Media Download

You guys get the title reference, right?

As fans of SFF, we often make choices by instinct — and because we have a lifetime of geek fandom saved up, we tend to just inherently understand the references and put them in our work instead of making conscious visual decisions. But how often do we really look at the genre and break it down in an aware way? So Im going to share some of the topics and slides from my talk here as a jumping off point, and a reminder to be aware of the choices you are making instinctively—understand why youre making them and you can fine-tune them even further.

First of all, the most important thing to remember about SFF is that its not a genre. Its 10 genres — at least. And each of these subgenres have different influences, different trends, and wax and wane in popularity independent of each other.

This is an extremely simplified view — I could easily make a chart with twice as many subgenres (Grimdark, anyone?) but I didnt want to scare the illustrators at ICON who werent as knowledgeable about SFF. Each of the above subgenres are affected by different trends: for example, Urban Fantasy tends towards photos and very rendered illustrations (like Dan Dos Santoss work) because historically this subgenre is shared by romance fans, and that fanbase has been trained historically to look for photoshoots and hyper-real painting. Steampunk, on the other hand has different "genre checkpoints"...

As an Illustrator its important that you understand the difference between the subgenres, and the genre checkpoints for each because then you can figure out ways to do these checkpoints in a new and fresh way. For example, one of the genre checkpoints for Adventure Fantasy is a guy in a hood and/or cloak. Not every book has one, but a hell of a lot of them do. Art Directors are desperate to figure out new ways to make a guy in a hood look fresh. So if you think about it, a guy in a hood isnt really about the hood — its about mystery, about anonymity, and its about the reader being able to insert themselves easily into the character (which is easier with an obscured face). If an illustrator can find a new way to give me the same sense of adventure and mystery in a new fresh way, then they have solved my problem for me, and a shit ton of work will come after them. If you look at Richard Andersons work, his popularity in publishing over recent years has a lot to do with the fact that he is doing very typical epic and adventure fantasy scenes and characters — but his highly abstracted style makes it feel very fresh and new. Sam Weber also has a style where he can do very recognizable themes and characters from SFF in a style and color palette that is uniquely his and also feels very fresh and contemporary. Sams work also crosses the SFF genre boundary and appeals to mainstream readers as well — the muted color palette really helps with that.

Its not a mystery why these illustrators are getting work over and over and over again — theyre making smart decisions because they really understand the fanbases.

Then we talked about the popularity of geek media in general in the culture creating a bit of friction between the old-school hardcore SFF fanbase and the newer fans. 

Then finally we talked practically, about how to find work in the SFF genre. You guys have heard a lot of the columnists here on Muddy Colors give advice on this topic, especially yours truly, but I tried to boil it down as much as possible. Theres 3 ways to have a successful career in SFF art:

And then last but not least I gave out some resource lists, of course including this very blog: