Am I allowed to rant? Non-contributing community members. (Uh oh!)
polycounter lvl 20
Oh I am? Nice! It's Friday. I've had far too much caffeine already and feel like writing. I hope you all don't mind.
DISCLAIMER: No one specific post, artist, or activity prompted me to write this. I have wanted to for awhile and finally sat down to do it.
3D game artists who use communities to shill their artwork, while never or hardly ever participating in the community outside of their own artwork: Lame.
I'd like to think that every artist takes some pride in helping others grow. But some times this isn't the case -- especially with extremely talented individuals who have the most to offer from an education & opinion stand point. Far too often do we see 'hit & run' art drops.
As someone who runs a community, I see this a lot. I see a lot of artwork that gets posted. In fact, at least at Polycount, I see it all. And more often than not do I see people who log in, paste the exact same vBulletin post code from the last forum the posted it in, submit, then wait for the praise.
It's annoying.
It's annoying because included in these art drops, are some education bits like wireframes and texture flates with no other explanation. Explain your process. Show how you can think objectively about your artwork in addition to your subjective train of thought.
How did you reach the final product? What steps did you take from the very beginning? Did you go off-the-cuff and come out on top with a crazy creative piece? Or did you plan for days or weeks prior to ever opening 3DS Max or Maya? Use that and copy & paste that everywhere.
What's the benefit to you as the author to take the time and write these things out?
There's many benefits to taking the time and writing about your processes, techniques, and personal thoughts on the artwork. I've experienced it first hand myself:
In short -- Tell us about it. We want to know. I've been doing this job now professionally for nearly 8 years and I still want to read about how my colleagues come to their final artwork. Yes, yes, I enjoy looking at pretty pictures but I enjoy them more when I read how they got to where they are. Share some of your informative nuggets and help grow this craft as a whole rather than selfishly retain that information for yourself.
Rant over.
-2 cents
DISCLAIMER: No one specific post, artist, or activity prompted me to write this. I have wanted to for awhile and finally sat down to do it.
3D game artists who use communities to shill their artwork, while never or hardly ever participating in the community outside of their own artwork: Lame.
I'd like to think that every artist takes some pride in helping others grow. But some times this isn't the case -- especially with extremely talented individuals who have the most to offer from an education & opinion stand point. Far too often do we see 'hit & run' art drops.
As someone who runs a community, I see this a lot. I see a lot of artwork that gets posted. In fact, at least at Polycount, I see it all. And more often than not do I see people who log in, paste the exact same vBulletin post code from the last forum the posted it in, submit, then wait for the praise.
It's annoying.
It's annoying because included in these art drops, are some education bits like wireframes and texture flates with no other explanation. Explain your process. Show how you can think objectively about your artwork in addition to your subjective train of thought.
How did you reach the final product? What steps did you take from the very beginning? Did you go off-the-cuff and come out on top with a crazy creative piece? Or did you plan for days or weeks prior to ever opening 3DS Max or Maya? Use that and copy & paste that everywhere.
What's the benefit to you as the author to take the time and write these things out?
There's many benefits to taking the time and writing about your processes, techniques, and personal thoughts on the artwork. I've experienced it first hand myself:
- Further personal investment from other community members in you as an artist. (Read: People will personally want to see you grow, even if you are already an established, working, 3D game artist.)
- If it's an itchy ego you have: You'll get far more substance in the praise you receive for writing out your processes than you will ever see with simply dropping your artwork. There's a huge difference between, "I JUST JIZZED IN MY PANTS THIS IS SO GOOD!" Vs. "Wow, thank you SO much for this information. This piece turned out so great."
- When you take the time to think about your own processes after everything is said-and-done, its a learning experience for yourself. Maybe you forgot something that happened a long the way that you want to do again on the next project (or never do again!). Perhaps you found a really awesome technique you hadn't realized you used before and writing it out helped you remember. And so on.
