I had every intention of starting the blog off on a friendly, generic, “Hi, I’m L and I’m an artaholic” note, but instead something much more interesting came along. Might as well start with a bang - let’s talk about laziness.
Anyone here heard of ImagineFX magazine? If you haven’t, and you are a digital fantasy artist of any level, all you need to know is that it is awesomeness in a magazine. It is one hundred and odd pages of goodies, information and instruction. Professional artists at the top of their game contribute interviews, tips, full tutorials and workshops in high, step by step detail with dozens of progress images. From the very basics to more advanced stuff. In every issue. If that’s not enough, every issue of the magazine comes with a DVD which has all the image files in high res, original .psds, free textures and brushes, demos of the latest software, virtual models that you can actually rotate to view from every angle and video tutorials. It costs just £5.99 (about $10USD). Now I’m just one person, but I think that’s pretty damn good.
Apparently, I am wrong. Here’s an email that ImagineFX recieved and printed in the November 2007 issue.
Not Good Enough
To encapsulate my current frustration with the magazine (and reason for letting my subscription expire): the instructional material is just not good enough. Don’t tease me with fantastic art – show me how to make it for myself!
The instructions often scratches the surface. The magazine should be more project based. There should be video screen captures on the DVD to explain how these wonderful artists are using the incredibly complicated software . There should be editable project files for every tutorial.
Maybe hire an educational consultant to help with a more structured approach to tutorials and cover some new ground. It’s really a shame because the magazine is so close to being really good.
JG
Right. Now I would have been sorely tempted to fire off a reply to this guy starting with something like, “Look, you whiny little -” and it’s not because he criticised the magazine. I think he’s wrong, but that’s not the point. It’s because he actually appears to be BLAMING the magazine for HIS failings as an artist.
“Don’t tease me with fantastic art – show me how to make it for myself!”
Teasing: Showing me artwork that has the nerve to be beyond my ability.
Apparently he believes that if IFX would just bring its tutorials up to HIS standards, he’d be able to duplicate this fantastic art. After all, the artists who created that work only did it by following some secret magical tutorials that they’re keeping quiet about. They certainly didn’t get to that level through years of hard work, love, and perseverence. They didn’t study their ideas of fantastic art and work things out for themselves. Who needs that crap? That takes effort. No, what you need is for someone to spoonfeed you THEIR process and you’ll be all set.
There should be video screen captures on the DVD to explain how these wonderful artists are using the incredibly complicated software .
Or here’s a crazy idea – you teach YOURSELF how to use the software! Groundbreaking, I know. In the (very polite) reply that IFX gave this guy, they explained that there simply wasn’t enough room to include everything in the magazine. That’s an understatement. What kind of pillock expects a £5.99 magazine to include a full instruction manual on Painter, Photoshop and every other program they might demonstrate? Not one of my program manuals for university cost lest than £18 or weighed less than a brick. Even if they cleared everything else out of the magazine (screwing over the majority of their readers) for several issues, it couldn’t be done. Stop being cheap and buy a damn manual. Or god forbid, actually play with the program and work out the functions for yourself.
There should be editable project files for every tutorial.
As in being able to go in and work from the original artist’s steps, their sketches, their templates? Being able to pick from their exact palettes and painting over their work? You know, these artists are already spending a lot of time coming up with inspiring, skillful images and documenting their process in a helluva lot of detail. They want people to learn. I’m guessing what they DON’T want is for a hundred copies of their original concept popping up all over the internet or people editing their original steps and claiming the result from their own. You want to make a copy? You eyeball, you study, you try and reproduce those techniques yourself and you LEARN from the process. What are you going to learn from painting by numbers? Tutorials and workshops show you ways to approach your OWN artwork, not how to duplicate someone else’s. And you know what? Copying doesn’t work. If you don’t work on your own skills, your paint-by-numbers will be a pale shadow to the original and you know it.
I have zero patience for artists who take NO responsibility for their own learning. They complain that if they have trouble with something, it must be someone else’s fault. The art teacher, the lecturer, the book. “I don’t learn that way,” they whine. “They’re going too fast. They’re going too slow. They’re not showing us the basics. They’re not being in depth enough.”
Let me be clear – if what you are learning from is not meeting your needs, it is YOUR responsibility to go out and do something about it. If you’re reading a book on concept art but you don’t understand perspective, go out and find a book that does cover perspective and read that first. If your life drawing class is skipping the basics and going right to the hard stuff, change to a beginner’s class or use your spare time to teach yourself the basics. What you don’t do is rely on one resource to teach you everything you want to know and then get pissy when you don’t turn into an artistic genius.
