Here’s a rant that might anger some people but let’s be real honest, many people who make 3D art based on a concept done by someone else doesn’t put in nearly the amount of effort as someone else doing the equivalent style of art with equivalent level of detail and materials with a purely original concept. It would be ok if the people doing these “studies” did something original to them like change the pose, the composition, or anything else that might enhance the art rather than simply adding a new dimension to a 2D concept art as I have nothing against the idea of basing your art on someone elses. However, I’ve seen way too many borderline copies making their way into the featured category.
Why am I picking on stylized copies? Because even though it’s very possible to have a sophisticated NPR material setup, the vast majority of these cases are PBR materials where the artist can get away with overly clean materials. Photorealism studies are good and should be encouraged for people to learn how real materials work. And let’s not even get into taking shortcuts with anatomy.
In short, these stylized copies should not be featured if they don’t add anything sufficiently original from the concept that’s not their own. Quite often, the pose isn’t theirs, the composition isn’t theirs, the proportion isn’t theirs, the color scheme isn’t theirs, etc.
It’s a cheap way of getting likes and attention by riding on the back of another concept artist and I’m quite honestly fed up with it.
Here I propose some loose rules for featured content in the order of priority:
Original, aesthetic, and creative photorealistic/stylized works that looks like work and thought was put into it
Photorealistic studies of real life materials/ stylized studies with some original input
Stylized copies (should not even be featured at all)
Art is to do; if you do good, you get cookie.
Coming up with the idea usually doesn’t get you a second cookie.
Many feel this is unfair. Some are angry about it. Methinks they really like cookies.
I wouln’t know. I delete cookies all the time.
Seriously now, my spidey sense detects an elitist overtone in this proposal.
I don’t know about you man but if someone took anything I did and just decided to convert it back into 2D or 3D and they got a good deal of the praise I’d be rightly pissed. It’s often the case that the original artist does get additional popularity but a lot of praise is misdirected at the “skill” of the copier and not the original artist.
Which is really really dumb given that in these cases I’ve mentioned barely anything is changed. This is also going to give a lot of beginners a bad incentive by copying and not improving upon their skills. Of course doing these “studies” does improve them somewhat but not nearly as much as challenging yourself.
You need to explain why coming up with an original idea shouldn’t get you anything.
If elitism means having some decency and some standards, yes I’m an elitist.
You mean kit bashing? No, because if you take premade kits you can arrange them in such a way that makes it original. If you take a deck of cards and rearrange them the chance of you getting the same arrangement is extremely low.
But even when we talk about photo/kit bashing there has been cases where the concept artist has been put under pressure and accused of outright copying for not making sufficient changes. These standards exist in the 2D world probably because drawing and painting is a much more mature medium than 3D. For whatever reason you can be loose and fast with these “studies” in the 3D world.
I feel the motivation behind this post but think enforcing it is difficult and not all that beneficial. Yes, creating original works is harder than copying, yes it takes more skill to create original art than to copy someone else. Of course. It doesn’t matter.
Hobbyists would enjoy the chance to get their work noticed, and why remove that from them? Maybe it is very similar to another work, but I don’t see the point in making that distinction on a forum.
Professionals probably don’t care. They get paid to work. If they can’t create what the customer asked for, they failed. Beginners who copy others work can’t work professionally because they don’t have the skill set. I feel the natural consequences are sufficient.
Everyone is at their own level of learning, and sometimes it is more beneficial to study by copying someone else’s work than to try and fail over and over to do something without inspiration. In fact, I feel part of the reason the Blender community has a lot of ‘almost but not quite’ good work is due to the community’s echo-chamber style of giving feedback.
I don’t think featured means original. Featured (from what I can tell) is simply a curated sample of the work which is new on BlenderArtists.
I’m glad it’s their job, and while I’m sure they are doing a good job, it should not be featured. People who put in original work>unoriginal work.
The line drawn is slightly arbitrary but not as arbitrary as you think. Do you know where to draw the line between the colors Red and Orange? Many people would put the lines in different places yet people can tell the difference between those colors given that they are not colorblind.
The law regarding copyright works the same way (I’m not implying people who do studies are breaking any law this is just an example). I’m not just being a legalist here, lines have to be drawn somewhere since people know in their hearts there is a difference between outright copying, improving, or proper photo/kit bashing with original configurations.
What I would like to see is “featured” work that have at least a fast forward of how they modelled it and then one video showing the material/texture progress… this shows the actual skill of the artists… and wether they cheat, haha…
Hope it makes sense…
edit: at least it would allow for actual “ground up” originals to stay featured much longer instead of being swiped off the header.
Also, must paint your own textures from scratch, no photo ref allowed and no use of add-ons unless you code them yourself. Keep away from base meshes too, can’t be using anything that might stain that pure blender output. No use of color correction, pure render please.
Boy you people are dense. I just addressed the fact that you can reuse assets, kit/photobash with no issues as the originiality of the resulting combination (See rearranged card example) is highly unlikely to be duplicated.
If you want to play the slippery slope game here a valid slippery slope argument:
If anyone can get away with copying 2D models into 3D are people allowed to do the same the other way around (3D to 2D) without making any significant changes? These aren’t my standards. These are standards of every sensible artist there is. If someone just outright copied a 3D render they might get accused of tracing but even if they didn’t trace their work would not be featured anywhere that’s respectable.
Yes, I am aware that the current featured category is based on what the admins like but that’s why I am making a suggestion to add one more criteria which would make the process slightly less subjective as the selective process now involves another factor.
Taking a 2D concept that someone else did and turning it into a convincing 3D rendition takes a lot of skill and isn’t considered cheating IMO. It’s one of the most popular methods of 3D work. As long as you credit the original 2D artist, I don’t see a problem with it at all.
The amount of work it takes to copy is lower than producing an original work. I would argue the amount of work is significantly lower and this is especially the case with stylized stuff. A lot of people do spend a lot of time trying to figure out the composition, lighting, general concept, etc and the copier effectively takes a shortcut by going down the path that’s already been paved.
I think what you’re doing is severely underestimating the work it takes for the original artist to figure everything out and shrugging it off.
Let me add something. I’ve already mentioned that all someone would have to do to pass the criteria (going from 3 to 2) is to add just a little bit of originality. Just something that makes the render fundamentally different. The line between 3 and 2 is a little blurry but most people can tell the difference in extreme cases and so having blurred lines would encourage people to go the extra step just in case.
Why is this too much to ask? Why is it so hard to change the composition, the pose, the color scheme, add more flares that improve the art itself?
Keep this in mind: These standards I’ve put out will be implemented eventually whether you like it or not. Why? Because as Blender and computer hardware improves, along with the user base of blender, copying other people’s concept art will become more of a trivial task as time goes on. I’m asking the admins to push for standards that are two steps forward, but why? Because these standards are already implicitly implemented in other forms of media. No one is considered to be a good artist by their copying ability. Why does anyone want to be behind?
A good modeller may not be a good conceptual artist… even so it is a good modeler as he can take someone 2D concept and convert it in 3D beautifully. So… as long all parts involved acept the agreement and that is clearlly stated that one only did the modeling… I think all is good.
The 2D concept artist probably can’t make the 3D model also
It’s a dificult topic, I see your point and I also see the others.
… I guess that worse is when the artist used Blender just to place the objects or do the color correction and dozens of other softwares to make everything else.
