Possible idea for a weekly art jam!?!

crazyfool

Hi guys and gals,

I'm not sure if many of you saw but I started up a speed sculpting art jam a few years back on gameartisans and it was pretty successful. I can only imagine how mad it would have been if we did it on here. It was pretty much a lunch crunch rip off but with a theme every few days and had an emphasis on learning the software and nailing forms within the sculpt itself, aswell as fuelling your inner concept artist haha. The main thing was it was alot of fun though and very light hearted.

I've been looking up things like fan art Fridays and wondered what people thought if we were to do one here. We could pick a one or two letter word as a theme every Friday and just see what everyone comes up with. Having a pretty loose subject could be alot of fun. I was thinking it would just be a massive art jam so it can run for 2d and 3d, possibly even environment artists could get in on the action. For people like me who don't have alot of free time I think it could be alot of fun. We could have discussions for good themes here aswell

For example,
Hulk
Japan
Marvel
Zombie etc

And just see where people take them. The beauty of it is that themes are so general you could do anything and you can drop in and out as you please. If you don't have time then just jump on the next one. I remember the creativeness was pretty infectious and soon lurkers and heavy critters would jump in.

Now there are down sides though that I noticed with the speed sculpting. You end up with ALOT of unpolished/unfinished work which I know alot of people don't like. To me it's part of the learning process and not polishing a turd is my ethos on the matter. Still it would be nice to get some 'final' looking stuff, which if you get a week to put as much time in as you want, it should combat that aspect which did bug me. I know I will probably be drawing loads of stuff and if I like it I might bring it into Z at some point. Also means you can have more than one session with it.

there was an issue for me where I was creating highlights of each subject which ended up being alot of work on my end and I felt a bit corrupt if I ever put my stuff up haha, (it was voted for, Im not a total tool haha). So yea, I don't want to do highlights, just keep it free and if its a cool piece maybe we could get it on the awesome weekly recaps here

So what do ya think? Hehe

It will be literally just starting a thread in p&p and we all go mad creatively haha.

Sorry for waffling on haha, it's been in my head the past few days.

Brandon.LaFrance

I would be completely down for this. I find that I spend way too much time laboring over one piece. Regular speed sculpting sessions would help me explore way more ideas than my current path. You can count me in.

Dylan Brady

Nice, deffinately someting I would participate in. been wanting to get into more quick fun iterative stuff rather than the long haul pieces.
I do like your idea about having a certain time to take something further. maybe it would be fun like... at the end of each month or something there's one week that's for revisiting your favorite piece of that month and refine it a bit. could put more emphasis on the group helping eachother learn sculpting pores/details for that one week.

anyway it pans out should be a blast.

daphz

sounds like a cool idea, I'm down!

Bigjohn

Sounds like a good idea. But honestly, you'd have to keep it pretty light. Something like a bust would work, where a full character wouldn't. This also means the themes have to be light as well. "New Orleans the day after Katrina" probably wouldn't work. But something vague like "Old Man and the Sea" would.

Sounds like a lot of fun!

Avanthera

I've thought of joining the peeps over at GA, but I'm never on that forum and pretty much end up forgetting about the daily comps they have. I'm def. down.:)

crazyfool

I think the main thing is just to spark an idea. You can do whatever you want, be it a sculpt, a sketch, a full on painting, a model. It's upto you how much you put in and how far you go with it. It's not like the speed sculpts where you do your hour and that's it, you put in what you wanna get out. Some people like me will be lucky to find time to do a sketch haha.

I think themes will be super super vague haha. And people are free to interpret it however they want. Say if we did hulk for one week, that could mean a massive monster, the marvel character, a monster truck, The more abstract the better I think.

OrganizedChaos

Ah! At first I thought you were proposing a speed sculpt thing here on polycount. Bummer XD Your speed sculpts from gameartisans are what inspired me to try it out myself.

How are you thinking this would work? A theme every week, I'm guessing that would mean everyone should be done by the end of that week? Or would it be up to them to decide when they're done and then they might be submitting months later. I guess this seems like a good thing for coming up with ideas, but what would separate it from using a random generator for themes (aside from knowing there might be someone else participating as well)?

crazyfool

yea the way I thought it would work is much like the fan art fridays where you get a week to do something, anything. And then we move on. But if its good enough idea then theres nothing stopping you from continuing it on away from the art jam. Theres no submitting finals, just make art and learn and get inspired from others around you, much like a sketch group. If you wanna do speed sculpts then do speed sculpts, everyone loves a good timelapse hehe or do a sketch? Alot of us dont have alot of time to spare but you can knock something cool out pretty quickly if you can find an hour here or there, reuse base meshes, dynamesh etc. I would certainly do a few speedies.

