What skill level do you guys believe is needed for getting Magic or Dnd work? Obviously there are some decent artists working for wizards, but there are many questionable ones as well.
Do you believe sending mails to their artdrop with a good portfolio is the way to go, or is chasing an AD's ass more important / would you say connections matter much?
What is /ic's opinion on WoTC paid work?
>>2322656
You need to be pretty good. There's a reason it's considered a benchmark/goal for fantasy artists.
That said, there does seem to be a shift in the last few years towards a homogenous photographic look to their art, and it seems that now that aesthetic is more important than genuine artistry and style.
Also sure there are some weak images they print, but on the whole the average quality is still fairly high. Considering they pump out thousands of images it's not a surprise there are a couple duds, especially since some of their briefs can be rather limiting or stupid. They pay better than most other fantasy illustration gigs and they get better quality work in return.
What the heck lol
>>2322679
Most artists have realized that next to nobody will ever look at the art zoomed in like this, so they half ass anything that can't be seen in real life. Apparently as long as the thumbnail is ok Wizards will not care anymore. Or maybe they never did and I'm just noticing this now.
>>2322656
That painting by Karla is pretty awesome, but wonky at the same time. The desk is way too short for the chair and the character. And the desk seems to be out of perspective with the chair.
Clint Cearley is usually decent but the latest piece of his was a bit iffy. So I guess there is some wiggle room. They are tiny illustrations after all. This piece probably looks fine at print.
I'm working on a new portfolio to try to get work from MtG as well. I'm trying to keep the print size in mind and keep things very simple and zoomed in, but probably not always going far enough with it. And I'm spending way to much time on each piece for $1000 or whatever. I hear they give on average 3 weeks for sketches and 3 weeks for finish though. Way more than I expected.
>>2322679
>>2322689
>>2322692
I really feel like /ic/ is way too nitpicky sometimes. When you're learning how to draw, it's true you should strive for accuracy. Once you get to the point where you can draw freely from imagination and have it look believable and appealing, and you start searching for style, rules are going to be broken. If you get good enough to get work, rules will definitely be broken. I didn't understand this at first either, but this summer I actually did a card illustration gig and I realized it's fucking hard to do, especially with time constraints. I did the best I could with what I had and it worked out alright in the end, even though I thought I should be able to create better illustrations for it but hey, they got approved and I got paid. Believe me, you'll find it impossible to sustain paid work if you treat it with the same tlc as personal work. Personal work and paid work are apples and oranges & should be judged that way.
>>2322747
>I really feel like /ic/ is way too nitpicky sometimes
Sometimes? Try always. That's this board's biggest problem. The only way /ic/ won't nitpick at a piece of art is if it's photorealism. But even with that it's always
> photorealism
> just buy a camera lol
>>2322753
Yeah I know, but ironically, considering how this place is supposed to be about unfettered critique, if I didn't use cushiony language like "I feel" and "sometimes" people would just dogpile me. It really is a problem though, because too often a "critique" really becomes someone trying to make themselves feel smart that they noticed some tiny imperfection, which is ridiculous. You could take any master painter and find imperfections, exaggerations, missed details, a hundred things to nitpick about any given piece. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't take a magnifying glass to tell how skilled the artist is or for people to simply decide whether or not they like it, so there's no point doing it. It'd be like insisting someone using Pi in an equation fully calculate every decimal point while showing their work when the answer is just going to end up being 2 anyway, only to then say
>why not just use a calculator
like you said. It's crazy.
>>2322756
>It really is a problem though
No it's not.
>that they noticed some tiny imperfection
If they noticed a small imperfection, they should critique it. Why would you leave that out? Are you scared or something? This is NOT a problem because a critique is just fucking words. Words that will be read by a dozen anons here at that, in case you were fearing larger repercussions.
>It'd be like insisting someone using Pi in an equation fully calculate every decimal point
Omitting the nitpicking critique altogether would be like saying that Pi is just 3.14 and the other decimals just don't count because you think they are irrelevant. Nobody is forcing them to use the decimals. Nobody is forcing you to correct the nitpicked parts. Let them say what they want and it will be up to the artist to decide what to do with that.
All this "problem" "crazy" etc. makes you sound like a SJW. The only thing that might get damaged by the critique here is someone's fragile ego which can't take a couple of shitposts with namecalling.
>>2322764
The reason I used Pi in my example is because it's a symbol that represents a value. You see the symbol and you know what it stands for, you don't need to see every piece. It's the same in art. There's a point at which you can stand close enough to the painting to see every brush stroke but not the image as a whole. Teaching people to be all about missing the forest for the trees just because they can is to teach people to waste time on so many levels. It perpetuates a mentality of chasing some unattainable level of perfection before ever trying to do something, and that noticing these tiny imperfections actually adds some valuable information to their library when it doesn't, because they'll always have the same imperfections in their work because nobody is perfect. It's much more valuable to be efficient, both when creating a piece and critiquing one. You don't need to count every blade of grass to recognize a field, so while you could, why would you when it's not needed?
>>2322692
Wizards has been requesting more details lately because you can zoom in on the art in the online version. At least that is what someone posted on muddycolors. All these 'i dont give a fuck about design and rendering' pieces that have been coming out lately like the one you just posted make me believe otherwise.
>>2322747
Well, of course commercial work and personal work are two completely different things, but if you are hired based on a decent and well polished portfolio which consists mostly of personal work and then proceed to produce half assed crap most of the time, then what the heck is the point of working with you? If you can't produce the quality of work that you have been hired for in the first place??
>>2322775
Have you ever worked commercially or talked at length with someone who has? There are a million reasons why something that hits print may not match the quality of something in a portfolio from the same person. Clients can be really, really stupid. You'd be amazed at the number of times even a large company will hire someone then turn and ask them to do work that's nothing like what they were shown. Budgets get cut, deadlines get pushed up, sometimes a half finished piece gets taken from one person and given to another, or an intern or someone does part of the work on a piece, a 3rd party client changes or disapproves something last minute, or asks for a different format; there are so many wrenches that can be thrown into the mix, not to mention shit that can just happen to you like you getting sick or having some other emergency or just simply an off day. There's not a single working professional in history who has delivered 100% every time. People aren't machines.
>>2322772
> It perpetuates a mentality
No it doesn't. Do you realize you're completely making stuff up? A critique is a critique. Now that critique might be right ("that mug is slightly off perspective" when the mug is slightly off perspective) or wrong ("that mug is slightly off perspective" when you have a photo of a mug). YOU might make whatever you want out of this. You might take it as a perpetuation of a perfectionist nitpicking mentality. Of course the mug will always be slightly off perspective in a painting as your lines are not perfect 1-dimensional geometrically entities. But you might also take it as someone accidentally noticing the mug as being off perspective, which will call your attention to that point and you might decide whether or not it's worthy of being corrected.
>You don't need to count every blade of grass to recognize a field, so while you could, why would you when it's not needed?
> and that noticing these tiny imperfections actually adds some valuable information to their library when it doesn't
Because what's needed and what is valuable are subjective. You might think you've put enough blade of grass in your field to read as such instead of a blot of color. Someone else might think there's too few. Someone might think it's missing exactly 2 blades. Let them have their fucking opinions and let the artist decide whether it's relevant or not. Maybe he actually thought he put too few blades in there before and he corrects it. Maybe he thinks they are crazy and "who cares about blades of grass". This takes a whole 10 seconds out of your life.
That said, I've rarely seen anything approaching this level of autism in any critique on /ic/, and I'm here since forever. The "average critique" - "nitpicking" boundary is not as clear cut as you make it out to be.
Cont'd.
>>2322794
Imagine that in the future you can run paintings through a program that gives you an automated critique. Of course it also finds problems in perspective and anatomy. As expected for any such program, it has a margin of error. Since every painting turns out to be "wrong", you have to learn how to use the program, ignore the mistakes you think you can ignore and focus on what you think is important. Would you call this program useful or "problematic"? Would you rather have a third party, who might or might not be a good artist, decide that some anatomical problems are irrelevant, or would you rather have the option to fine tune it yourself?
Also remember that the other alternative is a program which only gives one result: "amazing :)".