In short -- Tell us about it. We want to know. I've been doing this job now professionally for nearly 8 years and I still want to read about how my colleagues come to their final artwork. Yes, yes, I enjoy looking at pretty pictures but I enjoy them more when I read how they got to where they are. Share some of your informative nuggets and help grow this craft as a whole rather than selfishly retain that information for yourself.
Rant over.
-2 cents
Replies
Your post was oddly inspiring for me to get cracking on with some 3D!
I sure hope it isn't an attitude of "I had to struggle to get to where I am, why should I make it easier for you, so you can take my job?"
Adam, perhaps we should have another section for artists to fully document the process of their creations? Its better than the wips in P&P that just post pictures every few days and don't explain what they've changed, and very few are more indepth than that.
I personally haven't posted too much in the Pimping and Preview area because, like most artists, I'm my own worst critic. It's not that I do my job or work on my own personal projects half ass, it's that I'm learning the ropes. There really hasn't been that much to see other than me failing to achieve quality every time - only inching the bar a little bit each project. However, this time around everything just clicked and I think I've finally achieved a level of success I feel comfortable sharing, and when I do, I'll be sure to do a full write up on it and then maybe the community can come in and say neat things like "Yeah man, I do it that way too" or "Eh, that works, but try things this way next time," etc. That's the stuff I'm most interested, and I'm sure others, in hearing.
Meh, people just need to use P&P correctly. We don't need another board to band-aid it. The point he is trying to make is that people are doing just that: posting pics and not explaining anything. P&P is the place to do it.
Polycount for me is about looking at awesome art, but most importantly how one gets there. The process, tools, skills, thats all that one needs to help other artists grow and be a good member of the community.
Good post tho.
But to praise Polycount, here is where this doesn't happen so much or at least there is so much good threads and WIPs with great amount of info and feedback.
I think that attitude permeates many people who post including myself, I often don't consider how broad the audience is who is checking stuff out and instead often wrongly assume everyone knows the same things I do. So what might be self evident to me... probably Isnt as obvious to people as I may expect.
-random thoughts, not that i really post much on here anyway, but its a good read
I definitely agree, that pattern could stagnate us all as artists in the long run. I also think, it comes down to some people not wanting to show their "secret-sauce". But to those people i say that it's the challenge from others and the different interpretations of your particular techniques through the work of the artists that use it, that will help you even more. When some one uses your technique from another perspective that has already made you and the other artist much better and in the end evolve both.
I eventually wanna share some of the small things i do, (somethings i haven't seen much people do, texturing wise) Whenever i get my site up. this is gonna be a great discussion nonetheless!
In each environment I make, first I never do crossboard postings because I dont have the time, and I like to post all the progress I make, even if the art looks generally bad from the start. I hardly ever see work in progress thread from highly talented artists.
Are people afraid to show unfinished maps? (not counting WAYWO thread btw, where people hardly ever comment the picture they posted)
It applies here, because creatives make gut decisions all the time without really thinking why something feels right, looks better, or works easier.
Write about it. Post it up. Everyone benefits.
Firstly; I think breaking up sections is a bad idea, because it could potentially change everybody's thinking if they constantly see explanations/breakdowns in the P+P and it could therefore be seen as 'the standard' to explain your stuff.
~ I also think people sometimes ppl perpetuate the 'OMFG' culture, harmlessly but could perhaps be a bit more mindful of it. Ask questions more. It's nice to have the 'Oh you're great' but don't feel too embarrassed to just ask questions by the truckload.
If the threadstarter won't answer you, I bet someone else will if you ask enough times.
~ And I really really dislike when people ask workflow questions via PM, instead of on the desired thread. Everybody can benefit from the answer to your question if you ask it publicly.
/my2cents
I am really impressed but I feel bad just posting. 'that looks great, I love the lighting', So i often feel like I don't have anything constructive to add.
This goes back to them 'constructive crit' badges people like to flash around. I get to the point where i feel i shouldn't bother saying anything.
I am here guys, olah!
