Quantifying Beauty In Representative Art
polycounter lvl 14
Hey there folks. I don't get to post around on polycount as much as I would like lately so when I do I try to make it count. The thing I want to share with you today is probably the most important piece of advice I ever had to share to this point, with both students and professionals.
It's a talk I've been doing for a few years now for universities and schools all around and it tries to answer such questions like whether there is objective Beauty, why you can be the master of modeling and texturing and still be a crappy artist, how do you make every single of your art projects count, how do you compare art, pick up what's of value in it without taking on the flaws.
I was faced with a problem years back as an artist, where I didn't understand what specifically could make me better. Copying the hot thing and trying to put my own twist on it didn't seem substantial enough. It was hard to feel responsible for the success of my own work.
All of this and every other artistic insecurity forced to me to look for an answer, that eventually manifested in this talk.
Quantifying Beauty in Representative Art (Good Quality) - YouTube
The talk itself is around 40 minutes and the rest is just the test I do with the students. I know that 40 minutes of time is a big commitment in this day and age. so here's the preview video to help you paint a clearer picture of what to expect:
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPTOvOV3ANo"]Preivew - Quantifying Beauty in Representative Art - YouTube[/ame]
if it got at you at least mildly interested make sure to check out the full talk.
If anything I hope that the system described here can at least help us establish a language for discussing visual problems in a constructive way.
Slides on my website:
http://artisaverb.info/QuantifyingBeauty.html
And the archive with all the images:
http://artisaverb.info/Lectures/Beauty_Lecture_AiaV.zip
I hope this will be of as much use for you as it was for me.
And hey, I'm excited to hear if you guys have a different take on this or whatever else you might be thinking on the subject. If there is something we ought to be talking about it's stuff like this.
Thank you for your time and take care
Andrew
edit: took out the preview slides so folks are not tempted to critique them out of context without watching the talk itself
It's a talk I've been doing for a few years now for universities and schools all around and it tries to answer such questions like whether there is objective Beauty, why you can be the master of modeling and texturing and still be a crappy artist, how do you make every single of your art projects count, how do you compare art, pick up what's of value in it without taking on the flaws.
I was faced with a problem years back as an artist, where I didn't understand what specifically could make me better. Copying the hot thing and trying to put my own twist on it didn't seem substantial enough. It was hard to feel responsible for the success of my own work.
All of this and every other artistic insecurity forced to me to look for an answer, that eventually manifested in this talk.
Quantifying Beauty in Representative Art (Good Quality) - YouTube
The talk itself is around 40 minutes and the rest is just the test I do with the students. I know that 40 minutes of time is a big commitment in this day and age. so here's the preview video to help you paint a clearer picture of what to expect:
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPTOvOV3ANo"]Preivew - Quantifying Beauty in Representative Art - YouTube[/ame]if it got at you at least mildly interested make sure to check out the full talk.
If anything I hope that the system described here can at least help us establish a language for discussing visual problems in a constructive way.
Slides on my website:
http://artisaverb.info/QuantifyingBeauty.html
And the archive with all the images:
http://artisaverb.info/Lectures/Beauty_Lecture_AiaV.zip
I hope this will be of as much use for you as it was for me.
And hey, I'm excited to hear if you guys have a different take on this or whatever else you might be thinking on the subject. If there is something we ought to be talking about it's stuff like this.
Thank you for your time and take care
Andrew
edit: took out the preview slides so folks are not tempted to critique them out of context without watching the talk itself
Replies
@aleksdigital- Considering d1vers body of work I think he's qualified to provide a view point on this.
some of these slides also dont make sense to me. how does the photo with the bird as so little subject. do you hate birds ? so it is subjective of important a subject is (who the audience is). other wise abstract art would be completely pointless. you are putting too much importance on "subject".
the image with building has some significant compositional work in it and you put the composition to a minimum there. i am confident that your observation is faulty there as well.
execution should actually mean everything from understanding color, composition to scale and contrast. one cannot simply be a good texture artist without good sense of color or lighting or scale. one cannot be a good modeler without having strong hold of composition, scale and design.
good effort, but message seems very confusing. you are using lot of your personal definitions and subjective opinions to make up objective theories. it just doesnt work like that i think.
but you are welcome to prove me wrong!
The analyses seem very superficial and subjective to me, but I guess it's not that easy to talk about things that are pretty subjective by nature.
I think you could have made more effort going into art theory though,
You talk a bit about perspective, but in terms of composition and colors you usually stated something like 'the colors are cool' and that's it.
But what really put me off the most, was when you implied that the scene you made was looking bad because you chose a wrong subject matter, so it wasn't the execution that made it bad.
I think it's a very good concept art and your scene doesn't do it justice because of many problems with the execution, not the subject.
Also, you seem to contradict that statement yourself later in the video saying (about artists) that they can take the most mundane subject matter and make it work.
Which one is it then?
Qualified or not I just want the argument to stand on it's own feet. Some people will find a way to benefit from this greatly, others will disregard it completely even before watching. That's life
I am indeed no Feng, aleksdigital
Hey there MM, thanks for the feedback!
I'm afraid I've never used the definition you gave for quality of execution. However I've been thinking on a concise definition for a while now. And so far I've settled on
"How close you come to the clear visual idea in your head".
That's where I try to draw the line between things you say are one. Coming up with an original, interesting and thought-through visual idea requires a completely different set of skills then the actual execution. That's why we have art directors and concept artists. Like music: composing and playing are two very different skills.
From your questions though I have to ask if you watched the whole talk. I'll hold off from further discussion before that, I hope you understand.
