I'm finding myself no longer happy with anything I Bryce.  It all looks cheesy to me.  First I don't have the time I seemed to once have to devote to "projects"

Secondly, I don't seem to have the computer power to grind out the type things I want to achieve anymore.  Maybe my standards are higher.  Maybe I'm expecting to visually compete with all those wonderfully detailed and lifelike models everyone seems to be using now.  I want to create what is mine, not just positioning cameras on someone else's background, sky, props, models, etc.  (I am not mud slinging those who can achieve super images with the forementioned items.  I just would rather called it "mine". 

How about some insight from the masters out there...

How can I improve beyond "hobbyist" without quiting my job and enrolling in a graphic art school?  I have two other mouths to feed. 

Help me, friends.  I'm in a funk.

Sent you an IM

You can make planty in Bryce but you need time...not like Poser and Max models but inough good to make a nice pictures.

Your time is limited, but that shouldn't put you off. Decide on a project, visualize what you want to create. Then just do it a bit at a time. I tend to create each aspect of my scenes in seperate files, then I copy and paste each bit into a final scene. This will help with computer power troubles.

If you are hoping for an "insight from the masters" from me... you are going to be waiting an awful long time.  I doubt I'll ever be in the master category and I bet a lot of the "real Masters" in this forum feel uncomfortable with claiming the title. I do feel qualified to speak about funk however, if you'll accept that.

Lots of artists are dissatisfied with their work. I've fiddled and fiddled with scenes, adding another bit until the program bogged down, only to find that I've complicated it and lost the focus of the scene. Sometimes enough is as good as it gets and just pushing won’t buy you anymore.

Avoid Deadlines. The monthly challenge is great but it can be frustrating. I found myself pushing other scenes aside for the sake of competing in the community. Now I jump in sometimes and not others. I have scenes like a TARDIS interior that is taking several months. I have a few that are sitting and may never get finished. It’s very liberating to have a few I can actually say, “So What” to. They may never get finished. The pressure I put on my self to finish everything is gone.

Sometimes a cigar isn’t just a cigar. Art is expression. You may be using it as an outlet instead of dealing with something else in your life. Solve that problem and suddenly the art is more meaningful even if the skill level hasn’t changed.

Back to the Basics. You can’t go to art school but it would probably be easy to spend 5 minutes a week on a beginner course. I grew up with a kit called “John Nagy Learn to Draw.” It covered the basics starting with shading on simple cubes, cones, and spheres. Michaels or AC Moore will probably have some kind of basic instruction set.

I’ve had lots of Bryce scenes where the sunset sky was great but everything on the ground was bright green. Learning what the shadow, sky dome, and fog color do to a scene is as important as the model complexity. Instead of going for the big nebula, try playing with a simple grey cube for a while.

Do what you haven’t done. I see lots of straight forward shots and a few looking down in your gallery. Have you ever tried pointing the camera up? You don’t use a lot of characters. DAZ studio is free. Maybe do a crowd of people or a city scene with hundreds. How about a man parachuting from one of those planes with the camera tilted and no ground visible. Maybe dig out Glacier Gorge and put the camera right on the slope and a man on skis haulin it down the mountain. A lot of your images are way back, voyeuristic, almost telephoto. You participate less humanly in your renders from a little in “Victoria Falls” to almost none now. Getting up close in an image to a character adds a lot of emotional punch to the piece. If you commit to being closer you can expect more feeling in return from your work.

Misery loves company? It's been almost a year since I finished anything. Everything looks, as you say, cheesy about half-way through. The point has now been reached where I wouldn't know where to start a scene. Yesterday it hit me there was no reason to finish anything. Other people can do everything much better, everything has already been done, and, basically, I have nothing to say. Then my sister requests an image for her birthday. A gloomy, depressing image, which she isn't going to get. But now there's a 'reason' to do something: cheer up sis. So, maybe taking some time to think about what's important to you, then re-reading what electroglyph wrote, an image that demands completion will appear?

As an art teacher I can say with supreme confidence that no artist is ever 'finished' with a picture.It's just deadlines that get in the way of imagination.
Dissatisfaction is the constant companion of any artist,Master or amateur,hobbyist  or professional. Picasso very often would wake up and scrape away the previous day's work.

However others who view the work in the majority will quite often say a picture looks terrific because they haven't been privy to what was going on in the artist's mind as they were working the picture and have no idea of the artist's inner 'visualisation'.

At the end of the day sometimes less is more though.It might be a good idea to ask yourself IF you  have gone a kitchen sink too far.

Thanks Skiwillgee for asking this question. I'm in the same boat. I don't dare look at my gallery, cause it's been so long since I posted anything. I haven't a clue when the last time I felt creative was. I'm not sure why, but somehow I lost the "feel" for doing Bryce.
I hope you get inspiration.
One of my biggest frustrations with Bryce has been making materials, only to have them look totally different in the scene from when I created them in the mat lab, or when the lighting was changed.
Good luck and lets see something wonderful and new from you soon!  :biggrin:

I'm reminded of a previous thread about keeping things simple.

I usually spend around a day on a scene, and I usually create what interests me, so that always makes it fun.

Here a thing........ Think about something that you are interested in. Build an object (I didn't think I could construct the windmill i've just finished, it was a little frustrating at times, but I managed to finish it) and then create a theme with it. I plan to create quite a few 'windmill' scnes before I start a new theme.

One last point, if it looks cheesy, then it probably is. Try something different... like say what ICM is doing at the moments. Sometimes just rendering a ball with perfect textures and perfect lighting is all it takes to produce something excellent. Just think of the finished product, instead of the road it takes to achieve it.

