Digital Art Zone

This is the perpetual debate.  It’s good thing governments are not established on the basis of this debate.

There are those who can not see and there are those who will try to tell you what to see.  Difficulties arise when people with closed eyes try to tell you what to see.

My position?  Of course it’s art if the composition is put together artfully.  Now, define “artfully”.  8-o

Then again, art attracts it’s own brand of groupie snobs to the successful but talentless and insecure icons who deride any perceived competitors.

I considered my ability to write beautiful computer program code in assembler languages an art.  It is, because machine generated code lacks the finesse and elegant solution that I could give to a problem.

As the creator you can call anything you create, art if you think it is, but you will run into other opinions.  However, don’t get caught in the trap of art snobbery.  You may make money by selling your “art” to others but rarely will your buyers have more talent than you.  But consider what that says about them!  Especially if you take a long hard look at yourself. 8-o

I both laugh and cringe whenever I see some formless catastrophe lauded over by self-important clueless snobs.

My favorite mental image of the art world is of the characters in the tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.  Somebody always has to play the Emperor & his court. There are more than enough scheming tailors.  The world is full of sheepish villagers.  But somebody will always eventually play the little naive, honest little boy yelling out that the Emperor is naked.

LeatherGryphon - 09 September 2012 08:33 AM

You may make money by selling your “art” to others but rarely will your buyers have more talent than you.

Funny. I work in Photoshop and designing, by myself, display views of vehicles with different paint jobs, logos, and graphics on them.

Pricing is so funny because some people say, “But the computer did everything.”

I loath that.

I consider that an art as well and would love for them to try and pull photos into Photoshop and make all design changes, create all logos, and graphics themselves.

jmper - 09 September 2012 08:42 AM

LeatherGryphon - 09 September 2012 08:33 AM

You may make money by selling your “art” to others but rarely will your buyers have more talent than you.

Funny. I work in Photoshop and designing, by myself, display views of vehicles with different paint jobs, logos, and graphics on them.

Pricing is so funny because some people say, “But the computer did everything.”

I loath that.

I consider that an art as well and would love them to try and pull photos into Photoshop and make all design changes, create all logos, and graphics themselves.

Back in the early days of AC electricity Steinmetz was called in by General Electric to resolve a problem with a new power generator at Niagara Falls (I think). Here’s the story:

“After studying alternating current for a number of years, Charles Steinmetz patented a “system of distribution by alternating current” (A/C power), on January 29, 1895.
Steinmetz retired as an engineer from General Electric to teach electrical engineering at that city’s Union College in 1902. General Electric later called back as a consultant. He had worked on a very complex system that was broken. No one could fix it no matter how hard the technicians tried. So they got Steinmetz back. He traced the systems and found the malfunctioning part and marked it with a piece of chalk.

Charles Steinmetz submitted a bill for $10,000 dollar. The General Electric managers were taken back and asked for an itemized invoice.
He sent back the following invoice:
Making chalk mark $1
Knowing where to place it $9,999”

Quoted from: 
http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/a/Steinmetz.htm

Interesting photo including Steinmetz, Einstein, & Tesla
http://edisontechcenter.org/CharlesProteusSteinmetz.html#

LeatherGryphon - 09 September 2012 08:58 AM

Charles Steinmetz submitted a bill for $10,000 dollar. The General Electric managers were taken back and asked for an itemized invoice.
He sent back the following invoice:
Making chalk mark $1
Knowing where to place it $9,999”

Hahaha!

Now, that is awesome!

Thanks for that!

>hangs up the corpse of an exhumed equine< commence with the pummeling

now that is a good render
LX

lol thats a photo

It’s a fairly safe bet that the very same folk saying stuff like this probably don’t even realise just how much art is digital these days.  They also want it to be the exclusive domain of an almost mythical type of studio “alchemist”... it is NEVER the domain of somebody they know.

Digital is “cheating” - If your renders turn out better than they can draw, then it’s a blasphemy worthy of bitter contempt.

The problem is the ego of the antagonist… “If it wasn’t for you cutting corners, your images would look as bad as mine”.  So to rubbish your work can be interpreted as an attempt to salve his/her teensy-weensy ego.

The ultimate irony for me is that there’s a similar elitism among some 3D artists about post-working renders… it’s not cheating, it’s turning a render into a finished piece of work. 

Greetings,
I’ve been asked this; my argument is as others…the individual pieces are my crayons, the composition is greater than the sum of its parts.

But I do not consider myself a 3D artist.  I am an illustrator, at best.  I have images throbbing in my brain, which I’ve wanted to get out.  I tried to learn to draw to get them into visible form, but time and muscle issues made that less than useful.  DAZ Studio has made it possible for me to turn those mental images into illustrations that I can share.  Imperfect, odd, sometimes morally questionable, but I can get them out of my head which helps.

So, here’s my take.  What you produce is more than the sum of the items you used to produce it, so feel free to entirely discard criticism based on your tools.  Whether what you produce is ‘art’, however, is probably in the eyes of the viewer; my vague recollection is that whether something is art includes whether it elicits an emotional reaction, and that’s purely subjective.

— Morgan

It is art, but where things can get tricky is when intellectual claims are made on the art on how much of it is yours.

If you for example just did a quick render of Aiko 3 using presets and did no post work etc..  You most likely wouldn’t be able to claim intellectual property on the finished product as someone could do the exact same thing who never even saw your render.

If you set up your own lights, do a good bit of postwork, etc. you may be able to claim intellectual property on it as it is unique and not something easily reproducible by anyone who may never have seen your finished post worked render.

How unique your image is is what is going to be the deciding factor in an intellectual claim.

But I’d say any render you did is your art,  now if you have an intellectual claim on a finished render that can get tricky.

Very true. Well said. At least rotate the camera and get some intellectual claim:) Using everything as is without any tweaking/postwork is art, but not really intellectual.

Barubary - 08 September 2012 07:08 AM

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.

I completely agree, my friend has gone into “silent mode” after reading this. lol. Oh and hey KyotoKid: Those are fantastic renders btw!
I guess I missed the e-mail someone else replied. Fantastic examples and points made here.

..thank you.  That was actually a fairly early work but one I still like to consider as one of my best (and my favourite).

I guess in the end I like to consider myself more a visual storyteller than a 3D/CG artist.