Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist candidates

by Doctor Science

Continuing from the previous post about the Best Pro Artist nominees, here are the candidates for Best Fan Artist. Four of them are from the Rabid Puppy slate, one is not.

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"Scars", by Matthew Callahan. "A reflection of the fatigue and doubt troopers may have when faced with back-to-back deployments to a combat zone."

Matthew Callahan was nominated by the Rabid Puppies, but is actually doing really good, interesting, novel work. Callahan is a pro photographer and videographer for the US Marine Corps. His SFF art is of posed Star Wars action figures in "realistic" settings, to look like public relations photos or war journalism.

If it weren't for the slate thing, Callahan would definitely be a ranking fan artist as far as I'm concerned. As it is, I'll have him below "No Award" but still on my ballot.

disse86 is a Swedish artist who does brutally ugly digital paintings. He was nominated by the Rabid Puppies and didn't submit any work for the Hugo packet, so he won't appear anywhere on my ballot.

Kukuruyo makes comics and images, mostly soft-core porn and/or Gamergate. He's on the ballot because the Rabid Puppies think we'd hate him, and they're right.

Christian Quinot aka Darkcloud013 is a Filipino artist. Most of his posted work is for game designs. It's not remarkable in any particular way, so I have no idea how he ended up on the Rabid Puppy slate. He submitted nothing for the Hugo packet, either, and won't be on my ballot.

Steve Stiles: "Death Trap", cover for fanzine Askance 35. It wasn't in the Hugo Packet, but I like it better.

Steve Stiles was a Hugo Award nominee as Best Fan Artist in 1967, 1968, 2003 through 2008, and 2010-2015. This year, he's the only Fan Artist nominee who didn't come from the Rabid Puppies slate. He had the highest number of nominations last year, so it's not surprising that he's the non-slate artist to break through the Puppy Wall.

Stiles' work is out of the old fanzine tradition, not the newer web-based art I generally prefer. But he absolutely is getting my vote for Best Fan Artist, as the only "real" nominee. I put down No Award in second place, with Callahan after that as a Not Honorable But Deserving Mention.

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Overall, the Fan Artist category is in terrible shape.

Comments

[wj]

Sad. Just really, really sad.

I suppose I can see why nearly all of the entries are from Rabid Puppies. If Stiles is the best that the rest of fandom can find, then there really isn't anything worth an award out there.

(Actually, Kukuruyo's execution isn't too bad. It's his topics that leave me cold. Even the ones which aren't, quite, soft porn seem to be in the "all guys care about are a pair of double Ds" tradition. If he could get past that, I think he might actually be able to do something passable. More-so than the others, anyway.)

[Doctor Science]

wj:

The problem isn't actually that Stiles is the best of the rest. It's that web-based SFF art is so incredibly rich & diverse that nominators don't have short list of "big names" to choose from. Scroll through my fan artist tag to see what I mean.

[wj]

I guess I'm just ignorant about the nomination process. It seems like, even (especially) when there are a lot of really good fan artists out there. And judging from your site, there are a lot of artists out there who are better than any of the nominees.

So why didn't any of them get nominated? I can see that not all of them, or even the best of them, might get nominated. But none of them? I must be missing something....

[Matt McIrvin]

The legit nominations were divided between too many candidates, so none got enough individual votes in the nomination stage, whereas the Puppies chose a slate and organized behind it. There seems to be an opposition to slates in principle that prevents the non-Puppy fandom from working up a non-Puppy slate.

[wj]

I have the feeling that I have done too much (non-governmental) political stuff -- in various groups. Because, after watching the Puppies last year, I'd have been inclined to get some of my fellow non-(anti-?)Puppy friends together. Hold a little separate ballot among ourselves ahead of time to decide who we were going to nominate. Think of it as a primary, albeit with multiple nominees coming out of it.

No pushing for any of the candidates we come up with in particular. Just making sure that there were some decent non-Puppy candidates available.

Perhaps after this year's Puppy-dom antics, the sane folks will decide it's worth the trouble to get themselves organized. Doesn't even have to be a single group, as long as the groups are big enough to get a nomination on the ballot.

[Doctor Science]

wj:

Counter-slating is absolutely unacceptable. The *point*, for the Hugo-voting community (=Worldcon members) is to vote for one's PERSONAL choices, based on one's PERSONAL judgement.

It takes a lot of work and thinking to be a Hugo nominator, it's a project. Forming slates or parties would make the task easier and more efficient - but remove the point. Making the effort, doing the project, having the experience of considering all kinds of works - that's the important part, as far as the community is concerned.

[Countme-In]

What is it with God-fearing Republicans that they just can't keep their hands off their ugly selves:

http://juanitajean.com/because-they-just-cant-help-themselves/

First, they stole patriotism away from anyone else expressing it, and now they want to horn in on liberal's pornography/sex monopoly.

Take a bath.

[Doctor Science]

Count:

I think you put that comment in the wrong thread. Or something...

[wj]

Counter-slating is absolutely unacceptable.

Dr S, I was absolutely not suggesting a counter-slate. All I was suggesting was group effort to nominate additional artists. No expectation of those involved doing block voting. Probably not even mentioning to the rest of the world that they had cooperated to get those nominations done. Just some additional artists among the choices for the balloting.

Would that still be unacceptable?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

New nominating/voting rules are expected next year, correct?

So the point may be moot.

[cirsova]

Ku Kuru Yo does some top notch SFF work; I can vouch for him.