Congratulations to Meg Frank, Hugo nominee for Best Fan Artist!
Creating jewelry, paintings, and everything in between, Frank's immersive artwork communicates feelings that can't be expressed in words. With a varied portfolio, their work spans nature inspired watercolors, abstract paintings that make galaxies and nebulae look close enough to touch, and functional, wearable jewelry, and many pieces that fall in between, such as the cover art for Journey Planet 45 - The Matrix. Frank works on many projects within SFF fandom and publishing, including volunteering at many a convention, and curating the fiction in Fireside's forthcoming anthology Hope in This Timeline.
In 2019, Frank did a series of pieces inspired by This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. In 2019 they also discovered alcohol inks for painting, and the artwork became a brighter, more fun, and sometimes glittery place. A fan of glitter, fantastic hair and even more fantastic outfits, you can follow Frank on twitter (and see tons of their artwork and other great photos!) at @peripateticmeg.
Frank was kind enough to chat with me about their inspirations, going on an art creation binge after reading This is How You Lose the Time War, growing up surrounded by genre and the star strewn skies of the Midwest, creating art that speaks volumes without a word, and more. In spite of what they say, I am still convinced that Frank's studio spaces look like a glorious swirling galaxy, or perhaps maybe a magician's secret room.
Let's get to the the interview!
NOAF: What media do you typically work in? How did you first get started working with these materials?
Meg Frank: I've never met a medium that I didn't like, but you'll most often find me working with paints and jewelry. I started really focusing on painting as a hobby in 2014 while I was living abroad and sort of couldn't stop. Watercolors were first, then oils, inks (with brushes then pens) and most recently alcohol inks with resin and other inclusions.
Jewelry came a few years later - in 2017 my partner Sara Eileen, an extremely talented multi-media artist who made the porcelain for To The Moon and Back, took me bead shopping and I was hooked. I'd been playing with very basic wire flowers before then and silk was a revelation in terms of speed - knotting pearls is incredibly meditative work for me. I took a wire class from Elise Matthesen in 2018, whom I grew up watching making the most fabulous things, and I have to say it's an incredible honor to be nominated with them. I've always loved jewelry, it's a shiny, somewhat daily deliberation on how to present ones self. I feel terribly lucky to be able to work with Hillary Monahan and Becky Chambers of The Peculiarity Shop. They are both fantastic artists and Hillary is a boss with Etsy which allows me to focus on juggling so many mediums.
NOAF: How would you describe your art style?
MF: I would describe my art style as colorful. I go in a lot of different directions in terms of styles and mediums to express different attitudes, but my use of color is pretty consistent. Also, it has been noted on several occasions that a significant amount of my art includes glitter. NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans? MF: I think being raised by science fiction and fantasy fans probably did most of the trick. As a kid I was surrounded by (but not actually paying close attention to) media like Star Wars and Star Trek and Rocky Horror. I watched The Return of the King nab eleven Oscars when I was thirteen years old, and the Marvel reboot (Iron Man, 2008) came out the year before I graduated high school. Much of the media that in decades past would have been considered weird or dorky built just as much of my understanding of beauty as Annie Leibovitz’s photos or John Singer Sargent’s portraits.
Journey Planet 45 - The Matrix
NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?
MF: A number of the pieces that I made last year were very much influenced by This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone which is on the ballot this year and I cannot recommend enough. A very good friend smuggled me an ARC in March of 2019 and my brain was absolutely consumed. At 2’x4’ It Only Stings A Little is the largest wire piece I have ever done by a considerable margin - most of my previous work was necklace size, and it came tumbling out of my brain in about a week. Dark Blue, Dark Blue; My Careful Cardinal; The Garden Grows; and The Last Bloom are all nods to that story. There are many, many more.
Also, Be Still My Heart is me trying really, really hard to impress my partners and as I've been told it worked, I'm rather fond of it.
"It Only Stings A Little"
NOAF: What are your inspirations for your artwork?
MF: I would say that most of my work, the work that I love the most, comes from trying to express feelings that I just don't have words for. I can't say it, but I've got to say it somehow, and it turns out that I can get a lot of it out in color. Any time I'm overwhelmed with feelings (hey 2020!) I go looking for a paintbrush or silk.
I'm deeply interested in creating art that explores 'home' and all of the beautifully different and complicated ways home is built. NOAF: Many of your paintings have these incredibly lush, velvety black edges that bleed into the abstract colors. Can you tell us a little about how you get this beautiful effect?
MF: I wish I had a more exciting for the how part of the this question beyond "I pour a lot of ink on the edge of the canvas and the floor," but that’s mostly it! Merging the colors is done by tilting the frames and boards I paint on as well as blowing through straws and several other pretty basic but silly to observe techniques. The why is more compelling to me - I grew up watching the stars in rural Minnesota and other parts of the Midwest with dark skies and that feeling of immersion is deeply comforting to me.
NOAF: You paint, you do beadwork, you do metal jewerly, I've got to ask, what does your studio/workspace look like? (My imagination is telling me your studio looks like a glorious swirling galaxy, but that can't be true, can it?)
MF: Due to the adventure that is living in New York I’'ve actually just split my workspaces so I'm no longer doing as much of my work at home. I keep most of my beadwork in the city, but I've moved a significant portion of my painting supplies to a place upstate where I have more room to work and don't have to worry as much about spilling permanent materials on the floor.
My beads are slowing creeping from my desk at home to adjacent counters and key bowls in a very lovely subtle sparkly way whereas my painting studio looks like there was a glitter explosion in a basement that is half library and half art supply store. There is work everywhere. Books and letters are tucked in around various projects and supplies. Possibly a significant amount of paint on the floor. Also, a hammock and a cat on a heating pad. It’s one of my favorite places in the entire world. NOAF: Your studio spaces sound like heaven on earth! Meg, thank you so much for this wonderful interview!
POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.
Congratulations to Elise Matthesen, for her Hugo nomination for best Fan Artist!
Matthesen's artwork leans primarily towards jewelry and wrapped wire work. With inspirations that include everything from Art Nouveau, dragons, SFF fandom, the natural world, and the Fibonacci sequence, her artwork is whimsical and complex, often incorporation natural materials and unexpected accents. Regardless of the specific inspirations, you can't help but want to tell a story when looking at her artwork, especially her wrapped wire pendants. Her "Wandering Wire" style pendants and artwork has become so popular that she recently funded a Kickstarter to make a series of videos about hand wrapped wire artwork.
Matthesen has been part of fandom and the SFF community for decades, speaking and presenting at a number of events on topics such as fandom, self-esteem, bisexuality, polyamory, and body acceptance. In 2009 she received a World Fantasy nominee for the Special Award - Non Professional for a decade of serving as an inspiration for SFF fiction and poetry.
She sells her artwork primarily through her Etsy site, and for those of you who are on Twitter, Matthesen posted an excellent "2019 Retrospective" thread. Fair warning on that Retrospective thread - you will want to buy everything!
Matthesen and I had an extensive email conversation on everything from her favorite pieces of 2019, to her Kickstarter, to her favorite metals and stones to work with, and more.