I actually regret putting some of the slides up. My bad. I didn't anticipate that they require the context so much. You live and learn
Gav, thank you buddy! Yes indeed my GDC was a spin off of this one only applied more to games and production issues. This is sort of a broader art one. I was actually quite blown away by the reception I got from the attendees. I got to chat with so many lead artists and art directors who so warmly welcomed this idea. Heck naughty dog offered me a job, again, right there on the spot
Great feedback, frmdbl. Indeed I wish I could go more into the specifics of each element, however it is an even darker forest then the broader subject.
However I strongly stand my ground on the quality of execution issue. Firstly because I showcase the concepts both of us aspired towards and I haven't found a single person who would say that mine felt "objectively" more beautiful. Which technically makes execution moot because the ideal would be what is on the concept.
And please don't get me wrong - I no way made this talk to cover my incompetence and bribed the conferences and universities to let me do it. My incompetence knows no limits and I would never in my life try to deny it.)
I would very much like to hear your feedback on the lacking execution and how it would make that piece better then Paul's.
However if it has anything to do with making it different from the concept then it is feedback on the concept rather then my work and the point technically still stands.
I do really want to hear it though.
I also never said that artists can always take the most mundane subject and make it work. Both times it was "couldn't". If you think it was a sound issue though please let me know, so I can drop a youtube annotation on top.
thanks again
there are many ways of executing an idea. but idea can and usually be vague, incomplete or undecided just like any concept or art direction. so it is the job of the artist to execute it properly, and that requires knowing all the things you mention. it requires that the artist apply their own art direction and all the art theories and observation from life and bring it to realization. that is execution.
your definition(and over all tone in the video) makes it sound like execution is mutually exclusive from art direction and is just like pressing a computer button or running a plugin without plan or visualization or any sort of thought process. every artists applies some sort of art direction to their own work. all of this is execution. i dont understand how you can separate execution from art direction.
i understand the importance of art direction, but without actual execution and idea is only an idea without any realization.
as for the video, i watched the first 25-30 minutes and then skipped to the end where you talk about "Rarity" being the main quality of beauty and then stopped watching. it just feels a bit shallow(or overly simplistic) to me and at the same time very contradictory to importance of over all art direction. as others mentioned, many of the slides and the grading you applied seems bad observation to me and a lot of subjective calls being made in order to create some objective theory.
also, a final thought from me - any successful art director must first know how to execute his/her own art direction or idea because he/she can even think of being a responsible art director. all the art directors i have so far worked with, i have yet to meet one awesome art director who can just talk the talk but cant walk the walk. the awesome art directors however can not only put theory or words, but can execute it themselves. so my personal theory is if you dont know how to execute, then you dont know how to be an art director.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX2PzNHwabE&feature=youtu.be&t=23m37s
"They can take the most usual and mundane subjects and present them in a way that's so visually appealing"
This is also very true in my opinion.
In terms of the concepts as I think they're both pretty good and equally you could have said that the Leader's painting isn't that great 'cause it's dull, brownish, there's not that much going on, not very dramatic lighting.
What Paul Svoboda did was take the best out of that concept and expand on it to make it even better. He made the lighting more dramatic, added color and detail.
Imagine it without the reddish leaves and they're reflection on the water.
The Tsang's concept works in a different way, it's obviously stylized, the bright colors make it work, the contrast in lighting, the funny characters extruding pasta into a robot.
Your scene doesn't convey that.
You made a very bland and very different scene out of it, with no sense of stylisation.
Admittedly, the robot scene is much smaller, so if someone wows only at big scale scenes, then probably the Leader's concept has more potential, but in my opinion you could have made a brilliant small scene out of the first concept.
Hope all I said doesn't come across as hateful or too personal, I just really couldn't agree.
And I think I know why. Because what you think you heard in the talk offended you, heck it did offend me when I was first thinking about it. And I'm very sorry if it did.
We each pick our own battles. And if you decide to wing it as you go and not over analyze it no way makes you a lesser artist. I like your work and appreciate the art sensibilities that you put in it. But there are a lot of people way less natural at this then you are.
You have thousands of insecure students who are desperately trying to be where you are at. And the only kind of education we as an industry provide is always focused on a tool rather then broader artistic qualities. And while I perfectly respect you desire to see beauty and execution as one, it just doesn't work for education.
It takes someone getting up and telling the kids that Beauty is more important, that it can be learned and that they are not talentless. And if you feel like it was taken too far it's still fine by me because the rest of the industry is going to tell them otherwise and if I can do something to counterbalance that I will. Just as I will always hire a person with "light and color" skills on their resume rather then "max and maya".
frmdbl, gotcha. Yeah this is different from what I was thinking of.
I thought you were talking about this more:
http://youtu.be/UX2PzNHwabE?t=39m44s
The difference however is something that actually goes right through all the points you and I are discussing:
Same amount of effort on an idea with more capacity for Beauty is always going to end up looking better. I'm perfectly fine with people having strong opinions about the quality of my work, but this idea is something I can't see us disagreeing on. Because it is obvious. But still, not nearly enough people invest the same amount of time into ideation as they do into execution.
And while I appreciate you feedback, I wont get into that detail right now, because it feels tangential to the broader question.
