Possible idea for a weekly art jam!?!
polycounter lvl 13
Hi guys and gals,
I'm not sure if many of you saw but I started up a speed sculpting art jam a few years back on gameartisans and it was pretty successful. I can only imagine how mad it would have been if we did it on here. It was pretty much a lunch crunch rip off but with a theme every few days and had an emphasis on learning the software and nailing forms within the sculpt itself, aswell as fuelling your inner concept artist haha. The main thing was it was alot of fun though and very light hearted.
I've been looking up things like fan art Fridays and wondered what people thought if we were to do one here. We could pick a one or two letter word as a theme every Friday and just see what everyone comes up with. Having a pretty loose subject could be alot of fun. I was thinking it would just be a massive art jam so it can run for 2d and 3d, possibly even environment artists could get in on the action. For people like me who don't have alot of free time I think it could be alot of fun. We could have discussions for good themes here aswell
For example,
Hulk
Japan
Marvel
Zombie etc
And just see where people take them. The beauty of it is that themes are so general you could do anything and you can drop in and out as you please. If you don't have time then just jump on the next one. I remember the creativeness was pretty infectious and soon lurkers and heavy critters would jump in.
Now there are down sides though that I noticed with the speed sculpting. You end up with ALOT of unpolished/unfinished work which I know alot of people don't like. To me it's part of the learning process and not polishing a turd is my ethos on the matter. Still it would be nice to get some 'final' looking stuff, which if you get a week to put as much time in as you want, it should combat that aspect which did bug me. I know I will probably be drawing loads of stuff and if I like it I might bring it into Z at some point. Also means you can have more than one session with it.
there was an issue for me where I was creating highlights of each subject which ended up being alot of work on my end and I felt a bit corrupt if I ever put my stuff up haha, (it was voted for, Im not a total tool haha). So yea, I don't want to do highlights, just keep it free and if its a cool piece maybe we could get it on the awesome weekly recaps here
So what do ya think? Hehe
It will be literally just starting a thread in p&p and we all go mad creatively haha.
Sorry for waffling on haha, it's been in my head the past few days.
I'm not sure if many of you saw but I started up a speed sculpting art jam a few years back on gameartisans and it was pretty successful. I can only imagine how mad it would have been if we did it on here. It was pretty much a lunch crunch rip off but with a theme every few days and had an emphasis on learning the software and nailing forms within the sculpt itself, aswell as fuelling your inner concept artist haha. The main thing was it was alot of fun though and very light hearted.
I've been looking up things like fan art Fridays and wondered what people thought if we were to do one here. We could pick a one or two letter word as a theme every Friday and just see what everyone comes up with. Having a pretty loose subject could be alot of fun. I was thinking it would just be a massive art jam so it can run for 2d and 3d, possibly even environment artists could get in on the action. For people like me who don't have alot of free time I think it could be alot of fun. We could have discussions for good themes here aswell
For example,
Hulk
Japan
Marvel
Zombie etc
And just see where people take them. The beauty of it is that themes are so general you could do anything and you can drop in and out as you please. If you don't have time then just jump on the next one. I remember the creativeness was pretty infectious and soon lurkers and heavy critters would jump in.
Now there are down sides though that I noticed with the speed sculpting. You end up with ALOT of unpolished/unfinished work which I know alot of people don't like. To me it's part of the learning process and not polishing a turd is my ethos on the matter. Still it would be nice to get some 'final' looking stuff, which if you get a week to put as much time in as you want, it should combat that aspect which did bug me. I know I will probably be drawing loads of stuff and if I like it I might bring it into Z at some point. Also means you can have more than one session with it.
there was an issue for me where I was creating highlights of each subject which ended up being alot of work on my end and I felt a bit corrupt if I ever put my stuff up haha, (it was voted for, Im not a total tool haha). So yea, I don't want to do highlights, just keep it free and if its a cool piece maybe we could get it on the awesome weekly recaps here
So what do ya think? Hehe
It will be literally just starting a thread in p&p and we all go mad creatively haha.
Sorry for waffling on haha, it's been in my head the past few days.
Replies
I do like your idea about having a certain time to take something further. maybe it would be fun like... at the end of each month or something there's one week that's for revisiting your favorite piece of that month and refine it a bit. could put more emphasis on the group helping eachother learn sculpting pores/details for that one week.
anyway it pans out should be a blast.
Sounds like a lot of fun!
I think themes will be super super vague haha. And people are free to interpret it however they want. Say if we did hulk for one week, that could mean a massive monster, the marvel character, a monster truck, The more abstract the better I think.
How are you thinking this would work? A theme every week, I'm guessing that would mean everyone should be done by the end of that week? Or would it be up to them to decide when they're done and then they might be submitting months later. I guess this seems like a good thing for coming up with ideas, but what would separate it from using a random generator for themes (aside from knowing there might be someone else participating as well)?
I thought if we came up with some good themes that will set the interwebs on fire then it should be alot more interesting. Things like street fighter or metal gear, space etc. as opposed to using a random generator. The diversity in the ideas produced can be really fun to watch.
Im just thinking aloud haha, any possible theme ideas?
Im gonna go dark now as I have work to do haha.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63491
I like the any media thing, I'd enjoy throwing some lunch sketches about and then proper sculpts on weekends.