>>2322794
This is exactly what I'm talking about. All this parsing of semantics. Arguing the minutia is just a waste of time to me. Scouring every piece with a microscope is a waste of time to me. I don't believe those 2 blades of grass will make or break the piece or you getting hired. The main reasons I don't support it are this: 1. Find 100 tiny flaws in someone's work, you've learned nothing and neither have they because their next piece will have 100 more, and it won't keep you from making 100 tiny mistakes in yours. People have gone to their graves trying to perfect their craft who've never created something flawless. Even if their next piece only has 98 flaws so what? The one after will have 102. To me, it's not a worthwhile pursuit or way to look at art.
cont
>>2322814
2. I always see it being used as a way to try and knock down some perceived ego, especially because these "critiques" always seem to come after someone praises the piece, even if it's days later, so I do see it as perpetuating a mentality that's not actually aimed at helping anyone improve and is therefore problematic. I can tell you're just going to keep picking this apart, but that's as far down the rabbit hole as I'm going with this. That's how I feel, those are my reasons, and that's all I have to say. So you sit here and count grass, and I won't, and we'll see who gets to Scotland first.
you don't get hired if you are good and unknown, but you totally get hired if you are bad and known. so get known. that's really all that matters anyway. both for inhouse concept art jobs, for inhouse illustration jobs, and also for both of those on a freelance basis.
all that matters is being popular (of course you need a minimum of art skills too).
>>2322826
>you don't get hired if you are good and unknown, but you totally get hired if you are bad and known
Not really. You are yet another noob who is parroting some bullshit you heard on /ic/ once. There are thousands of skilled, yet relatively unknown concept artists and illustrators who have in-house jobs but don't have much of an online presence at all. Meanwhile there are thousands of popular fanartists etc who would never get hired by big clients.
Artists are hired for their skill or if they happen to have really good connections. Their fanbase is utterly worthless to any big company with an actual marketing budget. Even Sakimichan, the most popular fanartist in the world right now has a laughably small following compared to any moderately big youtuber, who are nowadays much more important for reaching an audience than any artist will ever be.
everyone can do it, with a bit of luck.
I remember my perspective class, we used a lot of Magic cards of how to Not into perspective cause most of their cards fuck up the aspect ratios, making things too small or too big in the distance. So not much, I guess.
>>2322914
Algen is better than 99.9% of people posting on /ic/ though. The fact that he sometimes fucks up faces or that the face of this particular background character looks especially derpy doesn't change that.
>>2322919
You must have gone to a pretty bad art school if your teacher didn't even understand the concept of exaggerating scale for the sake of impact in a fantasy illustration.
So, what I take from this thread is that it's really easy, everyone can do it... but for some reason no one ITT actually works for WotC.
>>2322940
can you even read nigger ?
>>2322939
No, he was right. Some of that shit was just completely off no matter how you look at it. None of it was exaggerated, a lot of it is just completely off.
>>2322959
who gives a deuce
This is an artist who is not a good draughtsmen trying to convery something huge. So he goes with what he knows will work. The idea "reads" but it isnt correct. This could just be two pieces stabled togethor.
In the end the audience "gets it" so who cares? Also lol at those chains
>>2322959
Can you describe what this image is showing? What is wrong with it? And what is that angle supposed to show? I don't get it.
Also, was this perspective class with CG Master Academy? Which teacher?
>>2322899
lol. right. get a clue.
>>2322967
>it's okay if it's shit :^)
But that isn't why this convo was brought up to begin with. Way to steer the direction of the topic to defend yourself.
>Also, was this perspective class with CG Master Academy
Yes.
>>2322976
great counter argument, you dumb shit. When you don't know what you are talking about and you were just corrected, why do you insist on having the last word? Just admit that you are wrong and move on.
>>2322994
Ok. But can you explain what is wrong with the dragon image?
>>2322967
>In the end the audience "gets it" so who cares?
This. This is what I was trying to say. It's way more valuable to both the artist and the publisher to create a striking image than a correct image. In a medium that allows you to invent worlds and the rules of those worlds, it's foolish not to take full advantage of that freedom, and suspension of disbelief and gestalt of the viewer are part of the medium. Leaving some of the details to interpretation instead of rendering every inch to HD, fudging some things to trick the eye, these things make the viewer interact with the picture without realizing it, it draws them in and they don't even know why. You do need a good foundation to even start making it believable, but there's a threshold of how right something needs to be to sell itself and becoming 'might as well be a photo'.
>>2323025
The people walking into the temple are on the same plane as the dragon. So the dragon is either very small, or the temple itself is essentially a clown car for the priests walking in.
I've been sending them emails since the beginning of the year with no responses other than automatic emails 3 months later, so I would say that is best to contact directly the art directors, specially if you are able to go to cons and meet them irl.... but then again my art may be shitty to their standards....
