Talent
Author
Can someone with no artistic talent learn how to create awesome digital art?
I love the artwork of digitalblasphemy and savinoff, but is it learnable?
I would say that anything is learnable, talent will just make learning less work. There are aspects of art that aren't as 'artistic', but more parametric and logic based (proceedural texturing, for example). If you're interested in doing art, I'd find a portion that's interesting to you. Go, delve into that area and see what it's really like to do it. If that works, then stick with it. If it turns out you don't like that part, then repeat the process with some other facet of artwork.
Instruo> I would tend to agree with you, but you can't learn everything. when I see what this guy does, there's something else than technique: http://www.stevengiesler.com/
Well, you can learn a lot of it. But can you learn how to adjust leading and kerning correctly? Someone trained could pick out two colors that would look good together, but can he or she come up with a creative plan for using them together?
For realistic work, much of it can be simply learned, but there has to be some talent involved, even just to work from an object or photograph.
A lot of people just refer to it as having the 'eye.'
Of course, on the other hand, even someone with some amazing abilites couldn't draw what's on savinoff without some amazing skills to go with it. That stuff is just plain tough.
For realistic work, much of it can be simply learned, but there has to be some talent involved, even just to work from an object or photograph.
A lot of people just refer to it as having the 'eye.'
Of course, on the other hand, even someone with some amazing abilites couldn't draw what's on savinoff without some amazing skills to go with it. That stuff is just plain tough.
Ehh, everyone I know IRL tells me I've got a lot of artistic talent, but I couldn't come anywhere close to the artwork in most modern games. I have all these nifty ideas in my head, but getting them on paper is another thing entirely heh.
If you want to see what I mean, check out
http://www.angelfire.com/ks/insanity42/artwork/. I think it pretty much sucks hardcore. (Most was drawn a long time ago, with the more recent stuff sucking more since I got out of practice heh.)
Maybe my crappy artwork will make you feel better, hehe. :)
/edit: How come it says I'm allowed to use html, but html links don't work? bleah.
If you want to see what I mean, check out
http://www.angelfire.com/ks/insanity42/artwork/. I think it pretty much sucks hardcore. (Most was drawn a long time ago, with the more recent stuff sucking more since I got out of practice heh.)
Maybe my crappy artwork will make you feel better, hehe. :)
/edit: How come it says I'm allowed to use html, but html links don't work? bleah.
You're addressing many things in one question, essentially.
Yes, you can learn how to be that good would be the short answer. The long answer is that you won't get there now, tomorrow, in a year, and most likely it'll take you years before you can be as good as that guy if you are just now deciding that you want to be an artist.
It's evident that from the portfolio of the guy that does the FF movie and the Matrix short that detail is his greatest strength. An eye for detail in a person isn't usually simply an aspect of that person, it's more than likely their whole personality. Chances are a person like that is really meticulous about what they do, and probably really anal and clean about everything in their life. Heck, some of these sorts of people are just obsessive compulsive (I myself am, and I am also incredibly anal about everything I do; if it's not perfect, then it's not worth seeing). This is their personality, and as such, their life-style. And every detail, no matter how subtle, is just as important as the most pronounced detail, because sometimes the small details could make or break a work.
Sometimes people that admire this sort of attention to detail and wonder how they do that (possibly yourself) are going to do just that and wonder. Other people like myself are going to look at those sorts of renders and make connections, I would make a connection between my best abilities to draw life-like and his models which could almost be mistaken for photos, and I'm going to think, "Yeah, I haven't really paid much attention to the shape of the ligiment behind the knees when the joints are perfectly straightened out in my drawings." and yes, that was my first thought when I clicked on a render that showed the back of someone's knees. It's purely observation and a keen eye. There's a difference between seeing something and telling me it's a tree and seeing something and telling me what it is that makes that the tree it is; how the bark overlaps, it's texture, etc. That sort of a mentallity could be easily seen if you ask these two different people to draw a tree. One might draw something representational of a tree so everyone could tell it's a tree, while the other might go into detail in their tree, or even ask detail like "Well, what sort of tree do you want? There's hundreds of them and hundreds of ways to draw them."
I think this level of attention is the first and most necessary thing required to being able to do that sort of thing. Because afterwards, it's really just up to you to know what you're doing to be able to put it together. And it's not like it always requires the best knowledge in said program, either. I went to a high school where students were usually either modellers, programmers, or designers if they were doing something in computers. You could give a senior there that took a few design courses Photoshop, a program they'd been using for the past four years extensively and by then knows the ins and outs of it. On the same token, you could give a freshman Photoshop and while he/she might say "Photoshop?" they'll probably create a better design, even if it's with the marquee tool alone. That's a true story, incase you were wondering.
The advantage to learning a program to do this stuff in after you already know exactly everything it is you want to do is that if you know the program, doing what it is you have in mind will be a lot easier, time-saving and efficient than if you didn't know the program.
Also, please keep in mind that when you hear art & design, don't think they're interchangable words. Art is one thing while design is another. And design in itself can be a very logical process as well, because essentially design is the practice of making something as aesthetically pleasing as you possibly can. Doing that is really something that comes down to a few principles of design, which you could apply to as a science, but of course, any one of these principles could be contradicted or ignored, and it could still work. Hence why they're principles of design, and not laws of design.
I do think that-- even if you skipped everything I've said-- the most important thing I have said is that to make art or design with heavy detail you don't need to simply learn it, you have to live it. Nothing annoys me more than when I'm drawing or making a design or something and someone comes up and says, "I wish I could draw like that, but I'm a bad drawer." because it makes them sound like they think it's some sort of innate ability that they either have or don't and they started and stopped once when they were 15. When in fact, I draw probably everyday of my life, and have been doing so for my entire life. And if you do something for 20 years every day of your life, you better hope you're good at it.
P.S. Don't forget: awesome, definable art always requires a good imagination, but I couldn't tell you for the life of me how to get one of those; you gotta figure it out yourself.
Yes, you can learn how to be that good would be the short answer. The long answer is that you won't get there now, tomorrow, in a year, and most likely it'll take you years before you can be as good as that guy if you are just now deciding that you want to be an artist.
It's evident that from the portfolio of the guy that does the FF movie and the Matrix short that detail is his greatest strength. An eye for detail in a person isn't usually simply an aspect of that person, it's more than likely their whole personality. Chances are a person like that is really meticulous about what they do, and probably really anal and clean about everything in their life. Heck, some of these sorts of people are just obsessive compulsive (I myself am, and I am also incredibly anal about everything I do; if it's not perfect, then it's not worth seeing). This is their personality, and as such, their life-style. And every detail, no matter how subtle, is just as important as the most pronounced detail, because sometimes the small details could make or break a work.
Sometimes people that admire this sort of attention to detail and wonder how they do that (possibly yourself) are going to do just that and wonder. Other people like myself are going to look at those sorts of renders and make connections, I would make a connection between my best abilities to draw life-like and his models which could almost be mistaken for photos, and I'm going to think, "Yeah, I haven't really paid much attention to the shape of the ligiment behind the knees when the joints are perfectly straightened out in my drawings." and yes, that was my first thought when I clicked on a render that showed the back of someone's knees. It's purely observation and a keen eye. There's a difference between seeing something and telling me it's a tree and seeing something and telling me what it is that makes that the tree it is; how the bark overlaps, it's texture, etc. That sort of a mentallity could be easily seen if you ask these two different people to draw a tree. One might draw something representational of a tree so everyone could tell it's a tree, while the other might go into detail in their tree, or even ask detail like "Well, what sort of tree do you want? There's hundreds of them and hundreds of ways to draw them."
I think this level of attention is the first and most necessary thing required to being able to do that sort of thing. Because afterwards, it's really just up to you to know what you're doing to be able to put it together. And it's not like it always requires the best knowledge in said program, either. I went to a high school where students were usually either modellers, programmers, or designers if they were doing something in computers. You could give a senior there that took a few design courses Photoshop, a program they'd been using for the past four years extensively and by then knows the ins and outs of it. On the same token, you could give a freshman Photoshop and while he/she might say "Photoshop?" they'll probably create a better design, even if it's with the marquee tool alone. That's a true story, incase you were wondering.
The advantage to learning a program to do this stuff in after you already know exactly everything it is you want to do is that if you know the program, doing what it is you have in mind will be a lot easier, time-saving and efficient than if you didn't know the program.
Also, please keep in mind that when you hear art & design, don't think they're interchangable words. Art is one thing while design is another. And design in itself can be a very logical process as well, because essentially design is the practice of making something as aesthetically pleasing as you possibly can. Doing that is really something that comes down to a few principles of design, which you could apply to as a science, but of course, any one of these principles could be contradicted or ignored, and it could still work. Hence why they're principles of design, and not laws of design.
I do think that-- even if you skipped everything I've said-- the most important thing I have said is that to make art or design with heavy detail you don't need to simply learn it, you have to live it. Nothing annoys me more than when I'm drawing or making a design or something and someone comes up and says, "I wish I could draw like that, but I'm a bad drawer." because it makes them sound like they think it's some sort of innate ability that they either have or don't and they started and stopped once when they were 15. When in fact, I draw probably everyday of my life, and have been doing so for my entire life. And if you do something for 20 years every day of your life, you better hope you're good at it.
P.S. Don't forget: awesome, definable art always requires a good imagination, but I couldn't tell you for the life of me how to get one of those; you gotta figure it out yourself.
Quote:Original post by onyxflameBecause you clearly don't know HTML. An HTML link works using the anchor tag, like so: GDev.Net.
Ehh, everyone I know IRL tells me I've got a lot of artistic talent, but I couldn't come anywhere close to the artwork in most modern games. I have all these nifty ideas in my head, but getting them on paper is another thing entirely heh.
If you want to see what I mean, check out
http://www.angelfire.com/ks/insanity42/artwork/. I think it pretty much sucks hardcore. (Most was drawn a long time ago, with the more recent stuff sucking more since I got out of practice heh.)
Maybe my crappy artwork will make you feel better, hehe. :)
/edit: How come it says I'm allowed to use html, but html links don't work? bleah.
<a href="http://www.gamedev.net/">GDev.Net</a>.//You can add nifty other things, like a target//window, in this case opening in a new window.<a href="http://www.google.com/" target="_blank">Google.com</a>.
Ermm no, when I tried the html way of linking, it chopped off everything including and after my link. I guess the ikonboard way doesn't work either though. :P
link that probably doesn't work
/edit: Ehh, maybe I typoed in my last post. Oh well, it's not like my posts are worth reading anyway. :P
link that probably doesn't work
/edit: Ehh, maybe I typoed in my last post. Oh well, it's not like my posts are worth reading anyway. :P
Dan of 76> totally agree with you, that's what I meant with "there's something more than technique" (a bit shorter and much less explicit of course ^^)
I tend to react the way you described too :)
I tend to react the way you described too :)
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