Cause there are the students and amateurs that are scared and afraid. That are not nearly as good as others. And they sit there trying to make sense to why they still suck, they turn to the industry and there isn't much we're doing to promote core artistic values before everything else. And I just want them to have something I never had - an available idea, that beauty comes before the tools.
teaching others without the proper experience would misguide who ever was listening to me. however, giving technical/objective feedback on a piece of art is one thing and preaching what beauty is completely another thing.
so, at the end of the day your main message seems to be to strive for "rarity" or "originality" and at the same time using phrases like "beauty =/= quality of execution". this is a bad message to students. it is like asking them to run and jump before then can even stand up properly. understanding beauty takes a lifetime in my opinion and it take huge amount of observation and literally overloading your memory with as much visual information as possible.
in my opinion, beauty is relevant to time and trend and varies from person to person based on their personal memory. originality can easily be a product of random combination of stolen ideas from anywhere. it all depends on how it is executed.
finally, the way you define beauty with conventional or contemporary concept of color theory or composition creates a narrow(subjective) view of rarity and originality and can be misleading for students or learners. what is more important is to teach them how to observe and dissect. beauty is subjective, so learners need to be able to observe and dissect and re-integrate in order to create their own personal idea of what beauty is.
a simple example of how to teach them to observer would be to study trees. see how the branches branch out, or look for visual patterns withing the nature itself. observe and dissect. or a more simpler test would be to ask them to create two random curves and compare which one is more pleasing to the eye and why. understanding visual rhythm, patterns, balance of shapes and forms can all be learned from observation. after and only after you have learned enough of the basics of observation and replication can you start to break the rules with rarity and originality or what ever you "think" is original.
Rather than 'execution', surely we are talking about 'craftsmanship' here and when we are making our craft we should constantly be using our artistic judgement at the same time. The quality of your artistic judgement will determine the aesthetics of your artwork.
I think in your talk you should make it more clear for the students that by observing and understanding art theories and fundamentals more you are improving your artistic judgement, which in turn improves the aesthetics of your art while you are making it. Improving your artistic judgement should be a goal to strive for and will probably take a life time to master.
The only person here pretending to possess ultimate knowledge on the subject is you right now. Which is neither professional nor polite.
I hope you do realize that every argument you provide is as subjective as mine and the only difference between us is that I had enough common courtesy to familiarize myself with the entirety of your argument.
And if you have to attack my experience and qualifications, after settling on this system, every single environment project I've done ended up on polycount frontpage. I'm the first to admit I still suck but I'd be surprised if you could name a single other person to do that.
And don't get me wrong, this talk passed through dozens of extremely qualified people before making it's way here. Game Developers Conference Advisory Board consists of the cream of the crop of this industry with art directors responsible for both of us becoming artists in the first place. Not to mention University professors. And all of them are more than comfortable with it.
Could this talk have been done better? A million times "yes". But I still 100% percent stand by every single word I said. Whether you choose to agree with it or not. And making it personal does little, but paint you in unpleasant colors, since I indeed do possess a track record that allows me to have an opinion on this subject.
And you're welcome to yours.
aleksdigital, none taken.
Thanks for stopping by Ex-Ray.
I agree with every single word you say and in fact believe that is the exact thing that the talk communicates, only using slightly altered vocabulary.
I somewhat insisted on using the word "beauty" because the talk spends 10 minutes trying to communicate what meaning specifically we are going to be putting into this word, before actually using it.
But this indeed only proves to show that we as an artistic community still do not have a unified language developed to talk about more abstract things, which sort of sets us back a bit.
You see I totally agree with you Ray, I agree with most things MM says, but more often then not the specific meaning each person assigns to the same word is what becomes the hurdle.
I'm still glad we are at least talking about it though
also how am i pretending to possess ultimate knowledge ? where did that come from? did i say you pretended to do the same ?
there is a BIG difference in me giving you brutally honest feedback and you giving talks on "meaning of beauty" to big number students and learners(and online viewers). my subjective feedback only affects you and your future lectures may be, but your talk affects a big number of people and their possible future careers.
now i have also been invited to speek at numerous schools and seminars, i pretty much have denied every single one of them mainly because i dont like public speaking AND i dont think i am experienced enough yet.
however, i do like helping other fellow artists get better at their art as i have received help from others in a same way. it also seems that the core of your message and the intention behind all your lectures are also the same - to help other artists. it is just the message that i find faulty however good the intention is.
my main suggestion/feedback to you is that your talk gives subjective lessons (combined with several faulty observations) that can be harmful to beginners. me giving you a subjective feedback on your talk is not harmful to you because you are neither a student or a learner.
anyways, i am sorry you took offense to my feedback. good luck with your future lectures and peace out!
I'm really not sure how I felt about the talk. Honestly the first thing that came to mind is, "This sort of thing is one of the reasons I didn't go to uni." I sort of got the vibe that you were basically suggesting all the students try to pander to your average viewer's sense of "Wow!". I feel like far too many artists, especially younger artists starting out, already try too hard to "wow" people with crazy subject matter they think is going to make people go "Wow!"... And then they fail to execute it any sort of properly and wonder why the theory didn't work. Really, the whole "wow" thing as a whole bothers me quite a bit. Mostly because you seemed to put a lot of emphasis on it, having some random person say "Wow!" when they see your work. The simple fact of the matter is that most people don't know what looks good. You know those "ugly tattoo" websites, with the pictures of horrible looking tattoo disasters? A lot of those pictures wind up there because the person who got the tattoo thought it was great, wanted to show it off, and posted it on Facebook or something of the sort. They thought, "Wow!", because they know how to draw stick figures, and to them it was great. I think if your goal in pursuit of beauty is to get a "wow" from random onlookers, you may as well skip the years of study and go show your work to high school kids who love dem graphics.
I feel like what seems to be your main point, sort of your "launching" point, is either wrong or just incredibly misleading. The whole "execution does not equal beauty" thing. I feel like this is most clearly evident in your very first example - the two environment pieces that set you on this thing to begin with.
