I would get pissed off and champion social justice here too but this is too silly even for me
I'm going to assume (and start this rumor, for your sake -) that you were drunk as hell and maybe short on sleep from having young kids and all when you wrote this thread.
actually I think it's more of a perception thing. Like Lamont said, someone in Japan is wondering why westerners are so much better at art :P
Haha, could be. All of my friends used to say the same thing about Russian artists, until one day we got a Russian teacher who terrible at art (and was an art teacher) :P
I was surprised when I moved to England 2 months ago at how polite English people are compared to Norwegians.(I don't like it, makes me uncomfortable) :P
Hahaha! What magical England did you move to and can I have directions XD
Topic -> Hard work is hard work where ever you are.
Hahaha! What magical England did you move to and can I have directions XD
Topic -> Hard work is hard work where ever you are.
Move to Norway for a while and then come back
Not saying that English people are that kind, but they are good at acting like they care, unlike Norwegians that just dont give a fuck, the way I like it
I've already seen a discussion like this before, I don't remember where. People are discussing about russians and asians, why they can get their stuff in a such higher level. Not only in arts, but in sports, science, etc.
My guess is the way they conduct education. Since childhood, they live (at least until some time ago, I'm not sure how things are today, with globalization) under a rigid system of control, that obligate them to learn a lot of things, want them or not, and be submitted to tests, to prove that they can go to the next level. Heres a link comparing education in US and Asia.
Anyone who knows a bit about japanese culture, is aware of the high number of suicides among young men that didn't make the university. And salary men that are not well sucssed in their careers. People in Asia are formed to do their best, all the time. In contrary they will be a fail, for the rest of their lifes. There's a good example about the difference between japanese people and American people on the manga Sanctuary (Sho Fumimura/ Roichi Ikegami).
Of course, both people can do a great work, but like the guy said it's the nature of each people. I think asians and russians struggle to do their best, anytime, because they were forced this wasy since they start building their personality. OF course all of this can be bullshit, since it's just my theory.. but its my opinion.
fuck man, i didn't even mean that it's an inherited genetic thing... i just wondered if there's any form of corrolation between an artistic language, and whether it gives you a stronger foundation for doing actual art.
fuck man, i didn't even mean that it's an inherited genetic thing... i just wondered if there's any form of corrolation between an artistic language, and whether it gives you a stronger foundation for doing actual art.
I was talking about another thread where people argued that you were born with a certain level of artistic skill.
As far as an artistic language, you think it's sexy as an outsider, I know there's an appreciation for the look of English letters in Japan. "FUCK" is popular in Japan because of the balance of hard letters on the outside and curvy ones in the middle.
@JR : i'd just like to throw out that the link you posted is awful. Aside from being pretty inaccurate it's also quite insulting to american schooling.
which IS awful, don't get me wrong...but good lord.
I don't know if you included it as more of a joke, in which case ignore me. but yeah...
I disagree with this thread's point. I don't think almighty_gir visited an oekaki or drawing imageboard originating in southeast asia. There are still obvious art newbies, they're just not in the kind of internet places you'd be familiar with. Pixiv also has, just like deviantART, its large disproportionate share of bad art.
@JR : i'd just like to throw out that the link you posted is awful. Aside from being pretty inaccurate it's also quite insulting to american schooling.
which IS awful, don't get me wrong...but good lord.
I don't know if you included it as more of a joke, in which case ignore me. but yeah...
Haha, I don't live in US or Asia to say if this is accurate or not. But my point is that education in Asia tends to be a bit harder than in Western countries. Students there feel more pressures of life than us here at the same age. And again, I repeat, I'm assuming the way things used to be (documented in texts, magazines or books during last decades), I have no clue how this people is behaving today.
Anyway, here a good proof that these guys spent more time studying than making profit of good things life has to offer.
I wonder how the "artistic skill is genetic" crowd feels about this thread
You have affinities, not genetic skills.
For example, in order to pass my math test in med school, I had to hire tutor who came to my house about 3-4 time a week, and each sessions lasted between 2-4 hours, before I even got an acceptable set of scores to pass my year.
