I would bring up Pollock, Picasso, and others often regarded as “not art”, but I’ve learned there’s nothing more pointless than arguing with art snobs, so I won’t bother. I’ll just say - any arbitrary, exclusionary definition of art is pure and utter nonsense and leave it at that. “Not art” is what people shout from the tops of ivory towers when they want to sound smart and impress someone they’re dating, not a serious point in a discussion
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One of my uncles is a prolific painter. He’s been painting for over 60 years. The pieces he does and the style he uses is very unique in that it uses very strange perspective and often purposely childlike character renderings with bizarre proportions. This is just his style, but technically he is an expertly trained classical fine artist who has an encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy of human/animal/drapery/hair forms, and a deep understanding of painting light and shadow/composition/sacred number theory/etc, but his joy in in creating these very specific types of pieces that don’t immediately give the impression that it was done by a ‘real’ artist.
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Could I […]? Absolutely. Am I going to? No, because I don’t want to
I have often felt the same way. I no longer think this is true. If I don’t want to make it, I really am unable to make it. And that’s okay by the way; not everyone is going to make 3D renditions of renaissance paintings or such. For me, this distinction often was an attempt to justify whenever I did not want to make anything, sabotaging myself. Your mileage may vary.
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You have to have at least some form of standard though, or you will have to confess that you will even see something like this as art. I mean the guy who made it said it was art and it does have a ‘human element’ (since duct tape cannot unroll and attach to objects by itself).
If so, then why can’t we go ahead and flood the art section of this forum with crappy images of the default cube, this is an art forum and we are calling our images art, right?
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If so, then why can’t we go ahead and flood the art section of this forum with crappy images of the default cube
Because novelty matters. And that should also be part of the standard you are asking for. You may be bored by the digital banana duct taped to the wall, but the real thing can be quite outrageous actually.
Effort and generated value are not in a perfectly proportional relationship. We cannot even agree on what value means. However, we tend to get more of that which requires less effort. Novelty wears off, crowd goes boo. That’s the way of things; just don’t mix up cause and effect.
It’s kind of like how sometimes when a joke is really bad, despite what the average Twitter user may lead you to believe, it’s still a joke, not a literal statement. This is true for the mere picture of a duct-taped banana (literally) just as it is for a 3D recreation of an existing work (metaphorically).
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If it isn’t art, then why are we talking about it in a conversation about art? Why did it get displayed in an art gallery? Who gets to decide what art is and isn’t, and what makes them wiser and more qualified than everyone else on the planet? If art has arbitrary boundaries, who gets to set those boundaries and why?
I maintain that anyone who says “art is this and not this” is shouting from the top of an ivory tower an opinion and personal standard that matters only to them. A personal, arbitrary, standard has no place in a serious discussion
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My argument though, is that taking the postmodernist view on such topics makes a serious discussion all but impossible because there is nothing then that actually means anything (if there is technically no standard, no wrong answers, no tiers of quality to climb, and nothing to prove or to improve on, then this thread should end here as there is nothing more to discuss. The human element is now declared whatever we want to be, and we are wasting our time).
To note, I am by no means talking about the ultra-strict definitions of art or even of what is considered finished like CGSociety instituted, but rather the simple act of avoiding the polar opposite of declaring that everyone can (for instance) throw some random things on the floor and think of some random quasi-philosophical statement, and then be emphatically referred to as artists or we otherwise receive the accusation of building ivory towers.
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Artistic Commentary, is one thing and is totally valid. Of which I am more than capable of, ha!
Storytelling, is another expression altogether.
While I do agree that urinating on a canvas, pulling out your phone or typing 10 words in a box shouldn’t be on the same level as the effort people have put into other art…
Most of the OP is essentially the same kind of art, and asking why it’s not present in another medium. Art which simultaneously demonstrates a lot of skill, time spent, and features both an implication of story and multiple humans, in a completely different medium while also excluding potential things that tick those boxes.
Short films tick those boxes. There’s other kinds of animations. Video games tick these boxes HARD. Hamlet is art, old movies are art, I’m not waiting 30 years before modern entertainment, which is what Hamlet and old movies were, can start being looked at beyond a surface level by specific people. Every other video game now has camera mode. Start a fight, enter camera mode, take a picture, boom. You’ve got the skill of hundreds of artists put together, with the story of a fight, human characters and a cool environment. Boxes ticked.
It’s also implicitly excluding lower quality art. Picasso is a great mention. Let’s be real here, Picasso’s art belongs on Deviantart. It has an ‘ugly’ style. It’s character studies with no stories, no background.
And with 3D, as people mentioned, doing stills takes longer. Lower the bar.
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Though you run into an issue that has some similarities with the whole AI craze, those images you took is not you.
You technically did not create anything, you simply are pushing buttons, twirling sticks, or working the mouse to travel through and interact with someone else’s canvas and piggybacking off their work (which they likely spent a huge amount of money on compared to your investment).
