Heat Guy J
Gender: None specified
Location: Deutschland
Rank: Desk Jockey
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:32 am
Posts: 97
LightningfistCal wrote:
THIS. IS. SO. FUCKING. TRUE.
Hell, the only reason I stay on dA is because I've neither the time nor the money to come up with my own art site. If I did, I'd just stick to that.
Ja, it's a nice place to post your art on, and hope that the occasional person who stops by is as interested and serious about art as you are, but I'm just not expecting much out of it. That's all.
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I really HATE the fact that people have the NERVE to post their ugly-ass shitty drawings. I hate seeing those effortless "sketches" *cough*doodles*cough* on the front page of the site. I hate the never-ending dumping of unoriginal anime fan art. How many times have I logged on to see Naruto, Bleach, etc. on the front page? And stupid My Little Pony as well. Bleh. And don't even get me started on the Artistic Nudes section. But really, what pisses me off the most is when you work hard on something ORIGINAL, and people don't give a shit about it once you've posted it.
I think you can change it so that it will only display popular works, which generally are quite good, but there is occasionally shit up there too.
People forget the scraps folder is there for a reason. Use it.
My theory about that is that people are selfish. They don't care about your artwork. They're only there to see what they want to see, which is characters they know and like. So they'll probably bias their searches towards those anime groups or using names of popular characters for art searches, and generally ignore everything else. It's sad that that's how people look at art, but we aren't going to tell people what they want to see.
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I've been a comic artist and illustrator for six years now, and a comics fan for twenty years. Ever since I came up with my original comic, "The LightningFist" (TLF) back in 2006, I've been working my hardest to make it successful. The characters, the stories, the universe... I can't even count how many times I've had to revise these just to ensure I could deliver a good story. In real life at comic conventions, yeah, there's a nice little community of aspiring artists with a lot of talent and you at least get trustworthy critiques from people who know where you're coming from. Not so much with dA. I only started getting noticed as a comic artist after I drew my
Assassin's Creed fan comic trilogy. To be honest the first comic of this trilogy was half-assed and a rush job, since I didn't think anybody would take it seriously. I only did it for fun and because I liked the fan fiction that my partner wrote, and wanted to see what it would be like in comic form. I was really surprised when people started asking for a sequel, and when that was done they asked for ANOTHER sequel. Since those comics got a lot of positive reviews, I thought the same would happen for TLF. I posted all 30 pages of the
first chapter of what I would consider my "baby", optimistic that it would garner the same amount of attentions as my Fans & Switchblades trilogy. Boy was I wrong. Barely anybody commented. I doubt my watchers even bothered to read it.
I can understand that frustration. What really bothers me most is that people will look at my older work, which sometimes does have fanart characters in them, and they will say how cool they think it is, and spend lots of their comments and faves on it. The problem is, I no longer feel like my older artwork represents my current skill, and I have much better artwork on display, and you didn't have to dig through my entire gallery to see it, and despite that, people would rather ignore it just so that they can look at the fanart, no matter how shitty I think it is. Of course, the simple solution is to just remove everything from your gallery that's older than a certain date, but I prefer to keep them there for evolution's sake, so that people can compare how I did then to how I did now.
I sometimes use fanart as a hook in the hopes that people will look at my original stuff, but there will always be people who won't care anyways.
This isn't actually so bad though. What's worse is people coming onto your page and demanding you draw certain subjects. I've had a few tactless people come by and ask for stuff like that.
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Now I recently graduated from University, and now that I've got more time on my hands I've been planning on making more comics for this year. I already finished a new original comic about Filipino martial arts, but now I don't know if I should even bother posting that on dA anymore. Why? Because immediately after that comic on my list is another fan comic of Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and that appears to be what my watchers are most excited about. See? It seems I've been reduced to nothing but fan comics because those are the ones that get attention. And that's a sad fact because all I do is work with these already-established characters with little room for improvement, while I'm forced to leave my OC's with tons of potential at the side because nobody cares about them. As much as I love Assassin's Creed, truth be told sometimes I do get sick of it.
