Question about ArtStation
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Yep, it makes sense for what it is--if you're going to hire someone to do studio work you want to know how well they can work within an entire production pipeline and deliver what the project needs. It's an entirely different ecosystem than personal art. I wouldn't even draw the line between professional and hobbyist, really--as deathbycanon touched on there actually is a massive community now that I would consider "pro" but which is very flexible, experimental, and focused on helping people realize their personal projects. A lot of those folks are getting hired and selling their work, an the fact that this path exists outside of the traditional studio environment in addition to it is good news for everyone, including people who hire artists. Sometimes you need to hire somebody who can translate your artist's outfit concept into a usable model and sometimes you need someone who will conceptualize, direct, and animate an entire music video in Blender. Person A is not necessarily longing to be an auteur and Person B is not necessarily dying to break into an established industry.
Overall there's been an enormous explosion of people just...helping each other do art, demystifying how complex things are done, and focusing on making it all less scary. Ian Hubert is one of my favorite 3D people because while he's doing incredibly ambitious projects, he obviously values just the interest someone might have in poking around and making things work for themselves. He's up front about the fact that his lazy tutorials are a huge simplification of skills that have taken him over a decade to develop, but to see him go, "Haha here's a box. Now I do all this fake stuff you don't have to take too seriously and it's a city" is how you get people to go, "Hey, I could do that."
The only mindsets I have trouble respecting are those that draw strict lines around what counts as art instead of acknowledging that different approaches to the same discipline serve different projects and different needs, but based on personal experience I think it often comes from seeing things changing rapidly and feeling the need to protect the value of their own skills. The biggest pro snob I ever knew was terrified of things like ArtBreeder and even didn't like PhotoShop--they were convinced that within the next ten years there would simply be no reason to learn how to do art. But even with "easy" tools there's still a ton of work involved in making what you really want to make, and making it your own.
I am not sure I get the hype surrounding art station. Generic sameface girlie and manga art, some decent landscapes, whats the big deal. It looks like Deviant or any other similar art place.
It looks like Deviant or any other similar art place.
I explained that when I mentioned how important the HOW (stuff is made) is to some people.
I also explained how feelings are triggered about this, which is why my response was called a rant. lol
Yeah,to me the art world does seem to do a lot of othering. To some only their acceptable use of tools is real art. Everyone else is a cheater. But unless you are grinding your own pigment, drawing by hand using brushes made by you, you are using someone else's tools.
But unless you are grinding your own pigment, drawing by hand using brushes made by you, you are using someone else's tools.
That's the difference between tools and assets, which is why (dictionary police?) the meanings of words matter.
But also in fine arts, you learn to make brushes, mix pigments and stretch canvass. You don't HAVE to do it to make art, but an artists *should* understand HOW their tools are made.
It part of the three Cs of being an artist.
I explain UV (un)wrapping in a course. I explain polygons in a course, hell,I even explain ray tracing. Is it NEEDED for you to make a nice Daz Render? No, But as an artist you *should* understand the media/medium you work with/in.
You're speaking of the purist rabbit hole. There is always some effort more primal, basic, raw ingredients-over-prefab...it goes on forever, in every medium and discipline. Every.
BUT! That is countered by end results. HOW you made something does not affect the art appreciation part, but it does impact the respect you give the creator/artist.
That idea will bother anyone who sees themselves at the bottom of any respect chain. It delights those at the top.
If you have a problem with this concept, imagine how you feel about the term "Poser Art" and what it suggests.......
You want to explain all the WORK you put in and how it differentiates YOUR ART.
The same part of this thread about Daz Studio - where artists mention the LIGHTING and POSING and knowledge [and all the WORK] needed to get the best renders....
all of that is mentioned to increase the level of respect behind the artist based on their EFFORT.
Work matters to the artist.
Art matters to the art-lover.
Eh, Not all artists are the same. I was an art major, and nope, never learned to make my own paint. Nor do I want to. That shit is toxic and also expensive. And yet...Still an artist.
I also think art matters to me over 'work.' And yet.... Stilll An Artist
You mustn't assume that all people are the same or that your method of 'understanding the tools' is explicitly needed to be an artist, it isn't.
I think there are 2 related but not completely overlapping issues
1. Artstation is primarily intended to serve as a portfolio site for people who are working in or looking to work in the vfx and video game industry. It has other ancillary funcions, but that is its primary function. and those ancillary functions also relate to the 1st: if you look at their tutorial section, for instance - a lot of them are tutorials on how to work in the industry. As Artsation is a site pretty explicitly for people working or looking to work in the industry I don't feel any more excluded than, say. a site geared towards painting might "exclude" me
2. Daz Studio and similar have a reputation for people just plugging suff they bought without any tweaking or "work" which, while it is not completely untrue, I would argue it frequntly is. One can use default everything - click a character, click the lighting, click the background, click the pose, and get something with zero tweaking, limited thought, and 2 minutes of effort. This is something that is much harder to do in other programs. Mind you most people do not do this in DS either. At Artstation there is generally an implicit understanding that there is something the artist made beyond just the composition: most commonly modelling or texturing, but also things like lighting. But again using DS in no way precludes this. I have DS renders where I: made the clothing, sculpted the morph, textured the character, set up the lighting from scratch, and made the hair. But I can completly understand some warriness if one is trying to show off ones character modelling and skin textureing abilities and theres no good way to differentiate ones art from 50 million renders of V8 (mind you an alternate fix would be better tagging options ie you have to put the software used and people could block irrelevant software)
Totally agree...
