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*shakes head* My wisecrack to Sturk up above, my feelings aren't too mixed on this: on the question of "Would you agree or disagree programs like Poser limit the amount of creativity an artist has in crafting an image or writing a story?" , my response is a resounding "No!"
The creativity is in the artist. Poser [or Bryce or Rhino or VIZ or even Maya] are just the tools. There's not a single bit of creativity in them, nor is there an inherent limiter. [Other than what a particular tool just can't do: you can pound a nail with an axe, but it's not as good as a hammer ]
People limit themselves. They limit themselves wether by design or merely by lack of time/inclination when they only use the stock items in stock ways, and don't go beyond that.
Or they do what a Scott King, or a Beton, or a *cough* GeorgeD does, and they go beyond the stock items and blend things in a new way, add in a dash of photoshop and some brow sweat and wring their own vision out of it.
Creativity isn't easy. It's a little bit of inspiration, 99% perspiration, and a dash of talent. But it's never easy.
The only "flaw" in tools like Poser, Bryce, DazStudio, whatever, is that they make it easy to just do stock filler and never go beyond that. Pre-made content has the same hazard, and you can do that as easily with pre-made Max models from a sci-fi site as you can with Mike and Vicki. You can take a Galactica LW model, add a Hubble backdrop and a dash of lens flare, hit render and Voila! You have the sci-fi version of an NVIATWAS. *PFM!* Poser and Daz content makes it a bit easier to stay stock, but they also give ample opportunity to go beyond.
This ain't a measure of the tools, sorry - it's a measure of the wielder.
Blaming a hack image on the tool is like me muffing a 10 yard shot on an elk - and blaming the rifle for making me miss. *snicker* If I look at a pic by Harrison2... what, do I blame Bryce for Harrison being superlatively good? If I can't draw like John Byrne, do I blame the pencils?
Learn the tools, learn the basics - lighting, composition, materials, shadow, perspective - and put in the 99% perspiration and the 1% inspiration. And then let the hacks worry about how the tools won't "let" them do the same things you're doing with them.
************************
But George said it a lot better than I did, and with better pictures. _________________ "I'd add a legitimate comment here, but that would mean reading everything, which I have no patience for." - Slynky
Joined: Jul 14, 2002 Posts: 12 Location: The Humid South
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:42 am Post subject: Re: Homogenization - Round Table
All:
Blank canvas. Block of marble. Pristine white sheet of paper and newly sharpened pencil. All of these things share something in common. None of the artists who used these tools had a figure -- created, painted, sculpted and trimmed nicely -- in front of them when they started. With Poser, you do (unless, of course, you change the defaults). And that's where the sameness begins.
There is an amazing glut of Poser work that floats around that is nothing more than a derivative of the default. There's so much of it that is bad. Terribly bad. And some of which is very good. Poser creations are like any other art -- there can only be one Dali, one Picasso, one Pollack, one Rodan and one Lichtenstein to fill the space.
However, the "start" of those creations stems from that first figure. And given eight people in a room, they would texture, pose, cloth and light that figure -- and call it their own. But it's not. I'm not suggesting that every time you create a 3-D piece of Poser, you build a human figure from the toes to the teeth. However, there does have to be *some* investment on the artist's part to make the figure his own. And too often, the artist does not. Instead, what the "artist" finishes and we are asked to rate are C-rate knock offs of Michael, Vicky, Dina and whatever other default figures are floating around.
Though no one's going to be sculpting figures from the ground up, facet by facet, nurb by nurb, (and they shouldn't have to), there does have to be a sense of responsibility -- of some kind. An artist who uses Poser should be concerned with what he starts with as much as what it ends up like. So, shouldn't the intent be to take the figure, strip it of all its textures, and make your own morphs onto the thing? Or is it safer to say, "Well, I was shootin' for Spiderman and that figure's pretty close any way. I'll touch up the hair, get the costume from Sturkwurk, light it and it'll be mine"?
