Artistic Opinion

I am by no means a "great" artist. Sometimes I do something that I'm okay enough with to display to others, many times I don't quite get to that level of okay enough. Lately I've been spending more time on an online art "social network" community, sharing my photos and digital art with anyone who gives a crap. Having access to an entire well-polished one-stop for anything and everything artistic, and having several million members to critique and discuss is really kind of inspiring, and I'm having all kinds of ideas. But, on to my gripe of sorts.

One thing I like doing is going to this site and browsing all categories, which the browse function defaults to latest within 8 hours in order of submission/upload time. This place has everything: sculpting, photography, digital art, traditional art...imagine my surprise when I discovered I could change some account settings and find NUDES! Okay, not that exciting, but for a guy who has picked Luis Royo as one of his favorite artists, you gotta have some nudity once in a while.

Anyway, again I'm not great, nor do I strive to be compared to many artists out there. I can honestly say I've tried at least one version of one program (3D and 2D) from almost every graphics software companies out there. I've seen value and a "place" for almost all of them. But what's been getting me lately is the amount of work I'm seeing on this art network that is passed off as traditional, or even photography, or even 'nude emotive photography' or cosplay...and it's 100% obvious the art was done using a Poser or DAZ style program!

I'm not complaining about the software, I've used them for finished products before. Being from the old school, where it was always about trying to be like a favorite comic book artist, or trying to impress the greatest art teacher I've ever met, or trying to SOMEHOW SOMEDAY be better than a childhood art friend (rotten pole-smokin' kick-ass penciler/inker that can blow your mind with pencil and paper in about three minutes...what a dick...) WOW skipped a little jealousy groove there Very Happy

. ANYWAY, back on point...I can see using these "photoreal 3D people" programs in a production environment, animating and the like...but to be a complete artistic noob or total amateur, and use these programs to pass off their "next best thing" just seems to me like cheating! Maybe I'm wrong... but, to me, if you're gonna make an emotive portrait in Poser, categorize it as '3D digital emotive portrait', and if that option isn't there, just '3D digital.' I don't care if it's an animation of a bouncing person with an apple head or a total "is it real or not" portrait, if you did it in 3D, it's fucking 3D...end of story.

Note: may be a little harsh, but any artistic talent I may have has been earned the old fashioned way, and even in cases where I used Poser or DAZ for a finished product I never went around saying "Oh yeah, I took that picture on my Nikon when I was in Bangladesh." I cannot use Poser or DAZ and make an emotive portrait...I can make a piece of fucking 3D digital art...

Re: Artistic Opinion Wed Sep 28, 2011 11:36 pm by soothsayer

Shadowcrunch wrote:: a childhood art friend (rotten pole-smokin' kick-ass penciler/inker that can blow your mind with pencil and paper in about three minutes...what a dick...)

No comment , jack wagon! It's all in love. I love you

But I do agree. Not with the above quote, but with the overall post. When I did work with Poser, to me it felt like cheating, only because it limited my own creativity... but then, I started using Poser as one would use one of those wooden figure models, so it was all good.

While using computer graphics programs is an art all by itself, knowing how easy they are to use, I don't think I could call myself an artist. Some programs do involve a great deal of adjusting and tweaking and detailing, and for that I would label those users as being more akin to sculptures (sculpturers?) I do believe that in order for someone to consider themselves as being an artist, or pass themselves off as one, would be to understand the concepts of art, whether it be painting or drawing or whatever. It's just like all the people out there who claim to be graphic designers... just because you have a computer with free downloadable clip arts and a printer, that does not make you a designer.

...

Lost my train of thought, have to figure out what I was going to say.

...

To use something like Poser, to position your model and make adjustments, to add scenery... that finished product may be considered art, but the person behind the screen isn't an artist, especially considering he didn't have to build anything. However, one who uses a program like Truespace or Blender, where you have to build from the ground up, that person I would call an artist. Hope that makes more sense than my opening paragraph.

Not everyone can draw or paint. Hell I can do a lot of artistic things, but I'm no painter... I've never claimed to be. That's one reason why I'd like to find a nice paint program so I can scan in my drawings and color them that way. As jealous as people may be of my drawing ability, I am as equally jealous, if not more so, towards painters. Painting is easy, easier than drawing; the detail in line art is absent, and is replaced with shading. Bob Ross blows my mind, that hippie freak pot smoking afro wearing... gaah, he can take his happy trees and number 2 fan brush and putty knife and... gaah! With that said, I would never take a drawing of mine, color it, and pass it off, or pass myself off, as a painter (or colorist).

With you, you at least try. You try to see what you're good at, what you're weak at, and you try to improve or adjust. You've taken what you've seen and you try to incorporate that into your graphics. There's nothing wrong with that; sometimes an artist just needs to find the best medium for him. So yes, you can go right ahead and take the title of artist, wear it well.

Just return my books when you do so. Not so much that crappy manga one... but the binder with all the Wizard guides.

Laughing

Re: Artistic Opinion Wed Sep 28, 2011 11:51 pm by Shadowcrunch

Oh yeah those books! DUH.... Looking at one right now...well not while looking at the keys. More like a glance and an "oh yeah!"

Okay, now I'm going to go against the grain of my original post to defend those Posers and DAZers. As stated, I have done some finished product using almost entirely 3D click-drag-resize-rotate softwares like Poser and Vue (think Bryce but better). I consider the finished products art. NOT because I created anything from scratch, but because I set the scene, picked the lighting (many photographers will vouch for lighting being its own art form!!!), posed the characters, and basically took the image in my head and made it visual. Which is what visual art is all about. So, that's art...same as drawing or painting.

BUT, it isn't photography, even if it's photoreal. It isn't painting, even if I apply a canvas filter to the image. It might be emotive, and it might be in portrait style, but it's a DIGITAL emotive portrait. Maybe it's just people not paying attention to categories, or picking multiple categories to show their work in more places. Either way it's just wrong. Off subject, but it's the same as downloading a Creed song and finding out some jackass thought Metallica was Creed so they named the file wrong!!! Or downloading Bob Seger and finding CCR.

Art takes many forms, but if it's digital, call it such! Like the folks who take a perfectly good photo and doctor the crap out of it and pass it off as photography. Once you hit it with one digital brush or light filter, it becomes digital art...that includes magazines photoshopping errors!!! Errors are real...reality has errors... to change them is to change the photograph into the unreal... digital.

THAT said...I will say again, Mypaint. Best 'paint' package I've found to date yet, and it's open source!!! Small download and a lot of fun to play with...try it!!!

Artistic Opinion

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Artistic Opinion