What Percent of your finished art get's shown to others?
Boojum the brown bunny
Posts: 348
I was going through my picture that I had created today and realized something. At least 1 in 4 had never been shown to anyone but me! This is mostly because the picture has personal meaning for me and I felt that no one else would really be interested in seeing the picture. In a few cases it was because the content was explicit and I really only have a couple places I put that sort of art, and don't feel it's nice to just spam pictures to sites.
So how about the rest of you? How many of your finished pictures (not test renders, but the completed work) have you simply kept for yourself? If your so inclined, you might also include why you chose not to show it to the world at large. :)
Boojum the brown bunny
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1 percent gets out so far .....
99% :ohh:
Great question! I would say maybe 50% give or take. The reason I don't post some of it i because I couldn't get the look I wanted and I wasn't happy with it. I don't mind showing failures once in a while, because even if the image as a whole doesn't work, there may be something relevant to show if some question or topic is being discussed.
Now ask how many aborted or abandoned scenes are cluttering up my hard drives and the non-shown percentage skyrockets. ;-)
Y'know, that may be an interesting topic. Dust off an old scene that was almost done but was abandoned for some reason or other, and make a render and post it. The discussion could center around why it was abandoned or maybe why opening it may have inspired it to be finished. Make it an orphaned scene render thread...
Good question. I guess if you count all images I ever worked on, then for me it would be about 25% that DO get shown to people. But then if you only count the images I considered to be finished or nearly finished, then the percentage is much larger - about 70% get some sort of audience. Even is the audience is just 1-2 people for whom the image was originally intended (commissions, gifts, etc.).
There are a lot of images where I hit a wall - either I find myself lacking the necessary skill or tools or knowledge to make the image work the way I intend it, and then I stop working on the image without getting it to what I would consider a finished state. But there have been occasions when I came back to finish some of those ideas once I found the missing components.
... and then there are images I wish I DIDN'T show to others, because they seemed OK to me at the time, but when I looked at them later, I realized how horribly lacking they are...
Before the old forum and ArtZone closed down I made sure to leave my older images up, just because I felt it was important for others to see the skill progression. If I can get better, anybody can!
For some of my older animations and tests, just look at my older youtube videos.
See, I am not sure I AM getting better. I might be getting more technically savvy or more practical or efficient. But I am not sure I improve artistically. And it worries me.
I haven't looked at your earlier stuff, so I can't comment on the progression, but the stuff I've seen you post here has been pretty impressive.
When I talk about my own work, I generally have a healthy dose of mid-western humility. You'll rarely see me type that this or that picture I made is super cool awesome. I'm more apt to say I think it came out pretty nice, even if I think it came out awesome.
Yep, sure is an interesting question..
I went through this months renders and out of them I've shown around 75%
The others I haven't shown anyone because they are just to silly or to dark to show online..
like this one LOL :coolcheese:
I haven't looked at your earlier stuff, so I can't comment on the progression, but the stuff I've seen you post here has been pretty impressive.
When I talk about my own work, I generally have a healthy dose of mid-western humility. You'll rarely see me type that this or that picture I made is super cool awesome. I'm more apt to say I think it came out pretty nice, even if I think it came out awesome.
I still have some very old work in my Renderosity gallery
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=Antaran
The first image from 2008 is actually one of the very first images in 3D I ever created (including playing around and tests) and the very first 3D image I ever "finished". And it was 6 years ago! So, yes, quite disconcerting. I think part of it is due to the fact that many of my images pass some sort of "OK" level, beyond which people don't feel the need to criticize. I don't usually get enough ctirique and critical feedback, so I am left to poke around on my own and I'm not any good at it.
In your work I see a steady improvement on all fronts even from the challenges I've been following. I think it's admirable and very cool. I think it also shows that even if you think it comes out awesome you don't decide to stop there and keep making sure that the next "awesome" is in fact more "awesome" than any "awesome" before it. Where do you show your work now (since ArtZone is no more)?
Stezza, do you keep a gallery somewhere? I'd love to follow your work more closely.
To All: Sorry for taking this a bit off topic. But I think the percentage of the work we show also depends on avenues and audience we have available to show our work. For example, I think I would show my unfinished work more often (and maybe would get a chance to finish it sooner) if I had a friendly, but very critical venue where I could get a lot of constructive criticism for what I do. And so far I haven't found one yet. In too many places the WIP discussions get quickly derailed by software wars/snobbery or contet-use wars/snobbery, and that is just of no use at all.
wow.. sure Antara
My gallery here has some.. http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/?q=stezza&x=0&y=0
I have only a couple up at Deviant Art - username - MontyKoona
Very few of mine seem to reach "finished"...
So much of working in CG is based on technical understanding of computers and of physics, not artistic vision.
5% is a generous figure for me. Everything I make, even the finished pieces of artwork are really nothing more than technical studies that turned out nicely enough to be presented as "artwork." I personally feel that one cannot truly create realized art if they don't have a strong grasp of the tools at their disposal. It's my opinion that people shouldn't set out to create art that they feel represents them for at least a few months to a year. Before that all we really should be doing is having fun and studying the tool and exploring what it can do without the lens of trying to create a particular piece of artwork.
So yeah, easily 95% of my renders never leave my desktop. I spend roughly 4 hours a day rendering in Bryce, but I publish images about 4 times a year. 5% is waaaaaay generous.
+1
Pretty much the same here. I would say 80-90% of my finished images make it into a gallery, usually on Rendo. Those that I consider finished and don't make it to an online gallery and that are seen by others are usually done more as technical illustrations or animations designed for presentations, print, or recently documentaries.
It usually takes me a long time to finish an "artistic" image, A couple weeks is pretty common, though I have worked on some for a month or more. One image idea actually took about 12 years (maybe longer) before it saw completion.
Antara - I took a quick look at your gallery and WOW!! I'd see a definite improvement from beginning to end. But in all honesty, your first image was is pretty amazing for a first render. So the improvements are a bit more subtle than others (like mine). I would venture to say that you get little critical feedback because for most people viewing your work it would be difficult to give suggestions to improve on it. I certainly don't feel qualified to.
With regard to my improvement, to me, my galley at rendo definitely shows improvement over the years. There are some images that kinda make me cringe a bit when I look at them now, and make me wonder what I was thinking when I posted them. :red:
I've often thought of deleting them, but they do help to inspire me to try and not repeat the same mistakes again. :roll:
I dont get much time to render images, and when I do, it just stays on my hard drive unless I think its worth sharing, and then maybe I'll put in on facebook or the show your render threads on here. I also do test animations, ideas that I have and put them on Youtube as unlisted videos so only someone with a link can see them.
Maybe 10% gets shown to somebody. I just never really feel like it's "good" enough. I keep meaning to start putting stuff in the gallery but hesitate at the last second. I think I have only ever even put like 2 images up on the forums here even. *shrug*. Guess I have a confidence problem.
So at some point, we need to let go of the technical learning phase for a bit, and use what we've learned to make some art. Relax your mind and forget the tech. Let the beauty of art flow back into your mind, and the art will emerge, as the tech will recall itself along the way. Part of the genius behind a good interface.
I put out 90% of my renders, if anyone looksat them, I dont know, accept the few that leave comments. Now i render quite a few that i never even save, no particular reason.
Well, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who doesn't release everything. It sounds like it's a trend amongst artists! :D I sort of like the idea that was suggested about going back and working again on some old pictures to see if they can be improved... That sounds like fun!
Boojum the brown bunny
I like to move on - so I find it boring to go back and rework some thing .
I like to move on - so I find it boring to go back and rework some thing .
