Sexism and Racism in Contemporary Fantasy Art.

As I'm looking through reference material and rediscovering some art that I've seen in the past and admired, but didn't know the names of the artists of I am beginning to see certain elements of the artist's body of work and Fantasy art as a genre that concerns me. Namely, work that falls into the same category as Frank Frazetta, and Simon Bisely's work. While I would not would not be foolish enough, as a man, to say something as stupid as " I abhor the sight of voluptuous nude women." I do have two sisters and feel like a lot of the work within the fantasy genre is offensive to them. I intend on having more than one female character and am wrestling on how to depict them. FEEDBACK WOULD BE GREAT HERE. The female characters won't all be weak and in need of saving so then there is the idea of how to physically depict them. I would like to have an erotic elemen, if only for appeal, but I want to find some middle ground between an asexual "Butch" female and a gyrating "Music video girl."

A good sampling of Fantasy art:

Frazetta Gallery

Fantasy Gallery dot net

Still organizing

I'm still organizing and keep finding new images that are relevent to the work. I will take some time to post images some of my stuff up to this point. I probably, will have to use a variety web image posting services since Blogger doesn't support image posting directly, so once some images start going up some may/ or may not erretically be available and unavailable, but I'll have to see how it works out.

Travis Charest

Travis Charest's artistic style and depiction of character in a particular context is THE major influence on the aesthetic of my sci-fi/fantasy work right now. Travis Charest is one of the few comic book illustrators that has re-established the look of traditonal art styles prior to the "Comic Book" art style era in popular books published now. Charest's work seems influenced mostly by Greek/Italian/renaissance period art.

Joe Mad!

Joe Madureira's art is one the many artistic influences on my work. I'm still organizing my refernce art and am really trying to whittle down my selection to something manageable and also create an aesthic paradigm for my project which combines sci-fi/ high technology and ancient myth-based fantasy. Joe Mad and Travis Charest, both illustrators primarily for comic books and graphic novels, are my main influences for tastefully blending lots of elements. So, primarily that's what I'm doing today while sorting through all these reference images.

Organizing

Current Favorites:
two songs: "Ghetto Rock" - Mos Def, "Big Weenie" - Eminem
two movies: "House of Flying Daggers", "Kinsey"

While I have some characters and a basic animatic already built I need to take time to organize my reference materials to streamline my modeling and texturing workflow. Unfortunately, all of my material is scattered all over my computers. I hate to do product plugs, but I just got and started using Extensis Portfolio 7 and it really is awesome at helping to organize lots of images quickly.

NOMMO the movie

This is my first entry for my thesis journal. I am testing the blog thing to see if it will allow me to journal my progress in a convenient, effective and finished way. It will be ideal to be able to edit and publish this from anywhere since I move around so much, primarirly between Philadelphia and New York daily. If you didn't know already I'm Butch Arrington, currently a grad. student at NYU. I am a Master's candidate in NYU's Center for Advanced Digital Applications otherwise known as CADA. "Nommo" is the tentative title for my thesis project and the film teaser trailer of a movie I would like to produce VERY SOON! "Nommo" is a West African term that roughly means "Word Magic" and it is very often used in reference to idea of weaving, or crafting stories orally by a person like a griot. A very important element of my film concept is the idea that the story itself is a story that is like mythology being passed down from generation to generation. The opening of the story includes a father telling one of the many "modern" stories of RA to his son.