While I agree with all above posts, the point to compose something beyond a zeroed figure in blank space begins to take on more of you and less of what someone else has made. The further you push it, the more it becomes your art. Artists made the items you purchased but it is you that combines these elements to make it your own.
Just like capturing an image on celluloid, digital, or mental…what you do with it is art. The composition of the picture (be it on canvas, paper, digital, or any other surface) and what you want to convey is ultimately art.
“Art” is a personal expression - this is the same whatever medium is used, and within that medium, whatever tools are used. 3D models are tools, just as much as the software used to create the images.
The biggest group who claim that DAZ or Poser renders are not “art,” because of the artist’s use of pre-existing objects, are those who are themselves 3D modelers. Many of them believe that 3D modeling itself is “art” - I strongly disagree; 3D modeling is craft, and amongst 3D modelers, there are several artists, people who not only can create a 3D model from scratch, but can also express themselves artistically with it. On the other hand, there are numerous 3D modelers who can create outstanding models, whether of objects or characters that already exist, or of things that exist only in their own minds, but could not create something artistic with them to save their lives. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that - I envy those people who are such accomplished craftsmen, because even though I both model some of my own objects and create art with both my own work and with pre-made items, I am in no way as skilled as most of these 3D modelers.
But no matter how good their models are, those models aren’t art until something artistic is done with them. And at that point, there is NO difference in the finished work between art that the artist modeled, and art that the artist used premade models for; if I create a work of art with my own models, it is no more a work of art than if another artist created the very same image using my model. Right? (Heck, I’ve seen works of art using my models that are far, far superior to anything I have been able to do with them! )
This is, unfortunately, a very common argument in our communities, and one that is based largely on the fallacy that 3D modeling is “art,” and by extension, that any 3D art that the artist did not literally create from scratch is not. The argument just doesn’t hold water.
I never thought about the modelers themselves and how they might see using models, but I can see their point: your comparison reminds me of a carpenter versus a decorator. Someone can design an entire room, and perhaps use them to make very live, vibrant spaces, but a decorator can use them in ways he/she may not have even been able to imagine, or use them in unintended fashions to create something that is truly original.
I agree a lot with many of all you guy’s points, there are many of them. I especially like the “good art/bad art”/original or not original examples as well. I am definitely going to direct critics to this thread and perhaps open their minds to your examples and shine some light on things they either just can’t accept, or are purposely being overly-critical on aspects of 3d work.
Here it goes:
My friends say it’s descieving to call anything in daz “art” or “my art”, not so much me personally, but anyone’s work who does 3d stuff because: “Well, you didn’t model that figure/prop/hair, you dropped it into your scene from a product you bought on DAZ or some other source”. Their line of thinking is if you didn’t make all the meshes from scratch, all the textures, bump maps, diffuse, etc. it’s not “your” work, but the work of the author(s) behind the scene.
Tell them it’s “collective art”. Some create the software, some the figures and objects etc., and finally some put it all together in a render. No one can really do all that alone, takes too long time.
Two sets and one prop by the aforementioned model creator Stonemason: and how they all came together for me one evening (along with V4 and 3DU’s Toon Girl Sadie)
the Floater Bot promo is one I made up as Stefan’s site is flash based so I cannot post a link to the actual page the prop is on
I look at it this way…
I did not build the people or the surroundings when I use a camera to photograph them.
Last I heard, photography is art.
Precisely!
Equally a lot of very prominent modern artwork, the Angel of the North being perhaps the best example, are designed by artists, but produced by artisans of various descriptions - shipyard workers in the case of the Angel of the North. And very few artists of the past half millennium, or more, have worked with the purity of creation that these people are claiming - did Da Vinci go out and personally pluck a badger for his brushes? Weave his canvases? Every artist uses tools, our tools are the models we use, our art is the composition, not the tool creation. Nor, even for people who create their models in tools like Blender or 3DS Max, or whatever, is the final render their ‘own’. I actually know the basic maths for projection of a 3D object onto a 2D surface, it was part of my degree, but how many 3D artists know even that much about the render process, about how light and texture effects are actually processed within the programme and turned into a flat, 2D render? A classical artist knew how light and texture worked together, because he had to show that through his brushwork, but for any computer artist their work is actually created via the ministrations of the mathematicians and programmers who created the render engine, and yet we still call that art.
When we use Studio or Poser, our role isn’t directly equivalent to the traditional artist working with a brush or chalk or pencil, we are working much more in the role of a photographer, or a movie director or cinematographer. None of these can produce work on their own, they all use the work of many others, the products of many others, and yet what they do is acclaimed as art.
Equally when I write and I use a genre trope, such as the homoeroticism of a vampire (to pick the scene I wrote last night), then I am using the work of every author who has ever touched on that trope, and the way that it has shaped audience reaction, but no one would say that the words are not my own.
People who claim that Studio or Poser work is not art because I do not create every tool I use are failing to understand the process of creation and are comparing apples to orangutans.
Crap. I just used rons brushes for postwork. Sigh.. Guess my image is not art anymore. I didn’t make those wonderful splashes. The argument is stupid. Art is art, how it was created is not relevant. Its the final result that matters. This argument can go on forever…There will always be a difference of opinion. Its in the same realm as religion debates:)
Does a storyteller own the ideas that they use to write a story? No… They borrow ideas from a number of sources.
This is an interesting twist on the ideas posted thus far in this thread. Somewhere, sometime…there was an original idea that had never before seen the light of day…
I love the posts in this thread! Since I use a toon shader for my comic, I often worry that people (especially those not familiar with 3D art) will think I’m “pretending” to draw/paint my images, even though (like the OP) I’m very upfront about the tools I use and give credit to the products I buy when I get compliments on them.
I now feel more confident in ignoring the criticisms of the ignorant! :-D
There’s really little to say to this after the whole photographer / directer analogy. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Although, and that’s something we should be aware of, is that photographers tend to credit their models just like movies tend to open and / or end with a complete list of everyone involved, down to the catering guys. Just like in those fields, we, too, should be able to admit that we completely rely on other peoples’ work and credit them accordingly where possible.
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