Realism in fantasy art

Disclaimer...I haven't slept for like 32 hours and I'm ill....so the text might not be coherent or easy to understand.

After receiving feedback about the first submission draft there were two issues addressed. One was realism in fantasy art and the other one popularization/commercialization.

Few minutes ago I wanted to listen to Mitternacht by E-nomine and the video I clicked on youtube was actually a music video for The Lord of the Rings featuring a scene that does not even happen in the book. (LotR MV - Mitternacht). Quite a coincidence because I was trying to figure out why fantasy art is getting so realistic. A new set for the Magic: The Gathering game is out today and there are illustrations by an artist named Slawomir Maniak. These paintings look photorealistic even though there are undead creatures on them. After staring at Elgaud Inquisitor for some time I was wondering if this level of realism makes me believe that those skeletons could be real. This image reminds me a lot of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson. When I was watching the video there are scenes from battle at Osgiliath that look pretty realistic, the very same way as Slawomir Maniak paints. I have no idea how real battle could look like but this looks real to me even though there are nazguls, orcs and other otherworldy creatures.

The problem with so realisticly done scenes is that they don't give any space for one's imagination. I've read The Lord of the Rings when I was about 9-10 years old and for me the creatures looked different and they looked more 'fairy tale' like. And Gollum was completely different! I wasn't imagining that world or creatures from it to look so realistic. Imagining a battle for me had certain limits. After reading tons of fantasy books where battles were fought I can finally make my own visualization of similar battle. After seeing the Lord of the Rings Trilogy whenever I think of the book I have the images from the movie in my head. All the illustrations from John Howe, Alan Lee and Ted Nasmith just disappear...no they don't disappear, they transform into the movie's realism. When I think of a battle, movie's battle scenes come to mind.

Is this the companies' intent? To strip us of the imagination fantastic elements can evoke? Well, showing us something that looks real makes it more believable. Less alienation happens nowadays and more people are willing to accept that there could be vampires and who knows what.

Introductory 'Paragraph'

I'm behind schedule slightly and the past week did not bring any fruit either. I wrote something like an introductory paragraph so the rest of the class could understand what my paper is about but I'm not really sure if it was clear enough. I tried explaining but I wasn't really understood. Hope that when I start writing it will be better. The introduction follows.

Is Fantasy Art yielding to the pressure of globalised commercialization?

"The dominant mould of 20th century is fantastic genre."
-Christopher Mitchell

In the past decade the word conjunction Fantasy Art started to emerge and is now commonly used although Fantasy Art was never acknowledged as an artistic movement.

Fantasy as a genre (primarily literary) was considered for children for a long period of time. At the end of 19th century it started to change. In 1923 the first all fantasy magazine collecting the most bizarre and far out stories was published - Wierd Tales. Authors such as H.P. Lovercraft, Ray Bradbury or Robert E. Howard launched their career in this magazine and several fantasy artist became widely known because of it as well - Margaret Brundage and Virgil Finlay - graphic pen illustrations.[SOURCE]

At this point fantasy written for adults was still rare and not considered of a good quality. Slowly it was coming to be known by reading public but it wasn’t until the publishing of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien that managed to popularized the fantasy genre. [SOURCE]

Since mid-20th century fantasy genre is known to the wide public and became part of the pop culture. We can find fantasy art on book covers, in card games or role playing games. A large portion of fantasy art is done for movie and game industry. The companies producing these items hire fantasy artists to do the cover, poster or illustration and the artist does it - he produces what is known as fantasy art.
As you can deduce from earlier paragraph fantasy art has a function. Is the art limited by its function? To understand this more we will need to delve into the elements that define fantasy itself and why and how such art is created. Lastly we will look more closely at the role of a computer as a medium when producing fantasy art.

Also today and yesterday I was putting my bibliography together. I will update this post with it when I manage to put it into the correct format.

Is Fantasy Art yielding to pressure of globalized commercialization?

Which factors play a role in globalizing Fantasy Art?
Is Fantasy Art yielding to pressure of globalized commercialization?

It is time for me to figure out my arguments and the structure of the work. I also need to settle on one specific question/topic and it's hard to do so. Especially when there aren't people really talking or writing about this.

To write my paper I need to define two things - Fantasy Art and Fantasy Fine Art. I'll be primarily talking about Fantasy Art as this is the area I would like to end up as a professional artist.

First of all I should define what art is. But well people can't really agree on that much. Anyway it is something we create that awakens are senses and what evokes emotion. It is a work of expression and take all kind of forms.

Fantasy Art in my case is any art produced for commercial use that has fantastic elements in it. Most Fantasy art is done for book covers for Fantasy literature, fantasy oriented magazines, rule books for Role Playing Games and Trading Card Games. The author of a Fantasy Art is someone who gets a description of the work he is supposed to do and does exactly that.

Fantasy Art thus is an illustration of a story that the viewer of the art is familiar with (or will be after finishing the book, playing the game etc)

Fantasy Fine Art is an art produced by an artist himself without any constraints by a client. Thus it can express the author's feelings and fantasies and does not relate to an existing story whatsoever.


Finding out about existing Fantasy Fine Art and artists doing this kind of division I tried to find a question that would lead me to an answer to what I'm interested. My whole research and information in it always had a fallback - commercial sphere and globalization thus. So I'd like to speak about the factors that have globalizing effect on Fantasy Art but actually...I can look at it from the other side. How about globalization having effect on FA and in this case the main reason would be - commerce. That is why I will try to settle on

Is Fantasy Art yielding to pressure of globalized commercialization?

From what I said earlier about Fantasy Art we can see already few elements that play a role in globalization of Fantasy Art. Some of the aspects are tightly related to the commercial sphere.

We as the end user have to be attracted by the art that is given to us. It has to be pleasing and it has to catch our eye in terms of milliseconds (1).