However, for some reason, I'm pretty well off in understanding and almost immediately grasping art, I didn't even think I would be able to read code for shaders, but guess what, anything that is 'physical' or you're able to look at sets in quickly with me, and while I cannot name you the correct persons name who landed on the moon, I think I can tell you the name of several people who worked on triple A titles and what their username is on this forum.
I think not too long time ago, they even tried to scientifically state that no-one has genetically skillset, but simply that their brain has a higher affinity to absorbing certain kinds of informaton vs. others, hence this is what determines our likes and dislikes as well.
I think the guys at the idea channel discussed this not too long, but I'll be damned if I can remember the video in which they touched the subject, maybe this one slightly?
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE-vSJh0N_A"]Are the Olympics A Model for Creating Geniuses? | Idea Channel | PBS - YouTube[/ame]
@JR: Um, not to contradict your point or image, but Japan is pretty well known for being exactly the opposite of everything comics like that and people stereotype. Once you interact with something on a personal level, magic like that just vanishes.
Japan is the kind of place that is all looks nice from the outside, but once you get in the inside, there is so much corruption, racism and low-tech involved, that by comparison places like Germany or Netherlands look like uber-power houses. Same with Russia, frankly, if you count how many Russian artists vs. non-Russians there are that kick-ass, the number is actually less in their favor.
It also doesn't help that places like Japan have pressure on people to do better, which is actually bad, since it leads to high rates of suicide last I checked in some regions.
So yeah, that's a really narrow way to look at stuff. I also suggest going to more Eastern forums if possible, and seeing how much crap they post sometimes.
@leilei: Yep, that sums up the thread, but I don't think Gir was trying to imply that, just simply that it shows Western artists are less exposed to other artists (especially the language barrier when it comes to forums) from other countries.
And have to agree with Pixiv, the amount of crap you have to go through before you find the few awesome artists is very high, not to mention, once you do, you find out they do porn too. Talk about shattering your idols.
Hey Ace. I know Japan it's not a Fairytale land. It's a country, like any other, with ups and downs. My point since the beginning is about the nature of peoples.
Asians has their own way to see things, and to develop them. Russians too, Western countries too. Awesomeness can be present in anywhere. We have for example awesome architetural wonders in Asia. Taj Mahal, The Great Wall, Golden Temple in Thailand. They show how Asian people is (or at least were) focused on details, and struggled to do things the most impressive and rich possible. But we have too spetacular things in West, like Sistine Chapel, The interior of many Byzantine churches, Mont Saint Michel. These means that we have great artists everywhere, each one doing their things on their way.
I brought this up between some friends some time ago. All american born Asian's that i know are pretty bad at art and the ones I know from overseas (Age 17-22) put out eye popping work that makes all my favorite artist look amateurish. I know it comes down to practice but cooome ooon man some of them raped master level artist and went beyond.
Its obviously something in the watter over there improving their skill x10
In an art class a while back the subject arose that there seem to be a great deal of extremely skilled oil painters in Russia and China.
Russian oil painting schooling is the closest thing to the XIX century classic European drawing/painting tradition. academic Chinese art is largely based on Russian. Since Russia never had a XX hippy/modernist BS movements (bc soviet), the classic school kept its quality level up to middle 1990s or so. There's about same amount of great skilled artists in today's Poland/Serbia/whatever ex USSR country you can think of.
The instructor offered the theory that, due to the way both country's distribute wealth, more people in those countries are able to focus on fine art (vs commercial art) without the fear of not being able to make a living wage. Not sure if it holds water, but it's an interesting theory.
delusional. there's a lot of shallow hate towards commercial art coming from art instructors, both l
There are many reasons certain races are better suited to certain roles than others.
The good news for you is that there's a community totally dedicated to this discussion. The regulars are very friendly!
