Unreliable Illustrator: Difference between revisions

 

No actual relation to [[Unreliable Voiceover]], despite the title.

{{examples}}

* The music video for the song "Pokerap" from the [[Pokémon (anime)|''Pokemon'' anime]] for some reason showed Poliwag when the song mentioned Poliwrath, and Geodude when it mentioned Graveler.

** The anime episode guide in the official Pokemon website for some reason had some of the screenshots shown in the wrong episodes!

* In [[Arina Tanemura]]'s shoujo manga, [http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=30208 Mistress Fortune], protagonist Kisaki Tachikawa is regularly described as being [[Ms. Fanservice|well endowed]], specifically sporting [[Gag Boobs|G-cup boobs]], yet her breast size is never depicted as more than a B or C-cup in the illustrations themselves.

 

* Read the ''Avengers / Transformers'' crossover and see how many times the illustrations don't match the text. The worst is when they can't correctly label the characters. Second-worst is when Cap doesn't know what an F-15 looks like. By the time you're halfway through, its safe to say [[They Just Didn't Care]].

* In ''[[The Mighty Thor]]'' #499 Thor is in Asgard with three characters named Kim, Annie, and Sylvia. Then Sylvia goes missing... or at least they talk about her going missing but the artist kept drawing her into the panel! Kim's hair and outfit change from panel to panel as well. More here: [http://daveslongbox.blogspot.com/2005/07/thor-499-marvel-comics-1996-part-one_11.html\] [http://daveslongbox.blogspot.com/2005/07/thor-499-marvel-comics-1996-part-two.html\]

* [[The Comics Curmudgeon]] occasionally points this out when comic panels are inappropriately colored or illustrated.

 

* ''[[Bionicle]]'' books were ''full'' of these, though most of the time, it was due to the editors not being familiar with the story, and not knowing which already rendered promotional image goes where. The most common error was depicting the wrong [[Mask of Power|mask]], or using movie stills that didn't match the captions, but the most infamous and baffling mistake has to be the [[Covers Always Lie|cover art]] of the book titled ''Dark Hunters'', featuring characters who had nothin to do with the titular organization. These can be classified as printing errors, though, being the mistakes of unreliable editors. The ''BIONICLE: World'' book, on the other hand, was illustrated with brand-new images, some of which ''did'' suffer from unreliable illustrators. For example, the being Karzahni, described as a black and gold colored, dark and empty-eyed freak, turned into a blue and green monstrosity, with brightly glowing yellow eyes.

* In the ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya|Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' light novels, this happens on occasion. Two examples are:

** They also tend to depict him as ''bald'', despite constant references to his black greasy hair.

* Just about any illustrated version of ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' will depict Lucy with dark hair, even though she's described as "always [[Have a Gay Old Time|gay]] and [[Hair of Gold|golden-haired]]" in the last chapter of ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe''. The fact that live-action adaptations also tend to give her dark hair may be related to this.

** According to [[Terry Pratchett]], the reason Kirby always draws female warriors in [[Stripperiffic]] outfits whether they're described that way or not and usually chops down everyone's age is "because it's Traditional".

** Averted by Paul Kidby's covers for the same series. According to ''The Art of Discworld'', Kidby often remembers details Pratchett forgot!

* That's often present in the works of the Italian writer Chiara Rapaccini, who is also the illustrator of her own books. For example, in one of her books a character is described wearing a green apron and bunny-shaped slippers. The illustration shows that character without any apron and with black boots. Another character is said wearing a shirt with a snake drawn on it... cue the illustration showing instead a skull with crossbones.

* In the 1960s and 1970s, the [[Doctor Who Novelisations]] were published with illustrations -- which, although they didn't contradict the text, had clearly been made by somebody who'd never seen the television versions. (In some cases, not only were the details of the scene different, so were the faces of the characters.) This wasn't all bad, though; some of the monsters are much more convincing in illustrated form than they were [[Special Effects Failure|on the TV]].

* A tie-in storybook based on Disney's ''[[The Lion King]]'' focusing on Mufasa's childhood for some reason described his father Ahadi as having brown fur, a black mane, and green eyes (just like Scar, the series' would-be [[Big Bad]]), but the illustrations show him with gold fur, a brown mane, and brown eyes, like Mufasa.

* [[White Fang]]: In the illustrated version of the book, when the bulldog is giving White Fang a Curb Stomp Battle, the accompanying illustrations show the bulldog burying his jaws in White Fang's neck, then standing a foot away, then standing a few yards away, then back to gnawing on the protagonist's throat. All the while the accompanying text has White Fang constantly in the Bulldog's jaws with Scott and Matt barely struggling to get the dog's mouth open. Also, while a lot of blood and gore is described in-text, none of it is shown.

* The largely-forgotten ''Runesword'' series had cover art painted by Larry Elmore, quite popular with the fantasy crowd. While depicting the main characters, he did the elf Endril as your standard long-blond-hair smooth-faced pretty-boy. Problem: the book text mentioned on more than one occasion that Endril had a ''beard''. Him dyeing it was even a plot point once. Of course, it was a cheap series written quickly by an assortment of different authors who couldn't agree on basic characterisation between books, so...

 

* The Monster Manual in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]] 3E'' features some monsters whose illustrations don't exactly fit their descriptions:

** The Allip (an undead man) is described as looking just like when it was alive, but with an insane grimace on its face, eyes burning with fear and the lower part of the body blurring into nothingness. The illustration, however, depicts something that look like a [http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG10.jpg vaguely humanoid, tattered black rag] ''without'' eyes or a face.

* In the [[The Dresden Files|Dresden Files]] roleplaying game, nobody told the artist that Harry's "Blue Beetle" is actually multicoloured (as it got repaired using off-colour parts), so he drew an actually blue Beetle. This is explained in scribbled comments in the margin, since the rulebook is presented as [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|a draft written by one of the characters]].

 

* Several of the character illustrations for ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2|A2]]'' show members of a class with equipment they can't equip without a special ability obtained as another class, if at all. They're probably [[What Could Have Been|concept art pieces made before the game mechanics were finalized]], so there are a lot of inconsistencies with the final builds of each game.

** The Paladin is shown [[Dual Wield|Dual Wielding]], which is only possible if you spend a ''very'' long time learning Dual Wield as a Ninja.

* Lampshaded in ''[[Stinkoman 20 X 6]]'', where Harvax XVII, a boss for some reason is actually described in the Stinkomanual as a "small but speedy octopus", but the boss actually resembles a large gangster robot. He even points out the error by saying, "This description is ALL WRONG!" The description DOES fit an actual enemy (an octopus robot that was not covered in the Stinkomanual) encountered in the game though.

 

* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' (1980's version), had an unreliable colourer. Since the turtles looked pretty much identical, save their identifying colours, it wasn't uncommon to see one turtle or another being swapped out for his brother with a mask colour change. This would get particularly jarring when said turtle had to speak and inevitably did so with the wrong voice.

** Or like in one episode, Michelangelo had been captured but it didn't stop two of the turtles from wearing orange in two different shots. Even when it mattered to the plot, [[They Just Didn't Care]].

 

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[[Category:Lazy Artist]]