I thought if we came up with some good themes that will set the interwebs on fire then it should be alot more interesting. Things like street fighter or metal gear, space etc. as opposed to using a random generator. The diversity in the ideas produced can be really fun to watch.

Im just thinking aloud haha, any possible theme ideas?

Im gonna go dark now as I have work to do haha.

Andreas

We had something like this going... but people lost interest eventually. It was mostly a subdivision surface type jam. If you're looking for topic ideas, there's a thread full of suggestions for that particular jam.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63491

Mask_Salesman

Yo man I'm up for this again
I like the any media thing, I'd enjoy throwing some lunch sketches about and then proper sculpts on weekends.

I'd suggest Zombie StarWars, not just deathtroopers, like zombie chewy, yoda etc and even weirdly zombie R2D2 haha.

Twoflower

im in ^^

Stromberg90

I think this could be cool, if the themes are thought trough or vague enough that us hard-surface/environment artist could get in on it

ScudzAlmighty

This was awesome when it was on ga, and I miss your timelapse vids
would definitely love to get into it here:)

Avanthera

Andreas wrote: »

We had something like this going... but people lost interest eventually. It was mostly a subdivision surface type jam. If you're looking for topic ideas, there's a thread full of suggestions for that particular jam.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63491

Yeah, but this was more of a focused exercise-based thing. It kind of lost steam once everybody kept making the same thing over and over.

valuemeal

Making a super robot would be more fun
or perhaps a final boss jam.

Idk, these suggestions seem to serious.

WarrenM

They're only a week long. If you hate the current suggestion, all you need is patience.

cw

I loved that gameartisans thread! Sounds great!

Andreas

Avanthera wrote: »

Yeah, but this was more of a focused exercise-based thing. It kind of lost steam once everybody kept making the same thing over and over.

Thats true, maybe just having a theme would be of more interest. CG Talk also has something like this, infrequently.


For those missing the GA jams, they are actually still going. The site has been completely revamped. I just missed their Star Wars jam but will be trying their next one most def. Fred seems to have vanished too which is good, seems like Draxxus is running the shop over there now and hes a top notch bloke.

crazyfool

This sort of thing wouldn't work on GA anymore i dont think, as there's just not enough people there now and all the pros have left sadly. They have about 3 or 4 posts a day on the whole site which is a real shame. I'm sure it will come back though.

Would be cool to get some discussion going over themes that people think would work? We could make the whole thing entirely fan art based possibly? Like we could do 80s cartoons, Disney etc. plenty of possibility for environment artists aswell, not just us character dudes/dudets!!!

Shadownami92

I really liked the idea back on GA. For one theme, I think Street Sharks would make for a fantastic theme on it's own. Essentially people making amazing mutant shark sculpts or I guess with it's villains a mutant sea creature sculpt of lots of sorts.

Taking something simple and adorable and making it freakishly detailed and scary could also be really interesting too.

Mask_Salesman

Heh Street Sharks would be incredibly fun

Zwebbie

I'd be up for a bit of weekly sculpting, but the thing that always refrains me from joining this kind of jam or a competition is that the themes are often focused on mutants, monsters and geek nostalgia, and that's just not my area of interest. I like the idea, but it'll depend on the individual topic whether I'll join in for any particular week .

Frump

It looks like it was pretty cool back on GA, so I don't see why not try to bring it back. Seems like it would be a lot of fun. I like the idea that env dudes could make props and little sets too.

Fun + Practice is always good

benji

Awesome, I'm up for. loosening up and experimenting with an open-ended prompt can be a lot of fun. I used to do half-hour art speedruns with a few friends, and we used this word generator to give us a start - it brings up some interesting words that are very open to interpretation.

BoBo_the_seal

love this idea! Nuff talk let's do it!

I'd love to see replicating established styles as a theme. This is something we are asked to do all of the time in the game industry. Being able to adapt your style to match that of the creative direction of a project is a great skill set to have.

I would choose a concept artist and try to translate his/her style into 3d, either by direct interpretation of one of the artist's concepts or a new unique piece inspired by the artist's body of work.

