Geezers vs. Whippersnappers - Round Table

samsiahaija · Forum Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2003 Posts: 7

@MapleLeafSailor

You asked for it, you got it:

The difference between Classic Art, CGI and Poser from my personal experience.

1 - THE AMOUNT OF CREATIVE INPUT

Classic Art -

You have a white sheet of paper and some drawing materials.
All creative steps are up to you. Unless you copy a photograph or somebody's others artwork (which is plagiarism, not art) you create everything yourself.

Professional CGI

Everything has to be created from scratch as well, but in many of the professional stages it's not a solo thing. There will be specialists at modelling, rigging, texturing, lighting.
For months and months and months and months...

Poser Art

You don't only use a program (the pencil) but mostly also other peoples creativity (3D models) Comparing using Mike and Vicky with not having to mix your own paint is BS.
It is more like driving a marathon in a sportscar, and then telling the people who are doing the distance on foot that they should not think they are superior in any way at all. Hey, come on, what's the difference, everybody's doing the same distance, aren't we, so shut up, traditionalist, don't consider yourself more skilled.
Yeah, right...
The models are part of the art, not of the tools. The Poser workspace is you crayon, Mike and Vicky and their clothing are part of the art. Read the copyright remarks and EULAs connected with the Poser content to see whose creative property they are. You may have bought the right to use them in your art, but that does not make you the creator of it.
Anyone that doesn't want to recognize that is either arrogant or blind, or a combination of the above.

2 -FLEXIBILITY OF THE MEDIUM

Classic art -

The sky, your imagination, or your skill level, is the limit. There are no boundaries concerning subject or style. If you can think of it, you can draw it. Even the sort of impossible stuff that Escher came up with.

High Level CGI

The sky's the limit - if you have the time. If you want to do a street scene with traffic there's a hell of a lot of modeling awaiting you, if you want to do it for real. You can borrow some 3D models that other people made, of course, but if you want to create your unique own fantasy world, you'll have to model and texture everything yourself -from scratch.

Poser CGI -

Unless you're one of the few modelers around, your choise of subject is not really free - you are limited to the contents of your runtime, or the availability of fitting models from 3D vendors.
If you want to do a Belle Epoque - Jugendstil - kind of picture in a French Art Nouveau cafe, well, good luck to you. If it's not in your Runtime, it's not going to be possible to create the picture.

3 - AMOUNT OF CREATIVE CONTROL

Traditional Art.

There's no limits to the use of material. You can work in straight lines, scribbles, clean, rough, colored, impressionistic, expressionistic, any given mixture, or if you are a genius, invent your entire own style.
You have unlimited control over the smallest of lines.
You can also break any rule, and not be anatomically correct if the design of the picture requires that,
replacing exact muscle shapes by flowwy, arced design lines that fit the composition and the dynamics of your drawing better, and redesign the folds and drapery to fit the total composition better - the ultimate control. A well know principle of art design is: less is more: whatever shapes can be simplified and made to fit the composition should be simplified.
If it serves the drawing, you can break any rule in the book.

High End CGI

You are linited to the amount of blendshapes - deformations you built into your rig or that your software allows you to. If you have experts like the ones at Pixar, they will design characters in a way that you can do great silhouette designs with them, like the characters in The Incredibles that were carefully created to match very strong hand drawn graphical designs..
Mostly however you get ugly silhouettes like in Shrek - a film that really sucked in terms of well designed poses..

Poser -

Unless you are a wizard with adding the exact sort of morphs that you need for the exact sort of deformation that you need for that exact camera angle, you're going to have to live with the Morph Dials that came with your character. Mike and Vicky are extremely limited in comparison to production rigs used by professional studios. (You can't even move their jaws around freely) If the anatomy of your character doesn't give you a nicely designed silhouette shape, without ugly bumps breaking the flow of the general design, well, tough luck, live with it, no way to cheat.
Adding to that, you don't need to go far to get to the limits of what poses are possible with the poser characters: many of the things you'd like to do cannot be done, because the geometry isn't allowing you to.
A whole range of poses easily done with a pencil prove to be impossible to do in Poser.
And even Poser's arty rendermodes won't allow you more than to adjust the settings and hope for the best.

4 - POSSIBILITIES TO BEND THE RULES

Traditional Art

You can cheat in every possible way if that suits your drawing better. If the light or shadows don't suit you the realistic way, you can tweak it in a way no real light source will let you. You can exaggerate any part of your drawing at will. You can cheat your perspective at will. If it serves the drawing, you can cheat your anatomy.
Total creative cheating. No limits, as long as the end result looks pleasing to the eye.

CGI -

Limited use of cheating: a pose only has to look good from the camera angle.
The reality of the production I was involved with: set lighters find out that no light setting will give the desired result, and then go crazy with node trees in Shake in an attempt to tweak the image in compositing. Every thing you tweak in one part of the image will have negative effects elsewhere.
Total creative contol..? It's more like a total nightmare. (My collegues flipped out more than once..)

POSER -

Limited use of cheating, a pose only has to look good through the camera lens
You need to go into Photoshop and the likes to fix and tweak things. Parts of of this process are closer to traditional art than most of the things you do in Poser, as you directly influencing the image, not the push-the-render-button-and-hope-for-the-best sort of creativity..

FREEDOM OF STYLE

Traditional Art

You have a total freedom of style.
Any ort of realistic style, from Hal Foster to John Byrne to Frank Miller to Bill Sienkewicz, round or edgy, tidy or messy or graphical, all up to you.
You can take reality, turn it, twist it, shake it, deform it, transform any way you wish, and cheat perspective and reality like Escher did.
Every conceivable cartoon - caricature style, round, flat and graphical, you name it, you can do it.
Your style does not have to be three dimensionally consistent at all if you don't want it to be you can cheat to your heart's desire, as long as the end result winds up looking pleasing to the eye..
You can arrange a couple of circles in a three dimensionally impossibe way and consider it a mouse. (Good old Mickey)
You can make your pencil draw any line that you can think of, in every way that you can think of.
Total artistic freedom.

CGI -

You are limited to solid three dimensional shapes.
And you find out that your toon shader is very limited in its possibilities, and mostly winds up producing ugly sterile renders.

Poser.

You are mostly limited to the solid and three dimensional shapes other people created for you,
and the sort of things the software allows you to do. If you want to create new content, you usually need other software to do that. There's not too much in way of Style posibilities in Poser, apart from your poses and lights, and Style is an essential aspect of art, it is not only about story telling.

FREEDOM OF CAMERA ADJUSTMENT

CGI/Poser

You can reposition your camera at will and re-pose you model at every given moment in the creative process.

Traditional Art

The one thing a traditionalist cannot do: he'll have to start again from scratch if he wants big changes like that.

So, in conclusion, as somone that created pictures both the traditional and the Poser way, and has been closely involved in a professional 3D production, I do think a pencil is the most flexible and versatile of these tools...

Ratteler · Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2002 Posts: 553 Location: NYC

Again. You suck as an artist.

It's obvious from your description that you don't consider Photography, or motion picture film, ART.

I'm a modeler and, I can paint my own textures in Photoshop.

You see limits where an Artist sees tools to enhance his creativity.

I can rough out an image in Poser, and repaint it in photoshop with my Wacom until it looks NOTHING like the the original.

So I have all the power of your canvas, and my 3D realm that rivals the greatest Universal Studio Backlot.

I'll just get there a lot faster than you because I can "find my line" in a 3D universe I know how to percieve, and you'll be trying to find it on a peice of white space.

Many times I'll story board my work on paper. Some times I story board in Poser and build models to match.

Some time I mix up all three elements.

I actually scanned a piece of paper I burnt to get a texture once.

I don't limit myself with prejudice about what part of my art is real.

All art comes from perception. You can't create anything without filtering elements of the real world through your own perception. So you're using "Prebuilt" items as much as I am. Designs of others, and nature, as much as I am. You're just tricking yourself into thinging that copying them in any given way is creative.

Creativity is how we combine what we percive and ART is how we express that combination.

You could have show us how great your pencil work is, or you're brilliant paintings. Instead you buried us with a bunch of negitive crap about our art form like a child playing some game and yelling at the adults "You're not doing it right."

The only art you've shown is hack writing for the purpose of stirring up trouble.

I would say you need work on that art form to since it was so obvious.

GlitchGirl · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject:

samsiahaija · Forum Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2003 Posts: 7

I'm always delighted to see how much you are assuming about me.

Rattler, I can do about three or four rough pencil pose thumbnails, comic panel size, in five minutes time on my white piece of paper, out of which I select the best to work out, (a skilled comic book artists can pencil a page per day); as an animator I'm required to sometimes produce as many as fourty rough key animation drawings a day to keep up with the deadline, how exactly does that make me slower than you..? And yes, I respect al the stuff you do with your render outside of Poser, more than the actual render itself in terms of creative input.

Where in all my posts have I ever stated not believing Photography, Film or even Poser to be Art or not Art?

Photography, is the art of freezing a moment in time, and depicting, and commenting on, reality: film is the medium where one tells a narrative in moving pictures, depicting a screenplay with actors, sets and often a musical score, among other things.
I have never even mentioned mixed media or stop motion or sculpture.

And I haven't got this obsession with producing Art that you have either.

Whenever I'm doing a commercial, I may still consider myself to be an artist, but it sure as hell isn't Art I'm producing. I just want my work to be up to standards, I want it to be as good as it can be under the given circumstances of not enough time and not enough budget and bad creative input from the client and the advertisement agency, I want it to be entertaining and enjoyable for the audience to watch, but at the end of the day it's just a brand of butter I'm selling, even if I would succeed doing it in Disney quality.

Art isn't likely to pay your rent in any given media: most of the people becoming professionals are forced to be craftsmen rather than artists by your definition - you either work per commission or you won't get payed. (If there's anything holding you guys back, it is your lack of willingness to comply to the demands of the industry.)

I will not consider myself to be an artist before I produce my first own animation short, a luxury I cannot afford right now.

I'm calling only very few films Art, master pieces like Citizen Cane, Modern Times, Casablanca, West Side Story or Twelve Angry Men. (The sort of films Rattler would probably think of as primitive, judging from his earlier posts)
Ohter stuff, like the latest Fantastic Four film, and most of the other roller coaster cheap thrills -expensive CGI flics, are just bubblegum crap.

It's the same as with music: Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are on a completely different level than Eminem or the Spice Girls, even if I like listening to pop music.

Photography can be art, of course, even if I'm not a big collector of it -but my holiday snapshots are not.

The same applies to comics - as much as I like the medium, I consider only very few comics to be superior art: Art Spiegelman's Maus, Will Eisner's Graphic Novels, V for Vendetta, some of the stuff Frank Miller did, Pogo, Bone, Carl Barks in some of his stories - but most of it is just popular culture, nothing more, nothing less.

The same with animation: Bambi and Fantasia and Iron Giant are art, Home On The Range sure wasn't.

Luxo Jr.and Geri's Game are art, the infantile Shrek and Chicken Little aren't.

And Nick Park's Creature Comforts contains some of the best lipsync and acting I've seen in any medium.

The topic was not what we consider to be Art to begin with, that's what you guys made out of it.
The initial theme of this topic was - traditional or digital - which do you prefer?

I wasn't naming any of the output of either traditionals or digitals Art at all: I was just explaining which I preferred, and why. I can express myself better with a pencil than with Poser, that often does not allow me to create the sort of poses I need due to the limits of the character rigs, and doesn't allow me a freedom of subject and style the way my pencil does, so I claimed the pencil was more versatile in its possibilities, and the better choise for me. I also, on the average, enjoy traditional art more than I do digital Art as a spectator. I don't go as lyrical about The Incredibles as I did over The Jungle Book, even if I believe both of them to be very good films: a drawing appeals to me on another level than a rendered image does. That's not only my perogative, it was also the question posed in the Animotions Newsletter that lured me into this Forum to begin with.
I did not suggest you to drop Poser and become traditionals, I was asked to state my reasons for preferring traditional means, so I did, totally on topic.