Fantasy genre works with tropes like magic, medievalism, quest etc. This is something we expect of fantasy. Not only it tells us that 'this is fantasy' but it also limits the authors of fantasy in a way(2).

Many people agree on that Modern fantasy as we see today was due to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. As I found out many artists don't even consider this option. They'll just say 'fantasy was always here, it would eventually find its way'. But still Tolkien and later TSR by creating the first role playing game set some kind of rules that turned into fantasy tropes. And even if they are different in different fantasy worlds they still exist. Magic can have various forms. Elves from one world can be completely different from other elves from a different world etc.

Working as a Fantasy Artist means that the artist gets a description of what he is supposed to do from a client. The artwork done probably needs to fit a certain setting (with this word this time I mean anything from matching style, design or colors) already and that itself can limit the author and it may dictate the style of the work.(3)

Like this we more perceive the artwork as being a part of something and we usually think about it that way. This and that artwork are both similar in design and come from the same setting but different authors - for example World of Warcraft. But when we look at artwork for Magic: The Gathering the style is different but the same two artists follow some kind of invisible guidelines for the MtG setting. (see Pete Venters for exmaple)

This also leads us to 'how was fantasy [genre] created?'(4)?
The genre was always there. We always had fantasies and dreams about something. At the beginning of 20th century pulp magazines were the place to look for fantasy fiction many times accompanied by illustrations. Later novels and books appeared but the popularity greatly rose with the publishing of Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Many writers and artist continued in this genre of fantasy. It was much more publicly known and the public started to get used to it. The game industry strengthen this genre much more.

Now with the digital age use of computer is on the rise and this plays a big role as well. Does it have an impact on how Fantasy Art looks like? Partly yes. (5)

The computer is a really good tool for someone who needs to work fast. It helps the artists to meet deadlines and also brings in elements that do not exist while using traditional media. There are artists that experiment with what computer can do and many try to see how far the artwork can look photo realistic. See Brad Rigney.


to be continued...

Art Directors vs Artists

Sensory Deprivation
I spent a night and half a day searching some information about what the descriptions from Art Directors look like and what comes out of it. I went through several blogs of artist I know and came upon this.

Sensory Deprivation is a card in two games from the same company (Wizards of the Coast). One is from Vampires: The Eternal Struggle which is a dead game already (but there are still players playing it) and the other one is from Magic: The Gathering released in the last set that is set in the world of Innistrad. Innistrad is a gothic, creepy place that has walking dead, werewolfs, ghosts, vampires etc. Horror place...in general.

Now look at the two paintings (erm the cards it was printed on).

WotC nor Steven Belledin made a connection to the first Sensory Deprivation (for more read the original blog post). What I want to talk about is about my perception of this image. Because it was identical to both of these artists illustration.

Before a new set is released there spoilers of the cards can be found on the internet. There are sites that gather all the leaked images, text or translations. I check the spoilers at mtgsalvation. On the spoiler page all you have is the info player is interested + link to an image if it exists. I don't click on those, I usually wait till the set is released. When Sensory Deprivation showed up on twitter...I had a clear idea of how the image on the card would look like. I imagined a pale face with mouth and eyes "stitched" together (with skin actually). It would be close up and the background would be blue. Why did I have a very similar idea in my head? I actually did not envision the person to be dead but alive probably making it even more creepy (but I guess that depends).

Color

[Talking about Elesh Norn] On top of that, both the style guide and Elesh's brief make it clear I should avoid making the final illustration overly dark and brooding. Magic is defined by its mechanical colour philosophy and an illustration on a white card shouldn't be mistaken for something that could end up on a black or red one. [Kieryluk, ImagineFX Nov 2011]

When talking to Bethany and one more person (can't recall who told me this...) our conversation came down to one question... 'why do I have the feeling that cards from a certain set have similar colors?' I pondered about this for a while as this is something that did not really strike me. I know that the colors can shift in contrast or even slightly different color feel to it.(when doing an alteration of Vampiric Tutor from Visions I realized that it has different colors from Japanese Vampiric Tutor from 6th edition). But I never seemed to notice that all the cards from the set would have something in common. In way they do...

I came across this late this night.

"Must everything be color coded? Is it absolutly neccessary that all zombies be black instead of a putrid blue-green, all basalisks be emerald instead of pleasingly variant as are reptiles in nature, all artifacts be the exact same shade of uninteresting? And don't get me started on ever damn wizard and warrior wearing the appropriate colored clothing like the entire Keld nation recieved a signed memo from the king stating "Sat-Thurs strick red-based dress code enforced, Fri casual." Point is, can things be the color they are, not the color that it costs to cast them?" [Deaderpool, 2011].

Actually this statement by deaderpool from wizards of the coast forums is correct. When you look at the visual spoiler by color you'll notice that each color (in terms of magic) has its own color palette. (I show you just two colors - white and blue, but it holds true for the rest of the colors as well). Igor Kieryluk's quote sums it up.



Anyway discussing Magic: The Gathering card artwork wasn't what I was looking for. But as most of the artist do a lot of artwork for Wizards of the Coast it was what I was usually encountering. Anyway... I learned that the Art Director gives a description of a card and states a color of the card usually or in case of WoW he/she states where the scene takes place or from where the characters is. The artist submit their work and then they are sometimes asked to put in more color. But it does not seem that the artists were given a color palette at the beginning. They just do what they think is appropriate and usually change the final image for print digitally for the client if he asks the artist to change it. The client does not do the corrections as I thought that this could actually be the case but it isn't. Because as someone noted... the sets in certain card games really are consistant in design.

Magic: The Gathering related note. Terese Nielsen was asked to do artwork for Force of Will. The description given to her was about a red mage and stopping magic. The final image ended up being REALLY red but...

...was printed on a blue card.