BUT I'M STILL CONTINUING MY ORIGINAL COMICS. I'm not going to give up on them, and may even turn down fan comic requests in the future just so I can focus solely on my original series. There exists a theory known as the Mere Exposure Theory. Basically, it posits that the more exposure something has, the more likely people will be interested or accepting of that said thing. I'm applying this theory to my comics, and hopefully it'll work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Have you tried Smackjeeves? They let you host your comics. I suspect they're only for original comics, as I haven't seen too many fancomics on there, but if they're strictly for original comics, then they're helping encourage more originality by letting people post their comics.
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Another good point. This is another topic that that the idiots at dA greatly misunderstand.
There's nothing wrong with using references or life-drawing. I get references from GettyImages and other stock image sites all the time, and I practice sketching backgrounds and street life (cars, buildings, people in the marketplace, etc) when I'm actually outside. It IS a good practice. People only say that it's cheating because "the creation isn't your own". Uh, FYI, that's not true. Anything made tangible by your own hands is, in my book, your creation. Same case as with anything you conjure in your mind is your intellectual property. References aren't a bad thing. They're there to guide you, especially when it comes to backgrounds and perspective. Because if you don't use references, then how the hell do you expect to improve?
Just my two cents.
I think we're all in agreement here. We need references because that's how we're going to know how to draw something. I think the goal to have in mind is to use references to understand how something should look. Then when you get good enough, you won't have to use them so much.
To be honest, I haven't actually met any of these people who say references are bad; I've seen people trace entire works without giving credit, and they post these on DA and get away with it all the time. I wouldn't actually be bothered if they didn't make it seem like it was a polished masterpiece (it isn't) and all the people commenting aren't retarded enough to realize it was a trace or call the guy out on it, and instead just say it looks cool.
Arkillian wrote:
Hmmm... Original story lines are one of those funny things that don't get popular simply cause you post them. I usually have to post ALOT of art of my character first before releasing a comic before they get a following. And posting comic all at once is no good either. 1 per week keeps watchers commenting and waiting for more. IT's all about anticipation.
I think part of the problem with original stories is that people have to spend time reading them. So unless it draws them immediately, they'll consider it a waste of time. This is a bit different from just a picture or two, where you can just evaluate it in an instant by simply looking at it. I guess a comic format isn't too bad, because you can skim through it, and judge the style quickly, and have an idea of what sort of story it's going to be. Fanfiction doesn't have this problem because people are actually looking for fics about their favorite characters. I guess that's why it's better to post a few at a time. You'll get them excited enough about wanting to see what happens, and they'll have time for one page every week rather than a hundred pages on the spot.
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In saying this, MAN it should be easier than that! XD Cool OCs should speak for themselves. If you have 100 active watchers, surely 50 of them will be reading / looking at art of OCs? How many comment? MUCH less. It's all to do with relevance of the viewer though. I wish I knew the formula, cause I don't, but some artists doe REALLY well with original comics. They need to be frequent, and consistent I've found. Comic dumps don't work I've noticed. You're right with that exposure thing. I believe it too- the more people that know of something, the easier it is for new people to understand it. I think humans communicate in more ways than we realise.
If anyone knew that formula, they'd be rich.
Although I think the advent of the Internet has helped in terms of the communication thing. Before, you'd probably be sharing your drawings on paper or canvas with friends and family, and if you're lucky, the local gallery. Now you can share them with people all over the world by simply posting them on the Internet. The problem is they have to be willing to watch you, and they have to find you because the Internet is huge; I'm not the only person using it to share my artwork.
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I wish there was a way of filtering out recolour + Frankenstein OCs from DA and leaving the ones with potential, or that are good. I actually like to watch a developing OC grow into a flower as much as I love developed ones. I can't be bothered with ones that wont progress.
There are a few elite clubs for that. The only problem is that they don't exactly foster a learning environment for people who want to get there; it's only for people who are already there. But as for OC clubs, good ones are pretty hard to find. You'll either end up with large OC clubs with lots of crappy artwork, and nobody really cares because there's too many OCs flying around. Or you'll have on the other end, OC clubs that are intended for good OC development, but hardly anybody comes by. OC clubs that are just in between are not easy to find.
Pauca sed matura.