Sigh. I understand that the OP wrote of art, but the original objecter in question meant CG art, not art in general.

If you claim to be a photographer, but you don't use a camera, you're not a photographer. You can't post oil paintings on a photography web gallery, right?  This is not in dispute, I assume, right?

If you claim to be a water color artist, but you photographed your image and used a Photoshop watercolor filter, then you can't post that in a water color artist gallery, right? Or no. Is this unclear for some reason?

OK - the CG artist community defines a CG artist as somebody who creates an image using content THEY CREATED. Period. The community known as CG artists gets to say what they mean by that.

People who do not agree with that are trying to say otherwise, and claim to be CG artists.

I'm not interested in the definition of art.

I am interested in the definition of CG artist. Which is what this is really about. So let's discuss that.

And I really don't mean to discuss CG artists. I mean, the interesting question here is this:

When an artist community (sect, subset, group, etc.) defines itself with a new term, and other people want to appropriate that term to confer upon themselves the honor and admiration that normally acrues to those for whom the term fits, without actually acquiring the skills necessary and without actually doing the work (but doing other work that falls outside the definition) then the big question is - what should happen?

CG artists define themselves around the idea that they can create anything from nothingness. A real CG artist (not a fake) can and does realize the vision by a God-like creative ability - to cause a shape to appear where none existed before. A CG artist does not "open a can of content" or "thaw a bag of content". They create, starting with vertices and edges, a shape that never existed before.

Some people want to argue about this definition. Why?

Just make up some other kind of art name involving a digital collage of 3D elements.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)