The two concepts, both Tsang and Leader's, are beautiful. To my eyes, anyway. Really if you asked any artist/illustrator, I'd say most would agree that both are a joy to look at, and definitely have a level of beauty, despite being so different. Your environment differs so drastically from the concept, though, whereas Paul's does not. Not meaning to speak for him, it looks like he chose to expand upon the ideas and feelings already present. You chose to discard much of the feeling and subject matter present in Tsang's concept, and so lost much of its "beauty". Using your own definition of execution, "How close you come to the clear visual idea in your head," you failed to come close to the visual idea - assuming the concept was your visual idea. If it wasn't, then you chose to design the scene differently - and I don't feel like there's any denying that having a concept and deciding to alter it yourself counts as part of the execution.
The rest of the slides mostly seem like you took all the various aspects a picture has, and said "If you do these well, your picture will be more beautiful." I guess I can only agree, in general, though I would argue that designing and utilizing those things sort of...is...execution.
I agree with others that taking such subjective words as "beauty" (or even, apparently, "execution") and using your own definitions of them so matter-of-factly is strange. I honestly found the last 10 minutes (especially ~30-32 minutes, on the video) to be painful because of this. The student who attempted to answer your question obviously had a different definition of what execution is - rather than consider that, you seemed quick to discard it entirely. Semantics really seems like it probably gets in the way of people being able to interpret this talk.
My last thoughts are that HOLY CRAP that's a lot of information to even begin to try to cram into 40 minutes. We're talking about something every artist is constantly figuring out, evolving and changing their definition of...all the time, for their whole lives. Truthfully, if you don't look back on this video 5 years from now and disagree with yourself at least a little, I'd say you've spent 5 years stagnating.
Edit: Just to add, I don't think the talk was all bad. If I had to summarize my thoughts, I'd say you have some good content that gets presented in a less than effective way. Also the "Obstacles in defining BEAUTY" slide, should be "too" in #2. If my post repeats a bunch of things already discussed, my bad.
So I don't think wow is bad, it's just we haven't seen enough quality wows lately. I'm hoping that is going to change sooner than later.
You raised a valid concern, but to be honest wow feels like the best thing we got so far. If you get rid of that everything boils down to "to each his own" again, which is not of much use for educational purposes. But if you agree to accept it's broader meaning then we have something.
And oh yes I'm definitely going to want to change things. I want to every day that goes by. But so far not the meaning, but rather the way it's conveyed. Say if I'd used the phrase "and I don't know if in the end I just messed up Arnold's concept or not but the whole ordeal got me thinking greatly..." half of the questions would've probably been gone.
And the other half would be what the execution really is. I do. Greatly in fact. And that's where most of ours and mms disagreements lie. I chose to "adapt" the concept, thus changing it's composition and most notable lighting and color which affected the final piece negatively. The visual idea in my head was all wrong. I messed up in the beauty part. So this follows my definition quite closely. I executed my idea all right: the assets themselves were satisfactory and I put the light sources where I intended to. But the lighting, color and composition didn't work so well.
I hoped the music example would make it sufficiently clear: Playing music has nothing to do with composing. Thus executing art has nothing to do with figuring out lighting, color, composition, subject or scale and detail. Which once again aligns with the definition of execution.
For some people this definition was sufficiently clear, for some apparently it wasn't. Which I am totally to blame for since I couldn't anticipate all the perceptions. And if I ever to do this talk again I would try to elaborate way more on what execution stands for here.
However I do have to ask. Assuming you agree on the definitions intended if the talk still makes little sense to you? MM if you would kindly reply I'd appreciate that too.
I'll try to elaborate on "execution" some more just in case:
- Back to the music example, melody is the part that remains consistent when you change the instrument. In visual art Beauty would be independent of the tool of choice: modeling, painting, drawing, arranging out of macaroni, etc..
It's what remains when you take out the tool and execution that it brings.
Another example would be everything that does not affect color, lighting, composition, subject or scale/detail of your scene in any tangible way = quality of execution.
It might seem like there's nothing left but apparently there is enough of it to destroy a great idea and nice color, lighting and composition...
To give more food for thought, personally I don't believe you can actually 'quantify beauty', and that's the beauty (pun intended). The wow, the profound effect in your conscience/sub conscience becomes an unmeasurable feeling, sometimes you can't explain it!
You can certainly quantify aesthetics by scientifically looking at the mechanics, the rule of thirds, lighting and exposure, complimentary colours etc. As artists/designers we all just hope to craft something that captures 'beauty'.
An alternative way of thinking about this is instead of looking at art, look at game design. Can you you quantify fun? Or perhaps it's more appropriate to quantify gameplay mechanics instead?
It's a heavy topic which is why vocabulary and semantics become important. I know you had limited time but from this one talk you could expand and produce probably several interesting discussions easily.
I guess I understand what you're getting at, but let me be doubly sure. You've chosen to separate the "physical" and "mental" sides of creating art. Chosen to separate the act of pencil putting mark on paper (what you call execution), from knowing what it's going to put down (the "factors of beauty", as I'll decide to call them). You've done this because you believe the "factors of beauty" are immensely important, something people should strive for (assuming they want to create beautiful art), and isolating those factors is of special value because technically you could plan them all (at least in part) prior to any aspect of the "final" piece ever coming into existence, and therefore can help you plan for the "Wow!" factor. And if nothing else, why not start with a good base?
Is that all pretty much true? Fit with what you're getting at, and the point of attempting to "quantify beauty"?