-lloyd [russian box]
Screen capping work is the way forward. I have 80+ gigs of recording's to sort and I'm midi level artist ;D Sure the pros would push Gb's a day
I even had a guy send me a PM saying that he knows what he's doing, and if he had wanted a crit, he would have asked his friends for it.
So then what happens is that if I see an awesome thread that I want to post in, I'm basically left with only saying something like "Good job man, that's awesome". Which is then followed by a bunch of pictures of Randy from Southpark in a mayonnaise covered room.
At any case, I'm not really getting the sense of a learning atmosphere. More of a pat on the back place.
As to what could help it... I don't know really. But what I often wished we had, is something like the WAYWO thread, only for dedicated subjects. So say an Anatomy one, people will post their WIP shot with the declared purpose (by being in that thread to begin with) that it will be looked at critically, and/or asked about for workflow if people are curious. Maybe one for hand-painted textures, as that seems to be a common theme. It would also create a centralized place to look back at if you're trying to improve a specific thing.
No need for a subforum. Just a thread will do in my opinion.
But yeah it'd be nice to see more of these threads. There are a fair few and some people video their work and then put it up on Vimeo with some explanation, that's especially awesome.
A. Im too far along to fix something like that without starting over, I usually say this though.
B. I did what I did on purpose but it may be hard to see that right now.
You can't expect everyone to write a detailed breakdown with each post. Some people just don't have the time, others don't care and others are are too insecure/protective about their knowledge to share it. That's how the world is.
If you take a look at other game art communities you will see that 99% of the posts there are just art drops; This percentage is much lower here on Polycount imo.
Most of my sketches and rambling goes on in my sketchbook though, i feel like i can say things better via posting images as opposed to trying to explain my vague and erratic process.
(typically though I dont like bumping my own threads unless i have an image to go with it and i rarely respond to things about my images in WAYWO as its a clusterfuck as is, personal preference mainly. i like questions though, as it makes me consider my reasons and its nice to be useful to someone)
I dont like selling myself but considering the topic it seems appropriate for those who are interested, hell... its more about the advice rather than the artwork;
http://apedogs.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1305&p=46069
Still there are plenty of learning resources on PC, just gotta dig through the forum.
Its great if people are kind enough to post their processes and workflow, but we shouldn't expect that as the norm as no one really owes us anything in life.
In the workplace I have always been very open about how I do things and was keen to share out any base meshes, handy textures. I have never been mean spirited that way, but on PC I somehow feel there are better qulaified, more technically able people to explain how to do stuff.
My work seems to just messily bodge itself in to a final piece,ater much reworking, fiddling about with stuff
I usually get a lot of these too until someone comes up with actual hints on things I did wrong.
I usually appreciate these. But well... I'm new to the forums and a complete beginner at modeling myself. ...and I want to complain about something that bothers me on these forums... so please don't read along if you think I'm not yet entitled to do that. Do something else...like baking a pizza
So yeah! I see a lot of amazing work here, that is sometimes really creative in every artistic aspect. ( I recently saw some multiple story tramways...these where great!!) In fact, some stuff is so good that it will most likely not find any use in any videogame title (there is no room for it in stereotype militarymoneywhoringshooter 22045)
But then, people only point out flaws on some work without actually writing about the model as a whole. So lets say someone creates a cool armor set for a knight in a fantasy game. He designed that thing in a specific way and I'm sure that the creator would really like to know how other artists react to it/ see it.
And then a lot of guys simply point out flaws in the anatomy of the legs. Well great!!
A good critic, if you would like to take some time writing one contains:
A) It regards the piece as a whole and a few lines on what it actually feels like (I'm not english, you should have noticed that by now) // what impression it has
B²) How could it be improved, in case you have some killer tips.
C) What is actually really good and what the artists should keep doing in future projects/models/pizzarecipes.
Well, yeah.. Thats not really related to the topic... but someone was talking about it above this post anyway.
What does that mean?
Generally when people post something big to show off they solicit questions and will post exhaustive breakdowns and explanations to pretty much anyone who asks.