So well I came to the conclusion that the original artwork and the published print version are usually really close to each other. The client sometimes even wants something that seems not suitable for a certain artwork but the artist still does it to please the client. We can usually find the original artwork on the internet and we can compare it.

Style
While going through a lot of artwork I realized that more and more artists have different styles for different clients. Some artists variety in artwork is really huge - Ed Beards, Scott Altmann, Jim Nelson ....

Even though I have to admit that pencil/pen/ink sketches or illustrations are sometimes difficult for me to assign to an artist. Unless I've seen a lot of B/W work from them already.

For example I have difficulties saying that this(first image below) and this (second image) was done by the same author. Both of these show Counsel of the Soratami. But there are artists that have their distinct style in their sketches and doodles (um how to call it, no offense to the artist) done by a pencil .


Conclusion

"Fantasy seems to have, like the folk tales from which it sprang, a restricted number of recurrent motifs and elements: there are young, questing heroes, wise controlling sages, irredeemably evil monsters, and (although, mercifully fewer these days) damsels in distress (Propp, 1075). It might seem that the most visible form, 'sword and sorcery' genre fantasy, is doomed to die of repetion and parody - as in Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' series, or Diana Wynne Jones's 'The Tough Guide to Fantasyland which mercifully catalogues every cliché: [...]" [Hunt, Lenz, Millicent 2004]

What the masses see is thus general in design and color palette and shows what the viewer would want to see. This creates a wide range of clichés (tropes, many elements did not end up clichéd yet) and archetypes that we get used too. Many artists are used to drawing a certain race or type of characters (reapers - Altmann, angels - Nielsen, goblins - Venters etc). The fact that the illustrations are for commercial use takes a big role in fantasy art. The 'community' are used to see something and they expect something. We have fantasy tropes that get get reproduced all the time. For example we had a Vampire/Werewolf wave. The artwork produced was similar in design. Mostly because it draws from horror and gothic fiction tropes that are already well established (comes from gothic era and romanticism)

Generalization of Fantasy 'Art'

What are the factors that lead to generalization of Fantasy Art?

I'll be updating this post (if I manage to work...can't seem to concentrate on anything)

Computer as a medium
Computer is a tool. It means that artist can work faster and it gives them the possibility to create something that wasn't possible with the use of traditional media. Many artist now try to figure out where the limits of a computer are. Those who try this produce work that looks relatively similar.

Influences/Closed community
Many Fantasy Artists know each other and meet at conventions, fairs, tournaments or at work. This also plays a big role as we are influenced by what we see. This can also lead to some kind of generalization in design.

Many new artist emerge and they are influenced and motivated by the well established artists already. As they see themselves in them, their style becomes oftentimes similar no matter if they like it or not. Only few artist develop a style that is really striking and a lot different.

Art Directors
Fantasy Artists work for different companies. Many of them do work for trading card games, role playing games, book covers or other illustrations that show what's in a story. Now if I take card games as an example.

How does it change the style and design of the final piece? It does change the design. Not only you have to know how for example Elf looks in this or that game but you also have to follow certain 'art rules' to keep the whole set/game cohesive.

For example if we look at Pete Venter's work. He's been drawing Goblins for years. He's doing illustrations for both Wizards of the Coast and Blizzard and you can easily distinguish what illustration was done for what company. But if you look at Venter's work that is not influenced by the client it is different in style.

Even artist with really distinct style have variances in the style according to the 'topic'. For example Terese Nielsen who is known for her ethereal and spiritual look of her paintings does illustration for Magic: The Gathering or Star Wars. But if you look her Angels where she does not really have much constraints her style is much more expressive and different to the ones I mentioned earlier.

Why is that so? Is it because someone says to the artist how it should be done? Or is it because of lack of time or there something else?

Fine Art
Fantasy Artists nowadays do a distinction between Fantasy Art - which is the one that illustrates something from something (for example certain character from World Of Warcraft) and Fantasy Fine Art that just ... is ...Something were someone did not dictate the author what should be on the painting. If these artist create such work or any other work in which there aren't constraints the work is usually quite a lot different to the one you are used to. Is it more about time spend on it or is it more about the fact that under such circumstances you can create a work that truly reflects your style and intention?

Aim
This is related to the commercial aspect as well. Fantasy Art actually has a function. It needs to attract the viewer. What the viewer wants actually changes with time. For example in pre-2008 females were usually depicted as 'damsels in distress' but from 2009 they have a completely different role. They are more like the 'bad-ass' woman.

"Most commercial art does this by relating to a target audience and making them recognize something familiar-it's about the art coming to meet the viewer. The purpose of a great work of SFF Art is almost exactly the opposite: it is to depict something alien, and then drag the viewer away from their world into the imagined world of the book, movie, or video game." [Panepinto, 2010]

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.

Researching the topic

Due to unfortunate accident (the store was robbed) and National Championship in Machine Dance I did not have much time to do some thorough research.

Influence sources - Tolkien or Peake
This week I decided to do some research on things that influenced the FA artists and what influence have art directors. For the first one, I noticed that many people reference Frank Frazetta. Though artist that emerged later usually reference artist that already work at the same company they ended up in. Todd Lockwood whose first artistic influence was Frank Frazetta and later Michael Whelan once said. "I flipped when TSR started having really good art in their products... Jeff Easley's stuff particularly interested me: so moody and fluid, so deft. Then Brom came along and really blew my doors off."[1] When observing Lockwood's work I always think of Jeff Easly and Michael Whelan. But the way Lockwood draws characters...it reminds me of Brom. I never searched for information about Lockwood's influences before. Finding about his influences did not surprise me at all. Also I can see why Lockwood likes Brom. Well, I always loved Whelan's illustrations of Elric and they remind me of Brom's work. Color, composition and the expression. The feeling I get from these images. Seeing some of the Elric illustrations I think of Brom.

