Frazetta and Vallejo

[bolen]

I saw "Frazetta: Painting with Fire" last night. It is a great documentary. I have to admit I did not know how influential Frank Frazetta was in Fantasy Art.

I was wondering if Boris Vallejo is of the same generation or is he a 2nd generation painter who grew up on Frazetta.

 

[Mark]

I saw "Frazetta: Painting with Fire" last night. It is a great documentary. I have to admit I did not know how influential Frank Frazetta was in Fantasy Art.

I was wondering if Boris Vallejo is of the same generation or is he a 2nd generation painter who grew up on Frazetta.

No "nod" to Frazetta in his bio here -

http://www.imaginistix.com/borisbio.cfm

- nor here -

http://vallejo.ural.net/about.php3

Though he is a bit younger, it would seem.

 

[bolen]

If he is younger, he had to be influenced by Frizetta. (don't you think) They seem to be very similar. However Frizetta seems to be a bit grittier. His warriors are scared while Vellejo's look like male models.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Boris Vallejo was definately influenced by Frank Frazetta, although there are some obvious differences between the two, mainly in the characters. The people in Frazetta's artwork tends to be stylized and slightly exaggerated, while in Boris Vallejo's artwork the people tend to be very detailed and nearly photorealistic (not to mention that the men in his artwork all look like bodybuilders and the women all look like models). Also, Frazetta's paintings often depict characters in the mid-action, while Vallejo's characters look like they're posing.

 

[Mark]

I think I would make the same assumption, if they both grew into their styles here in the USA, but Vellejo's style might very well come solely from studying the old masters, and it may just be that they were both influenced by the same old masters to some degree (Frazetta earlier than Vellejo, of course). It seems possible that Vellejo's style was fairly set by the time he came to the USA and I couldn't venture a guess how possible it was that he'd been exposed to Frazetta's work before Vellejo came here. Here is a link to Frazetta's bio.

 

[bolen]

Ok I will buy that

 

[bolen]

Has anyone seen "Fire and Ice"? Is it any good?

 

[David Howery]

a lot of Vallejo's men in his paintings look alike... because he uses himself as a model a lot. If you've ever seen a picture of him in his younger days, he was actually a pretty muscular guy....

 

[Zander]

Has anyone seen "Fire and Ice"? Is it any good?

I saw it a long time ago. IIRC visually, it's great but in terms of plot, it's mediocre.

 

[Warrior Poet]

Frazetta is the king. I don't know much about Vallejo, but I'm betting he was influenced by Frazetta, even if only indirectly. Frankly, most classic fantasy art after the 60s drew from Frazetta.

Vallejo's style is very different, and doesn't have atmosphere the way Frazetta does. With a Frazetta painting, I always get the feeling that something's happening. With Vallejo, I always get the feeling I've stumbled upon a studio set up. There's no denying Vallejo's level of detail, but just because CGI made it possible to define all the hairs on Yoda's head, doesn't mean it made the character better than the puppet version.

Vallejo is really into body-building, hence all his males look like, well, body builders, and his females all look like, uh, well, body builders.

Frazetta's males look gritty, dishevelled, dirty, tough, energetic, fierce, powerful, savage, alive. Frazetta's females look sultry, beautiful, sexy, mysterious, subtle, zaftig, sorcerous, healthy, powerful, interesting.

Environments, most of Vallejo's, frankly, seem to fade into the background. In Frazetta, he doesn't necessarily have much environment, but when he does, it's very distinctive: off the top of my head I can picture the snowy mountain range in the Frost Giants picture, or the undersea bubles and the strange watery lighting of the Sea Monster, or the pillar against which the savage queen leans. It's always dark and dynamic. The feeling I get from a Frazetta painting is that there's a world there, a context, more to the image than what I see and it exists beyond the edges of the canvas, and is waiting to be explored, like there's more paintings to be discovered. With Vallejo, I get the feeling that it's just a painting, decoration.

Has anyone seen "Fire and Ice"?

Many times.

Is it any good?

Depends on your standards of "good." Is it well written? No. It has some of the worst dialogue you'll hear in a fantasy film, and the voice acting (with a few exceptions, such as the voices of King Jarol and Darkwolf) is lousy. Visually, it's great. A lot of the still artwork is Frazetta's, and the animation work is Bakshi. People seem to either love Bakshi or hate him. I like his work (his Lord of the Rings excepted), and the rotoscoping technique works when it's used (sparingly, which is important) in the film. The fantasy story behind the film is great, the action sequences are cool, the setting is interesting, and when I first saw the film many moons ago as a wee child, it was cool to see a cartoon where there was actual fighting that resulting in actual injury/death (compare/contrast with, say the G.I. Joe cartoon of the 80s). There are prehistoric monsters, sword battles, betrayals, deception, a really cool imagining of magic and wizardry, dense jungles, epic chases, and scantily clad women drawn in a classic Frazetta style (they're healthy, beautiful women with wonderfully curvaceous bodies, not ridiculously out-of-proportion celery stick supermodels).

I love it.

Is it good? No, probably not. Is it great fun? You bet.

Warrior Poet