Everything that has already been said is excellent...

I'd just like to add that You are not Alone.. :)

Wow, I never expected such an outpouring of help.  Y'all are the greatest. 

Random replies to you:

Electroglyph, your response is most helpful, not only in it's suggestions of  "enlivening" the scene but more so on just getting back to what I enjoy and not pressured to finish something that really shouldn't be finished. 

Rod, I got the IM.  I'll be in touch.

I really got discouraged trying to do something for the Extreme challenge.  I've two super ideas but can't make it work.  The advice given here has me satisfied with two mats I was able to achieve and just screw the rest of the image.  I will be satisfied with the mats and the knowledge I gained.  It was the 24hr render times only to discover the finished render just didn't work at all that takes the fun away.

PS
I had a John Nagy Learn to Draw when I was a kid.  It taught me shading.

I'll post the good portions of the effort to this thread. 

from wikipedia *
At higher pressures, methane clathrates remain stable at temperatures up to 18 °C. The average methane clathrate hydrate composition is 1* mole of methane for every 5.75 moles of water, though this is dependent on how many methane molecules "fit" into the various cage structures of the water lattice. The observed density is around 0.9 g/cm³. One liter of methane clathrate solid would therefore contain, on average, 168 liters of methane gas (at STP).

I squeezed this out of Bryce.

Ice chunk two identical objects.  One nested inside the other.  The outside uses fuzzy material,  the inner one is normal.  Render time was 12hrs just to plop render the  cube.

Wow, those ice cubes look awesome.

Agreed, the cubes in the glass are really convincing!

Quote - I was happy with the ice cubes within the glass.

Fantastic!

Can't see what all the fuss is about.... get back to work!!, those are amazing!

Well, geez. It's not you that's crumbling. You're pushing Bryce to the limits of its render engine. The second I saw "fuzzy material over regular"... The result, however, is excellent! Waiting a day to see if anything needs adjusting, then another after tweeks, and another... can pretty much kill any desire to complete an image.

For me, I don't do artwork until I either have something to say or an image comes to mind.  Then I wait for the motivation to get me to do it.  Hence why I have a few gaps in my portfolio of multiple years.  LOL

Right now I'm working on an image, I'm going to post the WIP that has me bloody frustrated because I can't get it the way I want.  I'm learning a lot of tricks of using primatives in better ways, but I'm still not happy. 

It's been rendering for 20 hours+ and this is still only a single source light. :c(  I don't want to imagine fuzzy anything.  God help me when I have to start adding mist.

Please keep in mind you are seeing what was good after all that manipulating not the whole shambles.  Thank you for the nice comments though.  I guess it would just feel nice to do a complete scene that I felt showed some measurable improvement over the last couple years. 

I think just venting has helped a lot.

It is always good to try and improve with each work - BUT - that is not the primary goal! The primary is to enjoy the creative process of making your image's statement. What i really want to say, is enjoy the image, don't sweat the need for improvement, it will happen.

As your comment: "Please keep in mind you are seeing what was good after all that manipulating not the whole shambles. " states, getting something good doesn't happen in a flash, it takes lots of work and trials, it also helps to look at things differently, and I feel that the advice to try a different camera angle, is good advice.

I also found that looking at specifics is better than looking at the overall effect, by that I mean that if I look at the overall effect of an image by someone like say... rochr, I just feel miserable if I compare that to my own stuff, well you would wouldn't you?

But if I look at what (in general) he has done that I haven't - then I can learn something.  Like he has more little (usually fairly simple in themselves) items scattered about in his scenes, creating background detail, his textures are generally better, and also use small details to add to the general impression.  He is also an artist that consistently uses different camera angles.

I cannot emulate him, but I can improve my own scenes to make them better than they are, and my current project is aiming for just this effect.

So my main suggestion is, look at the art you most admire and wish to approach, figure out what the major differences are, and attack those differences in your own work.  Usually one by one works best.

And I really like both your methane cathrate and your ice cubes.  Are you entering that in the challenge this month?  That methane would be an excellent candidate.

Fran said, *And I really like both your methane cathrate and your ice cubes.  Are you entering that in the challenge this month?  That methane would be an excellent candidate.

Naw, (I have already entered a cheesy one) I was attempting a second scene to enter and it was the Methane flame.  I was satisfied with the flame I cooked up. But it seemed to simple as a stand alone render. 

I am happy now.  No more funk.   Now the BIG idea I would have liked to do was an winter urban fire scene, complete with fire engines, hoses, burned out and smoldering tenant building, with huge ice sickles and ice encased stuff from all the water freezing on power lines, poles, awnings, etc...    But I best leave that to a master like Rochr or you.

eyes bug out

Huh?  I hope you don't mean me when you say "..I best leave that to a master like Rochr or you."

Rochr maybe, but there's no way I'm anywhere near his class.

.....I wonder if such a scene would be possible?  I don't mean Rochr's standard, but just getting the elements you describe together?

Unfortunately my Bryce on the laptop is somehow broken, don't know why and re-downloading it and re-installing it hasn't fixed it, so.... shrug

P.S. I'd really like to know how you did that flame...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1651661

@fran

I used the installed Atmospherics/Cosmic-Volume/Nebula flame mat as a starter.  I applied it to three spheres. and changed the ambiance color, base density, defuse, etc to make it very wispy and the color I wanted.  Each sphere got a different treatment by varying the ambiance colors and densities accordingly.  Notice I had to cheat the positioning of the spheres to prevent the usual edge problems when playing with volumetrics.