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Jabrosky's Crimes Against Fantasy Art

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shwabadi

Minstrel
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This Dino Should Diet
This Triceratops really needs to cut down on the jungle vegetation she's been grazing, as you can see from all the stretch marks scarring her beautiful hide. But don't tell her that to her face lest she trample you for judging her by "oppressive beauty standards".

This character was inspired by certain individuals I've had the misfortune of bumping into in recent years. Their vain and ornery attitude reminded me more than anything else of a large and defensive ceratopsian dinosaur, an animal you had to tiptoe around carefully if you didn't want it to gore you. Sometimes your own life experiences can be a rich well of ideas to draw upon for characters.

I love this dinosaur haha
I've met a fair few people like that too
 

Jabrosky

Banned
Heeeere's Jabrosky! You may resume cowering in my shadow, mortals.

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Preying on Penguins
Carnotaurus sastrei was in the mood for poultry by the seaside, so he opted for these primitive penguins.

The oldest fossils found for the penguin order Sphenisciformes date back to 62-60 million years, or less than five million years after the non-avian dinosaurs' extinction. Some researchers estimate that penguins as a distinct lineage may go even further back to 70-68 million years in the Late Cretaceous, making them contemporary with dinosaurs like T. rex, Triceratops, or the South American Carnotaurus. Given this, I think it possible that dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous Southern Hemisphere might have munched on the earliest penguins.

On a semi-related note, looking up what penguins' mouths look like when open is not the most visually pleasing experience. Their tongues actually have spines on them!

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Andromeda, Disney Style (concept art above, ZBrush assignment below)
This was another homework assignment I just turned in for my ZBrush class. We were supposed to design an original character that could fit into an existing movie, or what you might call a "fan character". I chose Andromeda, the Nubian princess who married Perseus in Greek mythology, as the basis for my character, and I set out to give her design a "Disney Hercules" influence (her hairstyle is meant to channel Hercules's bae Megara). The render's background is of course a screencap from the movie's very first scene with Charlton Heston's brief narration.

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Homecoming for Brontosaurus
This sweet little girl is offering a nice starchy yam to a friendly Brontosaurus excelsus. Welcome back to scientific nomenclature, you ol' thunder lizard!

I wanted to try my hand out at cuter, more kid-friendly subject matter than usual, though I have to say little children can be challenging to draw if adult figures are your comfort zone.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
Two characters from a historical story, set in the year 1878, which I was outlining earlier this month (my next ZBrush assignment is actually going to be based off the male character):

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Nothembi the Azenyan Soldier
Having distinguished herself as one of the bravest and most formidable soldiers in her province, Nothembi was well on her way to becoming an inDuna (army commander) for the Kingdom of Azenya. But fate almost threw a wrench into her ambitions when British marauders under Col. Benedict Chambers launched a devastating raid against her village, carrying off her bookish little brother Lungelo. Figuring the British want to use Lungelo's newfound discoveries about uranium to manufacture the most destructive weapons known to humanity yet, Nothembi has taken it upon herself to pry him free from their clutches. But she may need the help of a vagabond Texas Ranger who won't tell her why he ran away from his country across the Atlantic...

Nothembi's home country Azenya isn't a real one (though I drew its name from the old Greek word "Azania"), but it combines elements of various historical peoples in southern Africa, especially the Shona of Great Zimbabwe and the Nguni-speaking kingdoms of South Africa (e.g. the Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu). I would place it somewhere around where modern-day South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique touch. You might recognize Nothembi's short spear (or iklwa) and oxhide shield as Zulu-influenced, but the stela in the background attests to Azenya's tradition of monumental stone architecture much like Zimbabwe (though the hieroglyphic sign is meant to channel ancient Egypt, since that's the best known written script native to Africa). As for her story, I'm still in the process of outlining it (though large parts of it are scavenged from my writer's back-burner), but I would sum it up as an adventurous historical romance in which this beautiful African warrior and a runaway Texas Ranger team up to save Azenya from the world's first uranium-based explosive in the year 1878...which the warrior's own brother was forced to make.

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Mick Hancock the Runaway Ranger
Once famous as the most daring and suave Ranger in all of Texas, Michael Hancock parted ways with both his beloved state and country to protest their brutalization of the Native Americans. Now his pursuit for a new living has brought him to the bushveld of South Africa, where the beautiful warrior Nothembi implores him to help her rescue her brother and people from British predations. At first Mick feels powerless against the might of the British Empire, and worries they might catch him for sale to American bounty-hunters, but his sense of justice (and hots for Nothembi) tell him it's worth the risk. Even if the British plan to develop a new weapon of mass destruction utilizing uranium...

