Bree Yark! has a post up about diversity in D&D art. His basic point is that he won't be making an effort to be diverse because it is a European genre. I'm not going to dispute his reasons. He is making art, he can make whatever kind of art he wants. I just want to share an insight from the other side of the table.
I have spent a TON of time looking through art. I have to. Because for every ten requests to use someone's art in one of my books, I get one reply. So I have to go through a LOT of art, make a LOT of requests, just to get that end result. For every piece of art that makes it into a book, I have looked at maybe 50-75 images close up and maybe 500+ thumbnails.
And I can tell you that it is really really hard to find diverse art in the fantasy genre. Almost all the characters are white males. I make a directed effort to get female character balance (I actually aim for more females than males in my books, sometimes falling short) and that ends up adding a lot to my search times.
But racial diversity? It's so hard that I have basically given up on it.
Conclusions about the issue of inclusion in the hobby, I leave to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment