Discussion: Do you consider yourself to be an artist?
polycounter lvl 19
I would imagine a lot of us here felt the same way when they were young, so I thought I'd ask.
When I was growing up I often wished I'd "become an artist when I grow up". I think it came from watching and loving Disney movies as I kid (still do!) and thinking that being an "animator" would be the greatest job evar. From there it moved on to thinking working for Pixar would be the greatest job ever.
All the while I was attending art classes in highschool (and even attempting going to college and taking courses in art [fundamentals, illustration, animation, etc]) and learning about art history whenever I could. So I would say that on top of my desire to work in some sort of illustrative, likely digital, form of art production environment I was also exploring, learning, and loving more traditional forms of art.
More interestingly, what I thought to be an 'artist' when I was younger has changed now as an adult. I am not so sure my younger self would think of me as an artist, if the technical know-how to do my job now was known to me as a youngster. And thinking this just now, before I thought to post about it, has me questioning if I am an artist in the general sense or just specifically someone who creates 3D 'art' for a living.
And perhaps, even when I am doing my own thing at home would I say this feeling applies.
I know what our business cards say about us, but what do we say? Do your consider yourself to be an artist? Do you make art?
Replies
But I guess this is also dependent on how you describe art...
If someone worked hard at getting skilled at a craft, no matter the medium, if they go and make something even partially motivated by their desire to create, and the end product that pops out the other end they are happy with, I consider it art.
So to answer, do I consider myself an artist? Yes. Do I make art? Some days.
but i draw stuff from time to time
Now on the other hand, I look at visual art by the great masters, and I often think that those guys sucked compared to what people are doing now. Our art makes their classic paintings seem as antiquated as cave markings made with a burnt stick.
I think most people that go around thinking of themselves as artists are probably not artists at all, but pathetic posers who spend more time getting high than they do making anything.
I dont consider myself to be a true artist untill its fully grown.
artist is a very broad word. some people get the image of a old dude with beard full of paint and wood chops in mind, a person who roams free and builds some a month for his gallery. others might see every creative imput that gets translated into something visual as art. some cavedrawing perhaps..
yes, we might very well be artists
Currently I use my skill to make video games.
Good reads so far, lets hear more.
I have to disagree with that, especially after having visited Rome... daaaamn those people knew what art (or maybe technique) was about. When you see all the modern super expressional stuff that only few people can actually understand/feel or in any way deal with, I think that back then more people actually got it. But that's also a matter of taste. (I'm not one of the people who really understands feet coming out of people's ears and stuff).
oh and just to throw it out there: one of my definitions for art:
-a creation of some kind that does something to the viewer. (summons a certain emotion/feeling or makes you wonder/think).
i actualy think that the whole painting and sculpting area is going back to cavemanstyles instead of overpowering the masters of time.
i'll go with that, pretty much. It runs very much in the family - my grandad was a professional draughtsman and illustrator, my dad was an architect who did some painting on the side and has pretty much devoted all his time to it since he retired, my brother is a singular illustrator talent who now professionally does "art therapy" for mentals, my sister is a mental who does art therapy for herself (and pulls out the odd painting you just wouldn't fucking believe unless it was in front of you).
I was just the same growing up. And I got myself a camera and a craft knife and a copy of photoshop and went to uni to get a degree in what i really enjoyed doing. It's just what we did.
And then tonight, weirdly, i get into a phonecall with my weird doddery suddenly-very-old dad who seems to think he's coming to visit tomorrow. Apparently thats been "arranged" though i know nothing about it.
Sorry dad, i'm working tomorrow.
On a saturday?!
Yeah, deadlines are looming fast. We call it crunch.
Don't you do the art?
Yeeah. Sorta
Isn't the art all done? You said it was mostly all done before.
Yeeeee-ah. Sorta.
Well why do you need to be there?
Cos we're making a game.
But if you're done ...
No dad
etc
only artists and creatives would wank themselves to death in a circlejerk labelling each other, but not themselves, as artists
fuck it im an artist its a broad as fuck term
im also drunk as fsk
Let's hear more.
You can be both, though. production art isn't the same as art for art's sake, I think.
So I would not consider myself an "artist" based on older definitions / time period, but I would consider myself an "artist" based on current time, with current / newer technology / tools at my disposable.
I mean really, if one can create something out of "mid-air", I think (for me anyways) one is considered an artist.
"it's not art, it's content"
I fully agree with this.
There is, however, a point where content inarguably trips over into art. And thats when it's totally fucking ace.
If you're a sunday painter who likes doing nice little water colours of boats just offshore or the sun setting in a valley, then no you're not haha.
So yes, I consider every game artist as a type of artist.
My brother is a designer, thats what most people would refer his profession as. But "designer" can be so many things... more specifically hes a product designer. But even that is a very broad term and can mean alot of things...
Anyway the point is, hes still a designer just like we are still artists.
