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The sad part is that there are amateurs out there who got a free copy of DAZ Studio and has some "free" sources to provide them whatever they need to create art, and those amateurs are actually doing an even better job than those who have spent 5 years at Art School.
Also, art isn't just a matter of being able to make a good render that anyone likes. Art is also about marketing yourself to promote your own work. Cutting your own ear off, for example, would be a good way to draw more attention. However, as it has been done before, it is unlikely to work again. Same applies to drawing rectangles on canvas and coloring them with red, white and blue. Ir taking a dump and can it to sell before the cans start to leak. All have been done before.
I've seen a Dutch Artist work once. His name was Anton Heyboer and he was a well-known painter in the Netherlands. In his early career, he made quite a few good works of art but as his fame started to rise, he learned that he could just splash paint on canvas and people would still buy it. All the painting needed was his signature so it could be sold for €25 or more. Not bad for two minutes of work. And that's just the secret of good artists.
A good artist is one who can create a name for himself. (Or herself.) And sites like DeviantArt are full with people who want to get more fame, hoping that one day someone starts calling their work 'art'. Because it's not an artist who makes art, but it is art which makes the artist. So you can spend $150,000 on a proper art education, only to end up competing with an elephant with a brush selling more than you do...
(Attached picture is from http://www.ramonaspainting.com)
First and foremost, I think a number of people need to get out a dictionary or encyclopedia and actually READ the definition of "Art", which is not the same thing as "Fine Art". This seems to be a matter of confusion for some. There's no qualitative level for "art", nor for the boader subcategory that encompasses most work with DAZ and Poser, as well as painting, sculpture and photography, the "Visual Arts". (As opposed to the Performing Arts, the Decorative Arts, Folk Art, etc..)
Now, "Fine Art" is a different thing, but the interesting fact about the Fine Arts is that they change fairly often and artists and styles that were once considered "beneath" fine art status have a way of sneaking up into the definition. Impressionism, Cubism and Pop Art were all initially rejected as art by the public and mainstream critics, but is there anyone out there who really wants to debate the status of artists like Monet, Renoir, Degas and Picasso today? There might be a few who still argue against Warhol, but in a parrallel to this thread, I suspect that much of the resistance is due to the fact that he was involved in so many other aspects of the arts that he never focused exclusively on painting and printmaking. Likewise there have been a number who say that art produced for the purpose of advertising doesn't count but that conveniently ignores the fact that the vast majority of art produced before the 18th century was made specifically to promote the status and agenda of the artists patrons. I mean, The Last Supper and the Sistine Chappel Ceiling are both amazing works of art, but at their core they're commercial products produced for the Catholic Church. Likewise, there are a number of illustrators and painters in the commercial realm whose work is attaining the status of fine art... Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell are already there and Frazetta's almost certainly on the cusp. Right now we're seeing a huge re-evaluation of the commercial art produced in the the 20th century and the work of artists who toiled in relative obscurity are suddenly the subject of massive intererest. A recent Frazetta sold for 1.5 million dollars and I was looking at painting by Gil Evgren a few months ago and was stunned to see that the price tag had crept up to $100,000.00.
So, has any DS/Poser work hit the status of "fine art" yet? Honestly, I think it's too soon to say as digital art is really still in it's infancy and a lot of the critical tools are still in need of development. That said, I think a strong argument can be made for some of the promotional art I've seen from PAs like Stonemason and Blackhearted meeting the qualifications, and there's definitely a lot of work done in landscape programs like VUE that's simply breathtaking.
As a final thought, I think something that tends to go against CG art... and digital art in general... is the fact that we tend to view it under less than optimal conditions. When you see a painting in a gallery, it's been carefully framed and lit for optimum presentation, but most digital art is viewed it's on a monitor that's probably not callibrated, surrounded by web garbage, obscured by glare, and invariably at a size that's either much smaller or much larger than the artist created it at. And yet, all that said, I think we've all had the moment where we clicked on a render and been completely blown away by what the artist has been able to create. And isn't that what art is really all about?
Well, yes, as art is a very, highly subjective and personal matter. I think you worded it quite nicely with:
"I think we've all had the moment where we clicked on a render and been completely blown away by what the artist has been able to create. And isn't that what art is really all about?"
You may substitute 'render' with any other art-medium you can think of.
