Magazine Cover Artwork

Re: Magazine Artwork

As I said in another thread for Interzone 210 the cover and all fiction graphics by Douglas Sirois, who is also profiled and interviewed (with more artworks from his portfolio). Doug also writes a brief introduction to each story detailing his thought and work processes, how he approached that particular assignment.

There is also a feature about Doug and his work in that issue and I'll post an extract here in the hope that you'll want to see more.
 

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I sat here for fifty years and watched the "revolution" in sexual mores move from "don't show naked women because it's nasty" to "don't show naked women because I'm a femnazi".

Progress?
 
I sat here for fifty years and watched the "revolution" in sexual mores move from "don't show naked women because it's nasty" to "don't show naked women because I'm a femnazi".

Progress?

NO!

That is not progress, that is someone forcing thier ideals onto someone else. Thats just idiocy. If I want to post naked pictures of myself or make adult videos for adults in an adult setting with willing adults then as a woman I have control over my body and I have the right to do so or to say no or whatever. I get so freaking angry with the governments censorship sometimes, and those dang radical feminists can kiss my behind.

It is about choice. I am not talking about human trafficking, those sick jerks can all be shot.

As a woman, I have the right and the choice to show, cover, love, abuse my body as I so freaking choose.

I do believe that adult -- anything showing anything between the top of th torso and upper leg area should be adult content and not accessable to children (especially my kids, I'd freak out). That doesn't mean it should be banned, but it should be blocked/covered/restricted. And yes, this definition would include most commercials and MTV.

For example, on my tv nothing above a g rating can be watched by my kids. I think that dirty magazines should have black plastic (or be kept in the back of the store). My problem is not with nakedness, it is with the way the female body is advertised as a commodity. I have no problem with tasteful art being shown to my kids, like Michelangelo's The Creation of Man or basically any renissance art that doesn't show women as objects of sex, but as objects of beauty.

see, here is my problem with radical feminists. They seem to think that honoring a woman's naked body is anti-feminism. I don't think it is. I think that when a woman has the choice to exhibit her body then she is being more of a feminist than those who would choose to control her body.

Yes, I went off on a rant. I humbly beg forgiveness.
 
Thanks for returning the thread to its original subject. The images I started with have disappeared because the links have broken. I could put them up again if you like.

All our IZ covers are 'paintings' as opposed to photographs. Does that make any difference? Manga covers and interiors can be pretty 'graphic' so I expect not but what do you think?

I do think that renaissance artists were aware that naked flesh was going to gain attention for a work.
 
Thanks for returning the thread to its original subject. The images I started with have disappeared because the links have broken. I could put them up again if you like.

All our IZ covers are 'paintings' as opposed to photographs. Does that make any difference? Manga covers and interiors can be pretty 'graphic' so I expect not but what do you think?

I do think that renaissance artists were aware that naked flesh was going to gain attention for a work.

I don't think it matters if it is painting or photograph, personally. I have vogue magazine, which always has a near naked woman on the cover, but it is done not as a selling sex point, but as a selling beauty point. If that makes sense? If you look at a lot of commercials, they are geared towards selling sex---Axe and Tag commercials, for example, sell sex and not beauty.

I don't think there is anything wrong with selling beauty, but I will say that I absolutely hate it when people draw a woman with double d breasts, a 10 inch waist, and a badonkadonk butt wearing a halter top and leather pants that are wholly inpractical for a warrior. :D
 
Im not so sure Renaissance painters cared about attention. Lots of that stuff was done on commission. My guess is they thought it was beautiful. And they always have a lot of draped cloth because it's fun to paint.

dusinzgirl... that's just comix..and, that's art. Just like they draw males with enorumous biceps and pecs and painted on costumes.

It's not mimetics, it's celebration. By the way, the costume Charlize Theron wore in Aeon Flux was altered from the cartoon version because the drawing version was impossible to move in. Wait until they try to do Vampirella. It's suggest tattoo.
 
And I thought all the folds and creases in the drapes were supposed to be suggestive of anatomical detail.
 
I'm easy. I don't think I've ever been offended by artwork in my life.


