D&D 5E About the artwork...

[Warpiglet-7]

You have made two statements here. One of them treats your preferences as an objective standard of quality, and the other does not. See if you can figure out which is which.

The point is that vernacular expresses an opinion. I don’t even play an art critic on tv.

The artist got paid. I don’t think they are sweating the opinion of some random on a game forum.

 

[Charlaquin]

The point is that vernacular expresses an opinion. I don’t even play an art critic on tv.

When there are rude ways to express an opinion and polite ways to express the same opinion and you choose to express it in a rude way, you’re just being a jerk.

The artist got paid. I don’t think they are sweating the opinion of some random on a game forum.

I’m not trying to defend the artist, I’m asking people to stop being jerks.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

When there are rude ways to express an opinion and polite ways to express the same opinion and you choose to express it in a rude way, you’re just being a jerk.

I’m not trying to defend the artist, I’m asking people to stop being jerks.

Oh Christ. Ok. Yes. It was not nice for the op to say a 12 year old drew it.

but to clarify, me saying “the half orc is not good” is a jerk thing to say? You must have hurt feelings all day long.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yes, art preference is mostly due to preference. I love Erol Otis and others hate him. I think the art in the 2e reprints is garbage, and others like it.

But sometimes it's objectively bad by any metric you're evaluating, like this.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Yes, art preference is mostly due to preference. I love Erol Otis and others hate him. I think the art in the 2e reprints is garbage, and others like it.

But sometimes it's objectively bad by any metric you're evaluating, like this.

Errol Otis drew some wild stuff. I preferred when he painted vs. line drawings. That and some other stuff in 1e blew my mind. It transported me to another place and time.

it was alien many times and not something my mind would have conceived. A lot of stuff in 1e gave me that feeling. Now we have so much common fiction with movies and tv...back then it seems like they were pulling more from books and their minds eye.

 

[Mercurius]

There are objective things you can say about the different recipes. What ingredients they use in what quantities, how fresh they are, where they are sourced from. But any assessment of their quality is subjective.

They are assessed subjectively, but are there not different levels of subjectivity, of expertise, and experience? What of inter-subjective agreement? For instance, would not every single cinefile agree that The Godfather is a vastly better film than Movie 43? And is not that agreement meaningful? It doesn't mean someone is wrong for preferring the latter film, mind you. Personal preference is never "wrong" - that would be a category error. But to reduce all assessment of quality to just "subjectivity," with any distinction about different kinds of subjectivity, different levels or depths, if you will, is a tremendous reduction.

 

[Mercurius]

I always thought that elven ranger had downs syndrome.

Representation!

 

[Charlaquin]

They are assessed subjectively, but are there not different levels of subjectivity, of expertise, and experience? What of inter-subjective agreement? For instance, would not every single cinefile agree that The Godfather is a vastly better film than Movie 43?

Better at what? There are certain things about The Godfather and Movie 43 that we can assess objectively. We can also assess its effectiveness at achieving certain goals, such as communicating a certain message or eliciting a certain emotional response, but such assessments are ultimately subjective. They are dependent on the audience’s personal perspectives, values, and experiences. In making this assessment, we might refer to certain objective qualities of the film, such as features of its cinematic framing, writing, editing, sound design, etc. but when it comes to saying whether or not those qualities achieve the goals in question, you can’t remove subjectivity from the equation, nor in my opinion should you try to.

And is not that agreement meaningful?

Of course it’s meaningful. Things don’t need to be objective to have meaning.

It doesn't mean someone is wrong for preferring the latter film, mind you. Personal preference is never "wrong" - that would be a category error. But to reduce all assessment of quality to just "subjectivity," with any distinction about different kinds of subjectivity, different levels or depths, if you will, is a tremendous reduction.

Only if you value objectivity over subjectivity. Personally, I think it’s far more reductive to call art “good” or “bad” rather than to discuss why different people like or dislike it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes, art preference is mostly due to preference. I love Erol Otis and others hate him. I think the art in the 2e reprints is garbage, and others like it.

But sometimes it's objectively bad by any metric you're evaluating, like this.

There are things you can say about it objectively. For example, the anatomy does not accurately reflect human anatomy, probably as a result of the perspective and foreshortening being messed up. Subjectively, many people might think this makes it bad, while others might like those features of the piece.

 

[Hussar]

I mostly don't like the elf picture because of the pose. His feet are facing in nearly the opposite direction. He would practically have to break his back to twist around like that. If you can see the front of someone's right shoulder and the back of their right knee in the same picture, that's some serious contortion going on.