I also consider myself a technician. I therefore agree with you. Perhaps that an artist is the one who would create imagery without even thinking one second to the technical side of the process.
I think Will summed it up very nicely. The sheer fact people are furiously discussing whether it is art makes it art.
You know... we would probably be presented with a lot more bad Maya art if Maya didn't cost 185$ per month and required a huge amount of work and time investment to actually do anything in it that is worth showing.
My assumption here is the lack of "personal touch" in this so called "Poser Art" thing. It might be due to inability (someone just being new to it) or lack of effort (someone just not caring). And that rubs artists the wrong way. It makes 3D artists who make everything by themselves in Maya/Blender/whatnot angry, cause people don't show the same effort they had to put in their work.
I can understand that perfectly. Imagine if in the future there existed a program that simply let's you enter a sentence and spits out a perfectly posed, lighted and assembled scene that is rendered for the person. They only have to type in "Naked Girl with a sword" and the program spits out a well composed render. Suddenly people flood the net with these. Your art suddenly is considered of less value, because "oh this is easy" and people get praised for pushing a button.
Yeah - that's how it looks. Of course, the renders eventually will start repeating, since the vocabulary used by a lot of common users will not be that great and the algorithym cannot do much with it. Eventually you will find writers who make insanely detailed, well made renders with the program as they enter gigantic amounts of text into it and write custom scripts to enhance the algorithym of the program. And then we have another discussion of "is this art?"
But the same problem will persist. Cause you will find people who write a book to feed it into such a program and get a very exact visualization out of it. And there will still be people who just type in "Naked white skinny woman. Holds sword."
The 'I'm a technician vs. art' thing reminds me of the critics of MC Escher. He was considered a 'mere draftsman' by 'fine artists.'
From the quotes you can imagine the piles of bantha poodoo I think of such arguments.
Personally, I consider it all art, and that art has _always_ been intertwined by technique and technology. There is evidence that many medieval painters, for example, used all sorts of projection techniques and other methods to measure scenes and guide them in their process.
There's always been this vibe of technology is 'cheating' and artists going 'nuts to that.'
if you ever said "band-aid" for a bandage, "q-tip" for a cotton swab, "font" for a type face, "googled" a word, or if you painted using the "Bob Ross" wet paint method which was used in Flemish oil painting 300 years before than I may have some other injustices for you. However if you really want to feel like a 2nd class citizen go on any 3D Computer Design forum and mention you used Blender to model something.
I used Blender to model something...
The dismissal of Blender as a legitimate CGI tool for filmmakers is almost strictly by people who only want those tools to remain out of reach for the average individual. Just like a lot of filmmakers they want it to be an elitist endeavor.
The truth is that all that ANY degree can do is qualify you to teach the subject or be a critic. It may make you better prepared and in some cases, like medicine or physics, it may be impossible to do the job well without the knowleged gained, but having a degree is no guaruntee of actually being able to do it.
I've been wondering how many people actually got this, but since it's been nearly a week - (from http://mentalfloss.com/article/57501/27-responses-question-what-art)
[In 1917, Marcel Duchamp, using the pseudonym R. Mutt, submitted a store-bought urinal, which he titled “Fountain,” to an art exhibition.] Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He chose it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under a new title and point of view (and) created a new thought for the object.
– Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and Henri-Pierre Roché, The Blind Man, 2nd issue (May 1917)
And that. in a nutshell, is art.
Yep. And yet, ironically, many of the most sucessful people in the world never bothered to get degrees in their chosen fields. Bill Gates, Steve Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller all dropped out of college to pursue their careers. Richard Branson, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford never even graduated from high school. The idea of having to have a degree to be sucessful is really a cultural artifact of the late twentieth century. Yes, most schools do teach some useful skills, but does an engineer really need to study poetry and learn to speak french? And the sad fact is that many people with a college degree in things like English and Education will be hard pressed to ever make as much as someone who's gone into a basic trade like plumbing.
Greetings,
Yes! Ye GODS, yes.
No! Ye GODS, no.
To be less flippant (and more controversial) an awareness of form and function and aesthetics is crucial for almost all forms of engineering. You can succeed without it, for a little while, but your career is somewhat limited. Eventually you'll need to learn it..or go into management. (This is not a ding on management, to be clear.)
