Art Rant.. Grrr

[Shollia]

Ok this has been ticking me off for some time now and it's getting worse and worse over at Elfwood.

I absolutely hate it when people take a real photo... apply filters and such in art programs to give it a painted look and then claim they painted it ALL from scratch.
What ticks me off even more is when people fall for it thinking that it is a from scratch drawing/painting/etc.

Take a recent addition to Elfwood (there have been others as well).
Person did what I explained above, added in a few poorly done things to the pic such as jewelry they actually drew and then goes on to say in a comment to a post that the jewelry only looks bad b/c they rushed it.
No.. it looks bad b/c your skills aren't good enough to make it look good on the REAL woman you're claiming you also drew in the picture!!

I don't want to post the link to the pic.. but if you saw it you would see what I'm talking about.

It's SO obvious that they didn't paint the pic from scratch. It's so obvious that they just filtered over a real photo... but they get away with it!
Grrrrrr.. I hate liars!
If you do photomanipulation... JUST SAY SO. I have no problem with photomanips so long as the person says that's what it is. Don't try to act like you totally painted something from scratch WHEN YOU DIDN"T!!!

I posted a nice comment on their pic and gave constructive crit never once flamed or ranted like I'm doing right now. I said that the jewelry looked flat and off b/c it's on a real person... I even complimented them on the other things in the pic... but of course... what did they do b/c I brought up the real person thing? They deleted my post.

Just.. UGH.........

*takes a deep breath*
OK.. feel a little better.... just a little........

[ahoteinrun]

*claps and pats*

Agreed on all accounts. I think most artists have issues with art in such a manner. This is one of mine. I agree, I don't mind photo manipulations, but it cheeses me off beyond a doubt when people claim it's "theirs". Especially when you know it's not.
However.
What makes me more mad is strait out art theft. There's been A LOT on elfwood lately. And some of it's even been mod choiced, which is... disturbing. I dunno. I sometimes catch myself wondering if the standards of creativity are being continually lowered by mainstream media and access to digital programs, but then I have my hopes renewed by super talented artists who make things like photo manipulations (one girl in my program does some of the most amazing photo manipulations i've ever seen. They're damn well flawless.) or digital art, and I start to feel better.
But still. *shrug*
One guy in my program has the continuall thought on how art has no where else to go, that nothing new can ever be presented by art. And I have to continually snarl and go "Thats stupid Paul. Shush" and then I make a shushing sound. *nod*
It's... yeah. A difficult thing for me to think about or even debate on accepting. Art is art. And I find it excessively hard to define what "new" is in the art world. If he's arguing that art can never be new, then I want to know why art is still moving forward. Obviously someone feels the idea could be presented in a new way, even if the subject has already been covered (And it's not like new subject doesn't continually appear as society/culture moves on in the world).
Bah.
So many thoughts... *gives Shollia a cookie*

[Eo]

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I swear, man, there was this art thing, and someone posted a photograph of Eowyn from the movie, only tinted orange. I've used that exact tool before (It's in Photoshop 7) and I knew exactly how they did it... couldn't have taken more than two minutes, counting upload time. But they claimed they painted it ALL BY THEMSELVES. I didn't comment, but MAN, was I steamed.

[Rufaida]

If people do that then obviously they are just stupid... kinda pathetic to lie about such things. Maybe they don't have any REAL achievements in their lives? You could just feel sorry for them

[Shollia]

Lol.... I don't feel sorry for them.. I just feel some rage and violent things muahahaha

I've seen a few more of these pics in Elfwood since I posted this rant.... *sigh* Guess they're gonna keep doing it cause people will always fall for it.

[Kugetsu]

I absolutely agree, it's annoying and actually somewhat offensive when people do that. If you're at least somewhat artistic, that's great, but if you're not, you're not proving anything by faking that you do, other than you're great at faking that you have talent. >_>

[Eo]

I'd say it's more out of laziness; it's not as if they can't achieve anything if they tried. Yesterday, I was working on colouring a drawing of Madeline *ALL DAY*. You know, the one I drew on the back of a vital form? I went and used Gimp to make it look, well, like it wasn't before colouring. XP And you will never believe how long it took me. I was colouring in that wierd Victorian outer skirt-shawl-looking-thing, and then I realized that just palinting over the black pen lines I had blurred them out, so instead I went back and painted *in between* each of those crazy detailed pen lines.

It looked a lot better, but the wierd outer-garment whatever I had just painted was looking a little... Bland and too close to the rest of the dress? So I decided to make it more as I pictured it. This was pretty much like the dress we see Kitty for in much of Topsy-Turvy -- historically innacurate. But for the moment I abandoned such innaccuracies for just making the picture look pretty, and highlighted the thing with blue and redness.

Which looked really good, but like I had painted it with one of those cheesy Photoshop brushes. So when I upload this sucker, I'd like you to know it's NOT.

Then I coloured some more the normal way, and then I spent a loooong time on the skirt. It had these patterns of laurels and stars and flowers on it, and I had to paint around these or the lines would be hopelessly blurred. I painted them in later, and got a little confused, but it worked out in the end. I coloured her shoes, drew a big thing of colour above it, and wrote "Madeline" on it. (Which took a few tries, the GIMP text tool is temperamental.)

And I saved... with the text still highlighted...

AND ALL THAT SAVED WAS THE COLOUR OF THE TEXT.

I went back to the version I had saved earlier, as a BMP, but most of the colouring on the pattened skirt was still not done.

All this took... like, seven hours. With intermittant RP, of course. It looked good, in my opinion, and I'm gonna colour it again. But now you see what these lazy sacks of sloth don't have to go through?

[Pokemon Kid]

Well, I wanted to return for just one post.

Hello, PPT! I've missed 'ya all. But I'm not staying.


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I also hate people that take copyrights ojut of the pictures, and use them as their avatar, and when people assk them where they got them, they tell them on their own.

Pathetic, no?