It's really a super awesome community and there's nothing embarrassing about wanting to emulate that kind of environment.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=118126
this is a good example. Read all 8 pages, and then tell me you don't want polycount's culture to be more like that!
On a semi-related note, I think another issue that could be addressed is members with 1000+ posts without posting one bit of art or constructive information. Not that it's really hurting anyone, it's just annoying
Its funny you bring this up because i'm in the process of finishing up a big art project that had some massive failures to it and wanted to share my experience of where I went right and where I went wrong. Postmordms are always the best part of any project in my opinion.
I do enjoy the occasional shameless art dump like professional work on a professional project where the workflow and development shots may be more restricted, but for personal work why wouldn't you want to build out your portfolio with some words of 'here's how i did it?' Where artists dammit, we love to hear ourselves talk about our artwork to anyone with an open ear.
^^^ what he said.
even if you are a professional artists who worked for many years don't be embarrassed to ask for a breakdown. i think some people are afraid to ask because it hurts their ego.
Me too, even beyond that, I get PM's from people who I've spent a good deal of time writing a critique/response to, or pm's directly related to one of the rather large threads if written/contributed to in tech talk... Like people are afraid to look dumb or something so they contact me via pm. To me this is just a pain, and does nothing to further the community.
ASK IN PUBLIC! Thats what Polycount is for guys! Chances are your questions are something someone else is wondering/struggling with, and chances are someone besides me also knows the answer/has some good input as well.
Yeah, I can understand not posting much art, as for many Professional artists, a lot of the work you do is under NDA. I can also understand not really contributing much in tech talk etc if you're not a very technical artist. What drives me nuts is the people who post seemingly just to argue about the political threads or talk about the games they're playing etc etc in General Discussion, contributing little to the *game art* aspect of polycount. These people should be rounded up and put into camps.
Truly a learning experience, I feel like a pioneer! :x
Also I don't think there are many secrets being kept from us in the game art world, I think the secret sauce is just years and years of practice. There's far more of that 'withholding' going on in other areas of CG, the type of CG you'd see on GCTalk; lighting tips, hair/cloth simulation etc. Deliberately vague advice being handed out in places like that for art of that type (that relies, IMO, much more on 'hidden' buttons/settings).
a single sentance reply is kinda useless and a lot of the time seems to be just there to up their post count, which is retarded either way. ok....you have 4k posts...3500 of which are cat images or "zomg coool narf". your post count doesn't = respect level. Thoughtful, insightful posts are what make me want to interact with industry pros.
OK now to the main point. yes there is a ton of FUCKING AWESOME WORK posted here on a daily basis. so next time you want to say "omg im jizzing my pants it so cool" why dont you go the lil extra few key strokes and explain what excites you so much about the piece and ask questions about it, if you really care about the art.
"wow that looks fucking amazing, nice job!"
or
"wow that looks fucking amazing, nice job! I really like how you got the various material definition on this model. the contrast between the concrete and metal looks really believable, how did you go about achieving that? I really like the lighting, would you mind posting a shot of the lighting setup"
literally 20 seconds of extra typing the thoughts going through my mind when I look at something and the information it could bring to the community/provide feedback/ technique overview to anyone on this forum for future reference.
Adam makes a great point about providing more info upfront, which is totally something I agree with. if people start asking more questions or even just explaining why they think the images being posted are so awesome, its only going to benefit the community as a whole.
If people posting here who are members of the community see the hunger for information instead of just ass patters who hop in a thread for 10 seconds to drop a "congrats" or "looks good" then I am sure that will encourage people to post more breakdowns.
Stop being a bunch of semi retarded clapping seals who use retarded memes to express their thoughts rather than articulating themselves like an actual human being.
I've been meaning to do this for a while. And after reading your post I might get to it finally!
I agree that I could contribute more to the Polycount and I wanted to write/record a tutorial so many times. But I always feel like I'll be misguiding people. Which is always holding me back. I guess I need to step over that.