(PS I was kidding about the ex-wife thing, just a little joke about anatomical draping...no real person involved)
 
Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with the cover art I've seen so far. It might not all be to my personal taste, but I don't see anything offensive about it.

Just go with what feels right for your magazine. You're always going to have some reader somewhere who will get offended over the least little things. I've come across the same thing in my artwork. Some people see a nipple and just go ape-poo. Apparently, either there's a minor chonological distortion and these same people have their brains stuck in the 18th century or Darwin was wrong.

Personally, I blame the Puritans, but then again, I blame them for pretty much everything.

Darkwolf
 
Regardless of censorship (which I don't think is quite the right word for such a case as this), there is such a thing as public decency. It has more to do with politeness than anything specifically moral. I haven't seen the covers in question so I can't give an opinion on them. (I'm only seeing red boxes. Scantily-clad little red boxes, I might add.)

And really, "don't like, don't buy" only gets you so far. It's not as easy as it sounds. I like a lot of things in Play magazine, but don't like all the skimpy anime babes they always stick in the back. And try finding an adult movie without a lot of offensive material.

If you know what kind of covers you want on your magazines, then go with it, and let the cards, uh, fall where they lay. Or play the ball where it lies. Or however the metaphor goes. Opinions are all over the board and you'll just have to take a few complaints, even if it's not (as it sounds like from the responses here) truly a case for complaint.

And as a woman with interest in sci-fi and fantasy, I have to ask why you aren't putting up covers of sword-wielding WARRIORS? Or are you only trying to attract male readers?:p
 
A survey of magazines oriented to men and to women will quickly let you in on the fact that both men and women respond to scantily clad women on covers. Sometimes I think Cosmopolitan has sexier nudes than Playboy (and I won't even mention Seventeen, so please forget that I didn't mention it)

It's a quirk in the human esthetic, but everybody likes naked women (perhaps because they are beautiful? Just a shot in the dark) and men are less popular. Both men's and women's mags will show pictures of nude or partially nude women in the same shot, or touching each other, by the way. Only magazines for gay men will show naked men touching each other...and then only in fairly hard core mags.

Go figure.

Given that, the decision to go with Warrior Maid over Abs Boy is a quick one. And...and I'm drawing on my own publishing/editing experience here...maybe it has something to do not so much with atraction plans as the submissions they get?
 
I know there won't be much market for it. :p

There are so many factors feeding into our responses it's difficult to single them out. And I'm not even going to comment on Cosmo. Not going to do it. Not even a little. Okay, maybe a little- no, not going to do it.

I think as women are encouraged (be it by nature or conditioning) to spend more time with their appearance, they are more willing to look at other women than men are at other men. And there are some theories about dominance as it relates to the sexes and watching, displaying the body, etc. But I'm not going there.

And then there's the stuff we've just learned to tolerate, as until recently women SF&F fans were in the minority.
 
Thanks Lith for a reason to reload those covers. They were here as links before but the links broke when the website changed.

Page 2 of this thread includes a cover with a male in a pose that would have brought complaints had the subject been female. There are lots of fantasy covers with sword-wielding male warriers but maybe more with sword-wielding females.

The Best SF reviewer said that the (IZ 199) illustration didn't need to feature the squished-together cleaveage. There are plenty of other titles on the bookstand doing that kind of thing already, thank you. I read part of this issue in public, and had to go through complex machinations to keep the cover covered up. For me, a disappointment after several excellent covers.
Interzone 199 July/August 2005

The IZ 205 cover was also a source of complaint.
Sorry about the mismatch in images file sizes.
 

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Those tits were MALE???? Wow.

Love those big, thrusting ears on that babe on the left above, by the way.
 
I don't want to get caught with any ear porn on me. I might have to work as an audiologist some day.
 
LOL...

I actually like those covers. They don't seem promiscuous or pornographic to me at all, but of course the way a woman sees something and the way a man sees something are entirely different. I didn't even notice her tight little ears :D but I did notice the differences in style of dress between the two covers, the pretty details on the left one in the earthy tones is a stark comparision to the deep, plain red on the right. Both women might be warriors of a sort, but you can tell from thier stance and dress that the one on the right is probably crazier. She just has that crazy look. They should both be in a wet ear mud wrestling contest....lol....
 

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