I find that I feel that way as well sometimes. On the other hand, sometimes I just stop because whatever vision I had is fading or I overworked it and lost the initial feeling I had for the piece and couldn't regain it. Then there are the scenes where I hit a technical hurdle and decided to come back to it after some research and forgot about it, or some other shiny thing distracted. ;-)
As long as I've been recognized as an artist in my home town community, I've always given my art away freely. There are very few things left that I've made before graduating High School, one is a large, science table sized dragon painting. My brother told me that the canvas I stretched for it wouldn't stay true for a month. Now every time we visit our parents I get to rub it's perfectly straight goodness in his face! About time I get one up on my big bro....
In the original question, the word "finished" was used. I have gigabytes of stuff that remains unfinished.
Nearly all of my work in Carrara is unfinished, as I have just been building pieces and bits, portions of things that can be reused in multitudes of ways... so almost all of my Carrara endeavors remain locked up in a sealed room, awaiting its light of day, at which point I'll always show it to somebody. My big brother is both supportive and a great critic. So I like getting my stuff to pass under his gaze. In doing so, I send them to my parents and sisters as well.
Also, I have this thing where I always plan on going through and deleting stuff that is not finished, and I'm not actively considering to be a successful test or whatever, and deleting it. So far that has never happened. I have gone through and cleaned up the 'crap', but instead of deleting it, I've stored it off in a hard drive somewhere. When I did that with my Carrara stuff, I opened a few of my saves from my very early Poser days, before finding Vicky 3. Oh my... oh... I still didn't delete that! LOL I really should, but I cannot! It's still part of where my head was at during those days. Besides, I think it's good to gaze upon stuff and absorb how far we can come over years of practice.
Antara's point on getting more tech savvy with software, but not feeling growth in art brings up a great point. As excited as I was to be doing what I was doing in Poser, it doesn't even come close to comparison to what I can do with stone and chisel, paint on canvas, acid on copper, or even pencil on paper. Thinking along ways that we can bring our roots of art into the software is a fun exercise. One that I have been doing lately to try and help to get my renders more like my art. Although I haven't implemented any of the ideas spawned from such a quest yet, the ideas are many and I plan to test them out. I was always more about realism that abstract, so working with content has been fine for me. Getting deeper and deeper into modeling is showing me things about Carrara use that can allow for pretty much any style of image/animation creation - not just the 3d trends we have been seeing. So if you're ever stuck on what to do next with Carrara, try thinking back to a day when your art had nothing to do with computers. It's easy for me, being born in the sixties. Then compare the differences. They're probably great differences. Perhaps you never were all that talented at art until a computer came along. Not a problem. Try imagining art that you may have seen on a wall somewhere, whatever. Go for stuff that excites you... not just things that you think might look really real. Think art. Perhaps a realistic living room image is very exciting for you. Then go there and do that. But if it bores you to see such things, try something else.
Unfortunately, I don't have that much time to spend on self-improvement. But I think the tests I create usually have the higher showing rate than the creative stuff, because when I carry out a test, I usually do it to test something that was brought up in a conversation somewhere or in a tutorial I found and I like sharing whatever I end up finding in hope of helping others. Also, sharing results of an experiment doesn't need to pass the QC standards I have for myself, so it actually happens more often :).
If you have time to run tests, maybe you could hold a weekly/monthly column in the forum, sharing the results of your tests. I think it would be a great learning experience for everyone. And you get to show more of what you do :).
With regard to my improvement, to me, my galley at rendo definitely shows improvement over the years. There are some images that kinda make me cringe a bit when I look at them now, and make me wonder what I was thinking when I posted them. :red:
I've often thought of deleting them, but they do help to inspire me to try and not repeat the same mistakes again. :roll:
Thank you for the compliment, but I think the effect you are seeing is due to the helpful influence of the few people who DO leave me constructive criticism feedback. Many images in that gallery looked much worse when I originally posted them, and then I got some advice, reworked and updated them. I am very grateful to my critics for that.
Also, I think one doesn't need to be a chef to know that something's burnt or rotten. Most people are qualified to tell what works for them and what doesn't. But I can see how when it "kinda works", it becomes more difficult to fish out what is it exactly that doesn't.