Why is that? Or why I actually talk about these illustrators (Whelan and Brom)?. Todd Lockwood's and Jeff Easly's work is all bright in a way. On the other hand Whelan's and Brom's work is dark and gothic. Why? Whelan was doing illustrations for Moorcock's Elric and that book (and other of his books) need a certain style paintings. I think that Whelan did a really great job on that. Moorcock is s supporter of Mervyn Peake (stsung's note: really scary and wierd books and poetry). The Gormenghast trilogy (by Peake) is something considered by many as a classic and is compared to J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. But Moorcock (being influenced by Peake) certainly does not really like Tolkien's LotR as Tolkien sees the fantasy world (well the Shire to be more precise) as Merry England (a utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial Revolution [wikipedia]). Elric of Melniboné (by Moorcock) is an antithesis for LotR and this has to show on the illustrations. Brom's work is influenced by Moorcock a lot. We can clearly see that in his work. But there are people influenced by Brom and Whelan and both can be traced to Moorcock or Peake.

(This kind of division is much more visible in science fiction where the utopian and idyllic form one great part of science fiction and the rest forms (many subgenres) another great part of it. For example if you watch or read Star Trek you can clearly see the idyllic future.)

With this I covered one part of research.

Conventions
I've done some interviews this week. They were rather chaotic but there were things that came up from all the artists. Looking for an answer to a question about going to conventions came up from my twitter timeline. Artist tend to tweet about the next convention they will be at so people can come and see them. As you may know many fantasy artists go to conventions and at many conventions you can bring your portfolio and see if by a chance WotC (or other company) wouldn't be interested in you. (Actually I've requested the WotC Fantasy Artist application form several years ago and I was overwhelmed by the requirements.)

Why FA artists go to conventions? They go there to show their art, to see other artists work, to talk to the artists, to sell their art and so on. Many of the artists know each other and see each other at such places. They influence each other as well and motivate each other. I think that this is something relatively special not seen with other kind of art (science fiction is actually similar to FA) and that's why I think this is also something that should be researched more.

Fine Art
After talking to several artists (several years ago) and this week's interviews I noticed one thing. Many of the artists do card games illustrations, rule book illustrations and book covers but minority of them does fantasy art as 'fine art'. When I was talking to rk post he said 'Some cross over to fine art...and the fine art world seems to embrace them. Like Chet Zar, for instance. Brian Despain has done the cross over. [...] strictly gallery. No story telling.'
This finally defined my 'commercial' and 'non-commercial' fantasy art. The art meant for commercial use is illustration to a story, it has some kind of given background already (like setting). The non-commercial one does not though and we don't have so many artists that do 'Fantasy Fine Art'. But all these illustrations and such are considered Fantasy Art. Hm???



[1] Kenson, S. (April 1999) "ProFiles: Todd Lockwood" Dragon Magazine (Renton, Washington: Wizards of the Coast) (#258): 96.

Question

Who is the one defining Modern fantasy (nowadays)?

(what led me here is only in hard copy - I'll retype it if I'll still have the time during this night)

My previous posts commentary

Monday, October 10, 2011

personal [speaking about topic] as that will drive us forward

In relation to Visual Production class I would like to explore drawing/painting techniques. As I'm interested in character design and 'fantasy art' I would like to discover what that is and from where the popularization and globalization of sword and sorcery came.

[topic] that will help us in the future

What I have in mind would help me in the future to become professional fantasy artist. It would give me the basis from which I can continue to progress and find my niche.

ad 3d animation/sound production

I would like to produce an interactive work but my interest leads me in a different way. Still conveying a message does not always mean 'wall of text'. So there is space for more.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011
When researching I encountered several thing that reoccur.

• J.R.R. Tolkien
  
• Magic: The Gathering
  
• Dungeons and Dragons
  
• Wizards of the Coast/TSR

When trying to figure out what to do for Visual Production class I realized that fantasy art (even though I already speak here about a subgenre of fantasy)can still be divided into two groups - concept art and fine art.
More and More I see Asian influences in modern fantasy art. Also Asian illustrators show up on the scene. This has brought many discussions to the fantasy reading public, gamers and role players.

Monday, October 17, 2011
I was researching ...something. I hoped that this something would lead me to where fantasy started to be accepted by people. I found my answer - after LotR was published. People were open for more fantasy and simply wanted more. Here I found also why generic and future fantasy settings are similar to Europe in Middle Ages (see Middle Earth of Tolkien)
Following, Dungeons and Dragons by TSR enforced that and especially Ed Greenwood created a world people could easily familiarize with. That being Forgotten Realms

Various settings were published - Greyhawk, Ebberon, DragonLance, Forgotten Realms - all reflecting already well known notion of a fantasy world. Magic: The Gathering with its Multiverse did the same (different planes each being different in setting but still resembling (Middle)Earth more or less). One exception (to European based setting)was published - Oriental Adventures (Legend of the Five Rings) based on Feudal Japan (even though you will find Chinese, Korean and Mongolian elements + magic and magical beings ie. spirits, demons)

Saturday, October 22, 2011
Martin McKenna is the one who helped me to grasp what I was looking for and showed me that what I think is what he thinks as well.
Pre-50s the reading public wasn't prepared for fantasy even though popularity of pulp fiction grew and was becoming less 'pulp'. It was still rather underground. In 1955 LotR was published and readers of all ages and education simply wanted more of this 'faerie world'.
In 1973 D&D was published based on wargaming rules and games that evolved for Gary and his friend to what we know as RPG today.
Fantasy novels, books, magazines emerged and the quality of covers and inside illustrations started to be better,
A lot of illustrations were needed for TSR's rule books, magazines and modules.
In 1993 trading card games appeared on the market which meant a lot of work for many fantasy artists.
As the notion of fantasy mostly means sword and sorcery, it starts to get generalized and we can clearly see archetypes. Now fantasy is being popularized - we have movies, games and books that are easily accessible.

brainstorming notes.

