It has been several years that something started to bug me concerning imagery in role-playing games rule books, adventures, card games, fantasy magazines etc. In the past few years the art in these starts to get a bit more varied and a lot of new illustrators are becoming well known. But this has also started many negative reactions from players of these games and readers of these books/magazines.
In 1973 Gary Gygax and Don Kaye created TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) and published Dungeons and Dragons. D&D in short is a rules set for a fantasy setting role playing game. Something like that needs some illustrations right? This game has already several edition but between 2nd and 3rd there was a huge change in both the rules and the overall look/feeling of the game. This brought new artist and a whole new - mostly digital art - era started. The reaction of the people was varied but no one ever complained about the art not it was anything discussed by the players. Same 'revolution' actually awaited the card games and magazines and everything else published by the company (Wizards of the Coast who bought TSR in 97 just FYI). [1]
Few years back the Magic: The Gathering design team started a 3rd stage of design (if I remember correctly) [2]. It is pretty creepy, dark and realistic. The art is more varied, new artist both known and not known from the past (or other company's products) showed up. And this certainly has not come unnoticed.
The art produced has changed a lot since 1970s. And now more than ever the artists are influenced by Japanese anime/manga/fantasy stuff. This by many people is not accepted well even though many of those don't even recognize why they don't like certain image (Angelic Destiny - yes, certainly Japanese influence or Jace, the Memory Adept - author is influenced by comic books and his comic book characters happen to be special, this one looks more manga looking but probably the author did not even know about that). [3]
There has been a long discussion that had to be heavily moderated (because the users just couldn't come up with arguments and started to flame) but it showed that this is ongoing and still ever present. These images were done for a trading card game - Magic: The Gathering. I've done a research on Trading Card Games earlier. From that research I found out that more than half of people playing Magic got attracted to the game by its nice art. The art is changing and the people who loved the art earlier don't like the new one. This does not seem to be an issue as the art evolves with time and now in the mainly digital age the art is becoming more and more digital and realistic which actually feels 'right'. Or at least that's what we see everywhere. More and more detail but the 'niceness' and 'mythical flavor' are simply waning. (Compare Fallout 1/2 with Fallout 3 and 4. There has been a long pause between 2 and 3 and if I would have to give an example of what it was in the past and now, this is the game I would pick)
So now what is it that I would like to know? One day in the future I would like to become an artist and if I will draw/paint images they will be what we call now 'fantasy. But what is fantasy? One definition says this: The faculty or activity of imagining things that are impossible or improbable.. Nice but what we are looking for here is something that shows what can be considered as Fantasy Art. So what is Fantasy Art?
Nowadays after Sword and Sorcery magazine stories, TSR's Dungeons and Dragons, WotC's Magic: The Gathering Fantasy in the western (commercial) world is something which takes place in a medieval setting where magic and magical beings exist. That's the first thing that comes to mind when many people are asked about fantasy (would be nice to do a survey on this! hey (Magic)Salvation await my post!). But take Japan for example? Fantasy is something completely different and can range from heavy science-fiction settings to medieval occidental settings with magic to completely crazy by most never understood settings. None of what I stated above is definition of fantasy so it would be nice to define it.
In the past years images that are done for this kind of books and games are considered art and I have to agree with that. Many of those works are amazing and really stunning. But we have many other artwork that could be considered Fantasy Art but is not. So what defines it? Should Fantasy Art be defined on commercial level or make it more wide? I have to see what other people/artists/professors think about this. What impact had TSR/WotC on Fantasy Art? Because it seems their view on Fantasy is the general public one... How the public views Fantasy (Art)?
[1] http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_History.asp
[2] Can be found at Daily Arcana. (also wizards.com)
[3] Comes from Wizards of the Coast Magic: The Gathering Community Forum (community.wizards.com) but these cards were heavily discussed in our game store as well to the extent that by the end of the day I just couldn't listen to it.
[4]
1. Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Brom, Fred Fields, Tony Szscudlo
2. Tom Baxa, Tony DiTerlizi, Jeff Easly
3. Todd Lockwood, Dave Allsop, Ralph Horsley
4. Daarken, Izzy, Anthony Waters, Jason Chan
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment