New User August Contest Inquiry

DAZ_ann0314

As promised, here is the thread to ask how you felt the August Contest went. We are wanting to try some new things on the "Free Months" that may help with different skills not necessarily covered in other months.

I know the August Contest had a bit of an akward start but as it went on it seemed to go well. So my questions are:

1) Did you enjoy the new spin on the month? If so, what about it did you enjoy or what do you feel you learned from it?
2) If you didn't enjoy it, is there anything that may have improved it for you?
3) What topics do we not cover in the current monthly contests that you feel are foundational that you would like to see potentially covered?

Thank you all for taking the time to look at this and to answer, I look forward to reading your feedback

Coryllon

As a general rule: I do not like if someone says "this must be your inspiration," or, "improve on something I have done." The former shuts down any creativity I have and the latter is like remaking a an iconic song, it can never be better just speak to someone new. It's the reason I obtained from the contest for the month. Feel free to do those if you like. I am certain other a had fun and enjoyed themselves, I just couldn't get behind it.

DAZ_ann0314

The month was mostly about giving feedback and potentially helping to see our own work the way we look at others (sometimes when someone works on an image they can get a sort of tunnel vision and in that process lose site of what they are trying to achieve) It can be easier to spot issues like that in someone else's work, which is why we gave this a shot.

I do appreciate your feedback and will take it under advisement. It could just be that it is a topic there is no good way to "do". I sort of knew it would be somewhat strange when we tried it.

richardandtracy

I am sorry to disagree with you, DAZ_ann, as someone who would have liked to take part, I have to say it felt entirely different from what you said. These are my feelings about it:

1. I am very unsure of my own artistic ability, or if I even have any. I am comfortable with tangible stuff, I'm an engineer; But intangibles like artistic taste and ability are very difficult - how can I measure, apply, duplicate, simplify and de-skill so an incompetent like me can do something with a little merit? Trying to get me to criticize the images of someone I generally respect for their image quality is a superb way of getting me to dry up entirely. How can I, with my tiny hoard of knowledge, dare to criticize someone with so much proven talent?
2. Asking said impressive people to create less impressive images so they can be pulled apart leaves me with an artistic quandry akin to what I feel with modern art. Is it me and my lack of 'taste', or is the image trash? What subtlety have I missed that makes me feel it's trash? How could such good artists produce trash?
3. I was being told to be inspired by images that I had not the remotest connection to. They left me deeply uninspired, and it would have been zero fun to work with. Ain't going to happen.
4. Telling me afterwards that my feelings are incorrect, as Coryllon above was, is probably the best way of preventing future entries. To be asked for opinions, only to be immediately told they are invalid because they reach the wrong conclusion, is a superb way of preventing further discussion.

You asked for opinions. You are getting them. Please listen, not dismiss. Even if you think they are wrong, you asked for our impressions. Ours. Not yours. If the impressions are different from the ones you wanted us to have, then it was probably the competition framing that created those impressions. Something about which you professed to want to know how we felt.

Regards,

Richard.

Leana

richardandtracy_e725004c1a said:

Telling me afterwards that my feelings are incorrect, as Coryllon above was, is probably the best way of preventing future entries. To be asked for opinions, only to be immediately told they are invalid because they reach the wrong conclusion, is a superb way of preventing further discussion.
You asked for opinions. You are getting them. Please listen, not dismiss. Even if you think they are wrong, you asked for our impressions. Ours. Not yours. If the impressions are different from the ones you wanted us to have, then it was probably the competition framing that created those impressions. Something about which you professed to want to know how we felt.

How does "I do appreciate your feedback and will take it under advisement" mean "your opinion is invalid and dismissed", exactly? And how does explaining what the purpose of the challenge was supposed to be mean "you're wrong if you experienced it in some other way"?

 

Ruris

Hi,

As a knowledgeable user but not top tier (yet), I see it as a more controlled theme, its a good thing really; vs say the DOF theme which I'm already using in every single piece but still good to hear comments for other people. And since most of the scenes are relatively simple to rebuild from scratch, (except the butterfly one for me), you would know if you can surpass the originals or come out sorta ok but need much polishing. This is not a criticism, but I'm also creating videos on the side, and this thought came along naturally. A new user may be thinking some grand dreams about creating something out of star wars with dozen of guys shooting each other, xwing overhead blowing things up. Its a great vision, but man, you need to get your basic out first. if you cant even make a single warrior looking badass with a simple backdrop, it will be difficult to move on.

However, as a newbie, I might want to stay away, because my mindset wouldnt be very diverse. I would look at the warrior pose and automatically locked into the 'war' theme, and not 'portrait shot with a 50-100mm lens, with an attentive face, get some rim light on the hair, etc etc.

 

 

ariochsnowpaw

I enjoyed the challenge.  I am more often inspired by other peoples work than internally.  I found it fun to look at images other artists had made and think about how I would approach the 'feel' of it.  I understand that some people might have felt constrained.  There will always be some subject areas or Daz skills that will interest some more than others.  I appreciate the work and creativity the mods put into this forum.  

Gordig

I found it utterly uninspiring, and declined to participate, whereas I have participated in every other challenge since I started posting here, and will definitely take part in the new one. I'm not especially interested in recreating other peoples' work generally, and I also have pretty limited resources, which make it challenging to do so even if I were so inclined. Personally, I much prefer challenges that focus on mechanics, like DOF or portrait lighting, because my reason for participating in these challenges is to get better at rendering, and I don't find trying to replicate a particular work to be a productive exercise.

marjoemartino

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to try to give some well thought out, helpful answers.
I understood the nature of the August challenge, critiquing art is a very important skill set for anyone that wants to make a go of it, and yes we all get tunnel vision while working on any image so having another set of eyes look it over is helpful, At the same time, having to critique artists that I do admire for their skill is a little intimidating, and to see some of them produce images that are obviously meant to be improved,as helpful as it could be to new users, I think does them no justice,the artist or the new user.

1) Did you enjoy the new spin on the month?  Not really it felt like I was back in one of my art classes when the teacher would bring out a picture and say "Ok I want you to recreate this." As such it took quite a while to get any inspiration to try any of them, and I looked them over at least a dozen times.

2) Is there anything that may have improved it for you? For me not really, once you put the "box" of recreate this image,(even with the additional image choices given), you take away a lot of freedom to be creative. The limitation was not intentional or even thought of as a limit but that is what you did with this challenge. It's one thing to have a "defined image" if you are working on a commission for a client, but when you are working on a personal piece you want to be able to go where the feel of the image takes you and I felt that was missing in this challenge.

3)What would I like to see potentially covered?  I would like to see "themed" fundamentals, what I mean is no matter what genre we work in be it fantasy( mages,dragons,elves,other mythical beings),Sci-Fi(technology,aliens,space,other worlds),Horror(haunted houses,monsters (ie, vampires,werewolves),poses/expressions that depict fear.), or any other there are certain fundamental elements that classify it as such, maybe a month where we take all of the other elements that are currently covered and combine them into creating a specific themed image, because all of the currently covered basics vary depending on what genre your image is. For example, if I make a fantasy themed image my lighting,materials,props,action, posing and environments are going to be of a lighter nature than if I were to make a horror image which would use darker lighting more run down/abandoned looking materials and environments. If I go the Sci-Fi route then there is going to be more in the way of hard/shiny surfaces my props are going to be more technologicaly advanced and usually involve different types of atmospheric effects depending on where I place my scene be it in deep space aboard a ship or on some alien planet, or even a futuristic version of our own planet. And yes I know that any of these could go the other way as well but the fundamental elements would still be there to define the genre theme.

AZDigitalArtist

I had fun with the challenge. It is always helpful to look at your own work critically. I enter a lot of contests with my digital art, so maybe I am accustomed to receiving critiques more so than giving them, lol. It was nice to have an inspiration piece to start with, however. Anything that stretches creativity and helps me learn this software is welcome.

Sisyphus1977

At first, I had similar thoughts as others noted regarding the notion of recreating a scene.  However, it is a challenge, so I thought about it for a bit and came up with my first scene, not trying to recreate it, but to use it as inspiration for an evolution of the reference scene.  I then came up with the idea of how could I weave the various scenes into an overall story.  So I really appreciate that the challenge moved me to create something that I had not really tried before, which I think is part of the these challenges.

I feel there are enough art critics out there and I typically don't comment or critique other's work.  There are probably some out there who would be walking past the scaffolding while Michelangelo was painting the ceiling and yell up to him, "Mike, get down here, I told you, no graffiti on the ceiling", or say to Rembrandt, "You know, I am not a fan of the triangle lighting thingy" or stop by Jackson Pollock's studio and tell him that a splash of cobalt blue to his painting would really make it pop.

As AZDigitalArtist noted "Anything that stretches creativity and helps me learn this software is welcome", I agree.

dragoneyes002

explain why anyone would want to redo someone elses work?

sure there are artists who recreate others work, there are those who get inspiration from others work.

but in the case of an open month cobling new guide lines into something which was well established for previous years seems more than a little ill advised.

the point of an open month is to allow the new users to take part or all of what the previous months taught them and have a free hand at creating something with that knowledge. its a learning experience.

to just tack on "Here take something out of our galleries and redo it " Pretty much SQUASHES that.  sure some will love the idea ^^^^^ some people need inspiration you see it in every month which is why so many entries have pretty obvious similarities to others. nothing wrong with that its all in the learning experience I'm talking about.

what squashes the open ended month is you've limited the creativity of the entrants to what they can find that has already been done you impose a selective outcome that does not matter how extensive the galleries are either because people when given free reign automatically begin to see a project they have been mulling over or get inspired by something wholy unrelated to anything that may be in  any gallery and you've made that even worse because you've chosen to do so with the galleries of the people judging the challenge.

" the last few months have given me ideas I'd like to try out with what we've been learning Oh an open month is comming up I'll save it for then..... Oh we're doing some kind of redo of others work ........."