For me, it's about the eye. You can have all the technical stuff down pat and be a walking encyclopeida of artist knowledge, and then you can stand next to someone who might know next to nothing in terms of technical stuff but they just have it.
When I was getting into photography, I didn't have a heap of money to keep up buying all the greatest tools (this was at the advent of digital photography when everybody had to go run out and buy the next newest camera or bust)...I stuck with the first digital SLR I purchased, a Canon 20D that I actually still have and it still works (though I've since upgraded once). My uncle had money and bought the best toys and studied all the best techniques. He would look at his stuff, and then look at my stuff and just shake his head and laugh and say that with all his knowledge and money, he'd never be able to just look at practically anything and see the art in it because he didn't have the eye like I did.
And I can sense this conversation going the way all "art" conversations go when one brings up the concept of gatekeeping. It's a pointless argument. Those comments posted earlier from ArtStation are the exact reason I don't bother to put my stuff there. I've had other "industry" people not associated with ArtStation laugh and say "isn't that just a paper doll dress-up game?" when the topic of my work being done with Daz came up. It hurt then and it hurts to think back on it now. It was a bad attitude for that person to have and it's still a bad attitude to have. It's an attitude fraught with a mixture of ignorance and snobbery. I might not understand why someone draws a red circle on a white wall and calls it art, but it's still art. Because art is an expression of whatever imagery or story or feeling the artist is trying to convey. Whether the medium is red paint on a white wall, or the written word, or clay, or a pre-rigged model in Daz, it's all art.
You mustn't assume that all people are the same
Never said that.
or that your method of 'understanding the tools' is explicitly needed to be an artist, it isn't.
Never suggested that.
And Understanding a Tool is your term that means or suggests what- in this context?
*Should* someone who uses Daz Studio know how it works?
*Should* someone be able to undertsand a product description before they buy something?
*Should* someone 'understand' the Render Pane? Tools Menu?
If they answer is yes, why does there need to be some sort of connection as a requirement for being an artist?
Should sounds like a suggestion.
You tell me- are there lots of artists making wonderful Daz-arts who DO NOT have an 'understanding' of these things at a basic level?
So if you want to be an artist, WHAT should you be studying and learning about?
If you want to make ART using Daz Studio, what SHOULD you know about?
Anything?
Is it WRONG to suggest that ANYONE who/that wants to be ANYTHING know anything about it?
Seems so.
Because, as you said, you can be an artist without it.
Knowing about video cards/CPUs, etc is important to those who do renderart.
I bet that somehow sounds controversial on the first read.
Also I think we've drifted faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from anything related to the initial question.
Should I post my stuff on Artstation? has nought to do with "what is the definition of art" Something could be both "Art" and "not something one should post on Artstation"
lets leave the definition of art to philosophy no good has ever come from trying to hash that one out on an internet forum
You kinda do though. You state "work matters to the artist" are we not all artists? Work doesn't matter to me. It is results that matter.
I guess it depends on the reason of the suggestion. If the suggestion is to gatekeep or police the use of something to fit their view then yest, that is wrong.
It hurt then and it hurts to think back on it now. It was a bad attitude for that person to have and it's still a bad attitude to have. It's an attitude fraught with a mixture of ignorance and snobbery.
Yep, I know the feeling of someone looking at your art stuffs and assuming HOW (and even why) you made it.
There are art and gallery sites that say NO RENDERED ART. No 3D works....at all.....Groups on Facebook.
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Fans and art-lovers don't care about the HOWs.
There is a person who is tracing over other finished and commercially available comic illustrations and calling it their original art.
Not inspired by....not in the style of ....
A person in the group keeps posting the ORIGINAL ART (that they are tracing over) and asking them to stop the practice and false claims.
Guess who everyone is calling the bad guy in that thread.
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I shared here, the guy who was taking Daz Promo art and running it through a filter and posting it as his original comic art.
Also, accepting credit for his stellar LINE WORK. I showed the Daz PA (who also did the promos).
The people on his page were okay with that. Why? They liked the end result and didn't care about the how.
The guy who filtered the Promo Art said he didn't know what Daz Studio was and that he thought the 'pictures' came with the product purchase.
lol
after reading the recent posts, specially about the Roman guy who does 3D since 2003 but still animate like done in Puppeteer...and only have 100 Patrons?, sounds like poor sense of his own reality, if yo get a real job in 3D Industry then a Patron is just irrelevant.
Now to the dead horse being kicked: You dont make art because "You don't model and you don't do UV mapping or rigging from zero", if premade asstes woulnd't be a necessity then why TurboExpensiveSquid had never got broken or bankrupt?, there is a keyword in 3D industry pretty remarkable: DEADLINE, and if you are a very genious doing from a box in Max a full figure resembling a Michael Jackson or any other famous real person and you get the same for $500 in TurboSquid...the company in urge will buy the asset, for them they dont care about your +18 years in mastering zbrush or another software, is the time and the project that counts, NOT YOU.
Now the benefit of being Daz Artist: you get commissions affordable for bizarre clients, I woke up this morning with $25 USd in my paypal accouunt for a guy demanding 5 renders of any size with a genesis female in some "pervert" positions...now, for you maybe $25 USD is nothing but I live in Mexico...$25 got me food for 3 days!
final: "is you are an Artist and do more rants than renders then...is not good"
This thread seems to be getting a little contentious, so closed.