D&D 5E Art in 5e...?

[Ruin Explorer]

Is it now considered a positive goal for society to approach a reality where men and women behave and dress in exactly the same ways such that you can't tell what sex someone is? That's not meant to be a snarky dismissal of the notion, by the way, that's actually a real question.

No. Can't tell that female characters are female simply by their pose, especially if that pose is OTT/arguably unrealistic.

 

[Callahan09]

Can we at least agree that the woman on the new cover has a more reasonable pose than this?

I really like the 4e game, but looking at that cover, it occurs to me just how much is wrong with it! You make an excellent point about the portrayal of the lady in the artwork. Compared to this, the lady on the 5e Player's Handbook is a significant step forward in portraying a female fantasy character in a reasonable, non-sexualized manner. On the 4e cover, she is wearing totally unreasonable attire made to expose skin and cleavage, she is posed in that arched back boobs-and-butt-on-display fashion which just makes no sense. I am sitting here at my desk looking at this and curiously decided to try contorting myself into such a stance... it is wildly uncomfortable, and would never be done while trying to fight, as these characters seem to be about to engage in. There may be slight nods to femininity in the Elf on the 5e book's cover, but it's subtle and still reasonable that her gear & attire represents real adventuring gear, and that her stance is curved ever so slightly backward in an attempt to ... you know, not be leaning in close to get a big whiff of that smelly fire giant breath (and, hmm, dodging backwards, perhaps, so as not to get splattered).

Beyond that, and this isn't really related to the artwork anymore, the subtitle "Arcane, Divine, and Martial Heroes" is kind of weird, because if you didn't have any experience with the game before, and you were trying to buy into it for the first time, that subtitle would mean nothing to you, and would possibly even confuse you into thinking this wasn't just the standard, first rulebook you should get, but maybe instead it's a special Player's Handbook supplement to introduce new features or ideas or hero types into the game that weren't in the original rulebook.

And my last quibble is just a nitpick from my own personal tastes and has no objective merits as a criticism, but I personally don't like seeing the authors names on the cover for a D&D core rulebook. It kind of takes the mystique out of it a little. Not sure if I could explain why...

I like the 5e cover by far the best out of every cover since the first AD&D1e Player's Handbook. I like the art, I like the move towards a plain "D&D" branding. I like the placement of the text, I like how it doesn't contain any information we don't NEED to know. The little subtext on the bottom makes it quite clear what this is for: "Everything a player needs to create heroic characters for the world's greatest roleplaying game."

OK, so I could have done without the "world's greatest roleplaying game" part, but I thought about how I'd rephrase it, and my first instinct is to just say "... for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game." But now we've got "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover twice, so we remove the red banner on the lower left side, but now we don't have a very clear indicator that "D&D" is "Dungeons & Dragons", unless you read the entire two-line subtext to get the idea. So I like the red banner, and I'd keep it there. So I'm not going to include the words "Dungeons & Dragons" in the subtext, so I'm perfectly fine with what they've written there in its place. It gets the point across, and while it may seem presumptuous and a tad hyperbolic to say right on the cover that's it's the world's greatest, it also serves its purpose of making whoever picks this book up look at that cover and say "If I want to get into roleplaying, THIS is the book I need!"

All in all, they've done a fantastic job with the cover.

 

[Hussar]

Is it now considered a positive goal for society to approach a reality where men and women behave and dress in exactly the same ways such that you can't tell what sex someone is? That's not meant to be a snarky dismissal of the notion, by the way, that's actually a real question.

That's not the point of the Hawkeye test. The point is, if you put someone of the opposite sex in the pose, does it look ridiculous? If it does, then it fails the test.

The idea of brokeback models - where you effectively have to break the back of the character in order to show both breasts and butt at the same time plays strongly into this. I mean, if you can see the front of both breasts AND both sides of the butt, that's one WEIRD pose and it's hypersexualized.

 

[Umbran]

Is it now considered a positive goal for society to approach a reality where men and women behave and dress in exactly the same ways such that you can't tell what sex someone is?

The Hawkeye test is largely about body posture and posing: "If your female character can be replaced by Hawkeye in the same pose without looking silly or stupid, then it’s acceptable and probably non sexist. If you can’t, then just forget about it."

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/37101781024/thehawkeyetest

Many have extended this to note that costume choices are also frequently sexist and absurd, and will put the male character into some equivalent costume to drive the point home.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The Hawkeye test is largely about body posture and posing: "If your female character can be replaced by Hawkeye in the same pose without looking silly or stupid, then it’s acceptable and probably non sexist. If you can’t, then just forget about it."