- fantasy fans are conservative in nature
- there are still many Tolkien die hard fans
- evolution of fantasy can be thus rather difficult

Back to the Roots - Middle Earth vs other fantasy worlds

Looking at the languages from ME and our world we can see a clear connection and something like this (creating the hoarding memory) can be seen in later fantasy both written and illustrated work.

For example Tolkien used some words for certain things like Mithril (metal) or Warg (dire wolf). Both of these words have roots in a certain language already but if it wouldn't be Tolkien who started to use these words the wouldn't show in other fantasy settings. In Dungeons and Dragons we now have Mithral and Worg having the very same meaning (not only in D&D). This also applies to races and class archetypes. For example Tolkien wrote the story about Bilbo the Hobbit. In D&D we have Halflings, that were also called hobbits in the beginning and resembled Tolkien's hobbits very much. Ents are common as well, we call them Treefolk in general but well, what comes to your mind when someone says Treefolk (Anyway changed to Treant in D&D)? Orcs as relatively intelligent but evil creatures also come from LotR and I could go on...

The fact that ME has it's own history (3000 years old), its own geography etc also led other people when creating fantasy worlds to have this as well. Not just races like elves, dwarves, gnomes etc but also the whole geography and history starting with the creation of the world (or the myths and legends if there aren't some immortal elves that could tell you the story from first hand^_^)

I give Dungeons and Dragons as an example but that game was not entirely and directly influenced by Tolkien himself as many people claim and write studies about. This game was influenced by many fantasy authors, Tolkien among them. (there were legal issues between TSR and Tolkien and later a de-tolkienization took place in D&D)
(Dragon Magazine, gotta find them)

I personally never took D&D as something relating to Tolkien, none of the fantasy from TSR/WotC seemed similar to Tolkien to me. Yes, I admit they have the same/similar races and names/terms used but that's more because this has already been established. D&D though defined it much more and many people derive from this today. And as many illustrations are done for all this 'gaming industry' it tends to become similar in design.

When seeing artists write about their influences they many times name artist working for the same company or writers that are not actually Tolkien.

But still without Tolkien our minds wouldn't be open for something like this - fantasy and that's why we have to give him credit.

Now the question coming from all this is: How come Fantasy Art artists are not influenced by Tolkien (with the exception of Ted Nasmith) when everyone seems to think that it was him that started Modern Fantasy?

Here I feel that my knowledge lacks a lot of information. I know a lot about the history of RPGs (TSR/WotC) and a lot about Tolkien's work. But I don't see the analogy (I do in certain things, but those were already described in Dragon Magazine) and the very same is about the art. Here's Ted Nasmith and Alan Lee on one side (Tolkien) and other artists on the other. Do I see resemblances? Um not really...

Back to the roots - J.R.R Tolkien

When I was 10 years old someone in our family came home with a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (LotR in short). This is a trilogy published in 1955 (Fellowship of the Ring) and 1956 (Two Towers, Return of the King). I finished the book quite fast and was fascinated by it. I'm not really sure what exactly it was that so made me crave for more. But it happened and I wanted to read more from fantasy worlds like the one of Middle Earth. I read everything from Tolkien that was published by that time and then read his biography and commentary on his work. Later I started reading many fantasy novels and books that I could get my hands on. So where does this crave come from? We'll look on it after a brief biography of J.R.R. Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born on 3rd January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State. His both parents died when he was young. Mabel - his mother - left J.R.R. Tolkien in the care of Father Francis Morgan - a priest at the Birmingham Oratory. At King Edward's School he developed his linguistic talent and later began inventing his own languages. (elven languages - sindarin and quenya mainly)

John Ronald Raul graduated at Oxford (English language and literature). During the World War he served the army. After war he worked as a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford where he soon prove himself to be one of the finest philologists in the world. At that time he was already working on a collection of myths and legends that were later published under the name of Silmarillion. (HarperCollins 2003)

In 1937 The Hobbit was published. It was successful and people wanted more 'hobbits'.
The Lord of the Rings was published in 1955-1956. The book became so popular that it started a completely new era of 'Modern Fantasy Genre' (Christopher Mitchell 2003).

Professor Christopher Mitchel of Wheaton College, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center and also Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Wheaton made a series of seminars and discussions concerning J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. In those he looked closer on the new 'taste' among the reading public and why Tolkien's work was so successful.

In late 1950s there was a huge discrepancy between critics considering LotR an inferior literature even 'juvenile trash' and the phenomenal popularity among the reading public. In the upcoming decade critics said that the Tolkien craze would fall into oblivion in few years. But even after 40 years we are still here with many Tolkien fans and people wanting simply more. At that time people noted that Tolkien's work is not read by a certain group of people(in this case - children, as this kind of stories were considered children's stories) but by a doctor graduated from harvard, solicitor, police officer, farmer, another writer etc. All these people though had something common. What was it that Tolkien gave them?

Later in his speech Mitchel started to talk about something called 'hoarding memory'. Tolkien used this term to talk about the memory Elves have. Elves in Tolkien's world are 'immortal beings' (they can be killed but if not they live eternally) and carry on the memory of the world. The hoarding memory can be found in myths and legends and in even later stories. All of those bear the memory of one original - religious - story. All the stories are a shadow to the very first story (the eden, kain and abel). We perceive such memories even in LotR (if we are familiar with the legends and myths from Silmarillion). All these try to awaken something in us.

Tolkien is taking us out from our own world to awaken us. All this starts with imagination. We reject our world thus we need to be awakened in another world and return back our own world to become awakened in it. This is not escapist as many people and mainly critics think so. (Tolkien/Lewis)

Why I write about this? In a way I agree. The thing is that the hoarding memory is there, it is something that we can trace. We might not consider it religious and looking at Tolkien influenced work (it isn't religious) but still it started somewhere and at that time it was religious. There is the universal truth underline in all there is in the nowadays work (and not necessary christian). J.R.R. Tolkien said that he is christian and that this can be deduced from his work. But did anyone notice that?