I think the most logical explanation for this percieved "asians better at art" phenomenon is a little bit of:
-orientalism - all across history, the peoples furthest removed from ones own society have been fetishised, admired, hated... just all strong emotions really. East and west have always, always been fascinated with eachother. From trojan times to the greeks and persians to the silk road to the east india company. Cultural morsels have always fascinated us, the further removed from our own culture they are... unless youre a xenophobe i guess.
-And the fact that, if someone's grown up in asia, speaking an asian language, chances are you havent heard of them until they reach a certain level of renown. Put it this way - chances are there's tons of intelligent lifeforms out in the universe. If we ever make contact with one, they will have developed some kind of radio or general EMR communication, language and all that. So 100% of extraterrestrials we ever contact will be "advanced" in that way. Would it then be fair to assume all life in the universe is highly advanced? Nope. Sorry to compare other races to other lifeforms, but I only use the analogy to portray how removed we are from real exposure and the ability to observe these communities, by things like language barriers, geographical distance, economic factors and so on.
TLDR; I think Asian people aren't naturally better, however there a lot more people living in Asia then in Europe/America, thus you are going to have higher pure numbers of 'good' artists in Asia. Also their culture is a lot more 'bust your ass and you'll succeed, thus I would suspect a lot of the artists there a extremely hard working. Here in North America the new theme is 'Fuck rich people, lets complain, sue them, distribute their wealth and we'll be better off.
It's pretty commonly assumed, and to beginners, often taught that chinese characters are pictograms (ie carrying physical resemblance to the things they represent, like hieroglyphs). This is wrong. Chinese characters are logograms, in comparison to the alphabet's phonograms. that is to say, the alphabet's letters primarily describe sound, while individual hanzi/kanji represent words in an abstract manner.
Before someone decides to mention 日 graphically representing a sun or whatever, it's a goddamn box divided in two. Almost all writing systems stem from pictographic representations, but have later been abstracted. the letter A originally represented the head of an auroch, but that doesn't mean that you're intentionally drawing a cowface every time you write the letter, just like our asian is not drawing a sun, but a box divided in two.
Imagine if we had a letter for every word. it's not quite that bad for these sign-languages in practice, but from this I hope to illustrate that a writing system like this isn't more artistic, just more complicated. And that's the thing. People aren't taught chinese characters through some beautiful creative painting class; it's boring methodical memorization in a systematic manner.
what we're really looking for is a link between great artists and pictionary.
funny thing is, inside our brains we do have "a letter for every word". When you learn reading words you read them letter by letter, but once your reading skills get to a certain level the brain sees the whole word.
Now the real crap with Chinese characters is that when you learn them you have to be able to speak first... or you only learn the simple characters where you know X means Y but you have no clue how to pronounce it. Plus as soon as you combine that character with something else it means something different. The fact that there's almost no punctuation and not even spaces between words and characters doesn't help either.
Having lived in asian countries for quite many years, and also been a japanese high school student i might have some first seat knowledge about this one, ofcourse i can't say this is 100% true or anything, i can only say what i know based on my own experiences.
but if you went into an art club in a random japanese high school vs a western one.
I think you would get quite shocked about the level of art they can produce, i think most of it would beat most universities in quality standard.
im not talking about ideas or originality just about basic skill to copy something onto a piece of paper or a clay model.
I always get surprised when random friends, i have never seen drawing can take up a pen after been asked how someone look or something similar to that, and starts drawing a very detailed and recognizable picture.
Japanese kids tends to draw a lot compared to western countries that i have been living in and maybe the long school hours results in some extra drawings in the school books hehe.
as for the game companies here, i would say that 90% could just as well take up a concept art postion rather then a 3D related position from what i have seen, that number wouldnt have been as high in a western company from my experience, and that includes myself as well.
well can't really say whats true or not just my personal experience regarding this, as for chinese, there are a lot of people that might not have as much money as people in western countries, and the art and game interested kids might not have a computer or things like that, and end up spending their days drawing and painting, i know i liked drawing when i was young, but as soon as i had my own pc there wasnt much drawing going on hehe.
