washka – Banzai

[washka]

-Last contest (Sea creature (http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=106155)) I did some black and white stuff, (shapes & tentacles thingies), mostfully dynamics and stylistic linework (with stains). About the painting's target audience, the inner message, I was considering a target audience with a Q.I. around 80 and 100. (Adult people.)
And I had 6 votes from 25. (Thanks for your support! And congrats to all participants)

-It was funny, but the fact is: I lost...
Ok we were two to loose (I wasn't alone), that's a small number, considering a 3 units participation. So we had more chance to win (statistically), that's a bit frustrating too...

So this time I will change da tactic: I'll consider a target audience with a Q.I. around 40 and 80. (lower and wider range) (Kids & Teenagers)
So (still on horror mood), for this circus contest, I'll just use a hamster (originality = 0% , idiotic empathy = 100% ), and I'll just focus on da mood and on colors, with this "keep it simple and =don't think=" words on my mind.

Let's see where we go and what we obtain (gl to all participants (http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/7631/taxe.swf)):

Don't feed the animals!
(Banzai)
Old coffee stained sketch and 2h15 speed painting. (Against the image's blur, take a lill' step back from your screen)
http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/4302/banzaiw2012.jpg

[washka]

Seems I've been inspired a bit by Bobby Chiu in da cartoon style kawai monster mood for this one.

Maybe a lill' baby girl in front trying to give him a candy? What dya think?

[BiG ToE-3DT]

You done yet?

[washka]

Nope boss, and thanks for passing by.
Imo except the whole mood the rest is quite crappy. I think I'll add two other ones and a baby girl with an ice cream.

Thinking too much is bad, when I think I don't work, when I work I start to think, except sleep is there a pause button?

When there's no participation my motivation approach zero, the concurence and the intereactions effects do a lot in the motivation everybody push into a challenge.

But I think I can go over it, I can still challenge myself even if it's boring and that the last time I did it...the fact is: I've lost. :dance:

Where is M. Cederstorm, where is vnmribaya, L3xicon, polysmooth, wargrafix, kidchuckle. And where is DD???
Where are da painting warriors?

[BiG ToE-3DT]

that's a good question, where did everyone go?

[washka]

Holiday?

[aby arty]

^^get richard tilbury and av sir to do entries for this everyone will flyover. like CG sir always does starters or maybe if a mod has done zbrush concepting you could add it as starter here as well. just saying

@ washka your hippo beaver looks highly promising provided you dont doze off like a hippo in the cool mud. XD i think i am missing madagascar lol

[ignacio197]

I will probably enter, I just haven't worked out what to do yet .......

[Born8th]

When there's no participation my motivation approach zero, the concurence and the intereactions effects do a lot in the motivation everybody push into a challenge.


washka : I agree with you. I hope other entrants will take part in that challenge... :hmm:

[washka]

Update, I can't be serious for this one, wanted to speedpaint another one (Oliphant) for a brained public... Omg I did it again :wall:

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/294/berserkhamsterforcircus.jpg

[washka]

Wich one go your votes for guys, Hamster or Oliphant?

[BiG ToE-3DT]

I'm digging the Dragon Ball Z guy.

[bladnman]

either way, really nice stuff!

[nucron]

yeah, I agree with bladnman--you have two nice paintings here (of course one being more "serious" than the other, like you were saying. but definitely, lol at the random Dragon Ball Z guy). you have a really interesting way of using texture/brushstrokes and color.

it was cool to see how your first painting evolved from a literally "coffee-stained sketch." and I think I can indeed see some Bobby Chiu-esque touches in that hamster. the contrast with the little girl does help to give it some action and narrative, but at the moment it seems for some reason that it is not quite conveying as much of a sense of drama as it maybe could, but I'm not quite sure why. I think it might have something to do with there not being a clear connection between what the hamster is doing and what the girl is doing. that might have been intentional on your part, like the hamster is so big and oblivious that it does not even notice the girl, in which case it works. I actually do kind of like that dead stare the hamster has. yeah, I'm not sure I can really give any advice, here, since I'm not sure which direction you are going with it. since you are just having fun with it, it might be cool to make it even more random and crazy somehow, but who knows.