There are many people who noticed that but for most the fact that the LotR is cut from anything religious makes it hard to understand why such a book should be religious. One has to look deeper and find it for that it is good to read J.R.R. Tolkien letters and his biography. (J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter).

In these books we learn about Tolkien's personal and academic life. Ronald's life was a difficult one. Death of his father when he was 4 years old, death of his mother in 1904 and the stay with Father Morgan marked Tolkien a lot. Living during both World Wars is also something that has influence on one. (I would like to quote Tolkien when he was talking of himself as a hobbit, but I don't remember it exactly and I don't remember from which book it came). The claim 'I'm a hobbit' though tells us a lot about Tolkien if we are familiar with hobbits as a race or (Frodo or Bilbo Baggins).

Anyway in the letters we learn more about the spiritual look on Middle Earth and this cannot be denied as Tolkien wrote it himself.

Nowadays J.R.R. Tolkien LotR or Hobbit is considered as a must read book even by high schools (at least both I attended had this under 'obligatory literature'). But no one at the school actually gave me any insight on why and how LotR/Middle Earth was created.

In both books we learn about where certain things came from - Norse mythology for example and we learn about the creation of elven language and tengwar (written elven language - it means letters in quenya).

stsung's note:
When I was around 12 I was able to write in tengwar and was capable of reading a text in quenya. Study of this language taught me about other scripts and languages. Tengwar is alphasyllabary writing system and as I wasn't familiar with such systems it led me to discover primarily Devanagari and Sanskrit (I was familiar with phonetic writing systems - Japanese, Chinese, latin letters and cyrilic based systems). Elvish language is a constructed one but has a rules that can be easily followed and that tell one from the writing system what to expect and thus memorize and easily use.
In LotR and Hobbit Tolkien also uses two different runic systems that are based on anglo-saxon and norse writing systems (this is much more familiar as this system uses letters both consonants and vowels and uses the same way as latin letters. Germanic languages were using these before they started using latin letters).

By studying the writing systems, we fall back on ancient languages and mythology that also help us understand more the constructed world of Middle Earth.

Finding a topic for my RCS part 4

"Pátrání mne přivedlo do kontaktu s vůdčímí výtvarníky z celého světa - ve Spojených státech, Asii a na středním východě, v Kanadě a jižní Americe, po celé Evropě. Na takové mezinárodní sbírce je fascinující pozorovat rozdíly i podobnosti moderního výtvarného fantasy umění, pocházejícího z nejrůznějších zemí a kultur po celém světě.
Ta nejlepší fantasy díla nám poskytují lákavou únikovou cestu do světa uvěřitelnosti, cestu kde se smazávají hranice mezi vnější realitou, kterou všichni sdílíme, a vnitřní duševní krajinou výtvarníka. Dnes je však zjevná jistá globalizace žánru fantasy, nepochybně díky vlivu všeobecně rozšířených fantasy filmů, počítačových her a dalších populárních médií ze Spojených států a Evropy. To často vedeke vzniku děl, která se snaží přijmout podobný výklad všeobecně známých témat fantasy.
Proto jsou si dnes výtvarné styly snažící se dosáhnout elegantního efektu hodně podobné, a to zejména v oblasti designu." (McKenna 2007)

Few years ago I received a book entitled Fantasy Art Now by Martin McKenna. It is actually a collection of work from the leading fantasy artists and from aspiring fantasy artists. Going through the book I realized that I already know most of these illustrations and if not the illustrations I know the artists (there are illustrations that were published in this book for the first time).

I made few observations:

1. On the illustrations there are many times depicted characters or scenes from something I already know. Is that the reason why the artists are famous and considered the leading artists? Because they are known via the commercial sphere?

2. There are similarities that we can observe and some kind of globalization of the fantasy genre (McKenna 2007). After reading the notes from certain artist I realized that none of them actually say that they were influenced by this or that fantasy world etc. but many note that they had this or that artist as an idol. (even though their work hardly resembles that one.)

McKenna's introduction (quoted in Czech above, I couldn't find the original one) actually summarizes my second point. According to McKenna we can observe globalization of the fantasy genres most probably because of fantasy movies and computer games on the rise. This leads to art that shares a common known fantasy themes/archetypes. This often results in similar designs of fantasy art. (this formulation is pretty bad, but now I just need to grasp the idea somehow). All this most probably fallbacks to Tolkien and later published Dungeons and Dragons whose fantasy setting was directly influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien's world.

When looking for something in my room I came across TSR Collectors Art cards and calendars. Calendars were for me a collections of Fantasy Art from certain artists as I couldn't buy prints of those work as I can most probably do nowadays. Among these I came across DragonLance and Ted Nasmith Lord of the Rings calendar. As those are relatively old. The illustrations from these calendars are from 1980s till late 1990s and they have something in common. Looking at these one can clearly see that highly realistic rendition of reality (with the aspect of fantasy theme) is there. The colors though being more fairy tale like.

"His approach to illustrating Tolkien draws on influences such as 19th century 'old school' landscape and classical painting, as well as 'magic realism', fairy painting, the classic illustrators, and the visionary/psychedelic art of the 1960s.

Besides the sheer pleasure of bringing Tolkien's world to light, he sees his fantasy art as a bridge between the realm of 'everyday' and 'faerie', faerie being Tolkien¹s term for the enchanted world of our dreams and nightmares; that great ancient-realm of Story." (HarperCollins 2003, Ted Nesmith Interview)

After looking at these illustrations and reading some of the comments I would like to take similar path as Martin McKenna. He created a collection of works with artist commentary to show it. In my case I'd like to research more were the globalization of fantasy art came from.