Let's get to the interview!
NOAF: What media do you typically work in? How did you first get started working with these materials?
Elise Matthesen: I work with sterling silver wire and gold filled wire, which I hand-form into sculptural wearable art and sometimes small sculptures, which is why my business is called "Lioness: art for people and places." I was once commissioned to make a necklace for a lamp. That was fun. Usually my work involves beads as well as wire, and the materials of those beads ranges from meteorites to vintage plastic Mardi Gras beads to dinosaur bone to opals to coprolites to Czech pressed glass. If it's got a hole in it I probably want to make wire art with it. Sometimes even if it doesn't have a hole in it, I will make art with it; I love doing pendants and sculptures using tektites, particularly indochinite.
I got started making things with beads when I was a little kid. I didn't start doing wirework until I was an adult and went to a Upper Midwest Bead Society weekend retreat with my friend who is also my mother-in-law. Someone at our table taught me how to start with wrapped wire loops, and I dove in and never stopped.
NOAF: How would you describe your art style?
EM: Asymmetrical wirework heavily influenced by botanical illustration, fibonacci series, the curves that happen when work-hardening wire in certain ways, Art Nouveau, the Arts and Crafts movement (I have a pile of old copies of The Studio magazine, and find great inspiration in the advertising typefaces as well as the articles and accompanying illustrations), and weird spooky assemblages. I made a necklace once that Jo Walton couldn't sleep in the same room with (she was visiting, and the spare bed was in my workshop) until we put a cover over it. Mostly what I have called it is "wandering wire," since that gets at the asymmetrical aspects. It's wirework that has moods, and that often points at the beads and says, "This! See? See what this rock is doing?" It's fierce stuff, and often fiercely whimsical. It's easier to show it than describe it.
"What We Hold Dear"
NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?
EM: I am one, so part of it was talking to my friends, including the friends I hadn't met yet, and part of it was talking to myself. Much of my life is inside the genre, and I'm in my head there a lot of the time too, so it makes sense that what comes out will speak to some of the fans I hang around.
When some unakite showed up with some oddly placed inclusions that were strongly reminiscent of a certain artist's style, a piece resulted called "Conversations with a Thomas Canty Angel." I've done pieces inspired by books, as well as pieces that have helped inspire books, because books are among my true homes, books in the genre especially. So is convention fandom.The tradition of fierce punning on panels at local conventions meant that pieces like "Caddis and Harmony" and "Clotho, Lachesis, and Octopus" found a good reception. Getting cackling laughs is one of the great joys of making and sharing that kind of joke.
There's a necklace I made for Lois McMaster Bujold when she asked me to put all of her award nominee pins into some kind of wearable art. Every now and then Lois shows up with the necklace and a handful of new award nominee pins for me to add. I keep joking that if she gets any more Hugo nominations, we're going to have to start adding them as fringe.
Necklace made for Lois McMaster Bujold
NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?
EM: There are two that are good examples of how influences braid together in what I do. The first one is the pair of earrings called "Live from the Room of the Lilies" made with Swarovski crystal, vintage lampwork glass, and sterling silver. In the info sheet that accompanies the images in the voter packet, I wrote about being inspired by the way the lines made by molten glass in the lampwork beads resembled the wall fresco in Room Delta 2 at Akrotiri, Thera, in Greece, specifically the stamens of the lilies and the birds in flight. Reading science fiction involves the delight of recognizing references and new bits of data, juxtaposing and considering them, and enjoying the expansion of comprehension. It's a rush. The best stories have the kind of worldbuilding where a small detail opens up a sudden new understanding of how these pieces fit together to make a living place, a living culture, that we see a little bit of in the course of a paragraph. That's how those lines on the vintage lampwork glass beads were, bringing me a sudden clear memory of marveling at the wall frescos in a book about the excavations. (I'd love to see them in person someday, but that's probably not in the cards.)
"Live from the Room of the Lilies"
The second is "The Doctor in Arcadia (after Poussin)", which is a stone and sterling silver pendant I made from a very large bead made of dendritic agate. It seemed to have a landscape on it, which is not unusual for dendritic agates and jaspers. This one, though, looked so familiar. I realized that it looked like the setting of a painting that's been referenced in various... hmm, rollicking conspiracy novelizations of reassembled history, I guess one could say. Before Dan Whatshisname and the Da Vinci Code, there were Baigent and Leigh with their Holy Blood, Holy Grail book, where they lined up as many mysterious correspondences and arcane possibilities as they could, and then sent it spinning like a ride at Disneyland. Poussin's painting of the shepherds of Arcadia had been reproduced in Baigent and Leigh's work, and here was a piece of rock that strongly resembled the wild setting and the ancient stone tomb, minus the shepherds of the painting. Looking at the stone, I suddenly realized that the whole thing made a lot more sense if you added the Doctor to the whole thing. So yeah, Doctor Who crossing over with any grand conspiracy yarn always makes it better, in my opinion.
"The Doctor in Arcadia"
NOAF: Convention running, editing, writing, filking, fantasy inspired jewelry (and jewelry inspired fantasy!), if it is a thing done by lovers of science fiction and fantasy, you've done it! And you've done it for a long time. How has the science fiction and fantasy community changed over the years, in your opinion? What types of events and activities are happening now that wouldn't have been possible years ago, and is there anything you miss from earlier in your career, that for whatever reason isn't possible now?
EM: How has it changed? It's a lot bigger, for one thing. A person used to be able to read most of the new books that came out in a year, and see all the movies even tentatively connected to science fiction and fantasy. And there were only a few things on TV that counted. Now there are so many worlds to discover. The material is fractal. There's endless stuff to discover no matter where you go. And it's too big for any one person to navigate. I think the role of fan friendships in our lives is bigger than ever now, because we point each other to places we might love.
This year at WisCon, which was held virtually, I got to do something I hadn't ever been able to make time for before. Since I had no dealers' room work and no Haiku Earring Party to host this year, I finally got to check out the Vid Party. It was SO GOOD. I'm going to make a point of seeking out more vids, because there are some seriously talented and passionate people making them. I'm late to the party, but delighted to finally get there!
One thing that's still true for fandom, or fandoms, or whichever way feels right for you to describe it: There's still the same joyful feeling of "Yay, here are some people who will know what I'm talking about and who will have knowledge and new thoughts to share with me!" when joining a group of fans, whether that's at a convention or in a discussion group online or on Twitter or tumblr or wherever. (Personally, I love all the text-based stuff on line because I'm hard of hearing, and it makes so much accessible to me. The internet gave me back group conversations, which are very difficult in person for me. So the fact that we live in the future, in a scientifictional future with a lot of text-based options for communication, has made my life better than I could have imagined. With the current situation, those connections are more important than ever, too. In face-to-face situations I lip-read, and masks are moving me from hard of hearing to functionally deaf... so I'm appreciating FaceTime and Jitsii and all the other options when my friends and I want to see each other's faces in a way that still protects us. I'm very high risk for COVID-19 so I'm not having much in-person contact with anyone outside my household for the foreseeable future.)
