Artist exercises. (Formerly: Upping the ante on our next challenge(s).)
polycounter lvl 19
Working within spec limits is good. It makes people consider the work they are doing while letting them work without shackles.
But I think its time we introduce some shackles to really challenge you guys as creative thinkers.
How would you guys feel if we did a contest, for example, where you had to create a scifi hallway. "Adam! Everyone and their mother does these it seems!"
Yes, this is true. However, the following things are not allowed to be anywhere in your entry:
Too many people get comfortable with themes and create what they know: cliches. So how would you guys feel if not only did we limit specs on our Challenges, but also negated items to which you're allowed to use in your scene. This is a challenge, after all. And we're thinking that spec limits might not be enough of a challenge to really have you guys thinking outside the box. The Mutant League challenge is working well because its not a common theme. Mutant themed sports arenas and players. But things like alley ways, scifi hallways, castle walls and so on might be an interesting theme for us to choose for future challenges.
Call it the "Anti-cliche Challenge".
Discuss.
But I think its time we introduce some shackles to really challenge you guys as creative thinkers.
How would you guys feel if we did a contest, for example, where you had to create a scifi hallway. "Adam! Everyone and their mother does these it seems!"
Yes, this is true. However, the following things are not allowed to be anywhere in your entry:
- Warning stripes
- Hanging cables
- More than 3 lights
- Glass floors
- Diagonals that occur at more than 1 angle
- Vents
- Computer consoles
Too many people get comfortable with themes and create what they know: cliches. So how would you guys feel if not only did we limit specs on our Challenges, but also negated items to which you're allowed to use in your scene. This is a challenge, after all. And we're thinking that spec limits might not be enough of a challenge to really have you guys thinking outside the box. The Mutant League challenge is working well because its not a common theme. Mutant themed sports arenas and players. But things like alley ways, scifi hallways, castle walls and so on might be an interesting theme for us to choose for future challenges.
Call it the "Anti-cliche Challenge".
Discuss.
Replies
Nice idea tho, Since you didnt say we should present it in any game engine, or "more than 3 lights and 3 light references, are we allowed to illuminate the objects to light up the scene? Instead of using lights?
1st rule in every challenge should be 'No fully dressed chicks with exposed breasts'. Even if its an environment challenge.
'Retrofuturistic' is a great example. It doesn't tell you style, what to make or how to do it.
I guess what I'd be getting at is; if you came up with a contest simply called "Stop Sign" you'd get some absolutely outrageous designs that went with everything from Sci Fi, to hand-painted fantasy, to photo-reffed hyper-real to cartoony abstract expressionism.
You'd get some people wanting to create an environment that told a story about a stop sign, to zombie apocalypse stop signs, to a very incredibly well made incredibly well detailed close-up of an incredibly complex and well made prop, Or an insect colony that uses a stop sign to setup their beehive/ant hill.
One awesome suggestion (IMHO) for an art contest, was the inspirational basis of Gears of War.
"Destroyed Beauty".
Even as a character Art contest that would be awesome.
My theme is going to be: Si-Fi Fantasy.
But to be helpful I'll say yes I'd be up for it and it would be refreshing to see limitations that reward creativity.
.
I think you are missing the point of this contest idea. By leaving it wide open most people will simply fall back onto clich
Yeah, I agree. What Adam is proposing is something different to your usual challenge, which is, normally, very open ended.
I think the exercises come before the competitions in the form of practice. The contest is more like the test. Compete with others and yourselves and then get graded at the end.
It can even be something as small as an article about the winner on the front page or a little icon on their profile or something.
I want to do more of those. Def 2012 will be more challenges/contests.
I think an article about the winner on the front page is a fantastic idea and having that piece shown off is the lease we could do as a community.
Great ideas in here fellas.
Its like a game of Pictionary!
You must describe the object in 3D without the usual elements of said object.
Go for broke as far as i can say.
Time to learn the UDK! Perfect excuse.
In order not to be a ninja of negativity here, I'll start by saying that I consider the intention and effort of this proposition highly laudable.
That said, I think it's rubbish. You want creativity, and you're specifying exactly which things are, according to you, creative. What if I envision a hallway lit by hundreds of little lights in the shape of flowers and a glass floor over a carpet of grass to combine the natural and the mechanical? Whoops, Adam says that's not creative in multiple ways. You're not encouraging people to think out of the box - you're ordering them to think inside your own box, which, yes, is a different one, but that's still not artistic creativity. I left Polycount ten (!) months ago in disgust of sci-fi hallways, but in the meanwhile I've learned that you can't force or persuade artists to change their bad habits - you can only inspire them to do so.
