Legends of the games industry: Roger Dean

I've always loved Dean. He was one of my biggest inspirations, in my own artwork[0].

I remember playing a game called ZPC, for Mac, that was illustrated by Brute![1] (A few old thrashers may remember his work).

It's not unusual for artists that are successful in one area, to try expanding to others.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidan_Hughes

I never even thought about the possibility that the t-shirt inside the box might not be my size. I was probably in my late teens, just left home at the time, such considerations were life-knowledge yet to be learned.

The T-Shirt was just the right size. I suspect the standard deviation for late-80's early-90's teen geek body type was smaller than one might expect today.

I loved this Sci Fi artwork ever since high school in the '70s.

I didn't know it from video games, but from the albums by the band Yes.

Especially Yes - Relayer. Spectacular futuristic images.

This inspired me to purchase the book, Views. This really expanded my understanding of his work. I especially loved his concepts of organic living spaces.

I had always wondered what happened to him, and I guess the answer is that he started working on video game art.

I've never seen any of that, but I wonder how well animation serves his orginal art. Especially in low resolution early games.

For any stamp collectors here, the Isle of Man Post Office [1] has just issued an official set of 6 Roger Dean and Rick Wakeman stamps [2]:

[1] https://iomstamps.com/collections/wakeman [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyqe679gqno

As my parents jokingly said to me, you buy vinyl records for the artwork not for the music.

Of course the music if you enjoy the band but the artwork is the centre piece. Some of the artwork is just magnificent.

Like pinball machine art. I love pinball machines just for the artwork.

A yes, Dean. I got to know his work through the Yes album covers he made, bought a book with his artwork and proceeded to copy the 'fallen planet shard sticking up through the clouds' on a large wall in my student room back in the 90's. I quite like the result, made with normal house paints, I do have a photo of it somewhere I think - back then making photos was a bit of a luxury, especially for a poor student. I wonder what the next person to occupy that room - above an old horse butcher's shop turned health-food place - did, probably painted or papered it over.

Wow, didn’t realise he created band artwork and the Tetris logo as well! I remember seeing a lot of his artwork back in the C64 days as a kid and that style always struck me - this was of course the era where the cover artwork was far superior to the game graphics. I think Psygnosis did some PC and PS1 games later as well? My memory is a bit hazier there.

Ah, Barbarian.. That was like the holy grail of the Atari ST scene back in the day.. TWO floppies, not just one! And it took a couple of hours each to download at 2400 baud.. (my family hated picking up the phone and hearing the modem screeches)...

I've definitely seen and played multiple of his games. Wow, trip through memory lane..

YEARS ago some of his paintings were on display somewhere in San Francisco -- Red Dragon and Blue Desert (ABWH) and maybe Relayer. So great to see up close and in person.

Went to visit their offices once in the early 90s, felt like I was somehow visiting the future. We still haven't got there yet.

Haha I remember that logo from the Destruction Derby series. Great fun. My brother and I played hours out of that one.

I still want to play the games whose graphics are as lovely as what is shown in Roger Dean's box art.

I always thought that the cover image for Terrorpods was stupid – it’s obvious that the image was made as an illustration of one of the final scenes of The War of the Worlds, and that someone just saw the image and made a game based on the image in order to have a cool image on the packaging; i.e. blatant shovelware tactics. (The game bears no similarity to The War of the Worlds.)