What I miss most at the moment is singing with people and laughing with people at conventions, the things that aren't safe right now. We'll see how things go. Meantime, I should probably be writing some filk, or laying down some Garage Band tracks to trade with people or something.
What else I miss is some people who aren't here any more, but that's the price of knowing wonderful people; someday you'll probably be missing some of them. There are a lot of new wonderful people around, which is a consolation. A consolation and a triumph, really, because there are so many people doing interesting work, and the field is broader and deeper than it has ever been.
"When We Rise"
NOAF: Congratulations on your funded Wandering Wire jewelry videos Kickstarter! What's this all about, and what do you hope people will get out of the videos?
EM: I love teaching people wirework and encouraging them as they discover their own style, and recently I got some strong incentive to put my lessons on video as soon as I can. (Hand and arm troubles and vision losses.) Kickstarter was the best way to get this carpe diem project going and we funded and then went on to add more. We're doing video lessons plus a mini-documentary of all the stories that don't fit in the lessons.
The intent is for the video lessons to eventually be free to anyone who wants to learn. Kickstarter backers at any level get a year of early access to each video as it is finished, and a year later it will be made available to all. I love that we can do this, and that one dollar backers and one thousand dollar backers all get the early access.
My videographer Neville also did a just-in-case Hugo awards speech-of-gratitude which the CoNZealand folks requested from all of us nominees. Eeeee! I'm looking forward to taping the lessons, because I was a little nervous for the speech but I'm never nervous when teaching, because the beads and the metal are fascinating to work with and it's not about me, so there's nothing to be nervous about. Anyhow, because of the current situation we adapted the original plan of taping a series of classes in August in Minneapolis, and now we're rearranging everything to be videos in my workshop. My Kickstarter backers overwhelmingly requested that I show my workshop in all of its fertile chaotic glory rather than unnaturally tidy (well, unnatural for me, anyhow), so the lessons will also offer cameraderie and support to other artists whose work grows in chaos, as well as a window into our world for artists who do it differently. (Let a thousand methods bloom, yah?)
NOAF: Thank you so much Elise!
POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.
In Year of the Witching, author Alexis Henderson renders a dark fantastic secondary world tale with resonances to Puritan America and the witchcraft with a strong central character focus.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. - Exodus 22:18, KJV
Immanuelle’s very existence is a blasphemy, a disgrace. Her mother’s miscegenation that resulted in her birth was a scandal in the community of Bethel, and the Moore family are outsiders in the community. Even with assiduous efforts at open piety, Immaunelle is an outsider within an outsider family, only good for her sheep rearing. When an incident brings here within the rightly forbidden Darkwood, Immanuelle starts to learn the secret behind her mother’s history, the dark power within her, and the rot at the center of Bethel itself.
This is the story of Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching.
As our central and only viewpoint character, Immanuelle’s story provides a deep dive into a character focused novel, with a third person perspective rather than a first person one to widen the lens of the camera to give us a perspective of the scene and the world around her. The chapters all start with fictional epigraphs from writings in this fictional world, aiding in the worldbuilding and accentuating the literary aspects of the novel.
Books are important to this novel, at the core of what this novel is. Away from the magic and the storyline of Immanuelle, what this story is revolves around the written word. EArly on, establishing her character firmly as a reader, she visits a bookseller in hopes of getting something to read. Immaunelle’s venture into the Darkwood has her come away with her mother’s diary. And the books that the church owns, and also hides away, are important and plot relevant. Books and words have power to shape the present, to recast the past, and to shape people. The words of the Prophet are the main throughline for this, both when Immanuelle tries to live by them, and when her story, her belief, her history, and her actions bring her into conflict with them.
The novel explores a number of themes through the revelations of Immanuelle’s story, and the dark magic that infects her community after those revelations. The novel’s darkness is not splatterpunk or cosmic but is the darkness of corruption, of degradation, of a society, a culture, a place being consumed by a darkness of its own birth and creation in its attempts at purity and tyranny. The corruption and spiritual poverty of the Church, the Prophet and its theocracy are mirrored and reflected in the plagues that strike Bethel. There is a real sense of not quite comeuppance, but rather, the “birds coming home to roost”. Where the novel shows its real power with that thematic element is putting the main character front, center and forward. Immanuelle is horrified by the plagues and works to try and counter them, even as she has a tie to the Darkwood and it’s history that she struggles to understand.
The power of women, when it is pent, restricted, and controlled by society is also explored in this novel. Immanuelle at the beginning wants to conform to her society's very limited expectations for the role of women, a very restricted space for them in which to operate and exist. The existence of the witches and witchcraft are but one of the daggers, as it were that challenge the accepted orthodoxy of the culture of Bethel. Immanuelle doesn't set out to be a fighter for her autonomy and freedom, but that desire just to conform to those limited spaces for women do not last in her.
To that end, Immanuelle and seeing the world through her eyes is the strongest and most abiding part of the novel. The worldbuilding beyond the bounds of Bethel and the Darkwood is deliberately vague and given the isolated nature of the community, this makes a lot of sense. I would have liked a little more underpinning to the world the author builds. That said, the atmosphere and mindset of a community under theocratic rule, finding that rule undermined from without and within, makes for effective dark fantastic reading, sliding into horror, scene sketching. What looks like an idyllic, pastoral community that the protagonist wants a quiet life within (despite her birth) is in reality something far different. And what’s more, Immanuelle herself at the fulcrum of events. She turns from innocent, to unwitting agent, to actively trying to be an agent of good and positive change. There is a brief sojourn outside the community which helps accentuate for me that the novel is on its strongest footing being concerned with the wood and Bethel itself.
The Church and the Prophet and its relationship to the community, its theocratic rule, and its Puritanical approach to community felt really relevant in this day and age, even as it evokes the Salem Witch Trials and the Puritans of New England. The religion here is not quite a monotheism, but there is a definite uncompromising outlook of how to worship the divine. There is also a magic system of sorts, Gifts that various people have, ranging from giving a perfect name to a child to telling truth from lies. Tellingly, we are told early on that Gifts have become rare (and Immanuelle does not have one herself), an early indicator that all is not well within Bethel, no matter what the Prophet and his rule say to the contrary. The cognitive dissonance of a society denying the truth around them and believing the lies of those in power feels awfully on point in this day and age, and necesarily so. The Church's fear-borne and relatively ineffective responses to the plagues only highlight that.
The Year of the Witching is a dark fantasy, if not an outright horror novel, that uses the tropes of both to tell a dark story of witchcraft, revelation, prejudice, injustice, femimism, and the search and need for change. Horror and Dark Fantasy are not usually my cup of tea, but the dark brew of the novel suited me rather well indeed this time. Readers who are not enthused with such tropes and such atmosphere may well find less to hook onto as readers. --- The Math Baseline Assessment: 6/10. Bonuses: +1 for strong atmosphere for the dark fantasy and horror evoked. +1 for excellent exploration and use of themes. Penalties: -1 the worldbuilding, especially with regards to the world outside Bethel, feels almost too undefined and murky. Nerd Coefficient 7/10 an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws Reference: Henderson, Alexis The Year of the Witching [ACE,2020] POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? 2020 Hugo Finalist for Best Fan Writer. @princejvstin.