Creature Box would be a great example

- BoBo

crazyfool

Oh bobo you silver tongued devil you that's a fantastic idea, creature box will definitely be a great theme. I think we still need to keep it quite light so could do that as one of them and some other general themes too.

I'm gonna write down some cool themes and hopefully start this up Friday coming, I'm thinking if I set it up so it runs for 2 months and then if its good maybe keep it going, someone could takeover possibly if I can't handle it at the end haha. Not sure if I should list the themes so people know what's coming or keep it a surprise, I may list the first few so it gets people interested and then keep the latter ones a surprise idk. Every Friday I will post in the thread with massive orange letters anyway what the new theme is and we all just go from there.

Zwebbie - what themes would you suggest that would interest you? Would be really interesting as I don't want to be jaded by just themes I want to do haha, and as a nostalgia whore myself it's gonna end up thundercats and street fighter if I get no input haha

ceebee

Anything you participate in crazyfool I'm also down with ur arts bbgurl

Seriously though, me and Denny have been doing a couple things like this but we just kind of do it randomly on weekends whenever we have free time. LETS TAKE IT TO ANOTHER LEVUL

McGreed

Can't we make the subject so open, so that us, who don't do characters, can make environments or props instead?

fightpunch

It would be a cool idea to maybe do some topics along the lines of : Make something that would fit into the district 9 universe, or any allready established universe.

Zwebbie

crazyfool wrote: »

Zwebbie - what themes would you suggest that would interest you? Would be really interesting as I don't want to be jaded by just themes I want to do haha, and as a nostalgia whore myself it's gonna end up thundercats and street fighter if I get no input haha

That's a very good question that I don't quite have an answer to. I was thinking of what you could do with extremely vague themes, such as "looking better" or "mother", but such themes are probably all pretty terrible for not being inspiring in the least. My "objection" if you'd call it that, to ideas such as zombie Star Wars and Thundercats is twofold: firstly, I just don't like those things, and while there's no problem with modeling something from someone else's likes every once in a while (I have), fan art without being a fan isn't quite as much fun. Now this is mostly a personal problem, since zombies, mutants and demons seem to go over well with most of Polycount, but I think it's worth pointing out that not everyone's taste is the same.

The second problem is that I think these pretty generic and, well, clich

MattFall

This sounds awesome, best part is that it's Weekly So this means one week I could do a concept art piece, next week a monster, next week a environment piece. Sounds like fun !

maximumsproductions

Zwebbie wrote: »

The second problem is that I think these pretty generic and, well, clich

almighty_gir

BoBo_the_seal wrote: »

love this idea! Nuff talk let's do it!

I'd love to see replicating established styles as a theme. This is something we are asked to do all of the time in the game industry. Being able to adapt your style to match that of the creative direction of a project is a great skill set to have.

I would choose a concept artist and try to translate his/her style into 3d, either by direct interpretation of one of the artist's concepts or a new unique piece inspired by the artist's body of work.

Creature Box would be a great example

- BoBo

this x10.

i think a lot of artists focus very heavily on defining their own style, when the reality is... if we want to be regularly employed, we need to be able to adapt to any style guide we're given!

so yes, i whole heartedly would love for this idea to turn into something real and tangible, that people can learn from and grow as artists. but i also think there should be some level of strictness, because i can already see people wanting to "do blah blah in my own style". if we're to help our members grow as artists and more importantly, as candidates for employment (studio or freelance), then we need to help them feel comfortable working with a multitude of styles or themes.

that's my $0.02

Mask_Salesman

You make a good point Zwebbie, while I'm vulnerable to nostalgic themes, an easy escape from the mindcrunch, I also completely get where Rhodes is coming from. Cghub is now like a foe to try and overthrow with fractured originality. And I would very much enjoy some deeper themes as well.

I often find now that I'll lean more to function than aesthetics to try and combat the vast array of existing dominance in popular genres.


One thing that could be interesting would be to try and deliberately go against the grain that certain themes go in, for example sci-fi is heavily dependant on sleek streamlined compacted suits nowadays with hexagon patterns and greeble of straps and anatomical mirroring in muscle like armour designs.

Trying to implement the exact opposite of those forms and design choices could create some interesting ideas and hopefully originality lol. For example, bulky, dirty, large forms, hi-tech assessories that don't just magically appear on some sort of holographic palm display. Or am I leaning to far towards the original "used future" look of starwars haha.

Well either way you get the idea, themes turned upside down. It's one idea atleast? lol

Frump

You guys are overthinking it, imo. If we're just doing a weekly jam for fun, light nostalgic fan art stuff is perfect.

