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Post by thorswulf on Oct 30, 2010 15:41:47 GMT -6
Does anyone know when orcs in D&D became pig faced? I know DCS is the artist I associate with this image, and he probably drew the first ones I can remember. But when and how did this become the "official" depiction of an orc? I know later editions generally make them more human looking, but there is something compelling about an absurd pg faced critter with a bad attitude.... Figure manufacturers certainly had some broad interpretations based on popular art like the Brothers Hildebrandt, and the Bakshi version of Lord of the Rings. Anybody got a spin on this?
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Post by aldarron on Oct 30, 2010 16:34:10 GMT -6
My only think is, consciously or not, the idea came from the pig faced "soldiers" that served the wicked queen in disneys Sleeping beauty.
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Post by coffee on Oct 30, 2010 18:40:23 GMT -6
I think it happened with the illustration in the original Monster Manual. I don't know of any other discussion of it (but my knowledge of such things is hardly exhaustive...)
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Post by calithena on Oct 30, 2010 20:07:25 GMT -6
B2 back cover and 1e AD&D MM are my original sources for this.
In a couple of my worlds orcs were brutally rational and had steamships and blunderbusses. Savages like us, not savages like criminal thugs.
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Post by Falconer on Oct 31, 2010 0:31:53 GMT -6
Inside cover of Holmes Basic, too.
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Post by Finarvyn on Oct 31, 2010 7:43:20 GMT -6
I swear there is a thread on this somewhere, but I couldn't find it in a quick search.
I think some of this traces back to the old Tolkien calendars by the Bros. Hildebrant in the mid-to-late 1970's. If I recall correctly, thier orcs were somewhat pig-faced.
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Post by Starbeard on Dec 28, 2021 10:51:47 GMT -6
Maybe we already talked about this:Does anyone know of direct visual depictions (or literary descriptions) of goblins or orcs with pig faces before the goons in Disney's Sleeping Beauty from 1959?
I'm wondering if that movie actually set the precedent or at least popularized it. If so, there's the question of where its inspiration came from. I'm having a hard time finding any information on exactly who was responsible for the goon designs.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2021 11:01:51 GMT -6
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Post by Falconer on Dec 28, 2021 11:11:45 GMT -6
Only one or two of Maleficent’s soldiers have pig heads, the rest have heads of hawk, crocodile, bat, etc. It seems to me the they are gargoyles.
The other angle would be Orwell, political cartoons, etc., including Disney’s own propaganda.
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Post by Starbeard on Dec 28, 2021 16:13:48 GMT -6
I think you're right on about the goons being inspired by gargoyles. From what I recall, the pig faces are the only ones who get lines or even unique voice effects, so that must be why I've always thought of them being mostly pigs. Maybe others intuited it the same way.
I hadn't thought about news or magazine cartoons, that's an excellent thought and very likely. I'll start sifting through some when I get a chance.
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Post by Starbeard on Dec 28, 2021 16:35:56 GMT -6
Quick side update: andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/04/goons.html?m=1According to Andreas Deja, the depiction of the goons in Sleeping Beauty were drawn from demons in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. So it's still possible that they were working out of familiarity with a pre-existing visual language of grotesque animal faced goblins from comics and cartoons, but the direct cues at least were independently derived from their deep dives into medieval & renaissance art for reference and inspiration. |
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Post by Falconer on Dec 29, 2021 13:28:45 GMT -6
Very interesting. Thanks. What a great movie.
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Post by Starbeard on Dec 29, 2021 14:58:20 GMT -6
One of my all time faves. It could just be my loyalty clouding my judgment, but I'm still a little convinced that the goons, the chief pig goon, the spells and story in general all shaped the post-Tolkien fantasy revival more than we give it credit for.
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Post by tdenmark on Dec 31, 2021 16:32:32 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2022 14:51:28 GMT -6
From Dice or Die:
Were these foul humanoids with pig faces later determined to be impudent slayers, armed with javelins and short swords, cloaked in robes of burnt umber over blood-stained scale mail, and hoarse chanting: “Blocks, shackles, & chains, boys! Blocks, shackles, & chains!”?
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 2, 2022 18:08:58 GMT -6
My orcs never were pig-faced. I was actually quite surprised when I saw the Monster Manual picture. I was familiar with Tolkien's books and saw the cartoons, but I never saw any artwork, including the Brothers Hildebrandt painting until much later.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2022 18:28:28 GMT -6
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Post by Desparil on Jan 2, 2022 21:05:11 GMT -6
My orcs never were pig-faced. I was actually quite surprised when I saw the Monster Manual picture. I was familiar with Tolkien's books and saw the cartoons, but I never saw any artwork, including the Brothers Hildebrandt painting until much later. Same here, I didn't start DMing until the very last years of 2E so I wasn't really familiar with Monster Manual pictures. My formative image of orcs was these guys  |
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Post by ThrorII on Jan 2, 2022 21:41:27 GMT -6
I discovered D&D before Tolkien (D&D in around 1978, Tolkien around 1980). So Orcs have always been Pig Faced in D&D, and Tolkien's goblins (in the Hobbit) were akin to the goblin portrait in the 1e AD&D Monster Manual.
Nowadays I differentiate their appearances depending on if I'm playing D&D or a Middle-earth type game (One Ring or such).
