Interviews

The answers from artist come to me slowly. So far I can comment on just two issues (actually three but I will wait for more answers, as this usually ends up being one sentence 'statement'...). I already started to wonder about one of them in earlier post and learned something rather interesting but the information is probably not of much use to me. We'll see about that later when I get more information. I'm researching what I wanted answered but there's a lot happening and a lot influencing everything. I could actually write a work on the diversity of Fantasy Art^_^ even though I'm still convinced about the trends of generalizing fantasy art.

Conventions
At last year's GenCon (Gen Con Indy is the original, longest running, best attended, gaming convention in the world. [gencon.com])Jason Engle was asked about why conventions are so special.

He said that well internet can offer a lot but there are things that you can only experience at the convention [Engle 2010]. Convention is a place where fans of a certain 'thing' gather, listen to speeches, panel discussions, talk to each other, play games with each other, trade cards, buy/sell art etc. When listening to Engle I noticed that he mentioned 'trading'. Why that would be so special?

In Magic: The Gathering people either have to buy cards they need or trade them. The best place to get cards for a reasonable price are big conventions or tournaments and Gencon is the best place to do so as you will also get the possibility to trade really rare items. In some games trading is the only way to go. There are still people who collect Magic cards just because of the artwork. People who appreciate the artwork a lot are willing to spend a lot of time waiting in line so they could get their cards or print signed. While going through some interviews and from my own experience I noticed few things.

When at a tournament I usually can't spend 5 hours standing in line to get something signed or a drawing made. But I learned that after such a long time when you get to the person you can talk to him and get something drawn from him/her. It costs a lot of money but it's worth the time. After waiting in lots of lines like this I realized that there is a difference in signatures you get. There are very basic ones, a bit more fancy one and some utterly crazy ones. (This depends on the artist himself) But well via this you can see if you spend some time with the artist and if he appreciates the time spend with you as well. This also adds to the value of the card/print/artist proof you get.

"As a freelance artist, it's important to network. You want to build good relationships with other artists and art directors. That means going to events such as Dragon Con, San Diego Comic-Con and Illuxcon." [Lucas Graciano, ImagineFX November 2011]

Computer as a medium
Now more on topic.
Jason Angle also told us something about the use of computer. It allows us to do things we can’t do using traditional media. If something goes wrong we can just tweak it little bit and it takes us about 30 minut. Using traditional media it would take 3 days to do this kind of change. This allows artists to meet the deadlines set by the client. [Engle 2010]

McKenna who has done quite a lot of research on the way how artist work wrote this.
"Digital techniques bring an extraordinary freedom to the working methods of artists, allowing much faster production time, more options for alterations and experimentation, as well a better control over preparation for print and greater case of distribution. (And a great deal less mess.)" [McKenna, Digital Painting Workshop]

When talking to several Magic Alter Artists I found out that many of them prepare their work digitally before commiting to the actual painting. They do this to save time and to produce a much more detailed and more realistic work.

And here we can see this. Fantasy Art is about the inner visions we have that actually form from reality around us, from mythology and such. Nowadays people go digital and using a computer as a medium evolves. 3d modeling has become a great part of doing fantasy art. When preparing an illustrations many artists use reference. Some do photomanipulation to get the idea of composition or the way the final piece should look like. Many come up with highly photorealistic artwork with elements of fantasy and this is actually the trend I see in the art now.