I don't want to spend days on a thoughtful concept or how to relay a theme. I want to enjoy making something quick for practice and participation.

I don't think that deeper themes shouldn't ever be explored, but for the first few weeks/months, keep it light and easy to participate.

I really like BoBo's idea too, matching a specific artist's style either through original creations or recreating a specific piece sounds excellent.

crazyfool

Well Bobos post really made me think differently about the themes I had before. Made me think of all the cool projects we would all wished we have been a part of, to try the style atleast. Im lucky working at a specialist character outsourcer that I come across tons of different projects every year with their own subtle differences and having to nail the art style from the offset is a real buzz haha. It also gives the opportunity for those who have worked on these projects the freedom to do whatever the hell they want instead of being tied down with a concept

So that In mind, (please dont start yet) first theme is ......Dishonored!!!!!!

now its upto you how you interpret it, theres no right or wrong answers, you can do something in their art style of whatever, make your own character/prop, take one of their characters and put it in your own style. Anything that relates is allowed so we can all just go crazy.

second theme is ghibli (in time for ni no kunis UK/europe release)

other themes I have so far are

nintendo/sega, comic books, pets, ios/android, vigil, cartoon shows, Bioware, world of bioshock (on release of bioshock infinite), creature box, and beat em up.

now these themes are very broad which some may not like but its only a bit of fun so lighten up theres no demons/zombies/sea creatures as you can add that into any of the themes as your own spin on it.

please let me know if any of these urk you something bad haha and we can change em I know some are not very easy for environment artists but you should be able to think of something cool, if not maybe do soem concepting or character based prop, or hell even have a go at characters.

Im pretty excited over dishonored, ios and ghibli though haha

Andreas

Looking good. I like the first theme because people can interpret it as the game, which has a distinctive style to reproduce, but also just as the word. Is that allowed? Can people just make a random piece that represents the word?

I'm also excited for Ghibli. CGTalk had a Ghibli modelling jam a while back but I got a terrible bout of the bone idleness.

Guedin

Please count me in ! It's gonna be awesome

Nizza_waaarg

Yeh I dig those themes man. And maybe if you encourage peeps to record some timelapses like the last one too... i had so many awsome zb vids from that last one ^_^

OrganizedChaos

Nizza_waaarg wrote: »

Yeh I dig those themes man. And maybe if you encourage peeps to record some timelapses like the last one too... i had so many awsome zb vids from that last one ^_^

Yeah, isn't it supposed to be easier to record in the new zbrush? I have never tried personally, but that sounds like a cool idea for us who're planning to do sculpts for this.
Is there going to be some kind of announcement when this officially starts/ or section to post the art? It'd be cool to post some kind of "how to make a zbrush video" kind of link (I think you might have had that in the gameartisans thread at one point)

teggs

This sounds like fun and a good way to improve my skills. Please count me in!

@Organized Chaos: Setting up a time-lapse in ZBrush is super easy just follow the steps found on pixologic : http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Recording_A_Movie

Funky Bunnies

my god...
this sounds epic!

crazyfool

this friday I'll start a thread in p&p and we will all go from there I think, I have everything pretty much ready to go but I wanna make it a friday thing hehe so we get the weekend to have a good think/play and then refine through the week.

I wanna do a borderlands theme now aswell

leslievdb

basically what i`ve been doing by myself for a couple of months now but in a group so thats much more fun nice themes. I`m totally up for this

Joseph Silverman

Love it. I tried and utterly failed to organize something like this about a year ago, good luck. This kind of thing would contribute a MAJOR positive influence on this community imo.

Avanthera

I very much like these themes. Nice!

Sculptaur

Sounds like just the thing i need to get me started making personal art again! In!

papagersi

I like it, and actually I wanted to join it on Gameartisan long ago ,(I was just watching and saw a lot people got improved and some fun with this Art Jam ^^
I would be down totes! I remember I liked you themes ^^

Andreas

crazyfool wrote: »

this friday I'll start a thread in p&p

There's always a Workshop subforum just sitting there stagnating, if that'd be more to your liking.

Could we add Nintendo to that list? They've really got the whole art thing down; both their promotional stuff and in-game stuff is always so damn nice looking.

Bigjohn

How would you define the visual style for Dishonored? Just Steampunk really?

Also, does it have any female characters? All I see is some beat-up crack whore and an old broad.