Finding a topic part 3

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?
-----------------------------
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.

Finding a topic for my RCS part 2

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

Finding a topic for my RCS part 1

Our first lesson is over and the time for figuring out what the topic of my RCS came. I've been thinking a lot during the long holidays, but I had a lot of work to do and I had no free time to even reevaluate my life as is.

Anyway about the topic...

- it should be something personal as that will drive us forward
- it should be something that will help us in the future

(I couldn't formulate the second point) Anyway it gets problematic even here.
I got stuck at several things. From one point of view I should be doing something that can be helpful in my professional life but ok let's be more specific my parents don't expect me to be an artist and they don't like the general idea of it. So it goes back to why I started studying at Prague College.

I went to the school to learn about 3d animation and sound production. It is something that fascinated me and I wanted to learn more. I tried myself in my free time, but it was never that fruitful. At Prague College I really got the chance, learned a lot and could work hard on it. Though several things hampered this.

1. work
2. my attitude to certain people when they behave the way they shouldn't

This completely ruined my motivation to do anything 3d modeling related even though after working with 3dsmax for hours that it is still something that fascinates me and I would like to continue doing that. But I also learned one more thing: I can't do this for long. 5 hours lesson in which I spent looking at the screen and modeling was already too painful for my eyes. Ending up dry and red and I get really bad headaches and I feel sick afterwards. This means that for another day or two I can't see anything in 3d (on computer screen), if I do I'm sick.

Sound Production. Well, this is something that involves more spontaneity and more imagination that I usually come up with. It is fascinating and we had really motivating teachers, but I have to admit that this won't be anything I'd like to do in the future, nor as an artist nor as someone working for company.

What is left there? My 15 year lasting interest in web design and coding? This is something I would like to do. It is something I'd like to become much better and picking up scripting would be much better (php and MySQL). I have to say that I have big holes in knowledge concerning the evolution of web design (notably) and coding as well. I even completely missed CSS3. No matter what this is something I'll be doing in the future and I would like to dedicate part of my life, both professionally and for 'fun' let's say. (interest)

I was thinking about topics I could elaborate on. There are few things that struck me. First of all...I'm typing this blog post on a blogspot site. This blog's system is not done by me. Not even the way the blog looks (ok, I made the template look this way but ignore that for a while). From here two question arise concerning

- content management systems (joomla, drupal etc)
- website templates (be it for a shop, web page, CMS)

When I first started writing on the internet I had a page that I updated manually. Later when I learned about php I no longer needed doing this, but still many times it was the easiest thing to do. When CMS systems started to be widely used, many people started blogging. Sites like blogspot.com, wordpress.com were created. Here everyone can create an account and write about anything he or she likes. But many people are not really HTML/php/asp literate. Users want their blogs to look different from others etc. The need for user friendly stuff arose. (I could talk about this concerning any software and operating system). And that's where people started creating templates, CMSs, gadgets etc. This does not only means 'web code', but also graphics and some real programming language skills. (BTW do you know what pasting a text from MS Word to this window will do (actually not to the one I use now as it shows html code, but to the one many people use to write their text and edit it?)

So my first two questions are about CMS and templates. But what of it? I decided to drop the first question. Actually if I would consider it, I would like to know where the evolution and CMS modules lead us. Same with the templates, but here it took me in a different direction. I spent some time doing web design and I went through a period where everything blocky was in and when everything with rounded corners was in. But again in Japan...this has never happened. The stage of rounded corners, flashy stuff and so on came much later and even now is not the widely used 'look'.
Japanese sites are usually about the content and are most of the time terrible in design whereas here the design is something really important and many people expect a site to look good and be interactive. Does a culture influence web design?

Another question arose - How should a good commercial site be done?

There are many more things that come to mind but I can't really grasp them and turn them into a question. And trying to relate any of those to Visual Production is also something I can't really do and thus I decided to let it go.

The second topic which is really close to me is anything Fantasy Art related. As this term is not even established it was difficult for me to even search for information. I wanted to see the evolution of Fantasy Art used commercially but I think I should start somewhere else. Somewhere at the root of 'What is Fantasy?' But when considering this and my professional life...I can't really come up with anything (except the fact that I would really like to become fantasy artist one day)

Images and Memory

2. Images and Memory

In one book review Freeman J. Dyson wrote:

"When I was a boy in England long ago, people who traveled on trains with dogs had to pay for a dog ticket. The question arose whether I needed to buy a dog ticket when I was traveling with a tortoise. The conductor on the train gave me the answer: 'Cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs but tortoises is insects and travel free according.'"[1]

A letter to the editors was sent noting that the very same was depicted in Punch cartoon in 1869. This is Freeman's reaction to that.

“Thanks to Nicholas Humphrey and Michael Jackson for letters informing me of the 1869 Punch cartoon about tortoises and dogs on trains. My memory of traveling with a tortoise has two possible explanations. The first and more probable is that I heard of the conversation recorded in the Punch cartoon and transformed it over the years into a memory. This would not be the first time that I remembered something that never happened. Memories of childhood recollected in old age are notoriously unreliable. The second possible explanation is that the memory is accurate. In that case the conductor on the train knew the cartoon and said what he was supposed to say according to the script.” [2]

So now, one wonders what happened. Certainly in the past something happened that created a memory. This memory was either altered (filling the gaps with something already in the memory) or invented. No matter what happened in this case something like this happens everyday. Seeing a photo can have such an impact on our brain that we confound actual memory of being there with seeing on a photo. Even a memory of something that never took place can be invented and this is nothing rare, it is actually very common and it is how our memory works.

In 1979 Nickerson and Adams [3] conducted a study so they could figure out how long-term memory handles a common object. They asked people if they can recognize a U.S penny. Most of the people said yes but the study showed that fewer than half was capable of distinguishing the right penny from 15 possible designs.

