...I look at the work everyone is doing around here, and it just makes me feel small! The quality some of you guys are putting out is excellent! I just wish I had the creative talent, know-how, and time to create such interesting pieces of work! Mark, Clint, BitDaf, AZChip, hoborg, mclarsen, and too many more to count (not trying to leave anyone out...just can't remember everyone's name whose stuff I am impressed with)! Just wanted to through out props to all of the artists in this forum! HG...

You shouldn't feel small. I know how you feel, though. I've been a graphic designer/illustrator most of my life and am constantly intimidated by the quality and vision of other artists' work until I remember that no matter how "good" a person is there is always someone better and someone worse. In other words, you are always in the middle. Besides, those terms of "worse", "good", "better", etc. are all subjective and not everyone agrees with them on any particular piece. Technical prowess comes only through practice, practice, practice - it's something anyone can learn to do. "Vision" is what usually sets apart the "great" artists - they use the same tools and yet, they somehow come up with greater looking things. Vision is unique to each person, and that is what you need to tap when creating. Your experiences which have shaped your way of looking at the world are unique to you - developing that combined with practice, practice, practice and getting comfortable with your tools will allow "your" great art to come out. Just a small rant about art which you can take with a grain of salt, but I believe we are all artists looking to express ourselves in one way or another and the key is discovering our personal vision.

Yea, what he said.

That is very true, every time you look at a piece of art, movie, or listen to music, speach read books, view landscape, ride in a car, airplane etc.... You are partaking in the vision of another person. As humans our imaginations are as boundless as our abilities. (some will disagree) Nontheless if you think you will not be able to do it, you won't but if you do like me, I KNOW I CAN DO IT, you will. Most artist here work very hard and some not-so hard to put out great stuff and on the web. There are a variety of tools used to ease the production of our visions. I personally use may use up to seven different apps to finish one scene that another person could do with a single app. All I am saying is find the tools that you are comfortable with and learn them. Don't get Carrara or Lightwave just because someone else uses it. Get it, try it on for size. Is it the right interface for you, does it meet your needs? Then ask the other questions after you decide on solutions. The question I ask myself everytime I sit down to begin work is "What do I see." Then I break it down into detail. ie: I see a car, I see tires on the car, I see threads in the tires, I see goodyear on the side of the tire. Breaking down your vision is the path to detail and that is something that I think we all agree with.

Here is an example of a how-to with the the right tools at your disposal, Take the tire example I mentioned above, How will you create it? Some will say, "Start with a Torus" while others may start with a cylinder with a boolean subtraction from the middle. I personally do it differently. Shroud's tire with tread (radial) 1. I decide on the circumference of my tire and make a box equal length to the circumference. 2. Then I will decide on the width creating the box with more than 32 segments. 3. Then I would go into photoshop and create a displacement map of the tread that I want or some real tread that I scanned and grayscaled from a picture. 4. I apply my displacement map and delete the redundant planes and polygons. 5. I use a boolean subtract lengh-wise the box so I can make the tire hollow for future manipulation ie a blowout! 6. I decide on pertrusion near the rim or no pertrusion at all. 7. I bend the box 360 degrees into the donut shape of the a tire 8. I weld points and merge polygons and wala! a tire with designer treads There you have it. My way in 8 steps which is just as effective as the torus and the boolean cylinder method. All of this comes from experience and knowing the tools you are working with. Good Luck Shroud

Don't let it get to you, HG! I doubt it's a talent thing- more than likely it's a time thing. I'm flattered you put me in with the others! See...I guess we all feel a bit like you do! I thought "The Invocation" was awesome! So it's got to be a time issue- Thanks Daf

HG, Your work is fine. It gets better and better. I get down on my work a lot. I am a Type A person. A creative Type A is a scary thing. I do music and art. I am never satisfied with anything I do. I always see ways to improve it and never seem to feel my work is done. I have learned when to draw the line, step back and say OK Im done. ;) One thing I can say is practice and play with things. See what you can come up with. Art is very subjective. I've seen some "Art" that is suppose to be ground breaking and I personaly didnt like it. The learning curve on digital art is steap as it is with any type of "Fine Art". Practice, practice, ask questions and continue to learn. I learn something new every day of my life. :) Keep up the good work HG!!!!!! Clint

Clint, I know exactly what you mean! I am a perfectionist, so I am always my hardest critic, and never satisfied either... I was piddling a while ago with the terrain editor though, and discovered something kinda cool. Don't know what the hell I'm gonna do with it, but I'll post something with a sample pic later tonite... 8^) BTW, Thanks for all the supportive comments guys. I wasn't THAT down on myself earlier, but was just commenting on the quality of everybody else's work, (especially the realism!) and wondering if I could get to that level of quality with the limited amount of practice time I have... But I really do appreciat the comments. It just goes to show how supportive this forum and the whole damn Renderosity Community is! HG...

This forum is the best thing that could have happened to me headgamer. I have learned so much since I became a member, and just like clint I'm learning something new everyday. My art work is not eye capturing but, it's all part of setting your goals (to get better at where your heart belongs) 3D animation and graphics design. Dam!!! it feels good just to write those words and be part of this forum. I'll be the first to admit "I AM ADDICTTED TO RENDEROSITY"!!, I'm here looking for something new "LIKE WHITE ON RICE" and it feels great. With that in mind i would like to take this time to say "HAIL TO CLINT"!! the forum moderator and Hail to renderosity. Yes!! Yes!! it's sad and true even us big guys break down in tears. In plane english I Love this place and I love you guys.

(big grin) Thanks Serge. Im glad we can be here to help share ideas and images. I really enjoy working here. ;) Clint

I feel like I'm late in joining this thread, but here it goes, anyway. First - HG, thanks very much for putting me in the company you did; what a self-esteem boost! Second - what has been said above is very on-target. I feel that art is something that comes from inside; if you feel something, once you have the hang of a paintbrush, video camera, MIDI music studio, 3D animation package or whatever tool you chose, you can make art. To me, art is about emotion. Mark, for example, evokes emotion with his work -- the skull in the diver's helmet or the jazz album covers, they all evoke emotion. Third - this forum has been incredible for me. I'd just been playing around with RD3D, but seeing the work people here have been doing has inspired me to do more. It's inspired me to try harder, and to pull more out of the package than I knew was there. To quote Homer Simpson, "woo hoo!" - Chip