I think I may have made Mick's face look a little too "pretty boyish" or effeminate, since he's supposed to be this strong and ruggedly handsome guy. Maybe it's his long hair, but then I like giving my white male characters long tousled hair. As for his black leather trenchcoat, I always thought black leather trenchcoats looked stylish and macho. Ought to get one myself once I can afford one.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Hannibal Roars
Hannibal Barca, the great general of Carthage who threatened Rome itself, yells out his order to charge from atop his elephantine steed.

Yes, this time I did base Hannibal's look on Mr. T of A-Team fame. It's such a shame that Mr. T has grown so long in the tooth now, as I think he'd make a great actor to play Hannibal in a historical biography flick (although they could also use him as a voice actor for a Beowulf-style motion-cap).

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Behind the Mask
I've had this animation playing in my imagination of a lovely African woman hiding behind this fearsome-looking mask (like the kind you'd associate with cartoon "witch doctors") and then taking it off to reveal her real self. You're scared of the beast when you first see it, but when you learn it's just a disguise, you fall for the beauty behind it.

As for the mask's facial features, they're supposed to resemble a mix between a human being and a dinosaur (especially the Tyrannosaurus rex).
 

Jabrosky

Banned
"I pity the fool who obstructs my elephant!"


I love that you made a Mr.T-based character design! Mr.T puts the laughter in manslaughter. He can divide by zero.

...and here am I wishing I'd ever seen him in action. Let me see if I can find some of his gems on Youtube...
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Reward for Mick Hancock
For our final assignment in my ZBrush class this semester, we have to make "self-portraits" of ourselves, but with the theme of either Western, science fiction, or Pixar movies. Choosing the Western theme, I chose my own original character Mick Hancock as my subject (since he was always supposed to look like a leaner, brawnier version of myself anyway). Since his backstory is that he's a Texas Ranger who left his state and country for South Africa, I decided an Old Western-style Wanted poster would suit the assignment well.

I know certain language used in this poster is...symptomatic of attitudes prevalent in the Anglophone world throughout the 19th century, but then it is the bad guys from Mick's story who would have drafted this.

(As an aside, President Custer Davis is another fictional character from my own imagination. As you can guess, his name is a portmanteau of Jefferson Davis and George Armstrong Custer to sum up his general character. In real history, the President of the United States during 1878 would have been a Republican named Rutherford B. Hayes.)

Oh, and here's his portrait in color:
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Jabrosky

Banned
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Ranger's Wedding Night
My characters Mick Hancock, the runaway Texas Ranger, and his beloved African warrior Nothembi are eager to consummate their new marriage. They're supposed to be on some kind of sleeping mat over her house's earthen floor, with our perspective looking down at them. And yes, Nothembi is about to check out the pleasant surprise Mick has waiting for her down there. :D
 

Tom

Istar
*deep breath through the nose*

Alright. I've held off for a while, but now I feel I need to say this. I just need to get it out.

Jabrosky, I want you to stop. I want you to stop posting drawings of sexualized, fetishized black women. I want you to stop drawing those sexualized, fetishized black women in sexually suggestive scenarios with white men who look uncomfortably like self-inserts. It's just...it's creepy.

You have no idea how f***ing uncomfortable it makes me. How angry it makes me. These women you draw are not people in their own right. They're posed to show off their sexiness. They're dressed revealingly. They're sexual objects, without personal agency. That's so wrong, especially when it's black women you typically draw that way. Black women have a long history of being hypersexualized, or denied sexual agency of their own. The implications that lie behind every sexy black woman you draw are...frankly, they're unnerving.

Let me ask you this--can you draw a woman who doesn't have a perfect hourglass figure? Can you draw a woman wearing anything other than revealing clothes? How about one wearing armor? Can you stop drawing "sexy chicks" and draw real women with their own stories and personalities?

I just want it to stop. Please.
 

Nameback

Troubadour
Tom, I don't think your criticisms are particularly well-founded. Jabrosky's female characters usually do have (often elaborate) backstories, and it seems to me that they usually are presented as having agency in said backstories. The idea that they're somehow totally lacking in agency or personality doesn't really jibe with what I've seen of Jabrosky's work (both written and drawn) on here.

