Problems with the Hugo Nominations for Pro and Fan Artist

by Doctor Science

I gave up trying to read the Rabid Puppy[1] nominations in the Hugo Awards story and (hawk, spit) Related Works categories, and went over to look at the two art categories: Best Professional Artist, and Best Fan Artist.

We Hugo voters get a packet of representative works from each artist, supposedly. The Worldcon Constitution states that:

In the Best Professional Artist category, the acceptance should include citations of at least three (3) works first published in the eligible year

-- and images or links are normally part of the packet.

As I used Windows Explorer to scan through the Artist packets, I noticed that a number of the images had surprising time-stamps:

This is "Neverborn", in Nick Greenwood's packet -- but the "Date taken" (because Windows assumes you're managing photos) is 2008. Greenwood is a Sad/Rabid Puppy nominee.

I'm cutting here for Hugo Awards Inside-Baseball, and many images.

I went to Greenwood's site, and found a black and white version of this image, © 2008. I can't find the image elseweb.

This image and the other ones that aren't book covers in Greenwood's packet appear to be from a game, Amethyst. It looks to me as though most of the pictures were originally created in B&W in 2008-2010, and were colored for the second edition, in 2014. Some, though, were colored for the kickstarter, and it looks to me as though the image "Mech" was one of the few colored ones in the first edition.

So here's what Greenwood's packet looks like, to me:

A red X means "not qualified", a semi-transparent red X "only qualified if coloring a pre-existing image counts".

Doing the same thing for the other Pro Artist nominees:

Julie Dillon, last year's winner, and the only non-Puppy on the ballot:

Many of these have very old time-stamps, but were first published in Dillon's 2014 book, Imagined Realms Book 1. She notes that she'd been been working on this one off and on for years, so I believe its 2012 "Date taken" is probably more like "Date started", and that it's a legitimate 2014 publication.

The one with the semi-transparent green X is Beneath the Surface, which seems to me to qualify as Fan art, not Pro. Pro is for work which

has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.

Fan work:

has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public display during the previous calendar year.

The Hugo Awards site notes that

Material for semiprozines or material on public displays (such as in convention art shows) is also eligible. Fan artists can have work published in professional publications as well. You should not consider such professionally-published works when judging this award.

-- and presumably vice versa.

Dillon says Beneath the Surface is "personal work", published only on her sites

ETA: I have been corrected, and I've changed the image. Nat Lovin informs me that "Beneath the Surface" was used as the cover for Shadows Beneath: the Writing Excuses Anthology by Brandon Sanderson. Dillon doesn't note it on her site, and Google Image was defeated by the lettering on the book cover.

The fact remains, though, that this image has been extremely popular on Tumblr and may be one of Dillon's most widely-known works for that reason.

Kirk DouPonce, a Puppy nominee (he has done book covers for Vox Day):

The red X is for the Day novel, which was published in 2014 2012 (thanks for the correction, Tuomas!). The solid green Xs are on covers of books that have not yet been published; in the case of the first one, it won't be published until 2016. As for Dillon, the semi-transparent green X means the image has only been published on the artist's website, and should therefor count as "Fan" work, not "Pro".

Alan Pollack, a Puppy nominee (he does covers for Larry Correia, among others):

I'm so relieved, you guys. I do find it darkly amusing that Pollack picked three images in which his most characteristic artistic interest (boobs) is down-played, but at least all three of these are covers for books published in 2014.

Carter Reid has no "Professional Artist" packet. Another Puppy, also nominated for his Zombie Nation comic, which I assume is what he wants to be judged on. Judge I shall. ~~offstage swirling noise~~

---

Fan Artist, the only Puppy-free category in this year's Hugo Awards!

Ninni Aalto is a Finnish artist.

The packet also includes a link to her (?) Christmas calendar of movie and literary characters as bunnies.

Brad W. Foster is one of the Artist Guests of Honor at Sasquan; he's won this category before. He put these images in his packet:

and linked to his complete 2014 collection.

Elizabeth Leggett does both Pro and Fan work (according to Hugo classifications).