This thread is fucking mental, aint no way Im reading through 4 pages. Chinese more artistically gifted because they write in pictograms???? WTF? There aint nothing artistic going on when they are writing down their homework at a hundred miles an hour. They are just strokes. We use strokes too. Those that are 'better' are better because they knew they had to step up because of how much competition there is.
The sense of aesthetics (whether it stems from being anal with hand-writing or any other cause, even cultural) is not the root of the problem. It's the stem itself. Whatever causes it, there's no doubt Asian art is better, right?
Perhaps. But if u answered 'yes' - the question would be: what makes it better?
I see it in the human anatomy. The bread & butter of art. Show me any artists' figure-drawings, and I'll tell u how good they r. Skyrim has anatomy which is "modest"... to say the least. But this Desert game is jaw opening
Not sure why you you are bringing up Koreans Jaq. We are talking about the chinese (and Japanese I guess), specifically because they use pictographs to write. Hangeul is not pictographic.
But I guess you do have a point. Many of the DW finalists were Korean. But they dont use pictographs. So I see no evidence that the two things are linked.
well koreans do learn kanji in school as it used to be the old way of writing, and as it's a country close to both japan and china, many learn chinese and japanese as their 2nd language.
We are clearly better at art because our squinty eyes allow us to see details that other people can't. Growing up using chop sticks helps strengthen the articulation of wrist and fingers... So drawing comes more naturally. Also, rice stimulates the right side of the brain so we are more creative... Especially after a good meal. And lastly since we all know Kung Fu (a martial 'ART') it all just makes things easier... Art, it's all the same right. I hope this may have answered your questions.
We are clearly better at art because our squinty eyes allow us to see details that other people can't. Growing up using chop sticks helps strengthen the articulation of wrist and fingers... So drawing comes more naturally. Also, rice stimulates the right side of the brain so we are more creative... Especially after a good meal. And lastly since we all know Kung Fu (a martial 'ART') it all just makes things easier... Art, it's all the same right. I hope this may have answered your questions.
With a comment like this, your looking for an internet rumble.
well koreans do learn kanji in school as it used to be the old way of writing, and as it's a country close to both japan and china, many learn chinese and japanese as their 2nd language.
As a teacher in Korea I can tell you their knowledge of Hanja is very limited and their practical application of it is nil.
lmao, way to not actually read the OP, and jump to conclusions dude. Leave the outrage at the door buddy, its not conducive to productive debate.
Come on, man. You're better than this. First of all, this "debate" is not productive. Second of all, on a responsible forum this thread would have been locked a long time ago. The whole thing is racist. Its the same as someone starting a thread asking why African Americans are "so good" at basketball and football and track. I cant believe this thread is still here TBH. Makes me wonder about the moderating staff
Replies
I'm one of those guys who write in all caps. LIKE THIS.
I would get pissed off and champion social justice here too but this is too silly even for me
I'm going to assume (and start this rumor, for your sake -) that you were drunk as hell and maybe short on sleep from having young kids and all when you wrote this thread.
& holy shit at that population graph.. They must
Hahaha! What magical England did you move to and can I have directions XD
Topic -> Hard work is hard work where ever you are.
Move to Norway for a while and then come back
Not saying that English people are that kind, but they are good at acting like they care, unlike Norwegians that just dont give a fuck, the way I like it
My guess is the way they conduct education. Since childhood, they live (at least until some time ago, I'm not sure how things are today, with globalization) under a rigid system of control, that obligate them to learn a lot of things, want them or not, and be submitted to tests, to prove that they can go to the next level. Heres a link comparing education in US and Asia.
http://efeiwang.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/differences-between-asian-schools-and-american-schools/
Anyone who knows a bit about japanese culture, is aware of the high number of suicides among young men that didn't make the university. And salary men that are not well sucssed in their careers. People in Asia are formed to do their best, all the time. In contrary they will be a fail, for the rest of their lifes. There's a good example about the difference between japanese people and American people on the manga Sanctuary (Sho Fumimura/ Roichi Ikegami).
Of course, both people can do a great work, but like the guy said it's the nature of each people. I think asians and russians struggle to do their best, anytime, because they were forced this wasy since they start building their personality. OF course all of this can be bullshit, since it's just my theory.. but its my opinion.