That's homogenization.
And whether its believed that one piece of clothing changes that viewpoint or an entire body morph does, it's still a derivative of the work -- ultimately, you're taking an already sculpted statue and adding your fingerpaints.
I'd offer that there are any number of derivative works in the Poser/3-D/art work that are brilliant. Amazing. But unless the studio was bare or the canvas was modified so much there could be no possible way to tell what was started with (GDEEP's BRILLIANT work with the Michael figure) when the work started, it's a derivative work. (NOTE: there could be an argument made here that *everything* is a derivative work of *something*. I know. To be sure, "... there is nothing new under the sun," however, let's not open up that can of chili yet).
As DLFURMAN said and Sturk concurred, if an artist starts lazy, well, you know. And certainly, given the choice between unchiseled stone, or stone the figure already carved, which choices would the great majority of "artists" whose "work" comprises the great majority of Poser "art" we see ... make? _________________ ---|----------------
Yojimbo, A Humble Servant
http://www.jasontudor.com
Blog, photos and more at the site
Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 2:25 pm Post subject: Re: Homogenization - Round Table
I'm not doing much more than signing in here, because most of the sensible stuff's been said.
Poser's a tool, just like pencil and paper. When I draw by hand, the result is either not much better than the worst comics artwork ever published, or far too slow to be worthwhile. I can draw better than a few published comics artists, but not as well as the ones I want to emulate. Poser enables me to produce images I'm proud of at a rate I can actually use, and part of my method is to work away from the default to the extent that even other Poser users sometimes can't tell whether I used the programme or not.
I might be cheating, using technology to simulate results others have achieved by hand, but then, what isn't cheating? Photo-reference? Drawing from life instead of from the mind's eye? Studying others' work? Using paper instead of real, traditional cave wall?
Comics, which is what I do, aren't high art. If I can tell a story in pictures and the pictures produce the same response in me that good art does, I don't think it matters much what the materials used were. There's a lot of Poser art in the galleries here and elsewhere: some of it's awesomely good, some is appallingly bad, and it was all done using the same software.
The singer, not the song (Dirk Bogarde and John Mills, good film, watch it).
No one complains that people don't color books with Inks anymore. Computer coloring is nothing like the traditional comic coloring. Yet it's now more than accepted. It's the norm and actually difficult to get work at a tradational colorist.
To be honest, I think the over rendered coloring takes away from the line art.
Comercial Art is what the public buys.
Art is whatever you say it is.
You're right about the colouring. Sometimes it obscures the art, sometimes it makes poor drawing look better than it is. It irritates me particularly when the colourist adds detail the penciller didn't put there. I suppose I'm thinking more there about art than about product.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 11:01 am Post subject: Re: Homogenization - Round Table
Um guys, you forgot about the artist that can't draw yet still has a story to tell. That would be me. I'm a visual person and didn't want to write the story as describing what I saw was not fun, but rendering it, and bringing into reality what I saw, was fun.
This discussion, reminds me of html by hand is better than html using dreamweaver or golive. Whether it is done by hand or using software, it's still html.
It doesn't matter if it's done by hand or software, it's still art. What matters most, is who is creating the art.
Joined: Jun 13, 2002 Posts: 49 Location: Bogotá, Colombia
Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:24 pm Post subject: Re: Homogenization - Round Table
Some artist said that everybody can draw, some better than others and there is not an exact way to represent something.
Some people told me that to do renders is not an art because we get the props and stuff on the net and we (some) never studied on an art school, so we are lazy ,but a pencil artist need to check cars on pictures to draw well a car, keep pictures of plants, animals, buildings, they draw in their comics things that really exists and is not in their mind .
Some people that knows how to draw can copy the job of other artist to improve their art so that´s lazy too .
Still to do a better job is better to try to do what is in our minds, try to improve a pose, a prop a background and keep learning from tutorials, and in my case Im still learning.