As a software developer, I find that the cadence and compact expressiveness of poetry is actually a more relevant concept than most mathematical formulae one learns in college. The latter can be looked up; the former can only be learned.
-- Morgan
Bruh, if you ever end up in my neck of the woods, I owe you a beer. Because that's savage yet true. The sameface Vickies with the same bloated fish lips, button pixie noses, and big doe eyes is creepy and kind of a hallmark of the "Daz Look". I don't know if anyone is familiar with YTMND, but if that was still a thing, I would totally do a "Call On Me" meme variant with all the Victoria-based female PA characters that have the exact same face (albeit with slight variants), lmao.
Also, I came across a video on YouTube from a channel called 'Deviant Cringe' (if you're familiar with DeviantArt, you can see where this is going), and one of the episodes -I could tell by the thumbnail- was about a fetish-rooted Poser artist, and there was another episode for 'Headless/Limbless women/characters' and the thumbnail again had Poser-based art in it. Argue all y'all want about "What is/isn't true art", but I think there needs to be more acknowledgement of the big honkin' elephant in the room that's holding back the Poser/Daz Studio-based artwork from being more accepted by more professional people: people who use it to make poorly crafted (and sometimes creepy/uncomfortable) fetish-based artwork. I know it's been briefly mentioned in this thread before, but I get the impression it's one of those open secrets/that one family relative that people know exist, but never want to actually talk about at family gatherings, lmao. Because regardless of where you stand on the matter (I don't care if people make it, just mark it with Mature filters appropriately and/or if you shove it in peoples' faces, don't get all whiny when they tell you it's disgusting), you can't deny that's another huge reason why Poser/Daz artwork has the soured reputation it does.
Ah!, just like me and computers. They never should have been let out of the lab.
Neither one of us! 
Well said...I originally got into DS when I hung out at Canadian Ice's forum years ago...it was just before Oblivion came out. The group included Matty Manx(who started me off on this track) Neil V and Sickleyield. Many of us got interested in 3D through mods and modding. So not only potential customers but also potential vendors. All three of those people now are CA's at Daz...
Just some food for thought...out of all the people who paint in the world there is probably only 5% who are considered great painters. Why do we expect that ratio to be different for 3D or any other art form?
the DAZ store (and other 3D content sites) is full of samples you can use to produce your next masterpiece in much the same way as Beatport etc is full of samples DJ's and producers can use to make theirs in the music industry, and builders can go to the hardware store etc, its the bricks and mortar,
Using a DAZ model on its own is no more art than playing a sample or trying to pass off a pallet of bricks as a house.
However the created result the fleshed out render indeed is,
I was there too...though I went by a different name there (just can't remember exactly what it was, but I remember you being there) and wasn't there all that often (once or twice a week...defini
Yep...sorry MJC...also Brady and JCClyde.
Those were some fun times...
Yep...they were.
Yeah.
Of course it's possible to make fine art out of any creative tool, digital tool included - IF you have extraordinary talent.
This 2014 multiple-tool render of Flamenco dancer is by a ZBrusher called Borhan.
Granted, technically it will be harder to create the same scene in Daz Studio than in ZBrush/ Maya/ Blender.
But can be done - IF you have the artistic talent.
It is achievable in Daz Studio ( by July 2016, with one of the fiberhair plugins + VWD plugin + free sculpting tool Blender/Sculptris)
Gawk at more details and process here at ZBrushcentral.
There's some truth in that. 1000% more discipline to make a digital sculpt than analog yet no respect. Not fair, but that's the reality.
Guilt by association? A lot of first gen CG celebs have no art sense because they are "techies". Not their fault either. Just the nature of the technocratic CG beast.
Still, here we are today. Avatar. Frozen. Assassins Creed, Overwatch, Elders Scroll cinematics.
The only people left arguing if CG is art, have yet to lower themselves to pick up a digital brush.
Even Miyazaki has gone digital. No more argument if CG is art.
But do talk what is good/ok/bad/non art. Relevant, always and forever.
For here, non-art are still growing and spreading faster than art. Guilt by association/brand is still (unfairly) affecting this CG niche. Hence this topic.
That's why, while selling toxic candies pay the rent, it's important to also ask, do the typical top row artists from ZBrush/ Modo/ Maya etc want to add Daz Studio to their portfolio? Why? How?
Those DS users with mainstream artist aspiration, what kind of digital gallery artists you want to hang out with?
