The artist I chose is called Monty Oum. He works for a company called Rooster Teeth Productions, which specializes in creating CG animation shorts based on computer/video games. These can seen on their website roosterteeth.com. Their most famous work is called Red vs. Blue, based on the popular video game series called Halo. Monty Oum originally created CG videos in his free time, and was hired by Rooster Teeth for his skills.
A couple years ago I came upon the CG series entitled Dead Fantasy (a clip can be seen here). It's based on the popular RPG video game series called Final Fantasy, and a popular fighting game called Dead or Alive. In Dead Fantasy the female characters (scantily clad of course) from both series are pitted in an epic battle. This is clearly a video targeted at the male fans. As a rare female observer I don't care so much about the sexual imagery and was drawn in more by Monty's clear talent as a CG artist and the fact that it was based on characters I am familiar with. I have always admired CG animation and the animators who make it happen, and was thus astounded that one guy could make such a a large project like that in just his free time. The graphics aren't top-notch, but they are certainly decent, and the choreography was more impressive than almost anything I'd ever seen, even in professional work. I chose to focus on Monty Oum for this reason.
The following image is a wallpaper that Monty Oum made. It is unrelated to the aforementioned Dead Fantasy series, and features an original character. I will focus on this piece first.
Denotations: The first thing I noticed are the words "transient princess," which is the title of the piece. The image is mostly in grayscale, and there is a girl with long black
hair, in a lacy white dress. She is wearing black boots and appears to be standing on a large white terrace or balcony.Connotations: We all know that sex sells. As with the Destiny's Child magazine cover, Monty makes full use of this in his artwork, which primarily focuses on scantily clad women in sexual poses. This piece is no exception. Much of her outfit is see-through, and there is a strong focus on her showing off her physical appearance. She is looking towards the viewer in a pleading manner, as if beckoning. Her facial expression also seems to show innocence and weakness. If you look close there are various images of feathers within the image of the girl. Her hair seems to be made of feathers, and there are various feathers within the train of her dress as well. The feather imagery, the fact that she has one leg up on the railing, as well as the wind blowing her hair and dress seems to imply that she is about to fly away. Perhaps the girl is supposed to be a bird in a human form. The title "transient princess" suggests she is fleeting, which also supports my previous statement that she seems about to fly away. The title also implies that she is a princess. The large white balcony she is on seems like it could be part of a palace. Perhaps she feels trapped in her palace life, and simply wishes she could fly away from it and be free like a bird.
The next image is promotional artwork for Monty's Dead Fantasy series. It features a character from a game called Kingdom Hearts, which is related to Final Fantasy. The character is going to appear in a future Dead Fantasy installment.
Denotations: The image focuses on a young, blond girl, in a short white dress. She is wearing shiny white boots, and there is a sword-like weapon leaning against the wall nearby her. She is leaning on the wall in a hallway that is brightly lit and appears very sterile. There is t
ext at the bottom of the image that says "I'll change your mind." This is the title of the piece. There is more text slightly less obvious than the title, as it is somewhat hidden in the background, and flows into the vanishing point of the hallway. It is on the ceiling of the hallway and says "Give me a chance."Connotations: Since this is not an original character of Monty's, it's important to see how he has changed the character from her original design. Below Monty's image is the character's original design from the game Kingdom Hearts. As you can see, Monty has made her quite a bit older with a much more curvy body, and sexier clothing. Her new appearance, along with the text, seems to imply that she is past her
innocent stage of childhood, and there is a big focus on sexuality here, as with the previous image. The curves of her body are very much emphasized by her position, and her expression once again seems to show weakness and beckoning. The empty hallway she's in doesn't appear to have any exits, so perhaps she is trapped. However, since Dead Fantasy is a series based on fighting, she is perhaps using her sexuality to lure her enemies into a trap. Her weapon is close at hand, and her left hand is stretched towards it and is close enough that she could easily grab the hilt at any moment.Sexual imagery such as Monty's art is very prevalent in our society today. As a female who enjoys video games, which is a very male dominated market, I am quite used to the female characters being scantily clad in an effort to advertise to males and draw males into buying those games. It is the same advertising tactic that was used on the Rolling Stones magazine cover. Seeing such images everywhere and daily gets a bit tiring, but I can't deny that it sells. I respect Monty's work because I enjoy good CG animation and epic fight sequences, and because I once wanted to be a CG artist myself. He is currently working on future installments of his Dead Fantasy series, and I look forward to when they are completed.
Links:
Monty Oum's DeviantArt page
Transient Princess Image
"I'll change your mind" Image
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