Honors Program Theses

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Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Aaron Wilson, Honors Thesis Advisor

Keywords

Zoological illustration; Biological illustration; Science fiction;

Abstract

Attempts to fuse fantasy and science fiction art work tend to be unidirectional. The artists begin with things that don’t make sense and then force them to make sense to the audience. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. In some images, dinosaurs are given mechanically sound contraptions; dragons are given tendons, and basilisks are drawn with surprising accuracy. It applies science to the fictional to create an image that is plausible. However, my experience with developmental biology and paleontology suggests that it is equally possible to take it in the other direction and begin with things that are completely real and based in scientific fact and create artwork that is descriptive and laughably implausible. This project examines the history of science fiction and fantasy artwork and its attempts to apply science to create something the viewer can understand and accept. From there, I will delve into
some examples of teratology and look at the abnormal fetal development that have been
scientifically explained. Finally, I will present some original art applying imagination to these examples based in science which results in fantastical images that the viewer will find difficult to accept as fact. This shows that fantasy and science fiction can develop in both directions.

Year of Submission

2022

Department

Department of Art

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

5-2022

Object Description

1 PDF file (22 pages)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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