Tav_Behemoth
First Post
Here's the video of the event for those who missed it (and also some clarifications for those who didn't!).
Dungeons & Dragons in Contemporary Art
- Thread starter Tav_Behemoth
- Start date
ancientvaults
Explorer
I have seen this event mentioned on various blogs and find it rather odd and a bit pointless. I have had art in galleries and shows and I find it more devious (and satisfying) to sneak D&D-isms into a painting or a sketch and play dumb than to try to make it a cultural crossover. Instead of postulating about all of these questions I would rather wonder what Hieronymous Bosch would have done if given the AD&D 1E Monster Manual to illustrate. No offense to any of the participants, but I just find this sort of thing underwhelming.
nedjer
Adventurer
Each to their own I guess, as I was quite 'whelmed' by it. A good 90% of the RPG related art we see is standard issue Photoshoped superrealism, with optional shiny airbrushing, to fit publisher's requirements. Not a huge amount of freedom of expression or style going on there. This kind of work offers the opportunity to explore outside the superrealism fishtank.
Intrigued by the mention of Bosch alongside putting D&D-isms into artwork. Bosch treated his canvas as 'the game' or medium into which he embedded layers of meaning from philosophical and psychological observations. I can, therefore, see how to, and am quite familiar with, embedding such observations into RPGs. Embedding RPG values/ RPG philosophies or psychologies into artwork is also of interest, but I'm not sure D&D easily offers such values, e.g. a Zen of D&D? So are you talking about dropping in a few in-jokes or taking a concept like RPG advancement and transposing it into other contexts?
ancientvaults
Explorer
Each to their own I guess, as I was quite 'whelmed' by it. A good 90% of the RPG related art we see is standard issue Photoshoped superrealism, with optional shiny airbrushing, to fit publisher's requirements. Not a huge amount of freedom of expression or style going on there. This kind of work offers the opportunity to explore outside the superrealism fishtank.
Intrigued by the mention of Bosch alongside putting D&D-isms into artwork. Bosch treated his canvas as 'the game' or medium into which he embedded layers of meaning from philosophical and psychological observations. I can, therefore, see how to, and am quite familiar with, embedding such observations into RPGs. Embedding RPG values/ RPG philosophies or psychologies into artwork is also of interest, but I'm not sure D&D easily offers such values, e.g. a Zen of D&D? So are you talking about dropping in a few in-jokes or taking a concept like RPG advancement and transposing it into other contexts?
I agree on most modern rpg art looking similar. Places like ConceptArt.Org used to have a few "Wow!" pieces years ago, now graphics tablets are cheap (I bought a big Wacom, that I have used for about twenty minutes, for around $250) and a lot of that art looks so similar it is sometimes difficult to tell illustrators apart. But that is just it, rpg art is, for the most part, illustration. When I put a "D&D-ism" into something it might be because I am jammed in some little apartment in Tokyo, going insane in some sketchy house in Sumatra or just cutting myself off from everything in my studio in Idaho. I have played these games for so many years that if I paint a lich or a black dragon or four adventurers fighting off a rabid griffon, and it sells to someone trying to be trendy then I have the satisfaction of injecting a little D&D into someone's life. I have had people find me who do play and that have asked if this or that was inspired by roleplaying.
Hmmm, maybe.
