other four versions are all here, it seems a shame not to include Adrian Smith's other one too, for ease of comparison purposes:

 

 

This was always my favourite piece of art for the HH showdown.  The Emps pose is perfect!

[Bouargh]

On 8/9/2023 at 8:59 PM, Cactus said:

They're obviously based on the Imperial and Chaos cruiser models from Battlefleet Gothic. Which makes them terribly anachronistic for this period but hey-ho. They'll be covered by the back cover blurb anyway. I'm not going to rag on Neil Roberts for not going the extra mile and designing some new ships. He might not have that much artistic freedom anyway.

 

Not really: as the genuine illustration is predating Battlefleet gothic foryears, the tights and relations with lore are to be looked for earlier. Iwould seay with the 1990´s Spacefleet game. Then the artist´s interpretation criterias apply to explain the way the twisted nature of chaos was reflected for the line of these ships... 

 

[Blood Angel Scout]

I think if you swap Sanguinius and the Emperor on the Vol 2 and 3 covers, the poses would look more natural to the characters. 

 

Good to see all the images for comparison sake, even the diorama - don't know how long I spent looking at the artwork, the diorama and the Citadel catalogues trying to work out what bits were used!

 

On the images, the Adrian Smith colour version is iconic though the one Dukeleto69 posted is probably running a close second in my opinion. 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Blood Angel Scout
Missed a couple of words.

[spessmarine]

On 8/10/2023 at 4:45 PM, DukeLeto69 said:

 

This IMO is THE definitive piece of art depicting this scene.

 

The Smith one is a classic, but this one is pretty fantastic too.
Same artist made those other renditions above? Seems like the quoted one was a do it right timeline whereas the others were you've got a fifth of the time you want deal