Clyde Caldwell

Clyde Caldwell (born February 20, 1948) is an American artist. Self-described as a fantasy illustrator, he is best known for his portrayals of strong, sexy female characters.

With his work at TSR in the 1980s, he is considered one of the artists contributing to fantasy art's "golden age".

Early life Born on February 20, 1948, in Gastonia, North Carolina, Artist Larry Elmore later commented that Caldwell's dragons, compared to those of other artists, appeared "more serpentine—slimmer and more snakeish."

Caldwell gained fame producing work for TSR from 1982 to 1992, illustrating many Dungeons & Dragons products at a time when the game was around the peak of its popularity. He was known in particular for his work on Ravenloft and Gazetteer gaming modules. Since 1992 he has again worked as a freelance artist.

His work was included as part of the 2002 collection Masters of Dragonlance Art. Caldwell has illustrated cards for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game.

In 2014, Scott Taylor of Black Gate, named Clyde Caldwell as 9C in a list of The Top 10 RPG Artists of the Past 40 Years, saying "Clyde took great advantage of his place and offered up a great deal of sublime and lasting work, although he was never really one to go outside of TSR even after he left the company, although like many he went into covering novels."

Alleged plagiarism of Caldwell's work In 2003, a Flash animation slideshow titled was released anonymously, alleging that a woman named Jan McRae had plagiarized the work of many artists, including Caldwell, for reproduction in proselytization tracts printed by the Children of God cult. After the slideshow was released, Karen Zerby, leader of the Children of God, acknowledged that McRae had copied the work of others, as did McRae herself, and McRae admitted wrongdoing.