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/37101781024/thehawkeyetest

Many have extended this to note that costume choices are also frequently sexist and absurd, and will put the male character into some equivalent costume to drive the point home.

Spot on. Thinking about that, I personally think this fails the Hawkeye test, not horribly, but it does fail it. If you had a male Elf in the same pose, people would be going be mocking it, because of the leg and neck position, largely. It bores me rather than offends me, though (personally).

 

[Iosue]

Spot on. Thinking about that, I personally think this fails the Hawkeye test, not horribly, but it does fail it. If you had a male Elf in the same pose, people would be going be mocking it, because of the leg and neck position, largely. It bores me rather than offends me, though (personally).

In the uncropped picture, it looks to me like a male Elf is indeed in roughly the same pose.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The mind just boggles on how someone can look at a picture where one of the major sources of light is emerging from right next to the breasts and say with a straight face "Nope. Not sexualized at all. Not calling attention to secondary sexual characteristics or the attractiveness of the character even a little. Her appearance is definitely not considered a thing of value and attention in that image."

There is almost literally a spotlight on her sex appeal.

But then I've gotta remember that just 6 years ago we had the 4e PHB and people were defending that monstrosity, too. It's hard to see the air we breathe, and a fish won't understand what water is, after all. If it's not in a chainmail bikini, waving flesh in your face, I guess it's hard for some straight dudes to notice what's going on. The calibration is all off. People un-ironically compare it to artwork of flowers. I'm certainly not going to enlighten anyone who is invested in the "It's no big deal and it's just an over-reaction if you think otherwise!" dismissal, here.

I'm happy it's better. Subtler, at least. There's leagues and leagues of worse images out there. It's the sort of mild everyday sexism that happens probably a dozen times on the way to work in the morning. I'm not offended, though I'm a little disappointed in civilization in a broad sense right now because even if it's acceptable, it shouldn't be this controversial to talk about what the image is doing in the first place. I hope 6e's is even better than this. I like what I'm seeing of 5e's artwork on display here. It's good stuff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In the uncropped picture, it looks to me like a male Elf is indeed in roughly the same pose.

He's not, though. I don't say that to be a twerp!

His neck is straight and level and he is standing, in a fairly normal and static way, on an... object. The issue here is that her leg and neck/back positions are something an artist would just not do with a male character (in my opinion!), they're just a bit too extreme. I don't think it's horrible sexism, but I do think it's kind of lazy, and very mildly sexist, largely leading me to eyeroll from boredom, not go "ugh...".

The full-size image is 1000% more awesome than the cropped one, I note.

 

[Klaus]

The mind just boggles on how someone can look at a picture where one of the major sources of light is emerging from right next to the breasts and say with a straight face "Nope. Not sexualized at all. Not calling attention to secondary sexual characteristics or the attractiveness of the character even a little. Her appearance is definitely not considered a thing of value and attention in that image."

There is almost literally a spotlight on her sex appeal.

:artist hat on:

Image Composition 101: put your higher contrast in your focal point. In this case, the circle encompassing the woman's and Snurre's faces (with her glowing hand in the middle). From there, you begin easing out on the contrast (be it value - light/dark - or color - blue/red).

I keep looking at the woman, and I can't even make out her breasts. Sure, I can make out her chest, and the lighting help pop her figure out of the dark background, but nothing in the image, pose or attire suggests "sexualization" to me.

I can't comment more on the art direction of 5e due to my lingering NDA, but ask me again on August 20.

:artist hat off:

 

[I'm A Banana]

:artist hat on:

Image Composition 101: put your higher contrast in your focal point. In this case, the circle encompassing the woman's and Snurre's faces (with her glowing hand in the middle). From there, you begin easing out on the contrast (be it value - light/dark - or color - blue/red).

I keep looking at the woman, and I can't even make out her breasts. Sure, I can make out her chest, and the lighting help pop her figure out of the dark background, but nothing in the image, pose or attire suggests "sexualization" to me.

I can't comment more on the art direction of 5e due to my lingering NDA, but ask me again on August 20.

:artist hat off:

Sure, I buy that, though all that being true doesn't mean that it's not also sexualized, even if it's in the sort of offhand way that a lot of depictions of women are sexualized even when they're not trying for it. You can TOTALLY focus on that circle and still call attention to the figure's attractiveness.

Like I've said elsewhere, it's entirely possible that neither Tyler Jacobson nor the art directors really were aware of it, and weren't consciously doing it, just because it's not significantly different from most other fantasy artwork. It's the air we breathe. It probably takes a lot of effort to NOT do it.