OH DAMN
I was talking about another thread where people argued that you were born with a certain level of artistic skill.
As far as an artistic language, you think it's sexy as an outsider, I know there's an appreciation for the look of English letters in Japan. "FUCK" is popular in Japan because of the balance of hard letters on the outside and curvy ones in the middle.
which IS awful, don't get me wrong...but good lord.
I don't know if you included it as more of a joke, in which case ignore me. but yeah...
Haha, I don't live in US or Asia to say if this is accurate or not. But my point is that education in Asia tends to be a bit harder than in Western countries. Students there feel more pressures of life than us here at the same age. And again, I repeat, I'm assuming the way things used to be (documented in texts, magazines or books during last decades), I have no clue how this people is behaving today.
Anyway, here a good proof that these guys spent more time studying than making profit of good things life has to offer.
[ame="
For example, in order to pass my math test in med school, I had to hire tutor who came to my house about 3-4 time a week, and each sessions lasted between 2-4 hours, before I even got an acceptable set of scores to pass my year.
However, for some reason, I'm pretty well off in understanding and almost immediately grasping art, I didn't even think I would be able to read code for shaders, but guess what, anything that is 'physical' or you're able to look at sets in quickly with me, and while I cannot name you the correct persons name who landed on the moon, I think I can tell you the name of several people who worked on triple A titles and what their username is on this forum.
I think not too long time ago, they even tried to scientifically state that no-one has genetically skillset, but simply that their brain has a higher affinity to absorbing certain kinds of informaton vs. others, hence this is what determines our likes and dislikes as well.
I think the guys at the idea channel discussed this not too long, but I'll be damned if I can remember the video in which they touched the subject, maybe this one slightly?
[ame="
@JR: Um, not to contradict your point or image, but Japan is pretty well known for being exactly the opposite of everything comics like that and people stereotype. Once you interact with something on a personal level, magic like that just vanishes.
Japan is the kind of place that is all looks nice from the outside, but once you get in the inside, there is so much corruption, racism and low-tech involved, that by comparison places like Germany or Netherlands look like uber-power houses. Same with Russia, frankly, if you count how many Russian artists vs. non-Russians there are that kick-ass, the number is actually less in their favor.
It also doesn't help that places like Japan have pressure on people to do better, which is actually bad, since it leads to high rates of suicide last I checked in some regions.
So yeah, that's a really narrow way to look at stuff. I also suggest going to more Eastern forums if possible, and seeing how much crap they post sometimes.
@leilei: Yep, that sums up the thread, but I don't think Gir was trying to imply that, just simply that it shows Western artists are less exposed to other artists (especially the language barrier when it comes to forums) from other countries.
And have to agree with Pixiv, the amount of crap you have to go through before you find the few awesome artists is very high, not to mention, once you do, you find out they do porn too. Talk about shattering your idols.
Asians has their own way to see things, and to develop them. Russians too, Western countries too. Awesomeness can be present in anywhere. We have for example awesome architetural wonders in Asia. Taj Mahal, The Great Wall, Golden Temple in Thailand. They show how Asian people is (or at least were) focused on details, and struggled to do things the most impressive and rich possible. But we have too spetacular things in West, like Sistine Chapel, The interior of many Byzantine churches, Mont Saint Michel. These means that we have great artists everywhere, each one doing their things on their way.
you racist
Its obviously something in the watter over there improving their skill x10
delusional. there's a lot of shallow hate towards commercial art coming from art instructors, both l
The good news for you is that there's a community totally dedicated to this discussion. The regulars are very friendly!
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/
wait, you ARE white right?
Trollmode off
I think the most logical explanation for this percieved "asians better at art" phenomenon is a little bit of:
-orientalism - all across history, the peoples furthest removed from ones own society have been fetishised, admired, hated... just all strong emotions really. East and west have always, always been fascinated with eachother. From trojan times to the greeks and persians to the silk road to the east india company. Cultural morsels have always fascinated us, the further removed from our own culture they are... unless youre a xenophobe i guess.