Showing them with armor would also be an odd request, given that many of the peoples he draws inspiration from didn't wear heavy armor. Like, the most recent posting--he says the character's backstory is inspired by Southern African cultures, most of which used shields but not heavy armor. Neither the Zulu nor the Shona wore Western-style armor in combat, rather relying on shields and the reach of long weapons (spears, javelins, etc) for defense. Wouldn't make a lot of sense to draw her in heavy armor. Add to the fact that also many of said cultures did not share our Western ideas of "revealing clothes." Effectively, you're imposing a Western, white notion of sexualization on a historical non-Western perspective that didn't necessarily find e.g. exposed breasts to be sexualized or obscene. Ancient Egyptians, for example, show up a lot in Jab's work and also considered exposed breasts to be totally acceptable at various points throughout their history. In this vein, it could even be said that Jab is making concessions to Western sensibilities in the clothing he adds in some of these depictions.

Personally, I find his latest two characters to be delightfully anti-racist in theme. The idea of the British colonizers as bad guys out to create weapons of mass destruction who must be stopped by an African woman? Yeah, what lack of agency! And that she does it with the help of an American defector perceived by his people as a race-traitor doesn't detract from that at all--only adds to it, in my opinion. Too often we excuse racists in the past by saying they were "of their time," without noting all those people of the same place, time, and background who resisted imperialism, colonialism, slavery, racism, etc. Often those people were treated very poorly and considered traitorous, but remembering that they existed helps us to place moral burdens on the villains of the past--because it shows us that those villains still had moral agency, but they used that agency to make immoral choices. That's a lot more damning than "well that's just how people were back then." You can tread into white-savoir territory if you're not careful, granted, but I don't think Jab's done that here.

Finally, as to black women's sexuality in the American/European context, I find that it's often a bit of a Catch-22. If black women are considered unattractive, it's a result of racism. But if black women are considered especially attractive, it's also a result of racism. The only way to have a healthy romantic or sexual perception of black women, it seems, is to be color-blind, which is oddly opposed to most progressive notions of anti-racism, which explicitly eschew color-blindness as a way of avoiding the problem.

I'd argue that like most color-blind mentalities, this is a way of avoiding the problem. Maybe in a perfect world none of us would have beauty standards, but in the real world most human beings do, and these are socially informed. Most people have an idea of beauty that is archetyped, not universal--and usually that archetype is a white woman. Asking people to not have an archetype is a bit like asking people not to see color and expecting that to solve the problem. Rather, it makes more sense to me to hope that our society can allow people to hold a wide array of beauty standards and to accept that diversity of ideals as legitimate, rather than tearing down opposing ideas of beauty as we so often do today (in a way that tends to reinforce white hetero-patriarchy).

Black women are explicitly demeaned in our society, and our world, as undesirable. If you don't believe me, look to Nigeria, where 75% of women use potentially dangerous skin-whitening creams. That's a massive problem. Having some counter-narratives that portray black women (especially dark-skinned black women) as desirable is a rather necessary thing, I think. And Jab isn't showing African women as hyper-sexual jezebels, or other classic stereotypes of black female sexuality. He's just presenting them as desirable, which I think is perfectly fine. If you disagree, you might also want to take it up with Shonda Rhimes, who has made white male/black female pairings a staple of her television shows, to such an extent that it almost has to be a deliberate statement. Presenting black women as desirable to non-black men is a counter-narrative to the way that white women are presented as universally desirable, and to the narrative that blackness is unattractive or unfeminine.

I think there's something wrong with assuming that preferring a black female standard of beauty is deviant, or bad, or creepy. There's a nasty implication buried in that, isn't there? It's one that bothers me greatly.
 

Tom

Istar
@Nameback: Thank you for lecturing me on why I'm so wrong.

I'm aware of African clothing conventions, and that African clothing is traditionally more revealing than European (due to climate differences), but that's no excuse for blatant sexualization. One element of a composition is not enough to consider; you have to look at the whole thing--the clothing, the figure beneath, the way the artist presents the figure, the intent behind the scene.

Many of Jabrosky's female characters are drawn with the focus on their breasts or buttocks, or in sexy poses. There's nothing wrong with that in the right context, but an artist should be able to depict a female character in a non-sexual way when there's nothing sexual in the context. If you can't tell the difference between wholesome sexuality and fetishization/sexual objectification, I'd recommend heading over to Escher Girls or Bikini Armor Battle Damage. Many of the pictures they feature and deconstruct deal with the fetishization/sexual objectification of female characters.

You seem to be projecting racism on me--I don't consider a black beauty standard wrong in any way. Where the hell could you have taken that from in my post? Just because I disagree with someone's depiction of black women does not mean I don't consider black women beautiful. I don't like Jabrosky's portrayal of black women, because I consider it racist, sexist, and disrespectful.

