Last week I spent most of the time reading some magazine articles, web pages and some essays concerning Role-Playing Games, Fantasy illustrations, Fantasy illustrators and Jim Roslof (Fantasy Artist and Art Director for TSR).
Well, I wasn't really looking for something in particular. Just trying to figure out in which direction I should go and what my work would be about. Defining Fantasy is something difficult to do and well if I'm going to do that I'll just choose one point of view and try to prove it. Some people will disagree, some people will agree. But the most important thing is this - there are some borders for each individual that define fantasy. For some slightly erotic image depicted in a really weird way is a fantasy. For someone it would never be a fantasy picture. So what are the boundaries of Fantasy Art?
I stumbled across many articles concerning J.R.R Tolkien and fantasy in general. The Fantasy subgenre - Sword and Sorcery - is the largest and oldest in the role-playing games history. Fantasy RPGs (based on this genre) are set in medieval setting (Europe) that also has 'fantastic' elements. That can be magic, magical beings, gods, nonhuman beings (elves, dwarves, gnomes etc). Now comes the question - were these worlds influenced by Tolkien's books (Lord of the Rings, Hobbit etc?).
In late sixties Hobbit and LoTR were really successful in the USA. In 1973 Dungeons and Dragons was created and fantasy settings followed. (the original D&D is set in fantasy world that is really similar to Tolkien's one)
Lord of the Rings had a decisive influence on the emergence of RPGs. Due to this, elements of Tolkien's creations (that are already based on mythology - Nordic and German mosty) can be found in many fantasy worlds. This means both geographic places and names (mithral/mithril comes to mind), races (elves, hobbits/halflings, dwarves etc)...
Also the RPG classes (archetypes) were taken from LotR. Ranger from Aragorn or Legolas, hobbits being thiefs/halflings rogues, dwarvs warriors etc.
This does not really tells us much about art though. The illustrations for Hobbit and LotR done by Tolkien weren't really accepted at first and were 'published' years later. Most illustrations come from magazines, card games and role playing games settings/rule books. These are products of a company and companies have art directors for that. But for some reason the view on fantasy art seems rather similar. So what makes an art a fantasy art?
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In 1993 WotC released a fantasy trading card game - Magic: The Gathering which was a rather dramatic event in RPG history. Many RPG gamers switched to playing Magic and this meant that the RPG sales went down by a lot. The boom of trading/collectible card games ended in 1996. Very few card games survived, but some stayed Magic: The Gathering and Legend of the Five Rings notably.
Later the shares on the market became balanced and now both of these coexist together without ruining the other.
Monday, October 17, 2011
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