Is it important to your eyes to your artistic soul, to reduce over-exposure to trite CG art?
Is it not self-interest to guard decline of standards, to use rating mechansim to filter out the worst CG-reputation offenders, the insta-non-art pretending to be art?
Technology has changed (for better or worse) art in its truest form. Now anybody who knows how to tell a computer what they want it to do can create "art", from building a 3D figure, painting, etc it is all done not by hand but by a machine. The machine takes away any and all flaws or form that a creation by an artist's hand contains. When someone draws, sculpts or paints they add their own personal touch to that project whether they know it or not. It could be how heavy they layer on the brush strokes, how edgy they like their lines, and so on.
You could tell an artist's work if you were familiar with them but now, digital media sometimes makes that personal addition obsolete.
Don't get me wrong, I love working with Poser, Studio, and Photoshop. It makes things so much easier when I want to create a character and share it with the world, because that is why I do it. Not to be considered a 3D artist, but to create characters that with my own hand would take more time away from me than I have to spare. Drawing is my art form, and when I draw that is when I want to be considered an artist, good or not, I love putting something on an empty space that wasn't there before with my own hands. But I don't want to draw all of the time and Studio/Poser give me the means to throw a character together on the whim that my ability would not allow me to create. Most of these characters I create I share for others to use in their own work on my art page, stock art I think is what it is considered, and it makes me happy to see others are inspired to create their own art with something that came from my own imagination.
The computer tools have made art so much easier to make so you cannot blame anyone who may not have certain abilities to be excited about a medium that allows them to tell their stories as well.
Do I want to be known for my ability to use a computer program? Not really. But I have other ways of expressing my art, that is why I think this way. Studio/Poser artists have their own reasons for using the program and to me it does not make them any less an artist.
(I can only speak for myself on this one) I'm not afraid that my work will be held back by DS reputation or general DS user creative standards. In the larger world only one thing matters: does a piece of finished art work have commercial value and appeal.
Ugly non-art and bad fetish art deluge can't hold back individual Daz Studio based artworks, nor will it stop pros from using DS. Users are safe.
But obsessive/narrow/stale optics can hold back Daz Studio from faster wider mainstream adoption. Even if DS is doing well regardless.
What I hope will change for the better, is
@Direwrath "Now anybody who knows how to tell a computer what they want it to do can create "art"
How is that different from saying "Now anybody who knows how to draw can create art?"
Equally "it is all done not by hand but by a machine". I guess you've never seen (been aware of?) folks who start with a blank screen in Photoshop or Painter (or several others) and create . . . art.
How is that different from starting with a blank canvas or board?
" I love putting something on an empty space that wasn't there before with my own hands"
Oddly enough, my screen in Studio is blank when I start, just as the card in my camera is blank when I start. So I must be missing some kind of fine distinction
Sorry but the artwork is just not the same. Once again I am not saying that Poser/Studio artists are not good at what they do because they are, if anyone is getting that idea it is not what I mean.
I know a few people who are quite adapted on how to use photoshop, who are not artists in any sense but even they can create something wonderful with a few clicks of the mouse. All because they took a class on how to use the program. You can be taught to use computer programs efficiently. But you cannot be taught to reach the height of natural talent that many traditional artists have. Either you have it or you don't in the non computer world, funny thing is that many artists who are that talented never once stepped foot in a class, one day they picked up their chosen medium and created something marvelous. That is the distinction,
I have doubts about the accuracy of the distinction you're making. There are technical skills involved in all media, and I suspect there are plenty of people who have amazing technical skills in photography, or sculpture, or oil painting, who are no more or less "artistic" than those who can do the same using computers as tools. Nor would I look down on an artist who can paint a masterpiece but couldn't sculpt his way out of a paper bag. Nor would I discount the artistic skills of someone who was adept at more conventional media who, because of a physical ailment does all their art on a computer now. Or one who can create masterpieces with a camera but can't draw a straight line,
Also worth mentioning that the term "art" ist thrown around very loosely in the CG industry. Someone who scans and cleans up a stone, gets it into a game engine with a proper shader is considered an artist and the stone a piece of art. Nobody would claim that this stone has any artistic value in the traditional sense, it's just a tiny piece that might end up in a dark corner of a game.
And someone who polishes the stone and puts it in a nice, non-CGI setting?