These are not necessarily the best IMHO of her eligible works per the Hugo Eligible Art tumblr -- I'm particularly fond of La Sirene.

Spring Schoenhuth does some painting, but is probably best-known for her jewelry.

She also has a page with all her eligible works for the year.

Steve Stiles has been nominated a lot but never won.

Frankly, I don't think this counts as "trying". The two works X-ed out are from 2013 (in fact, it was in last year's packet) and 2012 (it was in the LoneStarCon 3 packet).

---

I'll stop here for the moment, and go on later to talk about things like: how I'm going to vote, what I think the problems with the categories are, and start some ideas about how to fix them.

For a start, though, I urge my fellow voters to click around the 2014 Pro and 2014 Fan collections at Hugo Eligible Art, to get a sense of what your baseline should be for comparison.

---

[1.] Sorry, Sad Puppies, it wasn't really your show.

Comments

[Nat Lovin]

Dillon's "Beneath the Surface" was the cover to Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology (http://brandonsanderson.com/introducing-the-writing-excuses-anthology/).

[Doctor Science]

Aha, thanks, Nat. It's not listed that way on her site, and I didn't find it by image-googling -- there's so much lettering on the cover that it fools Google's algorithm. I'll edit the post accordingly.

[Tuomas Vainio]

That is interesting. Namely the prospect of the discussion of what sets a work apart. For example in the case of the "Neverborn" - to me it appears to be a charcoal drawing. Hence, after finishing the work on paper; you spray it to maintain it, and then proceed to either scan it or take a picture for a digital version. (Charcoal drawings are easily ruined by time.) Thus can we consider the most likely digitally coloured work as an entity of its own, or is it still the same picture as the earlier charcoal drawing?

Regrettably the images provided do not enable me to inspect the details, nor the actual distances within the image. Sometimes artists do decide to recreate their own work from scratch.

Thus with the infornation available, with the decisions between a work of charcoal and one that has been coloured. I would lean towards the works being seperate.

Though I suppose I should give a disclaimer how I have done charcoal drawings of my own, and then later coloured those, and I do consider both to be their own distinct works due to their seperate techniques and chalenges.

On the subject of "Kirk DouPonce": Why is there a red 'x' on the day novel, if it was published in 2014? Was the image published elsewhere during 2013?

"The definition of what is a “professional” publication is somewhat technical. A professional publication either (1) provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or, (2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner."

Thus the question on the green 'x' marks is as follows, are you sure that someone has not already paid for those works in question?

Well, I guess that is all I can bother about this topic.

[Ampersand]

Carter Reid's "Professional Artist" nomination is for his book covers, I think. He does the covers for the Rock Band Fights Evil series of books, among others.

[joel hanes]

works first published in the eligible year

I am way out of my field here,
but isn't it true that copyright date is
not the same as publishing date, nor not
necessarily the same?

I'm under the impression that modern copyrights
are automatic and begin at the creation of the
work, but publishing is a different event.

[Lenora Rose]

I'm not sure that already agreed upon and revealed future publication is a disqualifier. Maybe we need someone from the Hugo Committee itself to comment?

I admit, I'd have been inclined, IF given no other direction, to offer a portfolio of "Best works" not limited to the year in question - is it possible that these artists didn't know otherwise? I know ignorance is not a defense in the law, but I would like to know what they were told to do.

(I'm also a little surprised display in an art show, at least Worldcon or World Fantasy sized, doesn't tip into professional. I guess it's too hard to separate out juried shows (WFC, most actual galleries) or high-level shows with minimal fan-only presence (Worldcon) from local ones, and to include all would bloat the professional category into meaninglessness. )

[Doctor Science]

Lenora Rose:

That confused the heck out of me, too, until I read the rules carefully and thought about them a bit.

The distinction isn't actually between "pro" and "fan" as we usually think of it. It's between "pro distribution, assumed to be wide and publicly available" and "fan distribution, assumed to be available only to people who make an effort to be in fandom, by reading zines or going to cons."