your second painting has a nice classic tone and a unique dreamy color scheme. and you can really feel the weight of that elephant. the elephant also has some real character to it. I can practically imagine its thought processes. at first it might only be concentrating on staying balanced, but then it starts thinking "ok, how am I going to get down from here?"--there's some good drama in that pose. by the way, am I seeing ghosts of previous paintings in those elephant skin textures? I feel like there's some crazy alien staring at me in there somewhere. also, I do like that funny touch of having the mouse (dreaded enemy of elephants!) calling the shots in the corner. I will say, though, that as a painting this is the one part that is not working for me. I think since the rest of it is so loose and painterly, the brushstrokes on the mouse are maybe a bit too neat and tidy with very sharp edges that sort of make it feel like it is not part of the rest of the painting. I know this might be a work in progress, though, so sorry if it is too early for me to be pointing out such things.

as I said before, both of these painting have some interesting qualities. as far as picking which one to continue with, I know you might feel like you need to really play to the audience and try to figure out exactly what sort of painting people want to see and so on. but my personal feeling is that for a challenge like this, you should just follow your instincts and go for whatever will be the most fun for you and will help you grow as an artist. I mean, sure, I guess part of doing concept art in the professional world is thinking about what a client or art director might want, and maybe you could imagine the people browsing these threads are your "clients." but I think this is a difficult path to go down because you'll always be trying to imagine the mindset of random people on the interwebs and really there isn't much of a way to reliably guess how crowds of people will react to things as complex as a piece of art. so I say just go for whatever feels right for you even if you think other people might not "get" it or whatever.

it is the fate of most people, not just artists, to not be understood at least some of the time, if not most of it. for example, during his lifetime people thought Vincent Van Gogh was crazy, and, well, actually he was a little crazy, but the point is audiences weren't ready for his work. many of his greatest masterpieces were considered strange, amateurish work. it was only a long time afterwards that he was hailed as a genius and he is still considered so today. so if you think people don't understand what you are trying to do, maybe you are just ahead of your time. what would have happened if Van Gogh decided to start trying to guess what the random people that walked into Paris salons wanted and painted that? he probably would have just imitated the famous Impressionists of the day and thus fallen into obscurity as one of the many lesser-known figures of that movement, rather than the revolutionary artistic pioneer that he came to be despite the problems he had in his life. if you're painting to some imaginary specifications that exist outside of yourself you are always chasing after something you can never fully understand. of course we all can improve and learning to take criticism can help us to move in that direction. the way an audience reacts to something can be instructive and yield some valuable insights. but at the end of the day, part of what one is doing when they are practicing some skill is developing an instinct--a way of formulating ideas and just following the muse wherever it takes you. so instead of trying to change standards to conform to some perceived audience that may or may not be the way they are imagined to be, one ought to instead follow that inner voice, and if people do not understand it then just step back and think about where that reaction is coming from. after all, it is only your own mind that can filter things out and say "yes, that is a valid point," or "no, this critic clearly doesn't see the intention." and, hey, in some instances if people do not get the message, maybe it simply isn't clear enough, and even knowing that provides some actionable information for future development. but when all else fails, it could be that, like Van Gogh, you are actually ahead of the curve. so wear those misunderstandings as a badge of honor, because you're in good company. just don't go cutting your ear off or anything crazy like that, haha.

I hope all that made some semblance of sense. I'm not really even sure what I wrote. anyway, nice work, keep it up. peace.

[washka]

I don't like standards, but I think I'm not clear enough here, hopefully it's a WIP, thanks for your reply nucron and thanks for your comments Big-Toe and bladnman.

-About the elephant, it's about "prostitution", I used " " because it's not really prostitution as the way we usually use, so it's not just about sex, that's what I mean. It's more about using your talent for money or just for life, for an audience or for anything.
Having your talent distorted by the people, the audience, the standard, the world or simply the life in a way.
What's funny it's that the painting's idea is related to the meaning of nucron's comment.

-That's quite funny isn't it? His answer's quite the same than this elephant concept.
(Even if the "how" in "ok, how am I going to get down from here?" isn't really defined, because there's no timeline there, he could also try to go up, no? Ok, usually the elephants are advancing forward, Ok we're in a circus... But I like this "how", I wasn't thinking about it, nice mood there.)

-So here's the elephant on his own tusks, in equilibrium, I think that into The circus: that's the animal's life (for both elephant and man).
The tusks symbolize preciousness and the elephant has to trample on its own tusks to survive (onto the "circus's world"), the world is kinda a big circus. He has to trample on its "talent". It has to sharpen those tusks, and it must even tear those. A broken toy?
And the elephant can see the big wave of the unknown coming on its side, even if there's nice colors to it, that's the circus, you're never 100% sure your acrobatic partner will catch you when you fly, will you fall, there is no security net below, that's the real circus. There is real risk, it can be dangerous even for pro, even with experienced people. It's like on a big concert's scene, or onto a soccer field, or onto a ring box.
And what's that for? For money? For a mouse's shadow? That is not even integrated to the whole piece => the mouse... (It isn't part of the painting, it's "outside of it", the mouse won't even take the wave, because it's just a lill' shadow, joke for old cartoons lovers, and an Hollywood, Vegas, or world & cie critic) ;).