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Post by Starbeard on Jan 2, 2022 22:26:33 GMT -6
Starting around 2009 I went through a phase where goblinoids and especially goblins were Disneyfied, not in the sense of being cuddly but in the sense that each one is exaggerated in appearance and unique. Pig snout, raven beak, squat with skinny limbs, bumpy pickle skin, whatever. Monstrosities born of chaos fully formed and twisted into a uniquely grotesque image of vice and sniveling evil. Orcs were the same but more uniform, merely adopting faces horrendously reminiscent of brute animals, and compulsively lawful in their evil, reflecting the superior intelligence that was behind their construction.
It's something I might go back to actually. The merits of Gygaxian ecology and not wanting to come across as too artpunky aside, I've always really liked the idea of goblins and orcs as creatures made not born, whose breeding pits involve human sacrifice or bad voodoo or whatever, so that more creatures can spring fully formed out of the chaotic miasma nurtured there. And that in the presence of a being more powerful and evil than them, they are compelled to heed the command of Chaos and obey.
I think it goes back to the Legend of Zelda cartoon, where the pig-faced moblins when killed would flash back to Ganon's home plane, floating in a miasmic ball awaiting punishment and rebirth. When we first started playing HeroQuest my older brother automatically adopted that device as Zargon. "Killed" monsters were zapped back to his dimension where he yelled at them for being pushovers before sending them back to the gameboard when we entered the next room.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2022 8:07:27 GMT -6
Zelda was probably the first place I saw Orc-inspired creatures, as well, but the first place I saw creatures specifically referred to as Orc would have been the LOTR cartoon, and then shortly after in 90's D&D, Warhammer and Warcraft artwork. The Moblins were piggish but the other three, which I didn't associate with Moblins, were not. (D&D Orcs in the 90's sometimes had flat noses but not specifically piglike.) I think the big-headed "Where there's a whip there's a way" type colored what an Orc was in my mind until the Peter Jackson movies came out. I've pictured them as sort of a cross between the PJ Orcs and Orcs from modern fiction (Elder Scrolls is a big influence) since. More human in appearance and stature but still plainly Orcs.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 3, 2022 19:02:06 GMT -6
What about the Gamorrean guards in Return of the Jedi? I thought of the pig-faced orcs the minute I saw them in Jabba's palace.
Why don't orc-faced pigs ever get any love?
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Post by tombowings on Jan 4, 2022 1:51:28 GMT -6
What about the Gamorrean guards in Return of the Jedi? I thought of the pig-faced orcs the minute I saw them in Jabba's palace. Why don't orc-faced pigs ever get any love? Those were certainly the first orc-like creatures I experienced. Unfortunately, I now associate them more with science fiction than fantasy. Yes, I know Star Wars is fantasy in the true sense of the word, but instinctively I jump to the same division as O Scott Card: science fiction has rivets; fantasy has trees. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2022 8:41:22 GMT -6
What about the Gamorrean guards in Return of the Jedi? I thought of the pig-faced orcs the minute I saw them in Jabba's palace. Why don't orc-faced pigs ever get any love? Almost forgot about those guys, which is weird because they're still in new SW media. Yes, I probably saw them around the same time I was playing Zelda on the NES. I seem to remember associating pig faced axe wielding goons with movies and games in general for a while. That was just a "look". You saw those types of guys, you knew they were working for the bad guys. |
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Post by Malcadon on Jan 4, 2022 22:22:51 GMT -6
I just assumed that the pig-faced Orcs were from Lords of the Rings and the art of Brothers Hildebrandt. I maybe wrong, as Middle Earth is a bit of a gray area with me. Regardless of what they look like, Orcs are always made weird-looking.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Jan 5, 2022 1:07:50 GMT -6
Sometimes a centuries old myth becomes just another monster with the face of a dog or hyena or alligator or tiger or...  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2022 8:50:58 GMT -6
Lions and tigers and bears? Oh my!
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Post by Mushgnome on Jan 5, 2022 10:00:22 GMT -6
I can see the appeal of pig faced orcs. It certainly does help sugar-coat some of the more, shall we say, genocidal elements of the game ("nits make lice") to imagine that orcs are nothing but dumb animals.
I took it one step farther and simply removed all the low-level humanoid monsters from my campaigns. I haven't used any kobolds, goblins, gnolls, etc. in my dungeons, since I ran KotB back in 2016.
D&D still works perfectly fine as a game (in my opinion) without the cringey Tolkien/Gygax tropes about savage humanoids. In five years, not one of my players has complained, "where are all the orcs at??"
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Post by Maximus on Feb 1, 2022 18:20:37 GMT -6
I can see the appeal of pig faced orcs. It certainly does help sugar-coat some of the more, shall we say, genocidal elements of the game ("nits make lice") to imagine that orcs are nothing but dumb animals. I took it one step farther and simply removed all the low-level humanoid monsters from my campaigns. I haven't used any kobolds, goblins, gnolls, etc. in my dungeons, since I ran KotB back in 2016. D&D still works perfectly fine as a game (in my opinion) without the cringey Tolkien/Gygax tropes about savage humanoids. In five years, not one of my players has complained, "where are all the orcs at??" What do you use in their place? |
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Post by Mushgnome on Feb 2, 2022 7:34:57 GMT -6
What do you use in their place? Great question! My campaigns tend to skew in one of two directions: 1) "Lovecraftian" with cosmic-horror type monsters like Mi-Go and Deep Ones; or 2) "fairy tale" with talking animals, magical beasts, and enchanted creatures. Also there are some cool non-generic humanoid-substitutes in the AD&D Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II: Vilstraks, bullywugs, meenlocks, myconids, etc. Last but not least, substituting NPCs (such as a competing adventuring party) instead of generic goblin/kobold/orc encounters can be a lot of fun. |
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