Derek Riggs talking about Maiden

Riggs is a prima donna. Rod is a prima donna. Steve is a prima donna. Add that together and something has to give.
 
snake plissken said:
His effort for Fear of the Dark was really poor.

You have seen Riggs' effort for FOTD? Or are you thinking of the FOTD cover? The album cover was made by Melvyn Grant, not by Riggs. Apparently Riggs also submitted a design, but the management chose Grant's work.
 
Ranko said:
You have seen Riggs' effort for FOTD? Or are you thinking of the FOTD cover? The album cover was made by Melvyn Grant, not by Riggs. Apparently Riggs also submitted a design, but the management chose Grant's work.

Someone posted his design on the old free Maiden forum and it was dreadful. The Tree Eddie was much better than Riggs' attempt.
 
Riggs obviously made the most iconic covers, but he's definitely fallen off in his quality as an artist when he moved to digital art, in my opinion.

Also, in my opinion he was just burnt out on Eddie, and frankly an artist needs to have a passion for what he's doing, once Riggs lost it for Eddie, he lost it forever (though I do like the Flight 666 cover for example)


Other people have done great work, I think the AMOLAD cover in particular is amazing because it sets the tone so well.
 
snake plissken said:
Someone posted his design on the old free Maiden forum and it was dreadful. The Tree Eddie was much better than Riggs' attempt.

I've never seen it, is there a way to retrieve it? Or, does anyone else have it?
 
Ranko said:
I've never seen it, is there a way to retrieve it? Or, does anyone else have it?

The forum has been down for a long time now, doubt it'll ever come back. Hopefully whoever posted it there will read this thread and post it here. Had a quick look online, can't find it :(
 
Lo and behold, I think I found it. I need snake to verify if it's the one, but it matches the description Steve gave in an interview in '96:

fotdo.jpg


Yes, like I said, Derek had drawn Eddie intruding into a kid's dream to transform it into a nightmare. But we wanted something totally different. So we tried out other artists who sent us some drafts. One of them had imagined Eddie as Nosferatu, but we eventually chose the one you already know, Eddie as a tree monster.

(interview from the Commentary.)
 
I actually like the artwork, once I knew what exactly it was supposed to represent. With out's Harris's description, the artwork looks rather random...
 
I think it was time for Eddie to take a new direction.  As far as an overall body of work, the stuff Riggs did is amazing, Twilight Zone cover being my favorite (and the Trooper of course really is iconic), but the non-Riggs stuff has had some very good moments as well.  It would be nice if they continued to use Riggs for "classic stuff" though.
 
He is a genius for having created Eddie, but he wants to be bigger than Steve and Maiden, and that's why he's where he is.
 
^^Damn.

Anyway, Riggs' FOTD effort is alright but I can't see how it would work as an album cover. Of course it's nowhere near as good as his early work.

BTW, those comments on the article are infuriating.
 
Yeah the Riggsy FOTD was dreadful and cheesy. And from what I read in the 30 Years of the Beast Book, he was just bitter. He comes off as a total asshole.
 
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