Plus, you seem to be under the impression that I disagree with interracial couples. No. I simply find it off-putting that Jabrosky depicts his self-insert in sexual situations with fetishized black women. That's what I mean by depicting women as sexual objects. They are accessories for the male character's enjoyment.

Please discover the difference between "preferring a black female standard of beauty" and "exclusively fetishizing black women". Maybe then you'll see why Jabrosky's artwork bothers me so very much.

Ta. I need to take an aspirin.
 

Nimue

Auror
I agree with Tom. And I've also felt that way for an awfully long time, but it's just enough on the other side of the line that you don't want to say anything, right? None of these images, by themselves, is particularly objectionable. When I first came across this thread, I thought it was pretty cool. Dinosaurs, African warriors, nice.

Then...the voice of doubt piped up. All of these women are black. All of them have large breasts and butts. All of them are scantily clad in one way or another. And all of them seem to be involved with blond, blue-eyed white men. If this is about equalizing art, where are the black men? (In one image, I think.) Why do all the women have the same body? Why are none of them fully dressed? Is it really necessary to have a topless scorpion women...? "Miscegenation with a negress...?" Whoa.

Oh, lord. The thread title starts to seem a little less tongue-in-cheek.

Maybe the intent here is to redefine beauty standards. That would seem more sincere if there was any genuine celebration of variety, or if the women were doing something, anything! other than posing in leopard-skin bikinis and cuddling with white dudes. But they're one-dimensional, and that dimension is "sexy". If I saw a sexy African warrior on a pulp novel-cover where sexy white bikini girls usually stood, I might say "Eh. Step in the right direction, I guess?" as you seem to think we should be doing here. But four dozen sexy African warrior women in someone's personal art gallery doesn't make me think "societal progress" at all. I think you get what it makes me think.

Honestly, I could go on about this. I could bring in things that Jabrosky has said elsewhere that seriously make me doubt the intentions behind the artwork. But you're posing the question as though the only options are these sexualized images of black women, or nobody will ever draw black women again! I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this argument, sorry. We'll just break this down.

I think there's something wrong with assuming that preferring a black female standard of beauty is deviant, or bad, or creepy. There's a nasty implication buried in that, isn't there? It's one that bothers me greatly.
You had that strawman up in a jiffy. You're saying that if someone doesn't like Jabrosky's drawings of "sexually attractive" black women, they must, by deduction, dislike ALL depictions of attractive black women? That's, uh, that's pretty ridiculous. The logic in the rest of the post is somewhat along those lines.

Effectively, you're imposing a Western, white notion of sexualization on a historical non-Western perspective that didn't necessarily find e.g. exposed breasts to be sexualized or obscene.
Good thing these boobs aren't being drawn by a Western white male in a sexual way! Wait, um...

You can tread into white-savoir territory if you're not careful, granted, but I don't think Jab's done that here.
Right, he's just made every single one of his main characters and every female character's love interest into a white man. In African settings.

Presenting black women as desirable to non-black men is a counter-narrative to the way that white women are presented as universally desirable, and to the narrative that blackness is unattractive or unfeminine.
What makes them valuable is that white men want to have sex with them! Of course.

I...I just can't. I can't.
 
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Tom

Istar
So you're saying you have no social responsibility to be a decent person? That the rules of the forum and the views of other members shouldn't apply to you? That's...interesting.

Jabrosky, I am so done with you. You claim to be a feminist and diversity ally, but really you are the opposite.
 
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Nimue

Auror
So you get to pick and choose whose opinions to believe. Now you're arguing that we should listen to POC who agree with you, but disregard any POC who disagree with you? Oh hey, and you're white too. Holy cherry-picking, Batman.

And yes, I can absolutely believe that people would, at first glance, see your art as positive representation! I did, myself. But I would be surprised to find someone of color with the whole picture of your artwork and storylines who isn't a little uneasy about it.
 
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Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Well, he wasn't surprised. And no, there's no excuse. Tom was objecting to the art, which many women do (I mean generally, not just Jabrosky's art).

The sad part is I was planning to partake in the discussion, but saw how hostile it had become. Insulting Tom's sexuality is where the line was crossed, and I already gave a warning on Friday when I should have given a ban.
 
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Tom

Istar
LMAO

Sorry, was this supposed to be offensive to me? You're just telling me things about myself I already know (and like). And it's synesthesia. Jesus, if you're going to try to insult me by calling up a mental quirk I have (which is not a disorder), at least spell it right! And I have ADD, not ADHD, just so you know. And I'm not on tumblr (yet). And why do you need to call attention to the fact that I'm biologically female? Does that fact somehow invalidate my opinions?

If you're going to insult me, don't half-ass it. This is just funny!
 
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