Little did I know that, on the Animotions website, you are not supposed to prefer hand drawn art over digital art, and that the subject is not open to discussion at all.
That it would be populated with frustrated people complaining the world doesn't recognise them for the geniusses they believe they are, that want to elevate the limits their software imposes on them as a heroic starting point, stating that skilled and talented traditional artists deserve to be kicked out of the field for clearing the way for the next generation they believe to be ..
That all you are intrerested in reading is stuff about how the world is treating you wrong, how Maya and XSI users are not allowed to suggest their way of approaching CG is different and more profound, and how unfair it is that the industry is not embracing you with open arms
You've created yourself your private little fantasy, and beware those that dare to attempt to break your bubble.

The biggest frustration I read between the lines was the downright envy that a dinosaur not favorable to your tool of choise is still managing to scrape himself a living the traditional way, where you do not succeed, and boy, how you hate me for it. From the way some of you reacted I believe you think me to be the lowest of the lowest for not dropping my pencils and switching over to Poser completely.

By expressing to prefer the traditional approach, and indicating the freedom of theme and expression of a pencil over the Poser workspace, I have been accused of being a bad artist, a hack writer, a bad director, and of considering a number of media not to be artforms, based on nothing more than prejudice against traditional artists.
Other than that, I'm insincere and just out for stirring trouble.
Boy, you sure have an adult way of reacting to opposite opinions

I like Poser after a day's worth of doing drawings, buy I prefer to draw for my profession. I enjoy drawing facial expressions infinitely more than I do tweaking morph dials, I prefer hand drawn art, and, as the invitation in the Animotions newsletter invited me to do, I tried to explain my motivations for that in words - in a neutral way, comparing the media, and without attacking any of the contributors on a personal base the way you did.
Your opinion is clear: whoever does not regard Poser to be a superior art medium cannot be an artist at all. My general likes and dislikes are regarded as personal attacks, and met with personal abuse of a kind that I myself never uttered - until this final post I have never stooped to the level of personal insults the way you did.
(No Rattler, we're not even, it's just that your skull is probably too thick to even grasp what I'm talking about)

I'm off soon to the far east to be a bad director on a hand drawn, thus suspect and outdated, animated TV show, so I will not have the opportunity to return to this forum fo a longer time - but I have lost my appetite for it anyway.
It has NOT been a pleasure.
If I'd be keeping up this discussion any longer, I'd probably feel inclined to completely erase Poser from my harddisk within the next two or three posts.

You are the sorriest lot I ever had the pleasure to meet on any forum, and I have had quite enough of it.
You are all the things you accused me of: you're just bunch of close minded, jealous bigots that think the world treats you unfairly, given the great 'Art' you're creating.
And whatever kind of sympathy you had at the start of our discussions you have now completely lost. (NOW we're even)

To get off topic a last time, as a reaction to your off topic reactions to my posts:

Guys, for anybody frustratated about being stuck as a hobbyist: the choise is up to you: pick yourself a copy of the free Maya PLE and a couple of books on elementary drawing skills, learn about image composition and design and anatomy, and adapt to the needs of the industry, that requires you to be a skilled and flexible crafstsman rather than a selfimportant make belief Artist, or remain a bunch of frustrated amateur artists, sweating in your attics, praised by your peers on internet galleries but not recognized in the real world, unable to live from your art. (With the possible exception of one or two artists that can tweak the software just enough to sell an occasional render to be printed in a computer magazine or on a book cover)

If you believe that creating fan art of copyrighted comic book heroes is anything more than a hobby, and should pave the road to succes for you, guys, then dream on, and have a happy life in never never land.

GlitchGirl · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 10:07 am Post subject:

Yes, this is a debate about "preferred method" but not a debate about "inherently inferior methods", something you spent your entire answer to MapleLeafSailor about.

I prefer CGI. Does that mean I think that pencils are inherently inferior? No. It means I prefer to work with CGI. You prefer to work with pencil, pen, and ink. That's fine. I have some friends online who can do amazing things with pen and ink that make my jaw drop. I have some others who start with pencils and then do all their inking with a tablet to create a hybrid style.

But when you start saying that your method is inherently superior to my method, that's when I start getting ticked. Therein where the hostility lies.

