New Year - New Ways (Ditch the Hang-Ups)

Hey!  Its a new year, and we are all still here, which is nice.  I have decided to try and approach my art work and 3D models a bit differently from now on...

I have suffered from maybe a lack of "faith" in the way media and art is going.  When I create something it is often by my own low-standards, and showing distain for the popular.  I spent the last three years working and studying non-stop.  In this time I learned a lot about art and what people want to see.

Here is a fantastic piece of concept art, but my training just lets me see photo-elements and Photoshop filters (high-pass, find edges etc)

For some reason I have still been dismissing modern "pop art", as it gets very formulaic and "samey".  I am a strong believer in personality through art, but have seen too much that it has sickened me to a degree.  For example I get bored of concept art, the golden ratio, stolen compositions and palettes (even if from traditional masters of yester-year).

Here is another great piece.  This one is by Tom Edwards, who was a favourite student on our course the year before me.  All I see is Albert Bierstadt, and a signature paying homage to Frank Frezetta

In 3D there are too many Sci-fi corridors, boring looking textures created from dDo2 and the Quixel suite.  I see a new sci-fi rail-gun every week, and surprise-surprise I am now sick of seeing these.  Another popular one in the last years has been "Hyper realistic" character models.  I can see that many of these models share generic parts downloaded from badking.com.  If I see another photo-shopped composit-render with depth of field blur and rim-light I might stab myself in the eyes with my pen.  Here is the latest page on Polycount, and many examples of what I just mentioned just above.

What I have to remember is that I have had the blessing of being immersed in top-rate digital and traditional art & photography.  The fact is there are patterns to what works, what others like, and what is popular.  My problem is that I like to go against the grain , and fail to see value in quality work.  My main issue is originality - I have OD'd on art so nothing seems original for long thanks to the internet.

So what are these "new ways" mentioned in the title?  Well, I am going to follow the saying "if you can't beat them, join them".  There are many ways I can do more impressive work, and a lot quicker using shortcuts, and I feel I actually have earned the right to use them from all my learning.  This may involve using software in certain ways - like;

* Abusing other peoples brushes  - I have made many myself and know about creating and adapting them
* Using photo elements - Even if not my own images
* Stealing compositions & ideas
* Lots of rim-light, golden ratio and increasing contrast the nearer the object to the viewer
* Steer away from spending a lot of time creating original stuff - just rob it, nothing is truly original anyways
* Sculpt without consideration to texturing and game-engines - this takes ages
* Use as many shortcuts as possible

The main change to keep in mind is making art that appeals to more people - Even if I think they are dumb and tasteless.  The population are generally morons who Listen to Cold Play and watch Holly Oaks after a day at the mall in between posting memes on Facebook.

With this in mind I will endevour to post more regularly, and be less cynical if I'm lucky.  Nah, I'm going to be optimistic and embrace what is to come.  I felt old at university (being thirty while others are eighteen), but art will always be there for me, and I like to think that when I get to sixty years old I could be a total art-demon.  I just need to stick at it and go with the trends.

Here's a picture I drew today keeping the above in mind.  I think it is lacking in colour somewhat, and maybe in need of a few more detail/lighting passes