-And the fact that, if someone's grown up in asia, speaking an asian language, chances are you havent heard of them until they reach a certain level of renown. Put it this way - chances are there's tons of intelligent lifeforms out in the universe. If we ever make contact with one, they will have developed some kind of radio or general EMR communication, language and all that. So 100% of extraterrestrials we ever contact will be "advanced" in that way. Would it then be fair to assume all life in the universe is highly advanced? Nope. Sorry to compare other races to other lifeforms, but I only use the analogy to portray how removed we are from real exposure and the ability to observe these communities, by things like language barriers, geographical distance, economic factors and so on.
Before someone decides to mention 日 graphically representing a sun or whatever, it's a goddamn box divided in two. Almost all writing systems stem from pictographic representations, but have later been abstracted. the letter A originally represented the head of an auroch, but that doesn't mean that you're intentionally drawing a cowface every time you write the letter, just like our asian is not drawing a sun, but a box divided in two.
Imagine if we had a letter for every word. it's not quite that bad for these sign-languages in practice, but from this I hope to illustrate that a writing system like this isn't more artistic, just more complicated. And that's the thing. People aren't taught chinese characters through some beautiful creative painting class; it's boring methodical memorization in a systematic manner.
what we're really looking for is a link between great artists and pictionary.
Now the real crap with Chinese characters is that when you learn them you have to be able to speak first... or you only learn the simple characters where you know X means Y but you have no clue how to pronounce it. Plus as soon as you combine that character with something else it means something different. The fact that there's almost no punctuation and not even spaces between words and characters doesn't help either.
but if you went into an art club in a random japanese high school vs a western one.
I think you would get quite shocked about the level of art they can produce, i think most of it would beat most universities in quality standard.
im not talking about ideas or originality just about basic skill to copy something onto a piece of paper or a clay model.
I always get surprised when random friends, i have never seen drawing can take up a pen after been asked how someone look or something similar to that, and starts drawing a very detailed and recognizable picture.
Japanese kids tends to draw a lot compared to western countries that i have been living in and maybe the long school hours results in some extra drawings in the school books hehe.
as for the game companies here, i would say that 90% could just as well take up a concept art postion rather then a 3D related position from what i have seen, that number wouldnt have been as high in a western company from my experience, and that includes myself as well.
well can't really say whats true or not just my personal experience regarding this, as for chinese, there are a lot of people that might not have as much money as people in western countries, and the art and game interested kids might not have a computer or things like that, and end up spending their days drawing and painting, i know i liked drawing when i was young, but as soon as i had my own pc there wasnt much drawing going on hehe.
/endof.
Perhaps. But if u answered 'yes' - the question would be: what makes it better?
I see it in the human anatomy. The bread & butter of art. Show me any artists' figure-drawings, and I'll tell u how good they r. Skyrim has anatomy which is "modest"... to say the least. But this Desert game is jaw opening
But I guess you do have a point. Many of the DW finalists were Korean. But they dont use pictographs. So I see no evidence that the two things are linked.
tssk, tssk, tssk .... :P
With a comment like this, your looking for an internet rumble.
True story... I go with him. And afterwards, we are so much more better at art! We've found it... IT'S THE FOOD!!
As a teacher in Korea I can tell you their knowledge of Hanja is very limited and their practical application of it is nil.
No wonder those Asians rock in Art !!!! They draw Raiden and Kung Lao since elementary.
10/10 :thumbup:
Hi-yaaaaaaa XO
you guys need some pill. seriously
XD
lmao, way to not actually read the OP, and jump to conclusions dude. Leave the outrage at the door buddy, its not conducive to productive debate.
But I love the irony of your post, that made me chuckle
Come on, man. You're better than this. First of all, this "debate" is not productive. Second of all, on a responsible forum this thread would have been locked a long time ago. The whole thing is racist. Its the same as someone starting a thread asking why African Americans are "so good" at basketball and football and track. I cant believe this thread is still here TBH. Makes me wonder about the moderating staff