Back in the late '90s, I was in high school and obsessed—OBSESSED—with Japanese RPGs. I first discovered them on the SNES thanks to Final Fantasy VI, and Chrono Trigger remains my second true love after my family to this day. But it was the PlayStation era, thanks to games like Suikoden 2, Chrono Cross, and Final Fantasy IX, that my love for the genre really flourished.
Most of the time, me and my friends all picked up the same games at the same time. We all played through Final Fantasy VII together, comparing notes the next morning on the way to school, and I even went so far as to haul my Commdore 1702 monitor and my PlayStation to my friend's house so we could sit side-by-side and play Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete all night long.
Every once in a while, though, one of us would go off the beaten path and pick up something new. For me, the one I remember most was Breath of Fire III. The communal aspect of playing JRPGs with my friends was one of the big draws, but I have immensely fond memories of popping that Breath of Fire III disc into my PlayStation, cranking the volume up way past what was acceptable in a house with four other occupants, and losing myself in an experience that was all my own. Eventually I hit the game's infamous desert and, thanks to a translation bug that reversed two directions, never made it to the end of the game.
Maybe it was bitterness at this falling out, or maybe it was because by April, 2000, I only had eyes (and so much money) for Final Fantasy IX, but despite my fond memories for Breath of Fire III, I didn't play its sequel until many, many years later when it arrived on the PlayStation Store and was playable on the PlayStation Portable.
And I didn't like it at all.
The visuals and sprite work were gorgeous, the story seemed interesting, and I loved the battle system, which are generally the selling points for JRPGs, but, many other technical flaws kept me from being able to enjoy the game. I dropped it about five hours in.
But, here I am, a few years later, and, thanks to my deep dive back into retro gaming, I've got my PlayStation hooked up to a PVM monitor and I decided NOW was the time to give Breath of Fire IV another shot.
I'm about seven hours in. Here are my impressions.
By the time of its release, Breath of Fire IV was competing in a JRPG genre that had changed drastically in a very short period of time. Final Fantasy VII ushered in a new era of 3D worlds with visuals that focused on cinematic storytelling and unique set pieces. In contrast, Breath of Fire IV feels like the continuation of 16-bit style JRPGs from a universe where Final Fantasy VII was never released. Its use of brilliantly drawn and animated 2D sprites is nearly unrivalled even today, and they manage to convey a broad range of character and emotion that reminds me of Square's best work from the 16-bit era—like Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG, which really showcased how talented pixel artists could leverage their work for storytelling—but upgraded to the nth degree. This is pixel art perfection.
Over on OneZero, Richmond Lee takes a deep dive into the impressive library of 2D games on the PlayStation, and singles out Breath of Fire IV for its impressive sprite work and some bold artistic styles.
He said:
These are some of the most sophisticated 2D sprites ever made for an RPG. They largely avoid having obvious outlines, which up until this point had been a basic tenet of sprite art. Because of this, the artists on Breath of Fire IV had to be far more deliberate with their shapes and shadows. Most 2D games up until this point had very formulaic shading. You work outside to inside, dark to light, in bands of color simulating a gradient. But without outlines, this style is illegible, meaning it was never optimal to begin with. The shading in Breath of Fire IV raises the bar by being planar rather than broadly spherical. It’s not afraid to have large swathes of flat color, which, as it turns out, can be even better for legibility and visual appeal. The complexity isn’t in the amount of information being thrown at you, but in the decisions behind them.
What sets Breath of Fire IV's spritework apart isn't just the brilliant concept art from Tatsuya Yoshikawa or the obvious talent of the sprite artists and animators, but the way it helps define the world as something unique. As Lee points out, there's a careful deliberation to the sprites, each pixel perfectly chosen and each frame meticulously animated to the point that you as the reader feels like these characters live inside your TV screen.
Just one look at Ryu's sprite sheet on The Spriter's Resource shows the level of effort and care that went into a single character.
As tech continues to evolve, we're reaching ever closer to the point of photorealism, but in many ways I've never felt so disconnected from the visuals in my games. Instead, I think one of the main reasons I'm drawn to older games is that they require a marriage between the game designers and the player. These games hold whole worlds within them, but you can only display so much detail at 240p resolution. And so the game reaches out to the player by offering a level of abstraction and asks them to bring their own interpretation of what they see on screen. The sprites here are not photorealistic, but they're realized, and that, to me, is more immersive than photorealistic models and animations that teeter on the edge of the uncanny valley.
Fou-lu
I always find it challenging to talk about 32-bit JRPGs without bringing up Final Fantasy VII. It's the meteor-sized elephant in the room because it so fundamentally changed (and popularized) its genre and its impact can be felt in nearly every game that followed. One of the most notable elements to come from Final Fantasy VII's popularity was the empathetic anti-hero. Golbez was a bad dude. Exdeath was an evil tree. Kefka was straight-up insane. Sephiroth? He was traumatized and abused, he was torn apart and reassembled. He held pain and sorrow. Outside of a handful of games from the 16-bit era (like Lunar: The Silver Star and its wonderful antagonist, Ghaleon), not a lot of games from that era attemped to make the player care about the antagonist. Final Fantasy VII changed that, and many games rode in its wake. Breath of Fire IV is one of the most successful.
Early in Breath of Fire IV, the scene fades to black and the player takes control of a woken god emerging from a tomb. Fou-lu, first Emperor of the Fou Empire, is the game's antagonist, intricately tied with its hero, Ryu, and is controlled by the player throughout the game during specific moments. As a storytelling technique, this sets the stage for the coming together of the two nations fighting an endless war, and offers a perspective on the concept of duality. By seeing the conflict through Fou-lu's eyes, the player gains a new understanding of the magnitude of the game's events. No longer is it simply a story of a young amnesiac hero saving the day—instead it becomes something much more complex than that, and fits in nicely with the more politically intricate games of the era like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Orge (though with not nearly the level of complexity as those two games.)
Almost immediately upon taking control of Fou-lu, the player knows that something is different. Instead of fighting rats and slimes like Ryu, Fou-lu takes down enormous dinosaurs with a swing of his sword. The music isn't the usual scrappy battle theme, but something melodic and evocative of the western continent's Asian stylings. It's a twist on an otherwise fairly straightforward take on the JRPG genre, and showcases a level of ambition rarely seen outside of Square's offerings.
The Palette
I'm gonna take a mea culpa here. In the past, I've written about how Breath of Fire IV's muted colour palette was a negative for me. I'm drawn to bright, colourful graphics—like Breath of Fire III—so the soft pastels and predominance of brown in Breath of Fire IV's first several hours felt flat to me. However, as I've played more, and now reached the western continent, I've noticed my attachment to the world is growing. More colour is appearing here and there, and though the saturation remains muted, it gives the world a different feel than almost anything else I've experienced in a JRPG and I've really begun to dig how it helps to establish the world as its own thing, rather than just another carbon copy faux-fantasy world like the earlier games in the series.
