Hugo Awards – The Nominee Highlights – Best Fan Artist

Since I misremembered and I won’t have the detailed numbers to slice and di… ahem… analyze until after the winners are announced, I figured I’d start the reviews and highlights of the nominees instead, along with some side commentary on what numbers are available.

So, what with the Hugo parcels being a tad delayed, I’m starting on the freely available categories, the first of which is Best Fan Artist. First off, ballots in this category soared from 296 nomination ballots last year to this year’s 1073 nomination ballots. That’s phenomenal, and exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see this year. Given that last year, the lowest-ranked of the finalists received 23 nominating ballots and the highest 48, more ballots being cast is a really good thing. It’s not that hard to round up 50 or so people to vote for some specific work after all (I couldn’t, but my marketing ability is negative. Some of the writers I know could do it without breaking a sweat).

On to the finalists, as listed on the Hugo site :

Matthew Callahan  – Magnificent Galactic War Fighters art series showing Star Wars clone troopers in combat situations is all that needs to be mentioned here. Go and look at it.

Christian Quinot – the site is in Russian, the artwork does not need translation. Or just run a google image search for the name and feast on the results. While there’s a broad streak of dark in the works, there’s also a number of fun and playful ones.

Disse86 – This artist also leans to the dark, but is very good- and I’ve got to admit to loving the humor in the Metallica-loving skeletal dude in his den.

Kukuruyo  – This artist works in a much more manga-influenced style, and is – of course – the creator of the GamerGate life series (as well as several other damn good series – go check out the site. Just make sure you have plenty of time free when you do).

Steve Stiles – I’ve got to admit most of what’s here isn’t to my taste but I can see the cleverness and skill in it. The website and gallery are horrendously out of date and not exactly what you’d call stylish (and frankly not exactly attractive, either). His tumblr blog  is a little less unfriendly to people wanting to check out his art.

Go check all of them out, take a good look at their eligible works, and decide which you think are the absolute best of the best of fan artists.

P.S. For those who want the numbers, the detailed data for last year’s awards is available here.

16 thoughts on “Hugo Awards – The Nominee Highlights – Best Fan Artist”

  1. Enh. I remain distinctly unimpressed by Callahan. I much prefer Malaysian photographer Zahir Batin‘s work with similar materials – they’re less photmanip and more “practical”. Plus he uses more off the shelf SW figures, while Callahan seems to be using the Sideshow Collectible line – a bit tough to aspire to!

    1. Me, I love Callahan’s work (those images tell a story to me). Hadn’t heard of Batin but those are great fun too, thanks for the link!

    2. It’s a preference. Batin’s work is fun and cute, but he isn’t on the ballot this year: it’s a bit late now to talk about who should have been there.

      Also, like Reziac, I’m impressed with the use of the images to tell a story and draw some interesting parallels with the story and images.

      My opinion. Nobody has to agree.

  2. I may have to buy a supporting membership yet. Heck, if I didn’t have everything in the world happening this year, I’d probably attend..

    1. I hear you on “everything in the world happening”. I’ll need several weeks to recover from the death march, although – fingers crossed behind back – it looks like someone managed to bring some sanity to the situation.

      We Shall See.

    2. Same problem. We actually thought we had a good shot at attending and then… other higher priority stuff got rescheduled…family stuff happened…

      Ah well.

      On the other hand I am quite familiar with St. Louis in August: I can’t imagine Kansas City is much better. Maybe it has lower mold counts?

        1. It’s quite possible you only need the first three words in that post. There seems to be a lot more reacting than thinking going on over that way.

          1. He called me an ingrate for not appreciating his previous derogatory linkings back when I posted Don’t Pirate Indies (Which took him 10 days to notice, so at least this time he was on the ball.)

          2. I did find it odd that last weekend a place called SlateStarCodex, which I’d never heard of, linked to “The Missing Narrative” and gave me over a hundred hits. Interesting collection of folks.

            1. SSC does have an interesting dynamic. Not seeing the linking post you’re describing, though—I see your post, but not an SSC ping-back. Could you post a URL? That’s a conversation on SSC I’d perhaps want to join.

  4. Steve Stiles’ half-century of art point to his premier position in the field. He
    has done more for the field than any living fan artist. Hope he wins!

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