Thursday, June 5, 2008

Hugo Awards - Some Fan Artists

I'm continuing to present a work by the winner of the Hugo award for professional artist that is contemporary with the short stories I am reviewing. The fan artist category is one that I have not touched yet. I won't be doing this regularly and I'm not going to restrict the images I offer to just the year the award was given.

I'm going to offer these with minimum comment since I'm not an art critic. Where possible I will link to a gallery of the artist's work or their own site.

Jack Gaughan
1967 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist


The same year that Gaughan won the first award for fan artist he also won for professional artist. For a man with an art award named after him there isn't a great quantity of his work available online. There is a gallery of his work with magazine illustrations for Fred Sabrehagen's Berserker stories.

Vaughn Bodé
1969 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist


Bodé was an underground comic book artist who passed away in the mid-70's. His son, an accomplished comic artist in his own right, maintains a gallery of his work. Just as a warning much of his art is not safe for work.

Tim Kirk
1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1976 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist


There isn't a lot of Kirk's artwork online so I stuck to some of his Tolkien images. His best known work is stuff that he goes uncredited on: he did the art design on some portions of rides at Disney theme parks including the Indiana Jones and Alien portions of The Great Movie Ride at MGM Studios. In the mid-seventies he was best known for a series of Tolkien illustrations.

Alicia Austin
1971 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist


Austin is the first of these winners to have a very extensive gallery of her work available. She has remained active with creation of fantasy art.

William "Bill" Rotsler
1975, 1979, 1996, and 1997 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist


If that wasn't enough they also gave him a "retro-Hugo" for 1946. Rotsler was involved with just about every possible creative endeavor in the twentieth century. Besides his cartoons he wrote novels, directed films, and even was helped with the design of the Nebula award. There is a site dedicated to collecting his cartoon art but it is currently down.

Phil Foglio
1977 and 1978 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist


Foglio is the first artist who before I went looking for his work I had to decide what to use. The current page of his very popular ongoing webcomic Girl Genius? What's New With Phil and Dixie? I chose instead a selection of his most distributed art, card art for Magic: The Gathering. I'm sure having several million copies of your art being snatched up by people is a huge ego boost.