In his OneZero piece, Lee comments on the game's unusual palette. "The color palette of the game is incredibly subdued," he said. But then goes on to explain why it's so effective at conveying the game's mood. "It’s full of earth tones, but never comes off as muddy or dreary because there is so much warm/cool contrast going on."
And once you reach the Wychwood outside Ludia, you're hit with a burst of beautiful colour, and the effect of spending so much time in the desert areas becomes more pronounced. Many games of the era (and especially the following era, which hit not long after Breath of Fire IV was released) directed players through several distinct biomes. A desert, a volcano, the snowy place, etc. With Breath of Fire IV, it feels like the world is more deliberately subtle and intertwined, and therein lies a certain beauty.
Breath of Fire IV was released to a post-Final Fantasy VII world, and the JRPG genre had changed immensely. It didn't rely on big, sweeping set pieces like Square's heavy-hitters, but instead chose to go in a different direction, one in which the characters and flavour of the world was brought to life through subtle touches of colour—conveying an impressive amount of emotion and connection to the game world through its brilliant art design and sprite work.
The Music
Breath of Fire III features one of my favourite soundtracks on the PlayStation. Just like the game's graphics, it's fun and full of colour and wears its jazz influence proudly.
Like the visuals, Yoshino Aoki's score for Breath of Fire IV stands in stark contrast—but is no less brilliant. It's moody and vibrant in a way that feels more natural and aged than its predecessor and adds to the game's wonderful visual texture.
I particularly like the main battle theme:
And then, in contrast, there's Fou-Lu's battle theme, which steps away from Ryu's more traditional sound:
The Asian influence here immediately signals to the player that they're somewhere new, and that this isn't your typical JRPG fare. Coupled with Fou-lu's power level in battle, it immediately helps establish him as a threat, and signals to the player that they're in a different part of the world from the main quest.
And then about seven hours in, you reach the Fou Empire with Ryu and his party. The battle theme you've associated with Fou-lu up to that point kicks in the first battle, and immediately you feel your tension rise. By the music alone, you know that things are about to change. You're not in Kansas anymore. It's an effective long-game approach to using music to define the world as much as the graphics.
The Worldbuilding
As important as the graphics and music are for adding atmosphere and texture to Breath of Fire IV's world, the game's writing also contributes heavily to its effectiveness and uniqueness. Of the many elements that come together to form the world, two things stand out above the rest: the western localization and a groundedness to the characters and cities.
The PlayStation era was very hit or miss when it came to game localizations. They range from Final Fantasy VII's barely comprehensible gobbledygook to Vagrant Story's baroque brilliance. Breath of Fire IV falls somewhere in between on a technical level, but uses one trick to separate itself from its peers. While the base writing in the game is serviceable, and the translation itself lacks the personality of, say, Paper Mario or Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, the western localization team swung for the fences by adding a Korean influence to the cultures and characters of the Fou Empire. This is absent in the Japanese version of the game, and does wonders for creating a feeling of divide and singularity to the two warring nations. A less adept localization might have painted both sides with a single brush, reducing the effectiveness of a story that revolves around xenophobia and pointless war.
But perhaps the most effective worldbuilding element isn't how the people populating the world talk, but what they do. The towns in Breath of Fire IV are small and labyrinthine, and absolutely packed with people. As you flit from NPC to NPC, chatting with them along the way, you discover a world that's populated by blue collar workers, tradespeople, merchants, nuns, orphans, soldiers, travellers, and everything in between. This is a world that feels vibrant and alive, with real people populating even its deepest corners.
The Battle System
To this point, Breath of Fire IV hasn't offered much in the way of challenge, but what the battle system lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for in visual style. In many ways, it feels like an ultra-refined version of the turn-based battle system featured in games like Lufia 2 or Suikoden, all through a UI that's clear, snappy, and stylized without feeling like a gamified visual element. The player enters commands for all of their party members, and then the turn commences while the player and enemies trade blows. Breath of Fire IV's twist on the formula is that it gives you access to all of your characters in battle, but only allows you to use three on any given turn. This allows you to strategize as the battle progresses by swapping characters in or out based on how the battle's going. Sitting out of battle in the back row lets characters recover their magic points, which adds another layer to the mechanic. It's fun, fast, and several hours in I still look forward to jumping into battle, but that's mostly because…
Battles. Are. So. Beautiful.
Your party faces off against the enemy on gorgeously drawn battlefields, shown from an isometric perspective reminiscent of Ogre Battle and the earlier Breath of Fire games. It makes the game feel more active and cinematic than the more typical side-on or behind-the-back view many other sprite-based JRPGs used even on the PlayStation, and I prefer its level of polish and detail versus something like Final Fantasy IX's slow-as-molasses 3D battles that take so long to load you can go to the kitchen for a coffee refill and get back before ever having to enter a command.
If I were to conceptualize my perfect JRPG project in 2020, I'd start with Breath of Fire IV's look and feel for battles, which I think is about the highest praise I can hand out.
The Bad
Breath of Fire IV is hardly perfect, though, and there are a lot of little peas in this bed.
So. Many. Minigames.
Mini games were the de jour thing during this era, and Breath of Fire IV is packed full of them. Way too full. Like. Fuller than me after a trip to the candy store. While some of them offer a moderately fun diversion from the main quest, they're too frequent, regularly interrupt the story's momentum, and, in the case of my attempted playthrough a few years ago, actively forced me to quit playing. The game controls like a beached shark, making even the minigames with potential more frustrating than fun. If I have to chase another beast through the forest again in my life, it'll be too soon.
Little annoyances
Speaking of these minigames, Breath of Fire IV is also littered with a lot of little quality of life annoyances. None of them are too egregious on their own, but added together they really take away from the experience. For instance, a lot of those minigames and puzzles require you to run around an environment to chase a thief or track a beast. For whatever reason, Breath of Fire IV's team decided they'd spice these sections up with random encounters. It makes something that should take moments take much longer than necessary, even if you're successful in the first try or two. Couple this with the disorienting camera, and it can be tough to regain your bearings after a battle, often leading to the need to start over again. One little design decision, so much frustration.
The Ugly
Sigh. So close.
The Dragons and Polygonal Baddies
I've gushed at length about Breath of Fire IV's sprite work, which makes its dragons even more disappointing. The game's artists and designers deliver a beautiful polygonal world for the player to explore, but its true beauty lies the detailed characters and monsters. Instead of delivering enormous, intricately animated dragons, which are central to its plot and represent many of the most terrifying moments in the game, the artists instead used polygons for the dragons. The result would be laughably dated in any other game, but when put up against the 2D artwork, it becomes clear there was major pressure on the artists to compete with the 3D battle engines and summons featured in many other popular JRPG franchises at the time.
It's not even that the Capcom artists didn't have the resources to produce large animated sprites. Early in the game, Fu-lou faces off against this monstrosity:
The Zaurus is a regular enemy faced in random battle, while the Kham is meant to be an imposing and powerful boss. The difference is staggering and unfortunate—especially since Breath of Fire III had some truly impressive 2D dragons.