Now I'd like to point out that the thing you're proposing might be bigger than you realise. This wouldn't be a challenge of execution, but one of design. That's pretty radical for a 3D competition, and I can't remember having seen one ever. Technical prowess breeds bad design. Skill in modeling and texturing is shown by having as much detail as possible, skill in design is shown by having as little detail as you can get away with. The high-detail, awful design wins, gets lauded, and the idea implants itself in our brains that that's what we're supposed to do; hence the DomWar having become a game of copy-the-Slipgate, when its first iteration had some much nicer designs.
So rather, I'd humbly propose this: make it a contest about building *any* sci-fi hallway, a clich
BTW, Mutant League? You guys gotta figure out a better way to communicate that stuff, I had no idea it was happening until just now.
Every artist has to work within limitations, whether they be technical or aesthetic. It is working within these limitations and solving the problems associated with them that breeds creativity. IF you want to make a hallway loaded with sci-fi clich
But...
As the "proffesional" artist who has discovered that the box he works in is WAY too small for his own good, I give a big ol' THUMBS UP to something like this.
Even though there may be proposed restrictions, it's those restrictions that I think create more interesting / thought provoking outcomes. Even if it could be "crap", it garuntees that (at least for some of us) we have to leave our comfort zones and REALLY start becoming the designer... instead of just a "monkey see, monkey do" kind of artist.
Constraints however small lead to creative solutions. A theme is a constraint, time limit, polycount limit, texture limit are all constraints. I see the restrictions as a tool to stop artists from being lazy by relying on tired cliche ideas. I don't see anything wrong with it being a challenge in both execution and design.
Even those Arenanet art tests awhile back, were in essence the most constraining sort of thing, but lots of entrys tackled parts of the concept differently.
Discuss. Was the last words so I guess that's what we are supposed to do in this thread.
And I think its brilliant that the rules or theme of an upcoming contest can be ventilated before it takes off.
For instance: Don't use the colour grey. That's a limitation. I wasn't specifying them to be cliches individually but just examples of limitations so people were encouraged to draw away from cliches.
Paul was right in that something like this would be an exercise of creativity rather than a Challenge, per se.
Example challenge idea:
It's pretty trivial what the idea is here. Others have come up with great ideas as well for ways of limiting guidelines even further beyond triangle and texture limitations.
Ultimately I think what we would do is (in Challenges, Contests or what have you) stress your need for creative thinking in the design of your character/environment/weapon/vehicle as much as your technical ability. If you're going to go after every cliche in the book with the topic at hand, you'd have better execute and develop to the point where it feels fresh otherwise its become nothing but a technical challenge for yourself. In the talk I gave to IGDA Toronto I talked a lot about getting uncomfortable. That idea, of being comfortable when you're creating, is something I'd like to see more artists stepping away from. This thread is a discussion of how we can do that in future Challenges & Contests.
First step, maybe change your avatar to something non-cliche.
Anyway, I think it'd be interesting to encourage participants to avoid grunge/dirt/busy textures, but to really establish a solid design motif with shape and color. Simplistic is the word I'm looking for.
What I feel has limited me/kept me from polycount challenges is the themes. For example mutant league. I didnt have any exposure to tons of things that most people seemed to like when they were kids, like marvel comics, transformers, etc etc, so for me this is just...meh? The specs are fine etc, i can work with anything, but I dont get inspired by the theme.
Themes with keywords is a great idea, like JacqueChoi suggested, BUT i also like the idea of limitations like adam suggested. Would be great with a theme that allowed for alot of imagination and inspiration, but still was limiting enough to make sure people avoided clichees and pushed their creative boundaries.
But give us a new challenge/ contest soon.. please!
Any contest relative to art is worth participating. Doesnt matter if you are at the top floor of the building, sitting in a comfy chair (petting a white cat possibly) and work in a well known game company as a lead artist.
competition is a competition, participating it will not make your reputation and standards of art any less.
I know you're never going to satisfy everybody with every theme but I think making them more open ended would go a lot further in both getting people to participate and getting interesting results than continuing to make them more and more esoteric with every new comp...
I do like the idea of a competition that doesn't allow for people to work in their staid comfort zones, but I think the simple examples given are likely to wind up being more frustrating than mind expanding.
*How about an environment or character where no surface has a colouration below 75% chroma. ALternatively, one with zero chroma could also be interesting, though I think forcing people to use bright colours may be more beneficial.
*How about working from some specific classical art style - I'd love to see what people would do tasked with creating a Picasso style cubist character in three dimensions.