If that's essentially it, I suppose I can accept that, but I certainly can't afford to organize things the same way in my head. The "physical" and "mental" sides of art for me are so often occurring at the same time, and knowing one always helps with the other, I really don't see much point in separating them. Knowing what I can "execute" helps plan a more "beautiful" image; knowing what I'm going to be putting down makes it easier to create. I mean, I don't know about anyone else, but putting marks on the canvas IS how I figure out lighting, composition, etc. Even if I have an idea of what I'm going to paint, "guy with horns - light from this direction", I almost never have an exact, detailed image of every nook and cranny in my head. Half of every painting I do evolves as I'm painting it - and those same marks I put down early on when I was testing stuff out? Sometimes they're still visible in the final painting. These marks, done to help plan the image, later add detail and other value. I guess thinking about it counts as "composing", and the half second later when my pen puts the mark down count as "playing"? Just seems so weird to try and separate them...
From a purely personal standpoint, I don't think it wise to try and "quantify" beauty. This has been said a million times before, but it really is so subjective.
Hopefully you can pull some thoughts from this thread to help with future talks. Semantics aside, I feel like my main issues with the talk are with the vibe of it. Perhaps less emphasis on math and personal revelations, more emphasis on how you're simply isolating aspects of art as being important to an aesthetically pleasing image.
noun \ˈbyü-tē\ : the quality of being physically attractive
: the qualities in a person or a thing that give pleasure to the senses or the mind
The above is very subjective.
I can say the most of mundane is beautiful. The famous plastic bag floating in the air almost dancing akin to American Beauty the movie could be beautiful.
Trying to define beauty is hard even to quantify it. Even a harder subject that is closely aligned to beauty is sublime. What is the sublime? Seeing the vastness of the ocean can be sublime for me, but could mean work and be mundane to a fisherman, or the fisherman could also find it sublime for a different reason, such as it could imply his death if he or his crew mates does a mistakes or the weather turns.
It is as simple as this. I sit in a bar I order and IPA etc etc beer the senses of smelling the rich hop and wood richness emanating through my senses gives a sense of a sublime moment just for a single second, than the action of taking the first sip and sensing the flavor entirely different from the initial scent and really feeling either the bitterness or sweetness of the drink while it swirls around my mouth and later all these senses put through of this one simple mundane sip is sublime to me. If it is a damn good beer of course
And I think that is the most important factor. Everyone has different tastes. That simple example does not make her less able to appreciate beauty or the sublime she has her own senses. She sometimes smells things and passes them to me to smell and I agree it smells nice..... but does it bring joy to my mind as it did to hers, hardly.
I think the conversation of beauty is amazing, but can it be quantified?
I think the terminology your looking for that WOW moment is the sublime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_%28philosophy%29
wikipedia can get you started on reading of the sublime than plenty of books about this subject as well.
I feel like your ideas are forming and need more refinement to be able to talk about it publicly especially to students. Your intention is good, but could be giving students biased information on a very complex subject which can warp them forever.
I took a course in college of the beauty and the sublime. I wish I had paid more attention, I still have the books around and look at it from time to time. The professor who wrote the book for our class never really quantified beauty since it is impossible he admitted to it, but it is a beautiful subject talking about beauty.
As Humans we have a sense of instinctively knowing what is beautiful. Like for example the sun can be called beautiful even sublime for most people in the right occasions. But taste is tricky. For example clothing... some clothing is just horrible but those same dresses get paraded on runways... so does the success of it being on a runway make it beautiful? Was the execution well made, if the execution and structure is good should I force myself to quantify it mathematically and say it is beautiful and ignore my initial snap judgment on that one dress? How can it be judged... Humans judge people or things instantly without mental barriers. Every single day we make snap judgements. Again does the current trends make stuff beautiful? or does it make it more easily palpable for the audience? Styles of our time will get old. Fashion will change. Just like the concept of beauty of the shape of a female body. A while ago female bodies that had more fat were considered beautiful, now apparently almost anorexic bodies are beautiful. Trends change and right now the slides are only showing the trends of now which in my snap judgement I differ.
It sounds like your trying to show a way to make things more palpable in your talk for the students which is the thing that I disagree with. To teach them how to make something palpable to current audiences defeats the meaning of art, beauty, and sublime in general. Beauty and the sublime can not be quantified it can be quickly sensed in less than a second of a snap judgment.
These are just my thoughts I feel the way the course was taught makes beauty too simple to understand and even confuses the subject more. How about connoisseurship...? again subjective and even trend based.
Beauty and the sublime is a great study, but I think you need more general study. Look over sublime in the wikipedia and try to find some of the writings on it by authors who wrote on this subject matter and you will be surprised. I think you have some nice ideas just need more formulation good luck on your continuing talks.
Nice subject
These are general opinions I do not mean to offend or impose I can be wrong just like any other person so do not take my commentary to heart etc. This is my opinion as of now this very second my opinion does change as time goes on.
And yep, I never actually said that the "mental phase" should always happen before physical. I more then agree with your workflow and couldn't imagine doing things otherwise. What I propose is not a system to plan things, but rather to evaluate them on a constant basis as you go. Which is probably what most people do anyway but we put it into words.
Say you paint but your perspective or anatomy suck - that would be an execution flaw. You 3d model and you can't get the proportions right or your mesh is too messy - again execution. And for students it's very easy to get caught up in technicalities with all their: "hey man, what kinda brush are you using?" so decoupling that from the artistic(beauty) process I think manages to provide some perspective.
I actually fully agree with you and Ex-Ray that quantifying it as a silly idea. At the time it just felt like a better title then "Prioritizing Beauty Elements in a Representative Arts Piece". I don't think we could or should measure the exact amounts
Anyway it's late around here and I thank you guys very much for participating in the discussion I'm really glad we got it going!
And Rogelio, thank you so much buddy for the write up and I'll make sure to get back to you tomorrow after I familiarize myself with the sublime side of things! Thank you very much once again.
