Taron's gallery

[wasa]

What taron's saying is he doesn't want to compete for first place ;D lol j/k
It's probably best if the work shown to show off the app is that of the beta testers since usually it's made up of professional level artists
This also prevents people from getting feelings hurt if they feel they should have gotten shown, and for one reason or another didn't

[taron]

Brilliantly enough, the beta tester array was very colorful and had all levels of experience present. I think it helped a great deal to maintain the accessibility of Sculptris.
Many of the new artists joining here are phenomenal and if I look at the WIP thread "first model" I see some amazing stuff to show off the true excellence of the app.

But, yeah, I always loved the Artrage forum for it's gentle way to embrace diversity without making people competetive. As opposed to "challenge" for example, they have a subforum called "art projects", which is something we could think about, too, now that I remember that.

Art should never ever be about competition to begin with. Anything to help people understand their....hmmm.... I think I should write a bigger article. I will do that later!

Alright, let me elegantly wiggle out of this one for the sake of our forum's beautiful, fun and educating award competitions. They are no permanent institutions, while they may come back frequently. However, I will promiss not to participate, except maybe posing a few challenges with an example. Anyway, don't forget to pretent some degree of surprise when the first announcements illuminate the forum.

So, yeah, competition in art should not be a state of mind and shouldn't be nurtured by permanent exposure to such a concept, but every now and then it should act as educational motivator to strive for excellence!

(omg I feel like such a hypogrite now...LOL...but I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about, right?!)

[sporkfumaster]

I don't think that not participating is the best option. As long as it is a simple challenge, and no prize other than the comments from your peers is awarded, I think it would be helpful for all those involved if you were a part any upcoming challenge. I see nothing wrong with having additional great examples in any challenge (if you started the challenge or not). Some will always see everything as a competition, so you really can't do anything about that. But, there are many that want to challenge themselves by using the best examples to further their skills. It would also give some newer users the chance to ask you, or anyone else with a great submission, what techniques they can use to achieve the same results. Also, many use that bit of "competition" to gauge where they are and what they need to achieve where they want to be.

[sanc]

With any application, and even more with application that are made for creating pieces of "art" (just art, or art that will be converted later into some application content), there's bound to be people more experienced in the whole digital sculpting process, some more naturally talented, and some more skilled in Sculptris usage.

That's normal and that's very good, as there are lots of techniques and workflow to learn from just looking at the digital sculpting masters sculpted pieces.

Learning techniques, accumulating experience and self challenging oneself to improve are some of the good points of displaying firiendly showcases, "challenges" and "competition".

Those boards challenges, competition and showcases are really great source of inspiration and self-learning and even for those that are already expert in digital sculpting and Sculptris mastery there's always fun to have.

Because if you like sculpting it does not matter if you are experienced or not, you'll always enjoy making sculptures.

[taron]

First of all, I probably just know a bit too much already about what's to come and we'll certainly try to make some attractive little compos with some neat little prizes. All the fun little challenges here I naturally participate in and with great pleasure, since I see it exactly the same way, adding that it is teaching me plenty, too, of course!

I just want you all to have a relaxed experience. Some of you are not senstive to that stuff at all, while others are a bit on the misguidable side with a soft heart and such... I personally always disliked competition, even while I had little to nothing to fear, not because I'd thought that I'd certainly win, which I didn't think, but because I just can't stand the racehorse idea and what it does with artists. It's a reduction of the real potential and a redundant source of stress.
You have no idea how many times I did get challenged to speed modeling sessions, even official ones at conventions. I refused, because I had no intention to make anyone feel bad, you know, hehehehe.... wow, sounds a bit arrogant, but people just don't realize how close I did get to all this. I wouldn't have to sit there and practice, because I've been doing that for decades just by the nature of what I did. Anyway... digress, digress

Artist ain't Racehorse. Hollywood tends to argue that thought, but well...

[wasa]

Something to consider on speed challenges, it helps improve your speed by finding more efficient ways of achieving results, which is good because the faster you can get your ideas out, the less likely you will become bored or frustrated with a piece
Now that's not to say rush everything, but learning new and faster methods art part of the artists arsenal

One idea I had, inspired by what you said and from one of the sculptris videos is to post an image for everyone to load as their background and use it as ispiration for a piece
As an example, an image of a graveyard, might inspired a church, tombstone, coffin, flowers, zombies, ghosts, vampires, ect
And do like a new one every week or two, maybe one each month
and instead of calling it something like a challenge, just call it something like weekly inspiration

[taron]

Love it, wasa! That's a fantastic idea!!!

[wasa]

I have good ideas once in a while lol
it's when i'm staring at a blank image, a cube, or a sphere that my mind goes numb

[taron]

Hmmm...when I see a sphere, it's already gone! ;D

[wasa]

I've noticed! hope you don't mind me asking, but do you just start sculpting and see what comes to mind, or do you have an idea in mind before you start one?

[taron]

No rules, no reliable pattern. Usually it's without a concept, just having fun. But sculptris made it so easy to model that I began to focus on specific forms for training purposes. I rediscovered my curiosity about anatomy with it and did a lot of those silly supersize muscle experiments. I'm probably going to continue with them for a while, but I've therefore started to do a lot of concrete sculpting, setting up a body and going at the muscles type of stuff.

Right now I'm a bit curious about solid modeling experiments... lasts for a few hours, that desire, haha...but anyway. And, not to forget, I just did my selfportrait, which was an extremely unusual thing for me to do.

People sometimes call it "channeling", which- for what it's worth- might describe it best. I allow myself to grow a form out of my intuition and just touch my way forward. Rough topics can create great motivation. However, it's all about exploration these days more than ever.

Let me add this:
- imagine there's a specific form you want to learn, be it just a part of a skull, the way a branch from a tree comes out of the trunk, flowers, how legs come out of an insects and what makes them look believable. All those things can be fantastic motivators. As you learn to do these details, you pack them onto what ever you like, like an insect's leg might come out of a skull or a treebranch out of ... a... skull or eh flower grow out of a...ehm....bathroom mirror. Whatever, you know what I mean, right. Details that interest you don't have to stay within their context, once you get on top of them.
I think I've never been hot on complete, normal beings, like making a zebra or the likes...it just somehow bores me, as it's something that results in a known subject, seen in millions of ways already. But I already know who I am and what I can do. To me it's often just a matter of time or rather units of great focus. Those run far faster than time, but are far more exhausting, too.

There... focus on details to explore, for example!

[wasa]

Thanks for taking the time to write all of that
I think i'm kinda the same way, in that real stuff bores me
part of the fun of art for me is creating what doesn't exist
besides why spend endless hours to make a toy car look photo-realistic when you can just photograph a real toy car. at least make a car that doesn't exist in the real world ;D

[taron]

Or a spaceship:


Hehe, I'm trying to practice non-organic modeling (solid modeling). It's tedious and somewhat out of control, but I'm getting there... great fun, though! Brings out the "boy" in me for sure, hahahaha!

[taron]

Apple...

[sanc]

That one is so awesome that i was like this :