#I just feel like. the process of learning formline art is so personal

[telekitnetic-art]

I’ve been feeling really pessimistic about the AI “art” rise in the animation industry (thanks, Bob) and how it’s gonna impact my career post-graduation (I graduate next spring) and even though I’m nervous and worn down about it, one thing I’m sort of taking comfort in is that even if the animation industry keeps self-imploding, I can still do formline art. Maybe that’s a little self-aggrandizing, but i truly think formline art is one of the things AI can really, truly, never replicate. This goes for all forms of art ofc, but over all my studies I’ve come to the sort of understanding that formline art is more then just art; it’s a storytelling device too, and it conveys my culture. Formline art has a specific rhythm to it and a history to it that can’t be learned by a machine in a way that truly conveys and understands our culture. Formline art takes real work to learn and making it is all about the process. You learn the shapes, you learn the animals and their spirit, you learn the intricate patterns and the cultural relevance it has. you don’t just look at it and try to replicate it like some art scalpers or a machine does. You don’t get the spiritual and cultural connection from feeding a machine over and over again.

At the end of the day, AI can never truly be human, and thus it can never really replicate my nation’s culture and feel our history, and so it can never truly replicate formline art too.

[telekitnetic-art]

i hope this isn't intruding since i saw your response to a person regarding salmon run's usage of formline art. i've had similar mixed feelings about what the devs decided to do. i want to ask (in your opinion) if there are ways to correctly reference indigenous art (and in this case formline) and utilize it in ways that aren't harmful. with the assumption that the utilization isn't in a harmful/inappropriate context. feel free to ignore this however, i don't want to make anyone uncomfortable being treated as a spokesperson

Hi, thank you so much for the question! (Also sorry that my answer is late, I decided to think on the question for a couple days and then got too busy to sit down and formulate a reply 💀)

I think it is possible to utilize indigenous art and formline art in ways that aren’t harmful, but I think the main question to ask yourself before you utilize formline art is WHY you want to utilize it. Ie, is it because the art or story you’re using has indigenous characters or context? Or is it just because you want to throw it in? Learning to avoid harmful negative stereotypes is important, but it’s also important not to go too far and end up putting indigenous culture on a pedestal/aestheticizing (?) it.

The best example I have for what I’m talking about is this one OVERWATCH skin for a character called Pharah. From my understanding, the character was thought to be Egyptian (her Wiki Page even lists her nationality as being Egyptian) until this skin dropped and it was announced that she was mixed race PNW First Nations

Similarly to the SR formline, I can see that the IDEA of formline art is there; but again, it looks like the designers simply LOOKED at formline art images instead of looking into how formline itself works. Not to mention that the character in question isn’t LISTED to be of a specific nation or tribe, just “Pacific Northwest”. I don’t think Blizzard intended for their skin to be offensive or racist, but they ended up generalizing Pacific Northwest art and culture by throwing a skin of just “we looked at pacific northwest images for two hours, this is what we came up with” energy.

I read an article on the situation by Kotaku where a game director said ““Specifically when you talk about that Pharah skin, it’s really interesting because the first time that we had seen the concept art of it, we were all blown away. . . We wrestled with like, ‘OK, so Pharah is clearly Egyptian and that’s her heritage. That’s her nationality and we want to respect that and we also want to be respectful of Native American culture.’ We sort of had this moment of asking ourselves, ‘Are we being disrespectful in any way?’ The Native American parts of it feel awesome and feel like an homage and like, ‘Hey, isn’t this cool?’”

I feel like that’s the dividing line between appreciating Indigenous culture respectfully and appreciating it as an aesthetic. The director said they wanted to be respectful of Native American culture, so… why not make an Indigenous character for OVERWATCH instead of giving a skin with a conglomerate of traits that could link to PNW culture but not a specific nation to a POC character who’s not native because “hey, isn’t this cool?” and then going “wait guys she’s actually native” when the backlash starts.

Studying and researching formline art is VERY IMPORTANT TOO, ideally talk to an indigenous formline artist who is a veteran/expert. My dad always told me about how when he first started doing formline art (a logo for an event he was hosting) his mom exploded and lectured him for ages about how he was doing it wrong and he wasn’t supposed to just put shapes down willy nilly. With formline art, there can be specific rules and guidelines for specific shapes. It’s not just a random process. Utilizing negative space and shape balance is also incredibly important, and can set a beginner artist vastly apart from a more experienced one.

Consulting Indigenous people and thinking about WHY you want to utilize their culture is the main things to ponder when you consider using it for your art. I think that’s a given with most marginalized people’s culture; I don’t blame ppl for thinking it’s cool, but it’s important to be respectful for the culture as well so you don’t accidentally use it for simply aesthetic purposes.

I think that’s all I can think of, I hope this helps. Sorry for the late reply, and sorry for accidentally adding a poll