A sail boat on the water sounds a lot more beautiful and artistic than a thousand arrogant "artists" out to change the world by being "creative"
I remember when i was in high school i thought of art as a hobby, took 4 years of it because i thought it was fun. Even my art teacher drilled it into our heads, "I don't want any of you guys being artists, because i don't want your parents pissed at me when you're 27 and still living at home." We all thought of artists as "starving artists", game art haden't taken off, nor had movie cinematics. Digital art was only on the rise then. Artists were people who sat around in the park trying to sell crappy oil paintings.
Well, i'm 27 now, and went back home about a year ago so i could finally earn a degree in art. Can't help but wonder how successful i'd be if i just jumped in and followed my passion from the get go, funny how things turn out. But better late than never. Living at home blows, but I figure that's all just part of payin' dues to do what you want to do. Anyway, enough about me.
It feels like we're going through a digital renaisance. The camera came and geatly deminished need for technically precise art. The "craft" of art really died away. The 20th century i think will be remembered as a strange fluke in art history, where it became monopolized by thought rather than craft. Artists continued to push deconstruction until top artists around the world were literaly painting a cube on a white canvas. After that some dude sold a blank canvas. I'm pretty sure that was the end of all that BS. But now everything's changed. I'm glad craft is back in style. Digital artists nowadays are as much painters as they are engineers, and if you look only at the past 80 years, that seems odd, but if you look at art in the broad sense, we're just getting back to what it's always been when it was at the top of its game. The digital renasaince is just starting, it's an incredibly exciting time
regardless what that meant to you, as I did?
Does 'artist' to you mean the same now, with your interest in videogame
art, as it did when you were a child?
My passion for becoming an artist was proportional to how much i had been "taught" in school and by my parents. At one point in my life i was so fed up with the boring stuff that was supposedly going to make me successful and the impossibility of doing something i would enjoy that i just gave up. Parked cars and bussed tables for 5 years. Some friends of mine helped me get a gig doing QA at a game studio and i thought, "Hell, get paid for playing video games? That's awesome." While working there a friend of mine had enrolled at a video game art school and I had a moment of incredible Epiphany while inputing some graphical art bugs for some terrible in-game art assets, "I can do better than this crap." So i took the plunge, kinda feel like a kid again, haha. Going to school and packin' lunch money.
In all seriousness, when I was younger I was always drawing random doodles (planning out my own Super Mario levels in crayon, no less) and would have liked to be an artist, but solemnly believed the life of an artist would inevitably be one of abject poverty. When I stumbled into an internship in my college years though, it kind of woke me up and made me think, "Hey, I might actually be able to pull this off!" I would say at this point I am an artist, but not an Artist, if you know what I mean. I'm in a state of gathering experience and skill, and only once I've mastered the tools will I start earnestly trying to pursue world-changing.
But ultimately, labels aren't all that important. Doing what you love and rocking at it matters a lot more. Norman Rockwell was considered an "illustrator" but not an "Artist" for many years due to the commercial nature of his work, but he's impacted and inspired many more people than some of the various names that make their way into Art History books.
When I was at school art wasn't encouraged which was a shame, I dropped it in my 2nd year being forced into things like maths and physics by head teachers(family full of programmers aswell) until a few teachers from another department (not art) starting showing sketch books and going on concept art etc really encouraged me to do the same and this is what inspired me, not art teachers who never use to show any of their work, but a few CDT teachers who were still keen on the subject.
Maybe being an artist is just about seeing things differently, I guess its for other people to label you as an artist, and for yourself not to get dragged down thinking about it.
I did aspire to become an artist when I was young, but for me it had a very different meaning, I didn't grow up with much art so it was a very limited view on art. Now I must say that game art is not my primary work field, it is Architecture, so that might not be comparable.
I consider myself a creative proffesional rather than 'artist'.
What a terrific thought.
no
What do these artists have in common? They all did art on commission to get PAID.
I think current artists are doing a great job of progressing the visual art forms.
I would only call myself an artist in the broadest sense that ranges from terrible to masterful. Usually whenever someone makes any other distinction, it's just a way to reserve the term for "greatness".
I feel like that line of thinking creates an inferiority complex in artists (which might explain why I hate my own work).
I mean, I make art professionally for a living, but I never aspired to be an artist when I was young or anything. hell, I've only been doing art for a couple years now in actuality. I don't feel as if I'm good enough to be an artist, or something, but I guess that's bullshit, because not everyone needs to be a master to create 'art'.
however, when it comes to desire to create something new and different.. well, I have little to none, it's weird as hell. Personally, I think it's a mental thing, because i'd LIKE to, but at the same time I don't feel capable enough of it yet so it's blocked out in my head. I'm very interested in improving at my craft but it just feels so awkward not having huge urges to draw non stop or do pieces or whatnot, so I have to force myself.
I love doing it, and I've always liked looking at pretty things and naked women, so it seems like a good fit for a profession, but I've never had the drive like some people in terms of sheer 'MUST..DRAW'ness.
bah. I'll get there.
A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing."
I feel this covers 3D art.
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I consider The Marriage art. Despite its not having realistic depictions of cloth and metal and faces and bodies and broken sculptures, it impacted me, as art, much more than highly visually realized games today. If you want to put the word "art" or term "artist" on a pedestal, have it be the one of spirit and emotion. But it's all subjective, so you have to leave your ego out of it; my animator friend scoffed at the game, since it had apparent no 'visual style'.