*I remember back in the day we did a competition where models had no textures had had to be detailed entirely with vertex colouring. That's the sort of limitation that brings out peoples creativity.
~ Gotta agree with Nitwalkr.
When I said I didn't want to enter the current comp, it was only because the theme was very uninteresting to me. I didn't ever feel it "wasn't worth participating in".
All in all though I think its great that you're keeping this idea generation transparent.
Imagine the future, think like a designer not a 3d artist, and any cliched entries will not win no matter how technically competant they are? We want original design over technical ability, and both will be a winning combination.
Personally i think scifi is so cliched because its damn hard to create anything totally original in this field. Theres a reason why Geiger and 2001 are so revered, is because they have totally dominated the genre. However, its not impossible and would make a bloody good challenge, but to create some really groundbreaking scifi, be it character or enviro, you need an excellent imagination, to be a good designer, and a capable 3d artist to realise it.
I am up for it, it would be one of the weirdest and possibly most wonderful challenges ever!
Alien planet, no normal buildings, flora or fauna?
Snefer, Thanks for saying exactly what's been bugging me about the challenges that I couldn't put my finger on.
"Make a fighting stage!" I have never owned a fighting game and they do not interest me.
"Make something for mutant league!" I have never heard of this game and I don't play any sports games.
I suppose you could say it moves me out of my comfort zone, but it also fails to inspire. I like the idea of both constraints that would make people think outside the box, but an open ended brief.
e.g. Brief: 'Treehouse' Constraint: 'No wooden materials.'
edit:
I've expanded on it and let it open to pretty much any competitive sport. Hell there is even a Mutant League ballerina in there somewhere.
Someone could have made a stadium that looked like it was from the Fallout Universe for all I care as far as detail and post apoc loving goes as long as it was within the specs.
Then again. Can't please everyone.
huh? Not one person said they missed it...?
however, what defines cliche is very subjective and an idea that is NOT considered cliche today could easily be considered cliche tomorrow or next year.
it is good to force creativity but i think execution is far more important when it comes to learning or progressing your skill set.
a cliche idea can easily be turned into great piece of art with great execution.
just my 2 cent.
Im sure a lot of people have the Forums page directly bookmarked over the main page, just saying.
I do like adams idea of limiting this in terms of straying away from cliche things with the sci fi examples of hanging wires, non purposeful metal panels and such. But then again I also like the idea of leaving things very vague and open.
I think why not try both? Right now things are pretty open on this challenge so the next one why not try and limit it and see how things go? Then the one after can be more open again?
In the end like Jessy said you cant please everyone. Even with this content, some people just dont care about mutants or mutant related things. It just donst inspire them. I am one of those people, but I understand that not every challenge is going to be something I want to partake in or find interesting, and am cool with that. Hopefully these contents keep going really well that we can have more in attempt to please everyone
Dominance War is Cliche, because it was a contest about designing the most badass mech warrior demon cyborg thing you can.
The subject is cliche, and doesn't really leave a lot of room for it to be anything but that.
If you want to do something more contemporary, pick a more contemporary topic. Sci Fi Hallway IS a cliche subject.
What if said the topic was Titled:
M.C. Escher's Paradox - Where whatever you made had to be a surreal paradox of something creating something which creates something, that creates the original thing.
or
The Beatles Song:
A contest where you can model anything from a 'Yellow Submarine'. Or just a gruesome murder scene of Charles Manson's 'Helter Skelter' murders. Or maybe a dioramma of the Fab 4 on the Ed Sullivan stage, to a surreal pscychedelic 60's recreation of one of their videos.
or
Optical Illusion:
Maybe I'm off the boat here, but I'd love to see challenges that geared more towards creativity finding art solutions. Not really creatively finding technical solutions.
I liked the Brawl because it was about re-imagining a fighting stage or character and it was so open, you could do almost anything. I think it would have been less fun if we said "make a warehouse but don't use any crates or storage shelves".
I liked the TF2 contest because a style guide was set (TF2) and a general guideline was given "make a weapon pack" but it didn't say, make a mini gun replacement without using metal. I really like it when we don't pigeon hole the entry into a narrow category.
I just don't have time for the latest challenge even think it would be fun. So I don't want to come off like I'm boycotting the latest challenge or railing against it, but I do think we need to carefully craft challenges so they don't wind up with 4 pages of requirements, exclusions and exceptions.
Also, I REALLY like Choi's last idea of creating something that looks like something else. That could fit characters as well as environments, weapons and vehicles.
So what you are essentially saying here is that you can't think of any creative and original solutions to a clich