Our memories do not just fade but there are information added to it. When we recall a memory we have to reconstruct it from bits and pieces and after the memory is once again stored somewhere in our brain altered. After years what was a memory of real experience can become a really confounded memory or constructed memory.

This way seeing a photograph showing us an event we did not take part in can create a memory in our mind of us being actually there. Reading about the event, hearing others talk about the event that all adds up and creates the memory.

Ulric Neisser conducted a series of studies to see how memory is affected. In 1986 space shuttle Challenger shuttle exploded. The day after this happened Neisser gave his students a questionnaire about the explosion. Three years later Neisser gave these students the very same questionnaire with one additional question asking the student about the accuracy of his memory. Only ten percent of the students matched their earlier responses. But all of them answered honestly. Some even after reading their own first questionnaire said that how they wrote it, that's how they remember it.

People in general are not aware how unreliable our memory is. Even when you are 100% honest with what you say comes from your past experiences it does not need effectively to be correct. We should be aware of this fact and accept that our memories are not as accurate as we think.

---

[1] "Religion from the Outside", Freeman J. Dyson, New York Review of Books vol 53. no. 11, OnQuickness (12 Sep 1999)
[2]"Breaking the Spell", Daniel C. Dennett and Nicholas Humphrey, reply by Freeman Dyson, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/aug/10/breaking-the-spell/, retrived 2011/10/08
[3]Nickerson, R.S., and Adams, J.J. (1979). Long-term memory for a common object. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 287-307.
[4] "Affect and accuracy in recall: studies of flashbulb memories", Eugene Winograd, Ulric Neisser, Cambridge University Press (1992)

Fauxtography

For the next lesson we are supposed to read Photography as a weapon by Errol Morris. Errol Morris is an American Director and Writer. Our class will be discussing essays he wrote for New York Times. The collection of essays will be published in a book this year entitled 'Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography'. In early lessons with the very same teacher we already discussed some of Morris's articles and I found them really interesting to read so I believe the book will be good.

Anyway I would like to talk about two topics. I guess that both of them could be a nice Reflective Case Study but that's probably not what am I going to do myself. But well who knows^_^. My research on anything having to do with Fantasy Art is not leading me anywhere 'in terms of academic research'.

EDIT: it seems that the other topic will be covered in another post.

disclaimer: Everything I write on this blog is something that comes from my brain directly, no editing. This probably means that the quality of the following text won't be that good but it's the ideas I want to have here. This kind of .. links me to the information I've found and what it evoked.

I might fix the referencing later...I'll have to learn it once again

1. Fauxtography

This topic is has been here for a while and many people discussed its ethical and moral issues. We see photoshopped images everyday in advertisement and on the internet. But what happens when someone discovers that a certain photo showing a historic event is fake (or contemporary one)?

Lately people are rather sceptical to mass media be it. The main stream media are often considered exaggerated. But where this come from?

During the past decade blogging has become very popular. This enables people to express their feelings and show their point of view on a certain subject. Certain blogs challenging the main stream journals appeared. These journalists' aim is to provide more accurate information than the information provided by mass media thus challenging them. People respond better to more personalized views and the content of the blogs is more varied than the one of mass media.

In 2006 a Lebanese photograph Adnan Hajj submited photos of Israel-Lebanon conflict to Reuters News Agency. The journal published those photos not knowing the photos were doctored. On August 5th Charles Johnson posted an entry on his blog - Little Green Footballs - about this particular photo.

This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image.[1]

On the very same blog we learn about the smoke not being the only manipulated part. There as well buildings cloned.

But it's not only the plumes of smoke that were “enhanced.” There are also cloned buildings.[1]

This wasn't the only photo Adnan Hajj manipulated. Reuters published a photo of a Izraeli F16 firing ground-attacking missiles.

... the original photo of the Israeli F-16 was probably of a single anti-SAM chaffe flare being dropped. In other words, the F-16 which Reuters proports to show firing missiles at Lebanon, was taking defensive measures.[2]

In response to the first Adnan's doctored photo Reuters notified their customers apologizing with

“Photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvenience.” [3]

Soon after this articles about breaching ethics surfaced. Soon after this next Hajj's photo was discovered to be manipulated. Reuters suspended Hajj but Reuters' credibility was already questioned. No matter how the photo managed to get published there was a breach in the company's policy (or standards would be more adequate as no company needed to deal with photo manipulation of this scale earlier - the policy was changed later).

Six months later Hajj was fired from Reuters. But damage was done already. The reputation had to be once again regained. Tom Glocer Reuters CEO said:

“The upside of the flourishing blogosphere is that beyond our own strict editorial standards, there is a new check and balance. I take my hat off to Charles Johnson, the editor of Little Green Footballs. Without his Web site, the Hajj photo may have gone unnoticed.” ("Trust in the Age of Citizen Journalism", Tom Grocer, 2006)

The whole controversy became a scandal after Reuters' editor discovered the blog post on Little Green Footballs. Reuters took action and started investigating (which resulted in firing Hajj) but the more important is what happened on the internet. After LGF post many bloggers and readers alike started investigation of their own discovering more photos that were manipulated. Posting this on their blogs (crosslinking and posting similar content) is what created a momentum for the scandal. The loyal audience commenting on the issues drives the content forward. Even though this scandal main opposition was Johnson, the audience is not negligible, their number is great and they are together a challenge to the mass media. The public is now aware of photo manipulation and what it can cause and together they can doubt and question information given. Themselves, they can start an investigation that can either prove the information right or discredit it and prove it wrong.

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[1] "Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut?". Little Green Footballs. August 5, 2006. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
[2]
"Another Fake Reuters Photo from Lebanon". The Jawa Report. August 6, 2006. http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
[3] Yaakov Lappin, 6/8/2006