Anyway at the end the important thing is doesnt matter if you are a bad artist or a good one if you enjoy drawing with pencils or doing renders, keep doing what you like and learning everyday, you will improve.
Too right. If rendering doesn't qualify as art, what are we to make of a CGI film, such as Shrek etc? You'd have to have a pretty strange idea about things to not consider them works of art in some sense, yet the creators take textures from scans, point-sample real objects and models and so on. Also there's a very long-standing tradition of art made from collages, piles of suitcases, bricks, unmade beds and so on which get heaps of praise from the highbrow critics. When asked about the justification for this, the answer is always that the art element lies in the arrangment or setting of such objects. So if you take a pre-existing figure or set of props and decorate, morph, texture, pose and postwork them in a way that resonates with the viewer, where's the difference? I'd like one of those "art snobs" that denigrate CG to explain that one to me.
To be honest though, I never get hung up on the term "art" myself. It means everything and yet nothing. I just like to think of it as pretty pictures.
Joined: Jul 14, 2002 Posts: 12 Location: The Humid South
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 9:04 am Post subject: Re: Homogenization - Round Table
No one was questioning artistic value. As Frank Zappa said, "Art is making something out of nothing and selling it."
However, there is the question of just how good some of the work is. Period. And there's plenty of bad out there. Seriously, have you ever peeked at the thumbnails that pop up in the upper-left-hand corner for Animotions "Gallery Preview" and thought, "Eh. Whatever." It's THAT factor -- the "Eh. Whatever." Factor, we'll call it -- that matters and not the piece as an artistic expression. That's at the center of our discussion.
Take a step back from your "my art is GREAT" ledge (supressing your own ego or modesty) and ask yourself: how much of YOUR OWN art would you buy if offered to you in a store; or a gallery; or some other venue? Honestly, if I have two pieces I would pay for, I'd be surprised. There's just a difference between stuff that's well-thought out, well drawn and well presented versus stuff that's merely "rendered" (and I'll get to "rendering" shortly).
Now ask the same question of other people's stuff. If you had to buy it -- if you had to pay a membership fee; buy a ducket to see it; or sacrifice a few greenbacks in order to hang it in your house, who's "renders" would you buy?
There's a "gallery preview" of a render I'm looking at right now as I write this. It's a woman super hero. I won;t say who it's by. But it's cliche. It's overdone. It's not well lighted. There's no action. There's no flow. It's stiff. In short, it stinks. Go to Renderosity; or Renderotica. Peek that their Premiere Gallery previews and ask yourself, "Would I pay 30 bones to see that stuff?" Probably not.
The discussion is about homogenization. And whether or not Poser homogenizes rather than helps make distinct artistic expression. And it CAN. However, I'd offer there are more hurdles to climb than other forms of other artistic expression. Canvases and paper are blank. The paints and inks are still in the bottles. Poser puts Michael or whatever other figure right on screen for you. It's tempting to take the easy way out, too.
Take music. Imagine you bought some sort of music making software. You open the package and immediately, there are loops already in the tracks. You swap a few things around, add one or two of your own sounds and, blammo, your own song, right. So what if 10 people do this? 100? 1,000? It's the same song, homogenized with other sounds.
As for that Render, if you're not doing something specific in the pre- or post-render to make it your own, then, you're just as guily of making generic, vanilla stuff as that person in the "Gallery Preview." And if you're posting your test renders, drafts, good tries and semi-half-hearted efforts, stop. When you get to finished product, let us see them.
Forget the art discussion. That's reserved for another time (and I'm not sure any of us are educated enough to define art (especially when not even the Supreme Court can or will do it). However, if you can make something out of nothing well enough to sell it time and again (and not live some homogenized fantasy), then Zappa would be proud. _________________ ---|----------------
Yojimbo, A Humble Servant
http://www.jasontudor.com
Blog, photos and more at the site
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,but a pencil artist need to check cars on pictures to draw well a car, keep pictures of plants, animals, buildings, they draw in their comics things that really exists and is not in their mind 
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