-So it's quite an horrible painting in a way but it's still an elephant on equilibrium, that's all.

I'll finish the elephant with my point and show you the previous ones, ideas can change like everything, image too.

And thanks a lot for your sincerity nucron.

[nucron]

washka, it's very cool to hear your ideas about the meaning and symbolism behind your painting. I could sense that there might be more going on there than just what you see.

in this case it is something that resonates with me on multiple levels. in the more literal sense, it struck a chord in that, even when I was young, whenever I went to a circus I always felt sort of sad when the elephants came out. unlike the other trained animals which just did whatever they were told to do almost automatically, the elephants always seemed like they really did not want to do the tricks. maybe it was just something about their weight and the slow, deliberate way they move. also their eyes tended to show such a tired expression. in many cases they had to wear chains on their legs, even while performing. indeed, it makes you ask yourself if it is worth doing this to an animal for your own entertainment.

also, on the more figurative side, I thought the larger metaphor you explained was quite poignant, with life itself being a circus and we humans having the role of that elephant always "putting on a show," using up our talents for some audience or purpose we do not fully understand, climbing to ever more precarious heights and never knowing when we'll miss our cue and hit the ground without a safety net to stop our fall. circuses really are sort of like strange, exaggerated microcosms of existence, aren't they?

sorry if some of the things I was saying in my last post about your artistic intent not being understood were maybe a bit over-the-top. it's just that from some of your posts I could sense you might have been a little frustrated that your paintings were not reaching your intended target audience, and I was trying to encourage you to just keep doing things your own way, regardless.

anyway, as far as that goes, I think part of the issue might be that since this is nominally a "concept art" challenge, people are perhaps expecting a certain kind of thing, and not necessarily something that actually stands alone with its own internal meaning and so on. with concept art as we normally see it there is always that tension between the level to which a work is a piece of art in its own right and how much it is just a way of communicating a "concept" (i.e. a character, an environment, a vehicle, a mood, etc.). in the professional world, some concept art gets put on posters, ad campaigns, art books, and so on. but the vast majority of it just ends up in piles of so-called "pre-production assets" that never leave the studio where the work is used to help inform the making of some finished product in a different medium, like a movie or game. since this is the often expected purpose of concept art, in contrast to other types of art like illustration and fine art, this might be part of the reason your work is not connecting with people the way you want it to in these challenges.

I guess I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, and I could be totally wrong about it. but, regardless, I can see that you are an artist who is bristling to convey deeper meaning through your paintings, and you seem determined not to be like the elephant, swept up in that wave of uncertainty.

a lot of what determines how people respond to art relates to just the technical execution, but more broadly I think what it might take to get your intent across could come down to clarity of ideas and expressing things in a way that makes people look beneath the surface, and you seem to agree. so I look forward to seeing how your future work evolves. cheers.

[nucron]

hey, washka! I see you did not have a final entry this time around? I am not sure what your reasons were for not submitting anything, but I really hope that it did not have anything to do with what I said in my last post. looking back at it now, I can see how there might be some possibility that it could have been interpreted in a way that may have made you change your mind about submitting. but if that is the case, it is totally the opposite of what I intended.

even though I said stuff like how your work was more like "fine art/illustration" and not "concept art" I really did not intend to make it seem as if your work did not belong here. what I was trying to do was more along the lines of pondering why people were not being as receptive to your work as you wanted based on what you were saying about not reaching the audience and so on. I was trying to say that since your work doesn't fit into the typical concept art mold, maybe this is why the audience was not expecting work like yours. but I had hoped the big takeaway from what I said would have been, "hey, maybe people don't understand this, but who cares? I'll do it anyway!"

part of the reason I joined this challenge was because I actually wanted to encourage others to continue on and participate despite there being so little activity, here. I really, really cannot apologize enough if something I said caused you to do otherwise.

anyway, maybe I'm just over-thinking this, and you not submitting had nothing to do with what I said. for all I know, maybe you just didn't feel like it or didn't have time. but I only wanted to make sure you understood my intent in my last message. take care.