Gorgeous Ultima Artwork by Lee Macleod (Update: Runes of Virtue II!)
Artist Lee Macleod was responsible for creating some of the beautiful and distinctive covers for the Ultima games released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super NES, and Gameboy system. He has also produced countless iconic Hollywood posters and video game box covers over the years, but previously reproductions of his work could only be obtained through a series of small collectible cards released back in the 90s (although still readily available on Ebay).
He has been kind enough to place high quality scans of some of his original artwork on his website for public perusal, specifically the covers for Ultima IV for the NES and Ultima VI for the SNES.
They can be found on his website here. I’m sure astute readers will also recognize some of the other video game artwork from his site.
It’s really gorgeous work, and without the Ultima titles and stickers embedded on the art, it really holds its own.
Lee Macleod has in the past stated he might be willing to share similar quality scans of his artwork for Ultima V and Runes of Virtue, but sadly time has not yet allowed him to do this.
So Ultima fans and lovers of video game artwork, go! Check it out!
The First Age of Update: Lee Macleod has been kind enough to allow us to host the high quality scans of some of his original artwork on his website for public perusal, specifically the covers for Ultima IV for the NES and Ultima VI for the SNES.
As an extra special added bonus, he has even created high quality scans of the original artwork from the covers of Ultima V for the NES and Runes of Virtue I in rather spectacular 1200×1800 glory!
Take a look at this great work, for we are all indebted to his kindness providing these images for Ultima Aiera.
It’s really gorgeous work, and without the Ultima titles and stickers embedded on the art, it really holds its own. I’ve personally always loved the cover for Ultima V, since I suffered so much at the hands of the Shadowlords’ evil, I can glory in their ultimate destruction.
So Ultima fans and lovers of video game artwork, go! Check it out!
Revenge of the Update: Lee Macleod has donated one additional piece of artwork, this one from Runes of Virtue II! The man’s generosity is quite overwhelming, no? You can find the new piece in the gallery.
Updatodus: GameBanshee sends some link love Aiera’s way.
Nice artwork, but Lee needs to ramp up the DPI a bit. As much as I like 8-bit style graphics, I won’t be hanging any of those images on my wall without a resolution upgrade.
Many artists make a point of not keeping super-high-res copies of their works online. Not all, but many.
Kind of hard to have people order prints when you give something poster-sized away for free!
No real companies would just rip off some artwork and sell it, printed or otherwise. Seems more like paranoia or a lack of caring about rephotographing the prints or originals as he has them and publishing them online.
The pics on the site were unusually low-resolution. Even 1920×1080 snippets of the originals wouldn’t be fit for print, but would be great for wallpapers. I’d offer noncommercial use for medium-res web images and commercial use for the “super-high-res” versions. Lee’s file “Avatar.jpg” with the blue serpent is 378×549.
“No real companies would just rip off some artwork and sell it, printed or otherwise.”
True, but many printing companies (such as the ones I use for my graphics LLC) will print anything from any file you send them, even if it’s blatantly someone else’s IP. So while no one’s going to steal the image, print posters, and sell them, individuals can easily have their own prints made.
If you check Ebay, there’s some guy on there who is constantly selling T-shirts emblazoned with old Origin titles. Even right now, there’s a 2400 ad T-shirt, which he kind of sort of vaguely hints is an Origin original. Regardless, it’s illegal.
There has also been people who have used box scans from very kind members of out community to try to sell Ultima fakes on Ebay.
Still, this artwork is cool, and I want to share it, and I’m glad Mr. MacLeod does as well.
As an added note, more images are coming soon, thanks to Mr. Macleod’s gracious nature.
Links is coming up 404 here
Sorry about that, I’m kind of new to the whole posting updates thing. I fixed the links, so they all work correctly now. Now to do something about that featured image. Don’t know what the problem there is.
@RUSTICDRAGON I agree with that. What I think is that not much business would be lost from people paying to print images they downloaded online. Some people, such as myself do that occasionally, but it has to be pretty rare comparatively. If a large percentage of his customers would pay Kinkos to print the image they downloaded rather than just ordering a print from the artist I’d be surprised.
@DUNGY Good points too. For me, downloading or scanning Ultima artwork and making T-shirt prints is pretty awesome. Selling them is questionable depending on the circumstances. Giving them away, or just charging for the shirt and labor but nothing extra for the brand might squeak by, but gouging people with someone else’s IP is just dirty. Fair use, fan media distributions and outright exploitation of the IP holders are very different things.
What’s illegal isn’t too important to me, as the laws have been (and are) pretty insane. God’s law is one thing, but man’s law is usually sloppy, unfair, shortsighted, arbitrary and ever changing.
If I wanted a piece of quality artwork I’d make sure I had a high-res source image or ordered a physical package from the distributor. At 300 DPI a small, letterboxed 8.5″ x 11″ print would be 3300p x 2550p. Imagine the file sizes of properly imaged works. Such small images, while better than nothing, should have higher-resolution counterparts on the site for monitor viewing at least. Sell the higher-res files and the physical prints.
That ebay guy must be pretty handsome and smart. That sounds like a really amazing business plan. It makes me want to buy a t-shirt from him right now.
Yeah, talk about a niche audience. Guess he’s riding the whole G4-style “nerd is cool” theme.
I would really love to have some of these pics as a desktop wallpapers. Come On Lee, do the community a favor 😉
You can probably pretty easily make your own wallpaper from the 3 high res images, although I think Ultima VI would be my favorite one. Mr. MacLeod has already gone well above the line of duty in his contributions!
It was well above the line of duty. A safer bet would have been 320×200 at 8 bpp. Then we could color-cycle the water, full-screen.
I might try assemble all the various images, plus others from his site, into a desktop-worthy collage.
You know, with all my spare time that I have.