This way of thinking of things has been *completely broken* by the Internet, Worldcon hasn't recognized it yet.

[Joe Sherry]

I think I'm willing to give Greenwood a bit of a pass: If we consider colorizing the images to be a substantial revision (and I can see the argument on both sides), all of the work colorized and "published" in 2014 is eligible and the work that appeared on the Kickstarter still wouldn't have been professionally published until 2014.

The kickstarter was posted in October 2013, but I doubt that the colorized edition of Amethyst was done until 2014 since they were asking for money for the production of content. So even that one image passes muster.

So, there's one image, "Mech" that you're saying was already in color in the otherwise BW edition of the game. The rest, to me, are eligible.

[Doctor Science]

Tuomas:

Thank you for noticing the incorrect date on the Vox Day cover, over on File 770. Proofreading at 2:30 AM isn't always a very good idea ...

[Rebekah Golden]

@Ampersand "Carter Reid's "Professional Artist" nomination is for his book covers, I think. He does the covers for the Rock Band Fights Evil series of books, among others."

The problem for me with that is that I couldn't find anything about him via google search other than his web comic and nothing was submitted to the packet not even a link to where the covers may be viewed online or a list of books to look at the covers of.

It would be very helpful if Reid or his supporters did something to make it possible for those of us who have never heard of him to see his work. Otherwise it appears he has none.

[Rebekah Golden]

Hi Doctor Science,

I like your preciseness and willingness to research. I feel like the internet has messed with what "publishing" means and so any work released digitally could be termed "published" (like the works that were announced as chosen art for future print publishing) or "unpublished" (like works put on tumblr or elsewhere but not yet paid for in any way) without necessarily intending to be a lie.

Until some more vetting of individual works with strong definitions around what published in a year means the voters are left with packets as chosen by the artist/publishers.

So far I've been approaching the question as a more sweeping one. Was their most recent work awesome? Have they grown as an artist? Was last year's better? Did they capture some part of a scifi/fantasy visual zeitgeist? Since the vote is for a person and not an individual piece of art I don't know how else to analyze the decision.

Am I correct in the way I am placing my vote? Probably not. For now though I'm trying to be as fair as I can and look forward to participating in more conversations about how to define eligibility.

Thanks!
Rebekah

[Joe Sherry]

Rebekah: I'm less concerned about their growth as an artist or comparing to previous years. I'm working through this by considering: is this year's work awesome? Is it worthy?

Any comparison to other years or "growth" doesn't quite work, especially if you're looking at a very established artist with a particular sensibility / style. I don't know how to say John Picacio (not nominated this year) has grown, but I think his work is awesome.

[Bill Stewart]

Alas, I'm voting for Steve Stiles in the "Nominated a lot, but never won" category again this years :-) I like his work, think it's fun and worth nominating, even though he doesn't seem to have much new this year, but it hasn't been up to the winning entries, even though he's definitely painted one of the most canonical pictures of Scalzi, like, ever.

[Doctor Science]

Bill:

Thank you for commenting!

You sound like a long-time, consistent Hugo voter, unlike myself -- I'm in the "long-time, but embarrasingly sporadic" category.

What kind of things do you look for in Fan Artist? What do you think about artists like Galen Dara, Sarah Webb, and Elizabeth Leggett? ISTM they are professional artists who are in the "fan artist" category because their work is distributed online instead of via traditional SFF publications. But they're not really distributed via the usual fan publications, either: it's just that "misc" got categorized with Fan Artist instead of Pro.

Dara, Webb, and Leggett are the thin end of a gigantic wedge of sf & fantasy art that's being distributed online: on etsy, deviantart, tumblr, via roundups on io9.com, etc. A lot of this work is of professional style and quality, comparable to the stuff in Spectrum -- but it doesn't count as Pro SFF publication for Hugo purposes.

How would *you* like to see the Art Hugos organized? What do you feel about SFF art from people who are fans, but who aren't part of Worldcon fandom? Examples: Leggett (who I knew about from tumblr, and who was on my nominations list), Evgeny Kazantsev, Alexandra Khitrova, or Alice XZ?