Marlok
If the dragons are visually ugly, the whole Marlok sub-plot is ethically and morally ugly. Needing to get across a desert traversable only by sandflier, Ryu's party seeks help from a merchant creep named Marlok, who agrees to help them, but only if they can apprehend a thief that stole some of his stuff. Ryu and co. agree, but not before Marlok insists that Nina stay behind as collateral. It… goes down hill from there. As Ryu and his companions head out, Marlok commands Nina to do his housework. Once that's done, he adamantly requests a massage, and then he forces a massage on her—with a literal wink of his eye and a yelp from Nina as the screen fades to black.
It's gross, sexist, and, unfortunately, totally of the time for JRPGs (something that, sadly, hasn't changed enough in the 20 years since.)
My understanding is that the manga adaptation of the game alters this scene so that Cray bursts in just as Marlok is forcing himself on Nina, which is a better (if still unfortunate) handling of the scene. Unfortunately, we don't see or hear from Nina again in the game until the quest with the thief is over and she shows up at the sand cruiser dock in Marlok's tow. Nothing is said of the massages.
Isometric Horror
And, oh. How I've saved the best worst for last. Generally when I write a piece like this about a game I'm enjoying, I like to sandwich the bad stuff in the middle so I can course correct before the end and wrap up on a positive note.
Breath of Fire IV's camera and controls are so mind-bogglingly bad that I can't do that.
For all its many accomplishments—its brilliant art direction, god-tier sprites, terrific story, fun battlesystem—nothing, and I mean nothing, defines your time with Breath of Fire IV more than the way you view and move around the world.
I'm sorry, but what the hell? Who approved these? At what point did the designers come up with this system and think, "Yeah, this is great." What were the playtesters drinking when they played this and didn't immediately flag this as an issue?
Released contemporaneously with Final Fantasy IX, which featured full 360° movement, Breath of Fire IV is set to a rigid four-directional grid-based system reminiscent of much older JRPGs. It's jumpy, unintuitive, and reduces navigating the cramped environments to more of a guessing game than any experience found in other late-era 32-bit JRPGs. You have to leap frog the SNES JRPGs (which generally controlled really nicely) and go all the way back to the NES and beyond to find RPGs that feel as rigid and unintuitive as Breath of Fire IV. And at least those games didn't feature an isometric perspective, a camera you can barely control (and only turn in rigid 90° increments, when you can control it at all), super cramped dungeons and cities where you literally can't see anything, or time-based puzzles that specifically rely on the bad controls and camera for their challenge.
It's like trying to control Final Fantasy Tactics in real time.
Woof.
Conclusion
*takes a deep breath*
Despite all that. I'm nine hours into this playthrough of Breath of Fire IV and it's going to be the first time I complete it. Maybe it's playing on a CRT monitor, which really allows those sprites to shine. Maybe it's sheer grit and determination. Maybe it's a growing understanding of how to appreciate games within their context, rather than expecting them to be something more modern. Nah. It's the sprite art.
Breath of Fire IV is a gorgeous experience with a great cast of characters, a simple but effective battle system, and one of my favourite worlds in any PlayStation JRPG, but it's ultimately knocked down a few notches by easily avoidable design decisions and technical elements that hold it back from being a true classic on a system that produced many of the genre's most famous and lasting games.
Aidan Moher is the Hugo Award-winning founder of A Dribble of Ink and author of Tide of Shadows and Other Stories. He continues to write about video games with his column, Insert Cartridge.
Watching the Hugos continues with a look at the six finalists up for
Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Long Form generally means feature
length movies but by definition is any eligible work 90 minutes or
longer.
In previous years, three seasons of television have made the final
ballot (Heroes, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things) and one audio book
(METAtropolis, which was created for audio first). Otherwise, movies. Just movies.
That's one reason why this year's Long Form category is so delightful - there are two seasons of television on it, though neither actually aired on broadcast television.
My nominating ballot included Captain Marvel and Us, as well as the full season of The Mandalorian. An episode of The Mandalorian made the Short Form ballot, so I'll call it three out of five from my ballot.
Let's take a look at the finalists, shall we?
Avengers: Endgame, screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Marvel Studios)
Captain Marvel, screenplay by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck and
Geneva Robertson-Dworet, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Walt
Disney Pictures/Marvel Studios/Animal Logic (Australia))
Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (Amazon Studios/BBC Studios/Narrativia/The Blank Corporation
Russian Doll (Season One), created by Natasha Lyonne,
Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler, directed by Leslye Headland, Jamie
Babbit and Natasha Lyonne (3 Arts Entertainment/Jax Media/Netflix/Paper
Kite Productions/Universal Television
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, screenplay by Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams, directed by J.J. Abrams (Walt Disney Pictures/Lucasfilm/Bad Robot
Us, written and directed by Jordan Peele (Monkeypaw Productions/Universal Pictures)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: I wrote almost two thousand words about The Rise of Skywalker back in December and January for an essay that nobody has seen because I'm not sure I was ever close to finishing it. There were so many more things I wanted to touch upon but my will to continue was gone. One thing I found interesting re-reading the essay is that I never really talked about my overall impression of the movie. I focused on the details, but not the whole.
The thing is, I still don't quite know what to think about The Rise of Skywalker. On the one hand, it certainly did close out the main line saga and closed the door on a number of lingering storylines that fans have been looking forward to. On the other hand, it wasn't as satisfying as it should have been or as it could have been. Maybe it never could be, that fans who have been watching for decades had built up far too much expectation and that online bros would never be satisfied - but even with that impossible expectation and switching of focus, Rise of Skywalker was a mix of a mess and moments of absolute grace.
Rey calling Leia "Master" was divine, but Rey being the granddaughter of Palpatine was possibly the worst storytelling decision they could have made. The Rise of Skywalker is a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. I could detail all of the wonderful parts and lament the details of those that didn't live up to the promise, but then I'd be two thousand words into an essay I'm not going to finish.
Avengers: Endgame: Endgame gets a bit of a bad wrap for being an overbloated mess of a film that goes on for approximately 85 hours and got at least one significant moment terribly wrong, but it's such an impossibly satisfying ending to a 23 film saga. Endgame has so many beats to hit, but it benefits from a strong and dedicated plan - unlike, say, Star Wars.
Perhaps even less so than The Rise of Skywalker, Endgame does not stand on its own. Every moment is earned by the twenty two previous movies. Yes, the heart of Rise of Skywalker depends on at the bare minimum The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but also on the stories of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa - but as much as Star Wars is the story of "The Skywalker Saga" those movies are clearly a disjointed and unplanned mess. Endgame is not, despite my using the word "mess" in the first sentence.
Endgame is the culmination of an ambitious plan - though I would be skeptical of any claim that all of this was mapped out from the start. But even from that start, little puzzle pieces were laid down to get to Endgame. It's a movie that can't be taken as a singular piece of film making, but as that, well, endgame, is is masterful.
It could use more Carol Danvers, though.
