/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

Huion Kamvas Pro 16 vs XP-Pen Artist 15.6 Pro

Whats anon's choice?

>>4606498
>Compare this piece to something like a digimon design; if you just took a single digimon, it's like some cringy OC pokemon, but the entire world around it and knowing there is more to it carries it a lot.

When there ISN'T anything, no actual world, to back it up, what then? Pic in OP is just an elf holding a fairy. Who are they? What's their relationship? Why does the elf dress like that? Etc.. Without any world to ground the piece I don't know why I should care about these subjects. Rather than set my mind alight about the countless possibilities, what kind of amazing and magical world could surround these subjects, all I imagine is a black void of nothing outside of the illustration.

But is that just a failing on the artist? Think MTG, I remember not knowing jackshit about the story behind the pieces (outside of the little infodumps/character quotes on the bottom of the cards), but they sparked my passion for fantasy and filled me with all sorts of wonder about the world behind the subjects in the cards. But there actually WAS a fully realized world behind the art even though I didn't actually know what it was. I still cared and was captivated anyway and it actually led me to seek out and learn about MTG lore.

So what does an artist need to do to properly convey the idea of a living, breathing, interesting world behind their original art, even when they actually haven't come up with one? How does an artist give at least the ILLUSION of that in their original art?