kobaltkween opened this issue on May 18, 2007 · 102 posts
kobaltkween posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 2:26 AM
ok, let me further clarify a few things. what i'm seeing is work far below the quality of the poser work being criticized. way, way below. in originality, in technical ability, in composition, and most certainly in terms of use of light. so debates about comparable quality are off the table as far as i'm concerned. that is, the conversation will go where it will and that's fine. what i'm talking about is literally seeing stuff i don't think is very good at all and that being praised or encouraged, while the same people speak disparagingly of poser work i consider far superior. so i'm not getting into any debate about quality.
while i realize this is totally subjective, and i wouldn't begin to say i have the eyes of a professional illustrator, painter or cg artist, i think pjz99 can attest to the fact that i don't think any old poser render is automatically perfect or even good.
as for ps postwork: just about every painted image i've seen at cg society lists photoshop. about 90% of the 3d images i've seen list it as well, along with maya, max, lightwave or other 3d programs. perhaps i'm looking at the wrong ones, but they tend to actually be the highlighted "best" ones.
my point is this: i see mediocre or badly painted work, or a mediocre or anatomically ludicrous mesh, and i see people give advice, encouragement, and general praise. i see poser come up, and then i see specific outstanding artists criticized that, as far as i can see, blows their work out of the water and is occassionally in the same genre (e.g., fantasy illustrations). i've seen this many, many times. i have never searched for it. i don't know why you haven't seen it, but just in casually browsing at various places, i've seen it several times. many members took part each time, and most times not one member chimed in with a more balanced approach. conversely, each time this comes here, at least one person brings up: "but most poser artwork isn't very good," another brings up, "but poser is very limited, " and so on, even if, as in this thread, such general issues aren't a part of the point.
so it's interesting to me, and what i wanted to know, if you haven't seen this bias. that said, i'm not getting upset over a few trolls. i'm seeing general conversations denigrating poser in general, and some denigrating specific works that are far and away better than any of those complaining. i'm seeing people lie about using poser meshes as a base for really great work, and that work being roundly praised until they're "outed." i'm seeing actual site rules singling poser (and occassionally bryce) out for critical review. none that i've seen have rules about yet another badly composed render of something that vaguely looks like some movie or tv star, yet another extreme and unrealistically translucent use of maya's skin shader, or another female figure shaped as if by a someone's whose only experience with females was a slightly melted barbie. or any of the other myriad problems i've seen in the cg world- both 3d and 2d. and frankly, it's all just time learning a skill. how is learning to paint properly any different than learning to model properly? sorry, but i don't see less talent and artistry in addy's work than those who cover the same themes over and over again. let me see if i can name them:
i love a lot of cg, but i see very, very, very little that is more a matter of vision and creativity than a learned skill. most is the same stuff over and over, with no risks and nothing unexpected, but occassionally executed with incredible skill . so i don't buy that somehow working in maya is more than a technical skill, but that's all that painting realistically is. i greatly admire technical skill. i think discipline and hard work are greatly admirable attributes, and you have to have both to get good at anything.
as for originality: the present cover of "essence: the face," (and what i've seen in the preview of all of the contents) looks _ precisely_ like a custom morph(s) of v3, imho. especially looking at maria and model by janek .i personally find that the cg world follows mainstream media pretty closely, so i very rarely see looks so unique that just about any standard white female of decent quality couldn't suffice as a base. the same way most actresses are often so similar as to be almost interchangable, especially with dye jobs. not that the myriad different takes on pretty white (or asian) female aren't wonderful and beautiful, each in their own way. in the same way that natalie portman and jessica alba are awfully beautiful in very different ways. but neither is so unique looking that fygomatic couldn't reproduce both them, as well as many other actresses, with v3's face.
and i'm not "ragging" on people who can model. and i'm not saying, "woe is me." what i'm saying is i am witnessing a huge double standard, where quality is not even vaguely the point of comparison, the tool is. frankly, i've seen some paintings that were praised that could and should have used poser or some other reference to get the foreshortening and shadows right. and honestly, i'm not even complaining about it. i'm certainly not talking about a review of my own work, which isn't even vaguely in the neighborhood of cgsociety quality. i'm not saying squat about the quality of the applications people use. and i've seen tons of merchants post who use any number of high-end tools with marvelous skill, and who exhibit purely golden personalities that encourage and inspire rather than belittle and discourage.
to make an example: i once had a lawyer friend tell me that lawyers on tv are ridiculous because not only could women not wear such absurdly short skirts, only 3 colors of suit were ever acceptable in court: black, blue and grey. that's it. no leeway (according to her). so it wasn't: most people who wear brightly colored suits make bad arguments. it was simply: this is the norm, step outside of it and you're toast. i know from anecdotal evidence that this isn't so fixed with "poser" figures (quotes because figures made in lightwave or max, with textures done in deep paint, and rendered in carrara or cinema4d really don't have any association with poser other than the community where it's popular). thefixer mentioned his jobs, i've seen other's post about the money they make doing book covers, i've seen wolf359 say he works professionally with sanctumart figures, m2 and v2, and multiple "poser" works made it into exotique 2 (i think i last counted about 8 in the book preview, with sarsa, addy and phlox being the only artists i've identified). but i've also seen strong bias and double-standards from whole communities. so i'm trying to get a feel for how blurry the line is and where it lies.
Conniekat8 - i don't see where you get off ridiculing my question as a rite of passage. if you haven't seen the threads against poser at CGTalk, you must not be looking. i browse there very occassionally, and i've encountered them multiple times. and it's like you didn't even bother to read my original post, just glanced at the subject of the thread, and jumped to a lot of conclusions. for that reason i will repost two paragraphs i consider significant:
Quote - let me preface this by saying i do believe that making your own stuff means that it will have a more personal feel. and while i think a lot of time and effort in high end apps goes to reinventing life in the same mold, standard pretty girl or bad boy portraits, and most of it is just as derivative if more skilled than your standard poser work, i do acknowledge that making your own stuff means you can implement your own ideas and your own styles more thoroughly than if you just combine pre-existing elements. i think discussions about using premade or autogenerated content in any application is valid. and i do think that since price of professional tools generally keeps them out of the hands of hobbiests, and poser is mostly used by hobbiests, the average skill and creativity of works in high end apps is greater than the average poser work as it should be. professionals should, on average, out-perform hobbiests. so i'm not trying to make a whole case about creativity and tools.
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so i went to look at the galleries of these vaunted artists that think addy's work is only passing ok, and i was kind of shocked to see pretty poor work. one person had really stiff, mediocre painted work, another just postworked photos in very boring ways. i looked more in the galleries, and was seriously underwhelmed. and what got me was that exactly the same qualities they criticized in poser work- stiffness, incorrect anatomy, etc. - applied strongly to their own.