Another aspect of it, of course, is purpose. If the purpose is for an image to be pretty, then the majority of images I see every day posted in galleries around the communities I watch would actually fit the bill with nothing to be added or improved. Most images pass the bar for "pretty". But I am not trying for "pretty". I am trying for at least "good" and hopefully "memorable", and I keep hoping that my viewers will give their feedback with the same standard in mind. You've browsed my gallery a day or so ago, without looking at them again, do you remember any of the images? Did at least one leave a lasting enough impression to immediately pop to mind? Do you think it will still be there about 3 weeks from now? Absolutely everyone is able to provide a fully competent opinion on this level. :) So I dearly wish that people would do it more often :). And I usually offer to reciprocate when asked, but even then people rarely take me up on my offer. Although that might be because not everyone is as critique hungry as I am. :)
Most of what I render that makes it to the finished stage is done for use in court cases as evidence displays or for internal use to help in court cases. So that doesn't get posted.
A few of my renders end up getting done to make holiday cards.
Usually anything I could post I never do as I never get finished with the scene so it renders exactly how I want or I feel comfortable enough to post it.
So I'd say that only about 5% of renders ever get posted that I could post not due to them having work restrictions ever do.
Actually, there are two that I remembered, though I did need to go back and get the names - New Horizon and Golden Cage. Both are images that I would say are quite memorable. But to be memorable, an image has to connect/communicate with the viewer at a root level, which will be different for different people. When I look at New Horizon, the colors, reflective materials, atmosphere, and pose all work together to evoke a feeling of surrealistic calm and hope/wonder. I also can't help but think "beautiful, and "wish I could do something like that", with the immediate following though of "right, there is no way I could ever make anything close to this, because it's way out of what my imagination is capable of". When I look at Golden Cage my first thought is "soft and beautiful, feels like a painting", then I begin to look a bit more technically at it, because it is something that I feel I could possibly do, with a lot of work. So it is quite inspirational for me as well as exhibiting talents and skills I wish I had.
Getting constructive criticism is difficult, for many different reasons. One way that seems to work is to post an image to a forum asking for constructive criticism and help on improving. This affords you the opportunity to give everyone a bit of background on what you are trying to achieve, and where you think you might need help. I typically don't offer constructive criticism on gallery images because:
1) I often don't know what the person making the image was trying to do/accomplish, and my comments may be totally irrelevant.
2) In most cases I feel my own skills are not sufficient to really offer any significant help.
3) Many people really don't want constructive criticism, they really just want compliments.
So at some point, we need to let go of the technical learning phase for a bit, and use what we've learned to make some art. Relax your mind and forget the tech. Let the beauty of art flow back into your mind, and the art will emerge, as the tech will recall itself along the way. Part of the genius behind a good interface.
Very very well said!
Thanks, my friend. I'd certainly hate to think that someone as obviously gifted as Antara getting frustrated about her abilities! ;)
I probably post around 75% of the images that I do. If not posted, it might be because it was done for a specific purpose other than to share (maybe to test a concept) or I do not feel that it meets a minimum quality threshold. Although looking back through my gallery, there are some that I perhaps wish I hadn't posted in hindsight! But I agree that it is interesting to see the development.
And I share the concerns about artistry - have I developed technically over the years? Absolutely! But there are images that I did in the early days that still have a lot of artistic merit that I am very proud of, and I do sometimes worry that some creativity has been lost along the way in pursuit of technical goals. There needs to be a balance.
I used to post everything, whether it was good or bad, but noticed that they wern't getting views and feedback, where as an image that looked like a 5 year old did it was getting loads of reviews and 5* ratings when it was a terrible image, and its not sour grapes, I mean how can an image that has a character posed against a imported jpg, and has no shadow under the character or anywhere in the scene get such ratings?
I seldom do any art now as I see little point, last image I did do take me a fair a mount of time, and yet hardly anyone has viewed it, gets disheartening at times, I don't put stuff out just so that it gets views, I would like to know if I have missed something or made an error, so I can learn not to do it again