Gerald Brom
| Gerald Brom | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Gerald Brom March 9, 1965 Albany, Georgia, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Fantasy art, illustration |
Gerald Brom (born March 9, 1965 in Albany, Georgia), known professionally as Brom, is an American gothic fantasy artist and illustrator, known for his work in role-playing games, novels, and comics.
Brom was born March 9, 1965, in Albany, Georgia. As the son of a U.S. Army pilot he spent much of his early years on the move, living in other countries such as Japan and Germany (he graduated from Frankfurt American High School), and U.S. states including Alabama and Hawaii. Brought up as a military dependent he was known by his last name only, and now signs his name as simply Brom: "I get that asked more than just about any other question. It's my real name, my last name. I got called Brom all the time as a kid, and it just stuck."
Brom has been drawing and painting since childhood, although he had never taken any formal art classes. "I wouldn't exactly call myself self-taught, because I've always looked at the work of other artists and emulated what I liked about it. So you can say they taught me." Brom cites the work of Frank Frazetta, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell as influences on his style: "Okay... Rockwell isn't the kind of inspiration most people expect from me, but he just painted things so well. To me it's not so much the genre but the way it's done, and you have to admire his technique."
At the age of 20, Brom started working full-time as a commercial illustrator. By age twenty-one, he had two national art representatives, and was doing work for such clients as Coca-Cola, IBM, CNN, and Columbia Pictures.TSR, Inc. hired Brom on full-time in 1989 at the age of 24. Brom contributed to all of TSR's game and book lines, particularly the Dark Sun setting: "I pretty much designed the look and feel of the Dark Sun campaign. I was doing paintings before they were even writing about the setting. I'd do a painting or a sketch, and the designers wrote those characters and ideas into the story. I was very involved in the development process. I've been fortunate to be involved in the development end of a lot of projects I've worked on, from role-playing games to computer games." According to Shannon Appelcline, Brom "contributed the unique illustrations for Dark Sun that helped to set it apart from the other TSR games with their more typical fantasy drawings". His paintings have been published in collectible card games such as Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering and Last Unicorn Games' Heresy: Kingdom Come. Brom's paintings, along with Frank Frazetta's, were used in the development of the visual look of the game series Warlords.
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