The only thing I had an issue with was the idea that quality of execution is just a subtractive element of the piece of art. That it cannot make a piece of art beautiful, but it can make it not beautiful. There are many pieces of art where the quality of execution itself just makes me go "wow". Sand castles in competitions, for instance. Or ice-sculptures, or something. Though I do think you're right in most cases, haha...
absolutely
from my brief observation there seems to be several technical problems in that work that contribute to the lack of "beauty". the assets themselves do not look satisfactory and have some inconsistency issue. here are some areas that are noticeable right away:
1. models dont follow the aesthetic style of the concept, nor do they approach realism. they are inconsistent in shapes. in the concept, they are bulky and more minimalistic. you have some bulky shapes, but some think ones. the robotic arm is approaching realistic proportions along with the pipes, windows, wiring etc. BUT the table with the blueprint on it, the basket with rolled up papers and the stool look bulkier and bigger. this is a modeling inconsistency.
2. your textures are approaching realism for the majority of it but lot the photo textures are at wrong scale. when you put realistic photo details you need to make sure those details are true to scale. ie. if you put a brick texture it cannot be the size of 3 bricks put together.
3. the colors you have chosen to paint your textures with are some what dull and without contrast and variation.
all of these are execution flaws because they make the assets by themselves unsatisfactory or unbalanced next to each other and as a cohesive scene.
i cannot wrap my head around the idea of "playing music has nothing to do with composing"
even if the music was written by someone else, when musician plays it he/she thinks about it, reacts to his/her own performance, adjusts, learns, makes mistakes, creates new variations, et.c etc. etc. all of these behavior helps a instrument player to be a composer. you cannot simply be a composer without knowing what to compose. all good music composers know how to play their instruments very well. may be now in the digital era there are some composers who can sell bs and market themselves without knowing shit, but those are exceptions.
once again, all you are left with is just pushing buttons. human beings are not machines that execute lines of code without consciously thinking about right or wrong and making organic choices every moment.
if you separate the entire process of making art like tangible and intangible tasks then the whole discussion becomes pointless. one no longer need to know the tangible part of the equation. almost every physical act required to create a piece of art is directed by an intangible thought or idea or plan. you take out all the intangible parts and all you are left with is a robot without self-awareness.
i guess i dont understand how an artist can ever paint anything without thinking about color and lighting or model without thinking about scale/composition and detail.
i am sorry about all that text, i am just confused and i am seriously trying to figure out your point here.
hopefully in a future lecture you can elaborate on the process of making art, and really define what you mean by "quality of execution"
Benjamin Leader and Arnold Tsang's images are both very accomplished pieces that successfully illicit emotional responses from the viewer. They are too different in terms of subject matter and tone for you to credibly argue that one is 'better' than the other. They are trying to provoke different feelings from their audience and I think that understanding what the mood of each piece is and how the artist conveys it is more important than trying to justify one as more inherently 'beautiful' than the other.
As I said, both Leader and Tsang created great works. And Paul Svoboda understood what made Leader's work powerful and did a good job of recreating that mood, which was conveyed principally through lighting, composition and color. I don't think you fully understood what made Arnold Tsang's piece work, or at least you lost sight of its qualities in the translation from 2d to 3d. To be honest, the characters in the illustration are telling a lot of the story in the image, but even without them there is a warmth and cheerful quirkiness to the environment that your modeling, texturing and lighting failed to communicate.
I don't want to jump in and offer yet more criticism unnecessarily. But I feel that your basic understanding of what makes imagery successful is misguided. That's fair enough if these theories are only impacting on you, but if you're conveying this information to students as important revelations then I find that a bit troubling.
One thing I felt I noticed so far is that environment artists were more capable of seeing what I mean here. And my environment art brain at the time might be to blame here in failing to cater to some more well-rounded individuals.
I love Arnolds work and my current art director used to work with him so we constantly have heated discussions about how awesome he is, but when i talk about Paul choosing a better concept piece I definitely mean better suited for production of an environment portfolio piece.
Some people talk about the characters in the piece but since the context was environment art production when I look at the image I have to pretty much pretend they're not there. So when I look at the image all that is left is an inconclusive composition for an environment piece, undefined space, uncertain light origin etc... So by saying I chose a bad concept piece for my project I do not mean that the piece of artwork is bad, but rather it was ill suited for the specific art goals I was trying to accomplish. Paul had his composition and space and lighting figured out pretty good from his piece and he made the right call, whereas I had to fill in the blanks with my lacking artistic knowledge and it hurt me. I chose poorly.
If I specifically spent some time to elaborate on that in the talk, would the core concept still feel wrong to you Nick?
I in no way disagree that everyone's taste for sublime is different.
In fact this subject is extremely difficult to discuss exactly for that matter. Although it is very interesting seeing everyone's different take on it. It's amazing seeing how drastically we differ even in the perception of the same words.
Sublime indeed sums it up nicely, however I personally believe, that underneath the layer of superficial cultural triggers for sublime, has to be something shared across all the cultures. Very much like Ekman's 6 universal emotions that were proven to be culture independent.
And this is what I was getting at with "imagery that transcends generations" in the talk. I know that the specific example images are hardly timeless classics but with their help I was trying to attract students attention to the distinct broad features that have the capacity to be culture-independent.
And once again, the title was provocative enough to make people want to speak up, which is a good thing. However I'm pretty sure most people thought I was stupid even before turning on the talk and came here to prove me wrong
Or could be I just suck at titles greatly. Yet:
quan·ti·fy
ˈkwäntəˌfī/Submit
verb
1.
express or measure the quantity of.
Measurement however can be either relative or absolute. And the talk never pretended to come nowhere near absolute. In fact it says that we can never get the any sort of specific value, but what we can do is try and measure the relations between the beauty factor/elements in an image and that still feels like a perfectly sensible assumption, considering that most of us who post here, on polycount, do exactly that everyday to communicate feedback to one another.
