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Cover art: Sexist and lack of talent?
Amylion
Member Posts: 38
Hi!
In my honest opinion the cover art is really bad, and even politically incorrect: It shows a sexist notion hostile towards men.*
Original size here:
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/1992/2513130-firiona.jpg
- Bad style:
- Faces are painted in a dilletante way: Blonde elf, ork, dwarf, kobold are failures.
- Scene doesn't make sense regarding physical logic:
- The original scene painted by Keith Parkinson was set down in a valley. This scene now is on a peak, but without paying attention to it: There are no such small ponds on a peak like seen on the right of the painting.
- Shadows are not coherent.
- The dragon would not be able to sit there on the edge of the peak, he would fall down.
- The composition, the positioning of the characters relative to each other, is crap. Kobold, dwarf, ork and Kerran don't seem to correspond to each other, they are single elements looking as if they were added as an afterthought. Very bad!
- Problems with feet / boots: Kerran, dwarf
- Blonde elf (Fiorina Vie?): "sword" (no comment), bowstring is on the wrong side of the hand, the quiver can not be worn like this by a female.
- Sexism:
There is no equality regarding gender!
The front row is occupied by females. The only male humanlike is hiding behind another female. Other males are poorly painted animal races. The subtext is obvious: Women rule this peak, the only man is only a side-note (tolerated as someone standing behind a woman, looking into the distance without interfering with the scene), and the other maleness is depicted as rude, brainless savagery.
There is a clear focus on the female characters which are painted with much more love to detail, combining the grace of female "tenderness" with virile power (note the male leg of the female fighter to the right!).
I admit that the fantasy genre has been very patriarchal, but that was reflecting the medieval society and the target group. Things have changed and this is good, but that style is not only going over the top, but much worse than any art produced in the past.
It is bad art.
Amylion.
EDIT:
PS: Of course the depiction of half-nude women is sexist, too.
But I personally would prefer half-naked men over being cut out of the picture.
* EDIT 2:
PPS: I changed my mind, I don't see a sexist notion hostile towards man, but a serious imbalance regarding female / male models.
"My point is that positive male models are very important especially for young men.
The new cover art picture – contrary to the original art – shows a lack of possibilities to connect their psychological identities."
Others just shoot the zombies which are chasing us. Whereas I try to talk to them.
If the brainless realized that it is dead, maybe, just maybe, it would lay itself down to rest...
Comments
Its bad in many ways
however I do wish people would get over issues of sexism ffs
ooo 1 of them but 3 of those OMG stop the presses... damn PC rubish
EQ1 cover art was far worse. Brings back memories as a kid I felt so uncomfortable while in Comp USA my eyes kept glancing at the EQ art. I felt like a pervert geek everytime I picked it up to look at it....... Memories like the corners of my mind..MEMORIES
Atleast they kept the dragon.
Post like this, subjective only, get so old.
OP, I disagree with you.
I'm not an artist so... I don't really care about details. The art seems to be to me somewhat generic, not bad, but also forgetable. It's not one of those "oh god I want a poster of that" pieces of art. More like "hm, ok" and move on.
Regarding the sexism, my opinion on that is this: you treat the persons depicted in the art differently according to their genders. Ideally, you would treat them the same. You basically create some sort of sexism by sorting the persons in the art according to their gender. In some art men are in front, in other art it's women, I don't care about that. If all fantasy art would be about women being in front, I'd start to wonder about the reasons for that. But it's not that way.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
This thread was made as a joke right?
It was pretty funny to claim sexism against males when the female in red has almost nothing on.
The art work is fine. What would be the point of it being super realistic when the game is cartoony?
theres no sexism in that image. Theres really something wrong with a lot of people these days that they find everything wrong and sexist.....
The things that seem wrong with the image have nothing to do with sexism.
Sigh.....
I found the original art by Keith Parkinson for a comparison:
Original size here:
http://www.keithparkinson.com/images/eq.jpg
What a difference! Like night and day!
And I can see now where some weird elements from the "EverQuest Next" cover art came from: note the blue sparkle coming from Fiorina Vie's wand. The Erudite looking into the distance makes perfectly sense in this scene. The overall composition is well done: The good guys fight the evil, savage creatures: ogre, troll, undead.
Regarding gender it's not perfect, but not bad: The women take the front row, but there are also beautifully painted male characters there to get some balance. The female fighter to the right shows a bit much skin, so that could be considered a bit sexist, but it's within the limits.
Amylion.
Others just shoot the zombies which are chasing us. Whereas I try to talk to them.
If the brainless realized that it is dead, maybe, just maybe, it would lay itself down to rest...
How to make a EQN rant thread:
1) think of an outrageous statement, such as "EQN developers used chinese slave labour to develop the game!"
2) replace the exclamation mark with a question mark
3) post thread
4) profit!
This reminds me of those crazy rants that people come out with when they predict things that happen in real life from the bible.
People will always find what they want to find in ART or Literature no matter how it looks or reads.
Get a Grip.....
Did you not consider the fact that it may be some clever marketing ploy to get more woman playing this game.
It certainly is not high art in a way that would make me want to save it as a wallpaper or possibly order a copy to have in my pc room.
It looks like the point of this art was to show off changes in the game from EQ to EQ next. You can see the armors, multi-classing, seemingly different player avatar choices, art style changes. All of this is subtly telegraphed in the drawing.
So based on those ideas alone, I think the artist did ok.
As for the rest of it, you are reading to heavily into it based on the politically correct side of our current culture, which has poked it's head into way to many issues that really don't need it. Basic common sense and calling things what they are has gone out the window with the pc crowd. Call something sexist, call something gender biased, call it racist, call it homophobic. But please stop with this politically incorrect business. This is not a political area and we are discussing fun topics that interest us. How is your thread helpful, productive, or interesting?
thread is off topic for forums.
/ thread
There's no Devinci code deeper meaning here. Maybe some of the artist's subconscious leanings and cultural filter but no secret motive.
+1
#trollthreadisfail
OH thinlizzy, do it til yer dizzy!
That seems to be the case, yeah. It looks like an homage to the original Keith Parkinson art, but meant to show that this EQ is different from the ones that have come before it.
I don't mind it too much. The only thing that's jarring to me is the placement of Firiona's bow. How the hell is she supposed to fire that?
Bad art? Yes. It looks dated as hell.
Sexism has nothing to do with it. If you are drawing sexist undertones from that image OP, it might be time to relax (maybe smoke a bowl or grab a glass of whine) and stop looking for things to get mad about. It's a beautiful day in most parts of the world, I'm sure there's a lot better things to do today than get mad at a crappy picture.
The EQN cover art is CLEARLY a tribute image to the origianl art from EQ1.
A tribute, not a copy. Of course its going to look different, but similar enough to notice its a tribute. Jeez OP......Jeez.