You are just the customer who took interest in someone else’s work, and it will the same for those who buy your creation made in Godot with a camera mode coded in (except in this case you can claim the title of creator).
It doesn’t matter about it being you, the art is the game. Camera mode is simply a better way to experience it (in specific circumstances).
Like how Hamlet is art and quoting the skull bit doesn’t make you a writer, games can deliver absolutely stunning visuals if that’s your benchmark for what’s art. I see posting a picture as akin to quoting.
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Single frame vs multiple frame Storytelling … compare apples to oranges.
That’s kind of the point, comparing 2D to 3D is slightly apples to oranges.
3D single frame Storytelling is insanely different from that of 3D multiple frame Storytelling.
Tell a whole story in just a one single 3D frame.
That invovles caturing the viewer in a single 3D frame. Lead the viewer! It doesn’t lay out the story for the viewer in multiple frames … amazingly different techniques.
Compare apples to oranges.
Hamlet is public domain so there is no legal risk on you or anyone to turn a quote from it into your own. There are no public domain video games at the moment (outside of what has been gifted to it), so I do not see the possibility of an altered photo from Half Life or Portal hanging in a gallery or on sale in someone’s art store.
Yes, using material from Hamlet is technically considered a piggyback, but unlike a game’s photo mode you also have a lot of your own stuff in there to essentially make it into your own (and it becomes less controversial once we are a generation or so removed from the original creator’s time).
Asking for storytelling in a single frame when making multiple frames is that much easier in 3D than in 2D is kind of backwards in my opinion. However, in either case, given the images in the OP, I am figuratively willing to bet that it’s possible to take pictures of various things that tell a decent story in a single frame from a game. If you want to, I can try to bother taking some. It won’t be the last supper level of activity and story, but you can easily exceed that dinosaur knight image or the shark; a lot of what makes Nighthawks special is the framing, and the hanged people is typical Dark Souls stuff.
Furthermore, games are not all animation all the time. Some games will feature static or semi-static elements that can tell a story from far away. This can often be some soldiers or such in some looping idle animation. Then you get closer and some vultures fly away, the soldiers attack you, whatever. Almost nothing would get lost if you took a picture in the midst of the idle animation. People are often ranting and raving about environmental storytelling in games. That’s mostly static. Half-Life 2 has a lot of that, it’s static.
Here’s some quick Half-Life 2 storytelling. Both of those images have very little to no movement. The movement in the first is the flying camera drone. The only movement that happens in the 2nd is one of the 2 civilians turns to look at you when you walk near.
I also took them very hastily, hence why the FOV is so huge and why you can see the dev mode logging in the corner. I think these are enough to prove a point, but if you really want me to I can try to fetch better pictures from a more modern game like Elden Ring.
I understand your point about capturing a single frame from a game.
And that’s why it can be so much more powerful than the game itself. And some movie posters are simply insane.
With a single frame such as Delacroix 's The Raft of the Medusa… no need for any more frames. Instead? Capture the viewer … in just one picture frame! Let it play out! Leave the story to unfold in the mind of the viewer.
Multi frame games and films are awesome … no doubt. I have friends that thrive in the film industry. But, for an artist with the ‘aptitude’ to tell a story in a single 3D frame or 2D frame … completely different realm.
Just think of how many people visit the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
Why? I seriously don’t know why.
Or a Rothko?
These storytellings are far more powerful than a capture from a game or from any film.
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The story of the Mona Lisa is mostly external, it’s not in the artwork itself. The artwork doesn’t tell you that Da Vinci knew such a woman. You can maybe guess that, but that’s where it ends, which is extremely surface level for a story. It doesn’t tell you that there’s something up with the nose, the museum clerk tells you that. It doesn’t say whatever the association was with it and one of his students, I think making a near perfect replica? A lot of people are also seeing it because it’s already popular and/or, because Da Vinci is popular, as he did a lot of other things too.
I don’t know about the other one you mention, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same deal.
Some random 3D artist online can’t tell a story in that way, and they’re not already a huge cultural phenomenon. No one cares who their girlfriend is (if she’s even real). The way I see it, the OP is asking for story that the art itself tells you more directly without needing external knowledge.
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Art is in the eye of the beholder. Some might see a short guy in funny cloths opening a round door. Others could see a beginning of an epic adventure.
My dad was an artist, and when he would show me a new piece of his, I would ask “What is it?”. And he would answer, “What do you think it is?”
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I think 3D art is accessible to more people. You can make a half decent work with no drawing skill or any art education for that matter. When you have free programs like Blender, the barriers to entry are lower then traditional painting which requires paints, a canvas, brushes, etc. I think some people are less intimidated by 3D then painting.
So we end up with more inexperienced 3Ders with what some see as low quality art. But the good thing is they can only get better.
To the other point about renders lacking characters and story, I believe a still life can still tell a story even if no character is present. The item(s) in a scene can tell a lot about a character. A pipe would show they smoke, or a cup of tea instead of coffee.
The technology level of the items like a cell phone, or just an ink bottle and paper can tell a story about the time period.
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