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An ART issue. Suggestions please.
May. 18th, 2012 09:49 amThis is tricky. I've had quite an upset yesterday with my confirmation of my Masters of Fine Art ( a confirmation is where they review what you're doing and make suggestions about what you should do). It seems the stuff that I have expertise with (and seemed easy to do) was highly praised as Art, and the stuff I slaved over was discounted as being too "commercial".
The comments were made about the two graphic novels I'm working on: Real Life Trips (RLT) and Gender Transition for Innocents (GTFI). The idea was that each was a different take on the same thing. RLT was the personal (recounting five trips I'd taken in my lifetime), whereas GTFI was the impersonal and theoretical (in a manner similar to the Scott McCloud books. Ultimately I was looking at having them printed. In short (samples below from RLT):
Confirmation Ideas by LauraEss, on Flickr
The example on the left (full size here) was derived from taking photos or "snapshots" in Second Life (SL). I spent a whole month creating the set, buying/customising/building the props (over 300 of them) and customising the avatars (including the automated pets) for this. The example in the middle (full size version here) was a process of traditional drawing imported/converted/coloured into Illustrator. The example on the right (taken from the RLT Introduction) is the same, but I'm not drawing in a "funny animal style". Up to now most of the (meagre) feedback I've been getting has been that the SL stuff is "soulless" whereas the drawn stuff is OK.
In RLT there's a framing story and that's what the SL stuff was going to be used for, because the look was "closer to the now", whereas the stories told - all flashbacks to trips in the past) would be drawn in different ways. The first one mimics Rupert Bear album pages (like this this one) because it was the oldest story and Rupert was my first real comic love. As the stories got closer to the present, the characters would become less funny animal/furry, and be more human (the limited colour would also expand in each chapter).
And yet yesterday it was suggested that..
* I abandon the different styles for only one style, and that
* it should be the SL style, and that such should only be online, not printed
...in order for it to be considered ART! The other styles were considered to be too bland and commercial to be either either interesting or art. Now this has put me into a huge spin.
See I really do LOVE working in SL to make comics (just check out Seconds). But up until now I've gotten minimal response and it seems a battle to have it recognised as a legitimate way of making comics let alone art. The discipline is different from just drawing something - it's midway between a traditional comic and machinima (animation made from virtual worlds and video games). There's no proper name that I now of for this form of comic (other than some form of Fumetti). It's not "easier" than doing a comic any other way, not if you want to do it well.
But I had not considered it for the whole graphic novel. I had thought it "too easy" and the "soulless" comments had gone to heart. And there are limitations. Like Thunderbird puppets there are limits to the facial expressions you can use and you can't pose things like individual fingers. Even so, the example above accurately recreated a real person's flat, and approximated what they and I looked like in 2006. Also, I can't see the SL style being useful for GTFI. That is hugely inspired by Understanding Comics and I want it simple and straight forward.
And a post-Masters goal has been to have both printed. Huh? So, what do folk think? I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who've undergone something like this in academia, but I need some feedback. The suggestions made have hit me out into space, and I need some grounding.
The comments were made about the two graphic novels I'm working on: Real Life Trips (RLT) and Gender Transition for Innocents (GTFI). The idea was that each was a different take on the same thing. RLT was the personal (recounting five trips I'd taken in my lifetime), whereas GTFI was the impersonal and theoretical (in a manner similar to the Scott McCloud books. Ultimately I was looking at having them printed. In short (samples below from RLT):
The example on the left (full size here) was derived from taking photos or "snapshots" in Second Life (SL). I spent a whole month creating the set, buying/customising/building the props (over 300 of them) and customising the avatars (including the automated pets) for this. The example in the middle (full size version here) was a process of traditional drawing imported/converted/coloured into Illustrator. The example on the right (taken from the RLT Introduction) is the same, but I'm not drawing in a "funny animal style". Up to now most of the (meagre) feedback I've been getting has been that the SL stuff is "soulless" whereas the drawn stuff is OK.
In RLT there's a framing story and that's what the SL stuff was going to be used for, because the look was "closer to the now", whereas the stories told - all flashbacks to trips in the past) would be drawn in different ways. The first one mimics Rupert Bear album pages (like this this one) because it was the oldest story and Rupert was my first real comic love. As the stories got closer to the present, the characters would become less funny animal/furry, and be more human (the limited colour would also expand in each chapter).
And yet yesterday it was suggested that..
* I abandon the different styles for only one style, and that
* it should be the SL style, and that such should only be online, not printed
...in order for it to be considered ART! The other styles were considered to be too bland and commercial to be either either interesting or art. Now this has put me into a huge spin.
See I really do LOVE working in SL to make comics (just check out Seconds). But up until now I've gotten minimal response and it seems a battle to have it recognised as a legitimate way of making comics let alone art. The discipline is different from just drawing something - it's midway between a traditional comic and machinima (animation made from virtual worlds and video games). There's no proper name that I now of for this form of comic (other than some form of Fumetti). It's not "easier" than doing a comic any other way, not if you want to do it well.
But I had not considered it for the whole graphic novel. I had thought it "too easy" and the "soulless" comments had gone to heart. And there are limitations. Like Thunderbird puppets there are limits to the facial expressions you can use and you can't pose things like individual fingers. Even so, the example above accurately recreated a real person's flat, and approximated what they and I looked like in 2006. Also, I can't see the SL style being useful for GTFI. That is hugely inspired by Understanding Comics and I want it simple and straight forward.
And a post-Masters goal has been to have both printed. Huh? So, what do folk think? I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who've undergone something like this in academia, but I need some feedback. The suggestions made have hit me out into space, and I need some grounding.
