I'm not sure what sort of perception distorting drugs are used by those people accusing him for "posting the pictures to show how great they are" etc.,

in the very first line of his very first post he said:

Quote:

Here is a drawing i did when i was bored in tech ed class. its not great but i think i might use it in a game.

"it[']s not great", he said.
you see this?

and, since you call him a kid (me too lazy to look at profile), I don't see what's wrong with saying he wants to use it in a game. You don't expect doom3 from a kid, right?

Maybe one purpose for him posting this was to actually find out if people think the material is of acceptable quality for a game made by a kid, because he wasn't sure.
And he asked for suggestions, in other words hints for things to improve for making it acceptable for using it in a little game.

And, btw., I definately have seen lots of much worse pictures.

Quote:

Original post by UnshavenBastard "it[']s not great", he said. you see this?

yeah, I saw it. Im nto illiterate. but in my experience, anytime someone says "Its not great" they really mean "I think its totally rad, but if someone else doesnt, I wouldnt feel as bad when they critisize it. Really, I want compliments that contradict what i said".

Quote:

Maybe one purpose for him posting this was to actually find out if people think the material is of acceptable quality for a game made by a kid, because he wasn't sure.

Well, I think he knows now.
We should be commemerated for telling him the truth, rather than beat down for not lying and building up his ego.

This falls right into my theory that people simply love to hate. It's the new fad. Every reality show is successful cuz you hate so much about it. The situation in the US with the election is entirely based on hate. Hate rules.

Thus, it is often not surprising to me how FRIGGIN LONG these threads are bashing people's ideas and mocking their work (the less said about MMORPG threads the better). Then it turns into "Leave him alone" "No, why should we?" "He deserves to hear the truth" "The truth doesn't have to be so harsh". I create a thread asking for people's help, criticism and advice, and unless I post something that completely blows, the thread barely even gets VIEWED.

It seems everybody has the right idea bout what the wrong thing to do is (including me, I'm not so self unaware as to see that this post is no different from the others). If you have some comment about his work, and maybe want to offer specific suggestions as to what he could do to improve or change, then by all means post them. Example: "I think your artwork sucks. Have a look at (insert url here) to see an example of what kind of standard game art holds up to."

Quote:

To elaborate further, ding ding, here comes the shitmobile.

is equally unproductive and just as juvenile as the 'junior high kid on parent controlled AOL'.

Thank you ALL for wasting time on the forum. If there weren't so many of you around, maybe some SERIOUS people could get some help here.


As ever,
Cosmic

@baddogj:

I think the two main problems people have here is that a) your stuff doesn´t look like you´ve put a whole lot of effort in it, and b) that it doesn´t really relate to game development.

ad a):
I think you yourself see a lot that could be improved with your drawings. Try and work on that first, even if it´s just to show people that you´ve made an effort. It´s much easier to get detailled and constructive criticism and comments for improvement if the art looks like you´ve tried, but come to a point where you can´t improve on your own.
If you can do that, you´ll see that people will be more than willing to help you out.
As a suggestion - set yourself a goal for each skech/drawing/painting you do. Research first. If you want to learn about faces, read up on drawing faces before you start. There´s tons of good stuff floating about the internet. When you´re done, review your drawing by yourself first, then post it and get other peoples opinions about it.
You´ll see that you will become better much faster, as well as getting better responses.


ad b):
This is mainly a game development site, and even the art section caters mainly to game artists. This is not really the right site for you if you´re just trying to improve your drawing skills. I´m not saying you´re completely wrong here, but there are better sites and better boards if all you want to do is improve your drawing skills.
If your stuff is related to a game in some way, let us know about it. People love details, even if it´s a game that won´t even get started (let alone finished). Most projects here are like that.

For my first picture, i am planning to use it as a layout for a thriller halloween type of game, he would be like the main enemy in the game

I think the most obvious flaw in the early pictures are that they're clearly drawn with a mouse in something like MS Paint. The problem isn't so much MS Paint, but the mouse: it is _not_ a tool designed for drawing with.

If you want to draw directly on a computer, NEVER use a mouse. Get a graphics tablet. For those who think this might be a step too far, too soon, I should mention that my paper art style (monochrome, but more photorealistic) and computer art style (sprites, tiles and animations that look much more cartoony) are very different, so don't be surprised if yours turns out to be similarly divergent. The two media have very different 'feels'.

Graphics tablets are not as expensive as they used to be and you can get a 'starter' tablet for well under $100 these days. Often, they'll even throw in a cut-down graphics program too. The Rolls-Royce of graphics tablets are made by Wacom, (www.wacom.de), but try and get one that 'fits' your drawing style rather than the other way round. I find I prefer smaller tablets to the larger models -- which is convenient for my wallet -- but you may find that a sub-A5 surface area feels too cramped for your own style.

You might even try going for one of those Tablet PCs, which seem to be so derided these days. They're so unpopular that they're actually becoming quite cheap, even though they're basically a big, fat LCD display with a graphics tablet spot-welded onto the front of it so that you can draw directly onto the screen. (Wacom even make the sensor grids for some of these, so you get much the same feature set.) They're definitely worthy of investigation if you have the budget.

As I haven't been a professional artist for more than ten years now, I won't bore people with any of my own work. It's mostly animated sprites, tilesets and the like, so it's not much to look at. My career in computer games ended in 1997, by which time I'd done pretty much every job going in computer game development. I work mainly as a writer these days, with some occasional consulting work on the side.


--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

I agree that a tablet is a very nice thing to have, but it´s definitely not a must. People who can draw, draw equally well with the mouse, in most cases the differences in style and form aren´t even noticeable.
The Wacom Graphire 3 should sell for around $80, that´s a good tablet to start with. There are cheaper tablets around, but from my limited but horrible experience with Aipteks I can only suggest that you stick with Wacoms from the start. Much less aggravation that way.

Quote:

Original post by Hase I agree that a tablet is a very nice thing to have, but it´s definitely not a must. People who can draw, draw equally well with the mouse, in most cases the differences in style and form aren´t even noticeable. The Wacom Graphire 3 should sell for around $80, that´s a good tablet to start with. There are cheaper tablets around, but from my limited but horrible experience with Aipteks I can only suggest that you stick with Wacoms from the start. Much less aggravation that way.

I must confess that I actually spent my entire professional game artist career (such as it was) using a keyboard (and, later, a mouse as well) to draw with. Being young and naïve at the time, I used a cheap ex-rental Ferguson TX colour TV as the display. But then, my platforms were the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and then the Atari ST range. (I did do a few odds and ends for other platforms, but those were the computers I did 99% of my paying work on.)

That might seem an odd choice of equipment, but I was a struggling freelancer back then, mostly developing my own games. Unlike the big professional codeshops at the time, I developed directly on the target platforms. I didn't buy my first PC until VGA graphics were the norm.

The art tools available to me back then were either of my own invention or strange beasts like OCP Art Studio (ZX Spectrum) and Rainbird's Art Studio and NeoPaint for the Atari ST. None of these supported a tablet and the platforms had pretty basic graphics capabilities by today's standards in any case.

I gave up doing game graphics professionally when 3D modeling became mainstream, but I still like to keep my hand in with the occasional bout of Corel Painter 8, hence my Wacom Intuous Somethingorother.


The above can be summarised thus:

"You kids of today have it easy! By 'eck, in my day, we really 'ad it tough!"

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

KEEP DRAWING. Don't listen to people who say they suck, allthough they are not great, but they will be. keep drawing and you will get better with every single drawing you do.

"There are 10,000 bad drawings in all of us."

So keep drawing until they are all gone :: )

Your on the right track keep it up.