I'm sorry I'm not entirely sure how this specifically applies to your reply though, but I'm definitely gonna look into the books you were talking about
Thank you very much Joopson! It's nice to see someone understand me a bit more
And hey, good point about sand castles. Never actually thought of that
Thanks
Thanks for the reply Nick. I hope you don't mind, but I have a small follow-up.
Firstly, and my knowledge of english might be failing me here, but could "Understanding Artwork" and "Quantifying the Beauty" of it be somehow similar in meaning? Considering what I wrote for Rogelio higher: The talk doesn't not pretend to work in absolutes, but rather in relatives, it tries identify the most general yet impactful elements that compose an image and tries to analyze the examples of their application, to understand how they compose together into a piece of artwork.
Arnolds image was never intended to actually be "quantified'. The whole introductory part revolves around environment production and merely tries to follow the train of thought that gets us to the "formula" idea.
And here is where my follow-up actually lies. I would really appreciate if you could elaborate on what part of the "formula" you find inaccurate. Broad - definitely yes. But I'm at loss when I try to think about anything else but subject, lighting, color, composition, scale/detail and quality of execution making your image "beautiful"(or perceived with whatever reaction you're trying to solicit). If you'd spare a few words here I'd greatly appreciate it.
Superficially you could think it's similar but there are differences. For example the term 'Quantifying' is used a lot in maths and science where absolute values are measured. My personal perception of quantifying something is to measure to absolute values.
Using "Understanding Artwork"and we are talking about theories, fundamentals, relationships, research etc. Relative values.
From the get go, to me your title has formed a construct to talk about absolute values.
Regarding the 'beauty formula', you can certainly deconstruct artwork/designs to understand why they work. But I don't think you can or should, successfully construct artwork/design using that same 'reverse engineering' paradigm. The tone of your slides that deconstruct artwork seem to me, imply you can and because you used a bar chart it suggests a 'beauty formula'. The bar chart could also be mistaken as absolute or percentage values as well. It would have been better to state 'this image has strengths in colour and composition' etc. Relative values. It's more about using your critical eye to 'investigate' when those fundamentals start 'singing' with each other, and it's a marriage of the fundamentals that will hopefully capture 'beauty'. There isn't a 'formula' but there are guides. I just think it should be clear that you can deconstruct artwork like this, but not create it with this same mind set.
Generally I think in the talk, in parts you need to be more specific and clearer in your messages as well, which you have done in this thread. For example your Arnold Tsang piece was specifically about your 're-interpretation/re-imagining' skills and not being critical in reevaluating your visual idea you had, stating this is better than saying it was an 'execution fault'.
This in particular :poly115:
I think the word 'formula' actually originated from Nick in this conversation. What I'm referring to throughout the talk are "elements" of beauty, which are essentially the guides you're talking about. The only formula I could derive from the talk is:
beauty elements working together + them kicking ass = kick-ass artwork.
This statement I find quite intriguing. Mostly because I don't think I know a way to construct something without constantly evaluating(deconstructing) it in your head as you go.
The way I would work is usually deconstruct my references and inspirations first. Then throw a rough pass on a sheet, step back, and evaluate that. Deconstruct it. See what's missing, how can I "improve" lighting ,color, composition, subject matter, etc... and mentally separate them from the execution flaws that I'll have to rectify down the road.
And I honestly don't know another way of doing that. And the mindset for using the guides/elements seems quite applicable here.
But I'm extremely interested to hear your take on this and how constructing can be done without mentally deconstructing anything at all.
So do I good sir, so do I. I heard somewhere that whenever you try to teach you're subconsciously just talking to your younger self. Which would make sense 'cause younger me would know what I mean. Jokes aside I try to keep all the information as general as I can, as much as it's possible to be inside everyone's had at the same time.
For my environment art brain whenever we're talking about environment art production and concept art used for it, it is understood that it's evaluated on the amount of information it provides for producing an environment art piece.
And it's a fascinating lesson to learn that if there's even a small chance of something being interpreted otherwise - it will be. Which is my fault in the end and I'll be triple careful about that in the future.
This is the correct workflow because you are experienced, it was the slides with the bar chart that could give inexperience students the impression when they create their own artwork they need this amount of composition, this amount of colour etc. For example a student might deconstruct their favorite piece of artwork into a bar chart like yours and decide to create a new piece of work of similar nature, based on that bar chart without constantly evaluating it as you go. We can all agree this is not good. [Edit - sorry I should have given more context, the last sentence is in relation to developing as an artist to improve their artistic judgement]
When you are deconstructing artwork you are breaking it down into elements, you narrow down what works. When you are constructing artwork as you know, you should be constantly evaluating it and being open minded to see what works. One mindset is seeing what is done and the other is deciding what to do. I hope you can understand this is a slightly different mindset, both will share mutual thought processes though. Of course we shouldn't see what is done and just do.
As I say the slides with the bar chart could give inexperience students the misunderstanding to accidentally take the easy route and just do what they see done.
I hope I haven't been overly critical, I do find these topics and discussion really interesting
I'm sorry, self-reflection is bad why again?
So I think after reading what you posted here and crossed referenced with your Talk. The main aspect you are trying to point out is a means of which to improve or present your art work.
Lets put myself in your course and only hear your talk I would come out a bit perplexed of how your reasoning the graphs since again it is based on taste.
Than if the course was outlined with conversation thread like this one, were you specify some of your thoughts than it does become clearer what your intentions in the talk were. I think that is also the main reason why some art to the students and could have been clearer as you mentioned in a couple posts ago. Also the title chosen and words within the talk make it seem like this is almost a certain way to break down images.