I remember Mr.Kite popped in a few months ago ( probably a year ago or more lol ) and dropped that massive zip file of goodness and I loved it and appreciate it so much. It certainly didn't even enter in to my mind to throw some hate down on him for not breaking shit down for how he achieved that stuff, or giving me incite into his thought processes at the same time.
If someone makes a tutorial - badass! Mad props and thanks for that tutorial / or incite. But should we really be expecting that?
Would you guys rather those hit and run art dumps not happen at all in favor of the help-the-community type posts??
Will these hit and run type artists be run out of town? or appreciated for sharing their artwork with the community at all?
Meanwhile we could certainly use more 'what motivates you' threads.....
Whats going on here!?
This forum has been invaluable to me as a resource of ideas techniques and general knowledge.
For me I only post my work when I need a really fresh eye - when Ive been looking at something for too long. Or I KNOW the answer to someones question.
My biggest problem is that I know that there are others who can answer/explain better than I can. And why look at my work when you can look at yours Adam, or someone like EQ. There is a wealth of knowledgeable people here and I think personally its primarily intimidation. Its difficult getting over the fear of being wrong. Occasionally polycounters can be quite harsh.
In addition to this I know there are a lot of people that I know personally on this forum. That makes it also intimidating to show work, because you know they will check up on you as often as possible.
my own personal feelings. I like to keep things played close to the chest, that's my lifestyle. But I try to help people understand about what Im doing as best I can. In classes I make videos to explain workflow, and give direction. Thats difficult because its always almost 99% of the time met with discare or skepticism. Ive been told many times that "Theres no way you made that, you just followed the internet." And I hate that, I work very hard and I dedicate my time to make something look really cool. To have that slammed by someone who doesnt appreciate my hard effort is saddening..
Anyway I ramble. Im not sure that last part is even about Polycount. Ill just go back to my hole now!
edit: also, im lame compared to everyone else here. ah hah
The thinking process involved with art is a big step, especially when it comes to fundamentals.
But i got to agree that the least artists could do is give answers to the questions asked in their topic
I agree with PixelMasher that if we start asking a bit more questions instead - "cool dude" this might help us all. I really dont have many questions that were left unanswered.
In the same tame I totaly get what Hazardous is saying and the only reason to not ask questions to some of the amazing artists here is because i feel like my question is way too simple and I know they probably dont have time to answer it so I just try to save them the effort.
I guess we have to stop somewhere on the middle...
This is probably part of the reason people getting into 3d struggle a bit sometimes, there is so many high level / ultra low level (this is how you open max and make a teapot) tutorials out there, but its the arsenal of little tips and techniques you pick up along the way that you don't even think about anymore because they are 2nd nature that makes someone a true art beast.
There are no stupid questions when it comes to learning something. every one of the amazingly talented people who post here started making the same cube/teapot as everyone else and chances are they obtained the skills they now have by 2 things : putting in the time and effort required to refine their skills and asking questions at every opportunity they had to learn something new to add to their artistic toolbelt.
So, people who drop in and just post inspirational art and just return to the shadows are getting called out but meanwhile pollution like "DERP HELP ME STAY MOTIVATED" type threads, "How do I delete my account / I won't get what I want." or high school kids talking about why they hate being asked to pay for a product. I've contributed enough, I think, to show my workflow and - yeah - if there was enough interest in something I do that I somehow haven't covered, I 'could' take a few minutes to write something up but, man, these days I just want to make my own stuff which is why I stick to WAYWO.
I don't feel that it's my responsibility to spoon feed information to an online community of people who have more or less just posted memes and bitched about shit that they don't understand. Again, I've provided more insight than most about my work - if people can't use Google, this ain't my problem.
In a way, I wish PC was more like CA. Maybe if there were less bullshit threads, heavier moderation and a more serious attitude about our craft it would be more encouraging to post techniques.
Maybe something as little as a change to the p&p description -- some paraprhase of "Use this forum to post and discuss artwork and workflow" would help foster the kind of culture you want?