You lay down all these limitations you've found as absolutes. This "if I can't do it, then it's not worth anyone's time" tone is prevelant throughout your post.

samsiahaija · Forum Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2003 Posts: 7

@GlitchGirl

As the main purpose of a forum is to exchange opinions, I assumed that everything I wrote would be regarded as a personal opinion. As I'm not a native speaker of English (I'm a Dutch guy living in Germany) I may not have full control over some of the subtleties of the language, even if I studied it for a while - it never crossed my mind that anything I wrote would be interpreted in any other way than a personal opinion. I have been taught to avoid using the 'I' word too much: maybe this caused my views to be misinterpreted as absolutes.
I do not believe in absolutes either.

Even my reply to MapleLeafSailor, that was mostly a reply to his challenge, I started with the words 'from my personal experience' - I took that as enough indication that what would follow was my personal opinion.

Again, I had the impression that I presented supporting evidence to my claims, waiting to be challenged - but as a result, nobody tried to prove me wrong on any of these arguments, and I was just told I sucked as an artist, and not as a bloody opinion either.

What I did expect was, that my opinions and views would be challenged, not that I would get a load of personal insults. I have no problems with you in that respect, but I found the reactions of Rattler and Hasdrubal infinitely more rude and arrogant than anything I had ever written (except for my previous post), without you reprimanding them.

It's all a matter of perception, maybe, but my previous decision remains: I feel too much hostility towards my views to keep hanging around in this forum after today: I've never experienced this level of personal abuse in any of the other forums I visited before: it cannot just be me.

Ratteler · Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2002 Posts: 553 Location: NYC

Maybe it is a translation problem.

You see, we Poser fans are especially sensitive to being put down just for using Poser.

We get it first from the rest of the 3D community. Then other art mediums.

So when you strayed from what you liked into why it was better, you stepped on toes that have been rigorously stomped on for fun, and got the harsh responce of some one who ALWAYS get their toes stepped on even if you just did it accidently.

Me, I like the best of any medium, and as a fan of the Dada surealism movment I say anything you claim is art, is.

Your tone suggested that simple because it was made in Poser it can't be art. I think everything that comes out of Poser is art, even if a a lot of it is extreamely medicore. Bad art is still art.

There is art in the inudstial design of your chair or Grafitti on a subway car.

It not the "I like this" that has some of us pissed off, but the "and that sucks" you felt the need to express.

Art is attacked in general by Censorship, and Political Correctness. We don't need in fighting because of the tools we choose to use.

Yes. A lot of Poser stuff is crap. I would say honestly, a disprotionatly large amount of it. This is because it an entry level tool. Like 3D crayons.

Once people get a handle on Poser they start to learn to model, and then render in different packages.

It might not be your tool of choice, but you COULD make art with a box of 64 Crayola crayons, right?

Marshall McLuhan's maxim, "The Medium is the Message" is a self fullfiling prophecy fuled by those who work in a particular medium allowing their message to abused by the mediums stigma.

Comic books have only recently started to be recognized as a distinct art medium.

You also couldhave looked around to see that this forum is as much a Poser/CGI message board as one dedicated to Comic books.

To come in here and insult Poser and CGI, is like me coming into a German Forum and accusing you all of being Nazi's.

Even if you ARE, it's not a proper place to do it, unless I'm looking to make trouble. (Troll).

This isn't the place to put down 3D as a medium.

Hasdrubal

I withdrew from this thread when it was starting to turn personal. At this point I'm amused where it's gone.

Sam's life in movie productions sounds like an unhappy farce comparable to being the one and only private in a top heavy army lead by a thousand generals. It's hardly ideal, although few of us lead ideal lives. I pity his soul, inspite of his narrow ideas on the definition of art. Eventually the wicked world may have it's way with him, (as it does to all of us.) When I was a kid Alvin Toffler called it "Future Shock".

It's interesting he mentioned Spielberg and Jackson. I've listened to both men in interviews saying they admired Harryhausen's work. They must have had good reasons for admiring a humble prop builder/animator. There probably wouldn't have been a "Jurassic Park", or a new "King Kong" without Harryhausen's influence and inovation. Jackson practically hero worships Harryhausen and O'brien. He even recreated a lost scene from the original King Kong using old fashioned hand-posed stop action models.

I've enjoyed works from both Speilberg and Jackson, but both of them seem to have taken the idea that everything should be done as a huge production too far. It's an approach that less skilled directors shouldn't copy. My favorite movies will always be the low budget 60's horror films by Roger Corman. Corman's Edgar Allen Poe based movies tended to recycle the same sets, same props, same writers, and same actors over and over, but they're all great movies that can be watched over and over. There's not always a need to start every project with a blank white page to create a film or art. (It does help to have Vincent Price doing all your evil deeds on screen. ) Corman's approach to films has similarities to maintaining a Poser library.

I would stress that comparisons between 2D illustration, and computer CGI are foolish due to the dissimilarity of the two media. Comparing Michaelangelo's David, to Andy Warhol's "Campbell's Soup" would be equally pointless. Each is capable of standing on it's own merits as art.

palmers · Forum Member Joined: Jun 07, 2002 Posts: 379

I'm on both sides here, if that helps.

Traditional drawing does require skills which need developing and practice, and that's where I always fell short. To be fair to me, I can draw better than a very few professional comics pencillers, but not as well as most, and not well enough not to want to burn the stuff the next day.

Using Poser and postwork well - and postwork is important, as Ratteler says - also takes practice and skill. It might be easier to practice because your PC generates less mess, but it still needs to be done. Talking about Poser use while explicitly excluding making your own models and morphs is a bit like talking about pencil drawing while stipulating that you can only use rulers and French curves: it's not realistic, and it's not true.

I can emulate Byrne and others using Poser and postwork, and I have in the past. My work, which is done entirely in 3D programmes - mostly Poser - and in digital postwork, is influenced by traditional comics art, not by 3D.

I can illustrate anything using Poser, 3D modellers and postwork. Yes I can. Yes I can.

Shrek is art.

On the other hand, who the hell cares if everyone looks down on Poser users? I am one, and it doesn't bother me.

IMP.
_________________
RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com

palmers · Forum Member Joined: Jun 07, 2002 Posts: 379

Here's a new angle.

I was reading the House Of Mystery reprint book last night, and started thinking about pride. The artists working for this title weren't working to retain an ongoing gig, because it wasn't one. But still, even if one could suggest that Gil Kane and Neal Adams are doing what they've always done (Gil for about thirty years already by this time, Neal for, I don't know, twelve?), there are artists like Alex Toth and Al Williamson doing meticulous, stylish, fine and time-consuming artwork... for what reason? Their work is so much better than most of what others were doing at the time that they could surely have worked faster at a more conventional level.

I humbly suggest that whatever tools you use, what makes the difference is the pride you take in your work. If you go the extra mile you stand a better chance of making art, whether the dirt gets on your fingers or on your hard drive.

IMP.
_________________
RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com

1sandman1

Hello Animotionites,

Well, the terms used in the title are both older terms used by old people. So, I vote that they are the same. Artists are artists, and tools are tools. (ref: artist tools) It seems that everything used for art is a tool to be used by an artist. How that artist uses that tool is the key to successful art.

So, art is art.

You can have favored mediums like oils, pastels, acrylics, computer imaging, or whatever, but the fact remains it is all art. Some kind of training (or intense study) must have taken place for artist to start making pro art. All budding artists lack something whether it be perspective, composition, anatomy, etc.. Practice and study will remedy these in time.

As far as digital tools and the classical tools, I have moved into the digital tools for various reasons including:
speed
ease of change
non messy
space

I believe as the generations run into the timeline of the future, digital art will become more and more the accepted medium. For example, how many actual cartoon movies have you seen lately? How many digital toon movies have you seen lately?

2 cents
Sandman

Ubald

Boy now I feel old, Old Vs New.. Well I would have to say for me, what ever I feel like using that day. I went to school for 2D & 3D and both
have there Highs and Lows, however they go hand in hand together. I agree that its really the artist, though there are great tools out there
Ive seen Paintings that cant be beat and digital
Images that cant be painted.So like the chicken
and the egg I cant say, some would say there is good artist and bad I say the ones we may think are bad just havent found thier tools yet
CHEERs to you all.....
P.S sorry about any spelling goofs Im an Artist not a writer............