I agree with Ex-Ray that the graphs feel like a formula.
Though I do agree that deconstruction of art works are great and can help guide an artist to acquiring a better understanding of art. In art schools we re required to deconstruct by painting or drawing master works of art, doing this helps us understand some of the steps taken with our own interpretation of course, But here is the issue I can in noway understand the steps it took which ever artist I did this master study from I could only try to. But what seems to me is that what makes these sublime moments happen were an art pieces has reached a different tone altogether than just anything else is hard or near impossible to quantify.
In some of the examples the art is very kitsch in its composition and subject matter.
(before I get thrown over and under the bus or hit in the face for mentioning kitsch in conjunction to some great artist shown... I hope I do not offend in my point coming up)
kitsch art is great in many ways, in fact most of the art the entertainment industry does is kitsch. kitsch is made to quickly grab your attention. I do not like how it is associated with tacky art because some kitsch art is actually quite nice. So again what I find odd is how the talk goes into this area not directly but it kind of alludes to a socially acceptable art form. It is ok to teach how to present your work so it is more socially acceptable since this industry does require this to some extent and we are in the entertainment industry, but is it really ok to teach it as a quantified form equals beauty. Most of the slides shown are not particularly enticing to my soul, I get almost zero inner-reflection of the work and the meaning, besides that bum and some other slides. So I may have a "hmm coolish" moment but I do not have a "WOW sublime" moment. I would leave wow moments for standing in-front of a Monet, Picasso, and Jackson's work. But overall is this the type of sample of Beauty standard art students in any profession should be taught to go for...? the socially acceptable?
Again it is actually a good thing to say hey to get a job it is more likely you make this kind of art than do some crazy other kind of art. or follow maybe these kind of examples than they do not follow crazy town ideas. That is ok I get that. I did that and got my gigs... I am fine with that.
But teaching it as almost a percentage = beauty is just misguided in the way the talk kind of went.
Again I really think you have some great points and you as an artist will grow. I almost feel the true benefactor of this talk was yourself since I think you have at least heard some other compelling reactions and comments based on your talk so a win win right
Oh edit// I want to add that I think your talk was overall good and it is an interesting interpretation. This talk definitly got my noodle moving around a bit of what I was taught in school and what I have developed as an artist so far.
Hey Mark, sorry I should have given more context, it's in relation to developing as an artist. Not evaluating while you create does not develop your artistic judgement on aesthetics. Self-reflection and specifically following accurately concept art is definitely important as you learn how to do it and you improve your observational & translation skills but you don't get a chance to find out how they came about figuring out good aesthetics as most likely the concept artist would have spend hours answering those questions already.
I was talking about, after a while to go beyond self-reflection and challenge yourself to try and figure it out to improve your artistic judgement so you become a more rounded artist. Not going beyond is what I mean by not good. More specifically it's about '3D Modellers' transitioning to become '3D artists/designers' if you know what I mean.
I hope the full video has something else useful in it though
Oh, no worries Ray, I don't believe there's such a thing as overly critical
Tbh, I sort of echoed marks question. I think the way most learners(and even a lot of professionals) works is trying to recreate things they are inspired by, changing them just enough to feel new or different. And a more sophisticated way is to mix a few of those inspirations together.
So it felt like the proposed guide system is an improvement on whatever we had before to do that, allowing you to be more specific and precise in your education.
This actually, is also where I feel the "guide system" is also more useful than whatever we had before. I think that if you are specific about what you're trying to copycat from an image it's very hard not to try and have an idea why it works, because you will have to reconstruct it applied to your specific piece. Unless you're copying everything one for one, a slight change in composition might already require to reassess the lighting you were doing, etc...Color could be the easiest to copycat but then again if you change your subject and lighting it will affect the color pretty significantly.
So still, to me it feels like the guide system wouldn't provoke anything that wasn't already happening before. Imitation is a part of learning and the industry in general, so if anything, I was hoping that the guides could make it more modular and conscious, just as you were talking about. If it's going to happen anyway I would rather have it like that, wouldn't you?
Also, Nick, was that what you were talking about? Does the core idea still feel wrong to you here?
Haha, thanks for another one Rogelio! I appreciate you spending the time. Yep, something I've been thinking so far for the example images, is that it might be worth to replace the graphs with just elements arranged in the subjective order of their importance. Keep the graph only in the initial slide to explain that the elements "sum up" into an image. This should leave way less room for a different interpretation rather then intended.
And no worries nobody is going to be throwing you under a bus
I see your concern here and If anything I think there's a lot to be said about "kitsch".
Personally I do not believe that kitsch art is in no way inferior or superior to any other kind of art. I think it possess exactly the same kind of general representative beauty that we're talking about here. Only we as a culture were able to break it down more, distill it to a production formula and make it somewhat tired in the eyes of the artistic public. Yet the art itself did not change - only our perception of it. The culture is what makes it kitsch in the first place.
And I very purposefully tried to avoid any mentions of culture in the talk. The focus was a more general, culture-independent analysis of beauty. And I actually believe that what you call kitsch is a perfect study sample. Why? 1)Because we know that it works - people seem to just can't help but like it 2)Because the tricks are well known, which makes it way easier to use an example.
The talk in now way meant to impose any kind of taste onto the audience, but rather help them break down imagery(and this is one of those point I should've been clearer about). Because, as mentioned before this system could very well be used for more edge cases like mirrors edge(pun intended
Culture as well as the notion of kitsch would come on top, but I, personally and as an artist, wouldn't care for that in the first place.
Thank you Rogelio, I appreciate you saying that.
I'm really glad it got us all talking.
edit:oh and happy thanksgiving everyone!
cheers