I'd suggest Zombie StarWars, not just deathtroopers, like zombie chewy, yoda etc and even weirdly zombie R2D2 haha.
would definitely love to get into it here:)
Yeah, but this was more of a focused exercise-based thing. It kind of lost steam once everybody kept making the same thing over and over.
or perhaps a final boss jam.
Idk, these suggestions seem to serious.
Thats true, maybe just having a theme would be of more interest. CG Talk also has something like this, infrequently.
For those missing the GA jams, they are actually still going. The site has been completely revamped. I just missed their Star Wars jam but will be trying their next one most def. Fred seems to have vanished too which is good, seems like Draxxus is running the shop over there now and hes a top notch bloke.
Would be cool to get some discussion going over themes that people think would work? We could make the whole thing entirely fan art based possibly? Like we could do 80s cartoons, Disney etc. plenty of possibility for environment artists aswell, not just us character dudes/dudets!!!
Taking something simple and adorable and making it freakishly detailed and scary could also be really interesting too.
Fun + Practice is always good
I'd love to see replicating established styles as a theme. This is something we are asked to do all of the time in the game industry. Being able to adapt your style to match that of the creative direction of a project is a great skill set to have.
I would choose a concept artist and try to translate his/her style into 3d, either by direct interpretation of one of the artist's concepts or a new unique piece inspired by the artist's body of work.
Creature Box would be a great example
- BoBo
I'm gonna write down some cool themes and hopefully start this up Friday coming, I'm thinking if I set it up so it runs for 2 months and then if its good maybe keep it going, someone could takeover possibly if I can't handle it at the end haha. Not sure if I should list the themes so people know what's coming or keep it a surprise, I may list the first few so it gets people interested and then keep the latter ones a surprise idk. Every Friday I will post in the thread with massive orange letters anyway what the new theme is and we all just go from there.
Zwebbie - what themes would you suggest that would interest you? Would be really interesting as I don't want to be jaded by just themes I want to do haha, and as a nostalgia whore myself it's gonna end up thundercats and street fighter if I get no input haha
Seriously though, me and Denny have been doing a couple things like this but we just kind of do it randomly on weekends whenever we have free time. LETS TAKE IT TO ANOTHER LEVUL
The second problem is that I think these pretty generic and, well, clich
this x10.
i think a lot of artists focus very heavily on defining their own style, when the reality is... if we want to be regularly employed, we need to be able to adapt to any style guide we're given!
so yes, i whole heartedly would love for this idea to turn into something real and tangible, that people can learn from and grow as artists. but i also think there should be some level of strictness, because i can already see people wanting to "do blah blah in my own style". if we're to help our members grow as artists and more importantly, as candidates for employment (studio or freelance), then we need to help them feel comfortable working with a multitude of styles or themes.
that's my $0.02
I often find now that I'll lean more to function than aesthetics to try and combat the vast array of existing dominance in popular genres.
One thing that could be interesting would be to try and deliberately go against the grain that certain themes go in, for example sci-fi is heavily dependant on sleek streamlined compacted suits nowadays with hexagon patterns and greeble of straps and anatomical mirroring in muscle like armour designs.
Trying to implement the exact opposite of those forms and design choices could create some interesting ideas and hopefully originality lol. For example, bulky, dirty, large forms, hi-tech assessories that don't just magically appear on some sort of holographic palm display. Or am I leaning to far towards the original "used future" look of starwars haha.
Well either way you get the idea, themes turned upside down. It's one idea atleast? lol
I don't want to spend days on a thoughtful concept or how to relay a theme. I want to enjoy making something quick for practice and participation.
I don't think that deeper themes shouldn't ever be explored, but for the first few weeks/months, keep it light and easy to participate.
I really like BoBo's idea too, matching a specific artist's style either through original creations or recreating a specific piece sounds excellent.
So that In mind, (please dont start yet) first theme is ......Dishonored!!!!!!
now its upto you how you interpret it, theres no right or wrong answers, you can do something in their art style of whatever, make your own character/prop, take one of their characters and put it in your own style. Anything that relates is allowed so we can all just go crazy.
second theme is ghibli (in time for ni no kunis UK/europe release)
other themes I have so far are
nintendo/sega, comic books, pets, ios/android, vigil, cartoon shows, Bioware, world of bioshock (on release of bioshock infinite), creature box, and beat em up.
now these themes are very broad which some may not like but its only a bit of fun so lighten up
please let me know if any of these urk you something bad haha and we can change em
Im pretty excited over dishonored, ios and ghibli though haha
I'm also excited for Ghibli. CGTalk had a Ghibli modelling jam a while back but I got a terrible bout of the bone idleness.
Yeah, isn't it supposed to be easier to record in the new zbrush? I have never tried personally, but that sounds like a cool idea for us who're planning to do sculpts for this.
Is there going to be some kind of announcement when this officially starts/ or section to post the art? It'd be cool to post some kind of "how to make a zbrush video" kind of link (I think you might have had that in the gameartisans thread at one point)
@Organized Chaos: Setting up a time-lapse in ZBrush is super easy just follow the steps found on pixologic : http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Recording_A_Movie
this sounds epic!
I wanna do a borderlands theme now aswell
I would be down totes! I remember I liked you themes ^^
There's always a Workshop subforum just sitting there stagnating, if that'd be more to your liking.
Could we add Nintendo to that list? They've really got the whole art thing down; both their promotional stuff and in-game stuff is always so damn nice looking.
Also, does it have any female characters? All I see is some beat-up crack whore and an old broad.