Good Omens: There are a great many readers who absolutely
adore Good Omens, the now thirty year old novel written by Terry
Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I was not one of them, and I can't say that I
had any sense of anticipation for the Amazon adaptation. But, when a
pandemic has one working from home for as long as I have been working
from home, you find yourself watching stuff that you might not otherwise
watch. I would say that in my case that includes a bunch of shlocky
80's movies, but I'd watch those anyway.
Regardless,
Good Omens didn't quite work from me for the start but I was interested
enough in the relationship between Michael Sheen (angel) and David
Tennant (demon) that I would give it another episode. One episode turned
into six and I was generally interested in the story - and despite
having once read the novel, I didn't remember anything about the story.
It's a comic story of heaven and hell fighting sort of fighting each
other for the anti-christ, a twelve year old boy. It's really the story
of a friendship between an angel and a demon who are both willing to
risk everything, even their own sides, to prevent a prophesied
apocalypse.
I can't say I cared at all about the story,
but I cared deeply about the characters (and it was nice to see David
Tennant again) - the two angels, as well as another character named
Anathema. The character work is just lovely.
Us: I'm not in the game of saying that a particular actor was robbed of an Academy Award nomination (besides perhaps Tom Hanks in Captain Philips), but I can only hope that Lupita Nyong'o was seriously considered for Best Actress for Us because she is spectacular in this movie and like many actors in Us she is pulling double duty in playing both Adelaide as well as her "tethered" doppelganger Red. The success of Us hinges on Nyong'o's performance and that's an investment well earned.
It is occasionally difficult not to compare Us to (director and screenwriter) Jordan Peele's previous film Get Out but despite being horror they are very different movies. Us is much more of a traditional straight up horror flick and frankly, it's terrifying. The tethered are creepy as hell, whether it is the doppelgangers of Adelaide's family or Elizabeth Moss's doppelganger (Moss was also fantastic in a supporting role) - and not that I want a sequel to Us, but there's still a whole completely different survival movie of story left to tell. Because that's the thing, Jordan Peele leaves us wanting more.
Russian Doll: Russian Doll is a puzzle box of a show, with time loop followed by time loop. Whatever expectations views have after the first or second episode, and I'm not sure that there are any expectations beyond "what the hell did I just watch?", are completely upended as the series progresses.
I'm honestly not sure what the series is actually about - it's maybe about healing, but maybe it's about relationships or acceptance or maybe it's just a twisty time story, though Russian Doll isn't "just" anything. It's a masterwork from Natasha Lyonne. Frequently unpleasant, Russian Doll is always compelling.
Captain Marvel: Higher. Further. Faster. In a year I wished for more Carol Danvers in Avengers: Endgame, the world (aka Disney / Marvel) gives me all the Carol Danvers in Captain Marvel. While I would have preferred to have a full grown Captain Marvel at the start of the movie, there is so much joy in watching her powers develop and all of those small almost meme worthy moments are absolute perfection. Whether it is Carol looking over at Maria with "higher, further, faster baby" or the sequence of Carol getting up over and over again or the depth of the entire Maria / Carol relationship, let alone the pretty kick ass action - Captain Marvel is a delight.
In her review, Adri notes that "Captain Marvel is a great film, and as every woman led film
outside of "chick flick" genres needs to be a great film in order to
justify its own existence, that's something that we can all breathe a
sigh of relief about as well as celebrating. Its smart message about
self-belief, regardless of the limitations people feel entitled to stick
on you, is one that works particularly well for a female superhero, and
is overt about sexism without it overtaking the narrative or
overshadowing her unique journey or the fact that she's probably the
strongest and best thing I've seen happen to this franchise. I came out
of Captain Marvel immensely pleased that I'd made the time for it"
There are not many movies that I come out of excited to have seen it but also that I can't wait for my children to be old enough to watch themselves. Captain Marvel is one such movie.
My Vote
1. Captain Marvel
2. Russian Doll
3. Us
4. Good Omens
5. Avengers: Endgame
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.
Congratulations to Sara Felix, on her Hugo nomination for best fan artist!
If you've looked closely at recent Hugo Award bases, you've seen Felix's artwork! She designed the 2016 base, and co-designed the 2018 base with Vincent Villafranca. Currently the president of the ASFA (Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists), she was also the Art Director for the Dublin2019 Worldcon. Felix has curated art shows, designed multiple awards bases, and volunteered at, presented at, and sold artwork and jewelry at many a scifi convention. If you enjoy abstract artwork where colors blend into nebulae and cosmic dreams, Felix is the artist for you.
For more information about the 2018 Hugo Award base, check out Felix's blog post about how she and Villafranca first started talking about the base, their inspirations, and their design collaboration. You can of course, see much more of her artwork at her website, sarafelix.com.
Felix was kind enough to let me pick her brain about all things fan art - the joys of using different media, her experiences designing Hugo bases, the work she did with Dublin2019, and most importantly (at least to me), how she makes those gorgeous cosmic eggs.
Let's get to the interview!
NOAF: What media do you typically work in?
Sara Felix: I mostly work in alcohol inks, resin and acrylic paint. Mostly alcohol ink with a bit of acrylic as accent. So yeah, mixed media.
I started working in inks about a year and a half ago. Well, seriously at least.... before I dabbled not really knowing what to do with them. Then I took a class at a local craft place in Austin and fell in love. Mostly it was because I got to try out all the colors and see how they worked together. To me they are like space in a bottle. It is the sort of art that you can't control and really just need to relax and let the inks do what they want.
My resin work started years ago. My first big piece was about 20 years ago I made a table covered in my favorite comic book characters. A few years later I started making pendants. I went from using it as a way to seal in other art to an actual stand alone medium. Once I realized I could mix pigment powders into the resin I was hooked.
But overall I am really a bit of a dabbler. I like to play with different mediums and use them together. I have experimented with so much in the past I can now add in different mediums to get the effects I want.
NOAF: How would you describe your art style?
SF: Abstract. Space-y. I know that is very technical art term. I tend to like in my ink art an element of science fiction that is almost subtle. You look closely to see the stars.
NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?
SF: I have been working on science fiction conventions since 1999. I started making silly polymer clay figures and someone said to me you should put those in the art show. So I did.
I am a big geek myself and so I create art that I want to surround myself with. At first it was just silly, but now I have a few different styles that I sell at conventions that seem to speak to the different sides of my personality. NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?
SF: I think my piece for the Progress Report # 5 for Dublin was especially meaningful to me last year. I had worked on Dublin for so long and PR#5 was the last thing we released before the convention to the members. I had just started creating the portal series and that piece just worked. The colors fit Dublin, the logo fit perfectly in the center, and to me it felt like we have arrived and Dublin is now here.
But I really enjoyed all the pieces I made this year. I wish I had put in one of my more lighthearted sculptures but I really didn't get to do that much of that last year with all my convention work.
NOAF: Among other awards you've designed, You designed two Hugo base for 2016 and co-designed the 2018 base with Vincent Villafranca, Wow! What was that like, to be involved in the Hugo award design, and how did you go about designing them? Do they give you a mock-rocket to use in the prep-work?
