Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons

This is a true love letter to the art and artist of D&D and any fans of the game will enjoy this as the treat it is.

Having grown up with Dungeons & Dragons and been playing fantasy RPGs for more than 30 years, this was definitely a documentary that more than pleased me.

Sure, I was familiar with most of the artists featured here, but the documentary offered a lot of insight into the business and the happenings and how the magic came into being. Lots of great information for life-long fans here. And it was such a glorious trip back memory lane.

And it has been a blast to follow the artwork of the D&D material grow and evolve and becoming more and more vivid and colorful. There is such a world of difference between the meager start of the original Dungeons & Dragons with the simplistic black and white drawings to the intricate and colorful imagery they have today in the most recent 5th edition.

Initially I had some reservations about the documentary, but my doubts were put to shame, and I really enjoyed sitting through and watching this. It was, without a doubt, a really interesting ride from start to end.

This is a niche watching for fans of the D&D and fantasy genre, for sure. But if you are one such person, then you definitely need to do yourself a favor and sit down to watch "Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons".

I am rating this documentary six out of ten stars. Definitely worth the time and effort.

This was WAY too long for what it was doing. Essentially it's a nearly endless repeating of: here's an artist, he/she was great, here's some art, There's no background on TSR, history of the game, examination of controversies, etc. It's just some artists talking and pictures of their art. Overall, its way too slight to be worth 90 minutes of your life unless you are a super fan. Just look at your old art and get what you can out of it.

Artists like Brom were the reason I got into D&D and MtG, so hearing from him was amazing. There was something terribly off about the lighting and/or color grading on the interviews, because everyone had this sickly reddish pink hue to their skin tone and the beards looked a bit weird too lol. Overall, worth watching for old school D&D fans, and the art (the star of the show) still looked great.

My grandmother, Lynn Harold, did original art for the first Dragon magazines. Living by Lake Geneva gave me a chance to play D&D as a teen. Gen Con in Milwaukee. This movie brought me back to the art and adventure I loved then.