Thread by @delaneykingrox

I did this goblin head model many years ago...I think it was in zbrush 2, to give you an idea. It's rough by modern standards but it got me a lot of work back then.

There is a story here...

When I was a kid, I didn't know about Jewish tropes or the cruel charactures of money grabbing hook noses I now know today, I grew up with a Jewish neighbour and had play dates with some Jewish twins from preschool- it just didn't register with me that they were "different"

I didn't see the imagery and have it connected until much later, and it didn't stick with me because I did not see that at all in my friends.

I had no idea that Fagin was a horrible Jewish stereotype, or any of that- until I was a teenager.

However, the imagery was..

...already creeping into my art before that, without me knowing the context. I grew up on books like Arthur Rackham, Moomins, Dickens, and films like Labyrinth.

A book that terrified me was rumpelstiltskin by ladybird.

When I was about six, I went to th Charles Dickens museum, and got bored. I ran on ahead of my parents and in the dark halls of the exhibition, I skimmed the pictures and... you remember how it was as a kid, right?

So... there I was, and...

Suddenly out of the darkness, a light came on and there was this pale mask- and it terrified the absolute living shit out of me.

As I ran, I could still see the mask as it had scorched onto my retina.

It was a goblin mask, with a long bulbous nose and a toothy grin and wide big dark eyes.

And it stuck. I had nightmares for years.

The story goes that such a mask scared Dickens, and thanks to him, I got the curse passed on.

Ta chuck.

It was some NOSEYBONK LEVEL SHIT

Even today, I doodle the face, when I test pens, when I try out new software. Bug honking nose, evil grin. Scorched.

Uhg.

This goblin was me trying to flush it out

My family has fairly bulbous nose tips- me, my mom, granddad, aunts- all have this feature, so I also tend to draw chunky noses on my characters.

I have had a couple of people point out the big chonky snoz' I put on my characters, and asked if it is a 'Jewish thing'

No. It definitely is not, more the imposition of self portrait and that fucking mask seared into my brain.

This Dwarf Necromancer, for example, has my familial nose. More my dads- I get that but the bulb tip from my mums side.

Ever since those comments, I really had to go through my work and look for problematic references that creep in from other media.

When I look at this early work, I see two things- that damn mask, but also Simon Bisley's depiction of Ukko- who is a gold lusting dwarf. Yeaaah. I am gonna call it, there is definitely two sources here where racism has been filtered through.

Maybe indirectly twice, but that is the problem with such imagery- we internalise it STRONGLY on a subconscious level. And ultimately that helps for prejudices we act on.

You can see the influences that got me to that work. It wasn't intended as a racial comment- but it certainly carries the torch on.

You can be the medium through which racial stereotypes persist, even if you don't know that is what you are doing.

So, as an adult who teaches concept art and creature design, I always recommend you look at the history of offensive racial cartoons as part of your study.

Look, learn and listen, and be aware whenever you put your pencil to paper of the history and weight of those things.

I can forgive twenty something old me for making that goblin, because I knew the intentions behind it where not racist at all. But as an adult I cannot forgive myself making the same mistakes again.

However, I put a big nose on a goblin because that is what goblins look like in my upbringing. I did NOT make the association between goblins and bankers that you see in Harry Potter.

It is the associations with negative aspects that makes it fundamentally racist.

I am pretty sure had I been given the job of designing the goblins for Harry Potter at the time I would have come up with something very similar because, again, that is what goblins look like in western culture.

I know better now to even accept that job.

Here are a couple of more doodles where the family nose appears. And these are, again, not racially motivated. So the question is, as a fantasy artist with a bulbous nose, haunted by a goblin mask, what do I do?

I like big noses, and I ADORE women with hooked noses- it's such an elegant, powerful look- and both of these are frowned on by fantasy art as negatives.

I want to have heroes with bigger noses, broken noses, arched noses.

But I don't want to perpetuate evil stereotype.

So I would love to hear peoples thoughts, especially my Jewish follows who cop it on the flip side.

My thought is it all comes down to negative association.

Fun side note- if you look you will see the skin uses capillaries, veins and fat deposits under the skin, which I airbrush first then build the flesh tone over. It's a technique from VFX legend Steve Wang.