Read on Twitter
I've been tossing around thoughts all day about some recent 3D art Discourse™ that's been happening today, and I want to unpack some shit in a thread.
I'm not going to link the original tweets because they don't need more people weighing in on them.
Anyway:
I'm not going to link the original tweets because they don't need more people weighing in on them.
Anyway:
What all this basically boils down to is two points:
Person A posted some art
Person B had some harsh words about that art, and spoke about it from a place of frustration and fear that it perpetuates some negative stereotypes and harmful trends in our industry.
Person A posted some art
Person B had some harsh words about that art, and spoke about it from a place of frustration and fear that it perpetuates some negative stereotypes and harmful trends in our industry.
That art (which, again, I'm not going to link to or repost) was a portrait of a k-pop artist in a swimsuit that was very revealing, and accented things like her breasts and butt
Pretty common stuff if you go somewhere like Artstation
But there's a wrinkle
Pretty common stuff if you go somewhere like Artstation
But there's a wrinkle
That wrinkle is that someone called it out as being an example of some incredibly popular trends in CG art, publicly, and framed it in a harsh way.
This usually doesn't happen in our industry.
This usually doesn't happen in our industry.
On the one hand, this is a lesson on what happens when you say harsh things about someone's work in public, and people notice, and on the other hand, it's also a lesson in how the prevailing trends in our industry can hurt people.
Both are true.
Both are true.
I have a LOT of personal feelings about all this stuff, so what I'm going to say is absolutely biased
That in mind, I think it's still worth saying because I know I have a pretty wide reach with things I say and do in regards to the game industry
So here you go:
That in mind, I think it's still worth saying because I know I have a pretty wide reach with things I say and do in regards to the game industry
So here you go:
The original piece of art, while technically VERY well executed, is still a symptom of some incredibly problematic trends in the game and overall 3D art industry.
It's a hyper-sexualized depiction of a real person who did not give consent for their image to be used that way.
It's a hyper-sexualized depiction of a real person who did not give consent for their image to be used that way.
This is, to put it VERY mildly, a problematic thing.
Speaking out against a piece of art and saying you don't like it while in a public forum like Twitter may be in bad taste, and it's understandable for there to be backlash.
Speaking out against a piece of art and saying you don't like it while in a public forum like Twitter may be in bad taste, and it's understandable for there to be backlash.
But speaking out against a piece of art which depicts a real person in a very sexualized way without their permission or consent is an ENTIRELY different situation, and people who do it shouldn't be shunned for saying something is wrong.
Sex and sexuality are powerful parts of everyone's life, and the idea that you can make a depiction of someone in a sexual way is a dangerous and disturbing thing to start defending regardless of whether it's for personal use, and personal use is a defense I've seen a lot today
Something that is for your own personal use, such as in your portfolio, is not an excuse to make something that ignores the rules of consent
Another aspect of this is the idea that highly sexualized depictions of women are so common in our industry that parody images of the Artstation logo stylized to look like the Porn Hub logo have been made
As much as we want to be sex-positive, we can't ignore this
As much as we want to be sex-positive, we can't ignore this
Creating a space in which sexualized depictions of things like characters from video games is fine. They're fictional characters, often designed to be sexy.
Saying that what you're making is purely artistic exploration without acknowledging it's basically porn is just lying.
Saying that what you're making is purely artistic exploration without acknowledging it's basically porn is just lying.
It's okay to make porn.
It's okay to make things that are intentionally titillating.
But pretending that there isn't a huge saturation of porn or porn-adjacent content being produced by artists in our industry requires mental gymnastics that are incredible.
It's okay to make things that are intentionally titillating.
But pretending that there isn't a huge saturation of porn or porn-adjacent content being produced by artists in our industry requires mental gymnastics that are incredible.
Getting angry at someone who points this out is both the wrong thing to do, and also often verging on sexism because the people complaining about it are usually the people it most affects: women.
The game industry, the film industry, and all the other industries that use computer graphics are all heavily biased towards men. This is not an arguable position. The most women I've ever worked with was on a team that was 70:30 men to women.
We, as men, need to listen to women when they point out problematic things in our industry.
We need to do better about acknowledging our faults.
We need to be able to have women in this space without trying to shut them up or shut them out.
We need to do better about acknowledging our faults.
We need to be able to have women in this space without trying to shut them up or shut them out.
A sexualized depiction of a real-life person as a 3D model without that person's knowledge or consent counts as one of the problematic things in our industry.
When someone criticizes this, even harshly, we need to listen and act accordingly.
When someone criticizes this, even harshly, we need to listen and act accordingly.