SF: Both award experiences were so very different. 2016 was overwhelming. I sent in a drawing to the awards administrator and they chose to use it. They did send me a rocket yes, but there is also a great specifications sheet on the Hugo website. I worked with a company in Dallas that laser cut the wood while I created the rings and poured the resin and then I sent it back for them to finish the pieces, to pour a clear coat of resin and to add the acrylic on top. I based the design loosely on those fantastic tabletops people make with resin where it looks like a stream running through the wood. With the laser cutting available these days I thought creating planets in the wood would be a nice stylized look. The copper rings around the planets served as a way to keep the resin in place but also was a nod to the copper used in a lot of art deco jewelry pieces and is a prominent architecture style in Kansas City.
In contrast working with Vincent on 2018 was a dream. Vincent and I both were originally from California in the San Jose area so we presented to the worldcon team the idea of us doing the base for that year. The final idea was based on the Lick observatory in San Jose. For a few years I sculpted robots out of polymer clay that I sold at conventions and Vincent had also done a few robots so fit with both our styles to have robots at the observatory using telescopes to look off into space. Once we locked in the concept then Vincent came to my place to sculpt one afternoon and to discuss the base under the robots. A few weeks later I sent off my finished pieces to him and he did the bronze pouring. When they were almost done one weekend I went out to his ranch and we shot a video to show at the convention during the ceremony.
NOAF: Speaking of Hugos, you were the Art Director for the Dublin Worldcon. What was that experience like? How was it different (if at all) from what you expected?
SF: It is amazing. Iain Clark did such wonderful work for the convention it was fun to show it off. There is so much that the art director touches at a convention that the average congoer doesn't realize! From the Hugo stage props to the badges everything needs to keep a consistent look. But the convention team was wonderful to work with and they let me run with a lot of different ideas. For example I have always wanted to feature art that was not just two dimensional in the advertising of the convention. On two of the progress report covers I was able to use paper craft as the focal point of the cover. That made it more fun to me to interject my own style into the convention.
NOAF: Your Cosmic Egg and Dragon Eggs are incredible, there is a whole universe in there! What can you tell us about how these were made?
SF: Ah yes the eggs are really fun to create. I take a balloon and fill it with quick set concrete and blow it up to make the shape and then sit around rotating the balloon while I watch tv. When the balloon pops there is a fragile shell of concrete left behind. I use a coarse texture gel to make the scales and paint the inside gold. The outside is painted in acrylics and the inside gets a coating of alcohol ink to create the universe. The balloon/concrete step can be a bit temperamental. I can't even count the number of times that the egg shell imploded once the balloon was popped. But that is part of the excitement of the process. There was much rejoicing the first time I was able to make a concrete egg.
NOAF: Thank you so much!
POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.
Congratulations to Grace P. Fong for her Hugo nomination for best fan artist!
Fong's artwork has been featured in Strange Horizons, The Future Fire, Uncanny, and elsewhere. Her artwork showcases a flair for the dramatic, with characters often frozen in moments that get the viewer to immediately start a story in their heads, about what just happened, or about what might happen in the next few minutes.
She's done fan art in her favorite worlds, including The Grishaverse, the Illuminae Files, The Young Elites, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and many more. Fong is the kind of artist that when she sees stories and characters she likes, she puts her own artistic spin on them, showing the character's personality in a whole different light, to the joy of fans.
Along with Rhiannon Rasmussen-Smith, Fong is working on Bone Ink, a death positive short comic book, which will appear in Iron Circus's "You Died" anthology. She been involved with video games and movies, such as The Croods, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. You can learn more about Fong at her website GracePFong.com, or by following her on twitter at @fictograph.
Fong was kind enough to answer all sorts of questions I sent her way, everything from the dynamism and drama in her artwork, to how she goes about creating each piece (usually lots of drafting! and sometimes, none!), to Bone Ink, and more.
Let's get to the interview!
NOAF: What media do you typically work in? How did you first get started working with these materials? G.P.F.: For black and white, I'm a big fan of pencils and inks. I like pencils because you can get a wide range of shades, and I like pens because you have to be really powerful with your strokes because you can't erase. For color - I prefer digital. I usually use Adobe Photoshop and Procreate for iPad. They're very difficult to start off with because there's so many tools and possibilities, but I like how you can do so much without paying a lot of money or using potentially toxic materials.
NOAF: How would you describe your art style? G.P.F.: Haha, that's actually really hard. I guess I'd describe it as just - melodramatic? I like using groups of characters, lots of detail, and very contrasting lights and darks. Lately, I've been experimenting with flat versus deep space on the picture plane - how to use both lines and painting together in a unique way.
NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans? G.P.F.: It's all because I'm a big fantasy fan myself! I started drawing as a child by copying my favorite cartoons on TV - Sonic the Hedgehog and Sailor Moon, specifically. But then I discovered Animorphs and Tamora Pierce and began to draw those characters, too! After some time in art school, I picked up reading again and began drawing stuff for newer books. It felt like coming home.
NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?
G.P.F.: Following the award's eligibility criteria for Fan Art, the pieces I've included are ones I've done for speculative fiction magazines in the past year. I hope for all of them that I've managed to make something that speaks to my clients' stories. However, something struck me when doing "Pleiades for A New Generation" - the accompanying story was very abstract, but audiences resonated with the image of being exposed and falling apart as a way of revealing our inner stardust, being something else grander on the inside. It was actually a much quicker piece than the rest and using less complicated materials that I'd normally use just for sketching. The special ones just kind of come out fully formed, no drafts necessary.
NOAF: I noticed a lot of your artwork involves two people who are interacting with each other, and I love this, because my mind immediately starts making up a story about them and wondering who they are and what they are all about. Do you know their story before you start drawing them? What influences your composition decisions, regarding their positions to one another? G.P.F.: I always have the concept first. Sometimes it's a vague idea and sometimes it's very clear and specific. But as an artist, we have processes for drafting like thumbnails, color compositions, sketching, that help me arrive at a composition that reflects the narrative. I always tell myself that my multi-character pieces are "visualizing the space between two individuals" - like whether that space is close, far apart, tense, caring. And then I try to use lines, colors, and shapes that express that feeling.
NOAF: You mentioned on your website you have a forthcoming comic "Bone Ink", created with Rhiannon Rasmussen-Smith. What can you tell us about "Bone Ink"?
G.P.F.: "Bone Ink" will be a short, six-page, comic included in Iron Circus's YOU DIED anthology. It's about being death positive. Rhiannon and I have created a story about a girl who wants to turn her mother's ashes into a tattoo. I sketched the pages digitally but finished them in traditional media because I wanted to echo the themes of how creative work transforms as it passes through generations. For more information on death positivity, I recommend playing the video game A Mortician's Tale.
NOAF: Beyond illustrations, cover art, and other art work, you have also worked on games (FIFA19 and Call of Duty:Infinite Warfare) and movies (The Croods, Kung Fu Panda 2). How was your experiences doing artwork for games and movies different than doing artwork for book cover art, comics, and traditional illustrations?
G.P.F.: It's pretty different. Because I don't do art for games. I work full time as a programmer, haha.
NOAF: Thank you so much!
POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.
