Barleywine
The brouhaha (now THERE's a nice Victorian-era word) over the VR and other MRP decks elsewhere on the forums makes me think it's time for a frank discussion about the apparent unspoken bias among AT-ers about the "legitimacy" of the various artistic conventions used by deck creators to capture their aesthetic vision. The hierarchy appears to be that images produced by hand with traditional media - pencil, pen-and-ink, paints, printer's ink, what-have-you - somehow exhibit the most artistic integrity, while computer-generated art is somehow "tainted" by the technology behind it and therefore slightly suspect, while assemblages of pre-existing images - otherwise known as "collage" art - are a poor step-child to the "real" thing, sort of like taking the "easy way out." The code-words that convey this impression in many posts about the latter two techniques ("cold," "stiff," "sterile," "formal," "photographic," etc.) tell the tale - and I'm equally guilty of using some of them in the past.
As a trained artist my personal preference is obviously for hand-drawn-and-painted (or printed) images, but I've also worked quite a bit with collage and know that the constraints an artist works under in selecting and arranging images that cleave seamlessly to the intended "theme" of the project are every bit as rigorous as mentally formulating and projecting the images by hand onto paper. (In a visual universe as hemmed in by traditional symbolism as tarot, it might even be said that conjuring up images out of "thin air" is fundamentally just an exercise in "mental collage.") Many hard choices, compromises and trade-offs must certainly be made, but some truly compelling decks have resulted from the practice.
That aside, I AM uneasy about the impact of CGI on tarot art. I've seen what modern methods have done to film animation. Just look at any Saturday morning cartoon (in the US at any rate) or anime feature: there is virtually no fluidity to the motion of the characters. It's enough to make Chuck Jones weep. And I think some of that "quick-and-dirty" paradigm creeps into even the best computer art. The word I've used before is "ambiance" (hmm, spell-check doesn't like "ambience"); either you got it or you ain't, as the saying goes. I've personally dabbled in computer art, and I find that the interface gets in the way of my creative muse.
What say ye, AT?
As a trained artist my personal preference is obviously for hand-drawn-and-painted (or printed) images, but I've also worked quite a bit with collage and know that the constraints an artist works under in selecting and arranging images that cleave seamlessly to the intended "theme" of the project are every bit as rigorous as mentally formulating and projecting the images by hand onto paper. (In a visual universe as hemmed in by traditional symbolism as tarot, it might even be said that conjuring up images out of "thin air" is fundamentally just an exercise in "mental collage.") Many hard choices, compromises and trade-offs must certainly be made, but some truly compelling decks have resulted from the practice.
That aside, I AM uneasy about the impact of CGI on tarot art. I've seen what modern methods have done to film animation. Just look at any Saturday morning cartoon (in the US at any rate) or anime feature: there is virtually no fluidity to the motion of the characters. It's enough to make Chuck Jones weep. And I think some of that "quick-and-dirty" paradigm creeps into even the best computer art. The word I've used before is "ambiance" (hmm, spell-check doesn't like "ambience"); either you got it or you ain't, as the saying goes. I've personally dabbled in computer art, and I find that the interface gets in the way of my creative muse.
What say ye, AT?
); some apparently amateur art is actually brilliantly clever.