If theme encapsulates the sort of emotion you want to portray, and visual style works as an extension of the theme, how can such a simple, bare but very intentional game like The Marriage be so potent, and emotionally effective to me, as art? Because due to careful planning, it becomes an interpreted portrait of the nature of relationships. The book quoted in my signature isn't very visually realizedin fact, it consists of nothing but dialoguebut it touched me in a special way because it was a carefully and tragically woven portrait of the human spirit. That's art.
Unless I can tell an untold story and instill some degree of spirit (elusive and mystic as the notion is) in my work, I don't really consider it complete art. A random prop or texture or whatever would be a study, to me; it can be made art, but maybe such objects' artistic contribution to a game is often lost due to uncommunicative level design or, whatever. I don't know. I'm probably totally off-topic, anyway.
A friend of mine was telling me about one of his favourite things in Fallout3, last night. He said that in the whole game, in all his exploration of the world, the most fascinating thing he ever found was the existence of two ant hills. One housed small, worker ants, which were mostly peaceful. The other housed larger soldiers, which would raid the other, weaker colony. That scenario, I would consider art. And it's the sort of story you can only tell in a game, unless you sneak it in subtly in the background of a movie; if told in a book, it's explicit, and written. But in the game, set up like that, it seems alive, and the player has to notice it themselves, has to think; it can be completely overlooked. Maybe it's a silly example, but I would consider that 'game art', and consider the rest of the work 'study', just parts of (hopefully) an eventual whole, which could be considered the 'art'.
Of course, if you can stage a scene or character portrait in an artistic way, then yes, you are an artist, but most of the time the artwork created for games is never given that chance; it's left as study, posted to the forums as study, which is great and wonderful to look at, but more just an example of work and skill, than artistic spirit. I think Neox's latest mock-up screenshots for Airborn are a great example of the latter, perhaps preferable goal.
art⋅ist
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noun 1.a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.2.a person who practices one of the fine arts, esp. a painter or sculptor.3.a person whose trade or profession requires a knowledge of design, drawing, painting, etc.: a commercial artist. 4.a person who works in one of the performing arts, as an actor, musician, or singer; a public performer: a mime artist; an artist of the dance. 5.a person whose work exhibits exceptional skill.6.a person who is expert at trickery or deceit: He's an artist with cards. 7.Obsolete. an artisan.
Origin:
157585; < MF artiste < ML artista master of arts. See art1 , -ist
Synonyms:
1. Artist, artisan are persons having superior skill or ability, or who are capable of producing superior work. An artist is a person engaged in some type of fine art. An artisan is engaged in a craft or applied art.
So no, I don't think of myself as an artist, exactly. Some people will say that real art 'makes you think' but I'd rather get my views and ideas in the viewer's head without them ever realizing it. Honestly, I think that's more powerful.
No. I wanted to be a fireman, or a GI JOE.
I didn't recognize 'art' as a child. Did you Adam? As a child?
As a teen, art to me was comics, and I'm proud to say it still kind of is. With a little video game, pop cultre, and Juxtapoz magazine crowd art thrown in there, too.
All that illustrative work done by some dude who just drew to damn good to be a 'fine' artist, and became a 'work-for-hire' artist instead? That's my shit. And the people who do that shit are my heroes.
The stuff I'm about to animate, for pay, is not art -- far from it, in fact. Even if I were working on a really high-quality game or cinematic or film and I thought the product was art, I'd still think of myself as a hired craftsman. I guess for me the distinction comes down to not just the creative process where you're actually painting or animating, but the IDEA behind it.
If I'm in complete control of both then I feel like an artist, but anytime someone's paying me to work, they're coming into the process with their idea (whether it's a client or a supervisor or whatever) of what I should be doing. Then I feel like a craftsman. It's only when I work on my own stuff that I can really feel I'm acting as an artist.
But as you can see from this thread, everyone has their own distinctions...
or was that the hacker?..
Yes. I'm a traditional artist who happens to have a thing for making stuff on computers and belief that I can turn it into a career some day. I don't think I'd have as much chance turning traditional art into a career because I hate bullshit too much to whore myself up for gallery owners and art critics.
I had a Fantasia poster in my room as a kid and the Mickey Mouse on it was the first thing I ever seriously sat down and tried to draw. I think I was 5. I made comics through the years, took art classes, was that kid at school that everyone had draw them stuff, the one that hung out in the art room all the time. I always liked playing games, I guess I just didn't put 2 and 2 together until I got to school. I was going for 2D animation, but then that industry collapsed and that's when I had my first 3D class and found out that it was what was used to make game art. Got way into it and never looked back.
Modern gallery-type artists tend to piss me off, I think they spend too much time explaining and thinking about what they're doing and not enough time actually doing it. No, not all, but most, at least from my experience. I don't feel like I'm doing something overwhelmingly important or interesting, I'm doing something I enjoy and it beats the shit out of retail. I've spent so much energy doing "artsy" things over my lifetime, I'm really not good for much else anymore. :P
But yeah, in general, I think I'm an artist.