>>2323205
Ah. Hmm. Fuck. It's still kinda lost on me. And I still don't understand what the overpaint was trying to communicate. When I look at the original, I can sense that the scale of the dragon is not as big as the artist intended. The piece just feels off and not very grand.. But I don't know how I would attempt to fix it. Other than slather on a ton of atmospheric perspective. And maybe tilt the tower and the dragon back a bit? Arg. Why is setting up a scene so fucking hard? I'm struggling with conveying scale at the moment in a piece of my own. Same shit, I can feel that it is wrong but can't correct it.
>>2323268
It doesn't matter, because the average person looking at the card will get the idea that the dragon is big. This is another instance where it's entirely possible that the artist actually did set the scale up correctly, but some executive told them to fudge the scale to show more of the dragon. To set this composition up "correctly", you'd either lose a lot of the dragon by having it cut off, or the people would have to be so small they wouldn't stand out, either that or fudge the midground by making the people going down some hill or huge winding road or something, which there may not have been time to add, so I can see them being told to just do a dirty fix and run with it. Again, you shouldn't expect perfection out of paid work, or that you'll be given the chance to make perfect work if you're hired. Your artistic integrity isn't top priority to business owners.
>>2323296
>It doesn't matter, because the average person looking at the card will get the idea that the dragon is big
Basically this. If you can't see the error, it's fine. Technically it's incorrect, even from a stylize point of view. But the average person doesn't care.
>>2323296
>>2323317
Well artists aren't average people. We always want things to be better. I would like to be able to convey scale well. This dragon image is kind of boring. Maybe because the scale isn't communicated well. It seems a lot of artists struggle with making things look big. But somehow people like Daniel Dociu can pull it off over and over again, even in images without humans/trees for scale.
>>2322656
There are tiers to MtG art.
There's Nielsen, Nelson, Palumbo, Staples, Avon, Reynolds and Baga. Who are secure on quality or name, often get comissioned art for the best, most iconic and memorable cards and can run as well as they tackle, figuratively speaking.
There's Algen, Ortiz, Chan, Lockwood, Cearley, Rahn, Deschamps, Kieryluk, people who are decidedly high quality but have fuck-ups or take ugly shortcuts sometimes and get criticized more harshly than the above category since they're not "old guard" yet, but they're getting there.
There's Swanland, Argyle, Bradley, and others who are really only good at one kind of illustration and have that niche covered since they're actually pretty good at it, but look wonky when made to draw something off their zone. And then there's a shitload of noobs that are sincerely Merc.wip tier and doing all the filler cards WotC knows will end in a bin after being opened.
The problem and cause of this is that they haven't updated their wages since somewhere around 2001 and now are on the same pay tier of FFG and chinese online games who don't nag so much about consolidating style and are generaly easier to work with even if they don't have the omph that working for WotC gives you.
The current art director is a bitch, literally, who is paying much less attention to building a memorable setting than about everything looking "house style" and within the confines of the ridiculously mediocre design bible for the current set, plus notthing being triggering for poor little POCs and wimmns of course.
And finally, the game itself has adopted a top-heavy hierarchy, where only about 180/1250 cards they put out a year are playable, and of course, rare and valuable. Check mtggoldfish to look at the cards that are actually seeing play, you won't see such offensively bad art as this >>2322679 in those decks.
>>2322692
>The desk is way too short for the chair and the character
But if it was taller it'd stop directing your eye to that delicious thigh.
That's the biggest problem with illustration vs fine art. You gotta take a stand wether you want realism or powerful visual communication and here it's visual communication. You look at that as a costumer and get the message "Teysa is fucking hot". Then you start looking at it like a Loomis addict and realize her arms are different lenghts, the desk is too small, the window is off plane and she's missing a bit of hip volume. Then you look at it like an illustrator and realize how everything is placed in a way to direct the eye in a figure eight motion from her face to the quill, passing through those delicious funbags and that gorgeous cane, picking up a bit more detail every time but not resting the eye enough to ponder the mistakes.
And of course this was made in hours, getting nitpicked by an art director and having to stay within a design doccument.
>>2323522
I'm not sure I agree with your categorization of names. Some are on the wrong list and you are missing out on some big names. But yeah, they basically know who their best artists are and give the best cards to them.
Also I believe they did raise their pay like a year ago or something. It was when everyone was ditching them for Applibot, they changed it so instead of like 800 per card they now pay 1k+. FFG pays <200, so it's not really a fair comparison. Wizards is actually one of the better paying companies at the moment. It's still not amazing, but many companies pay absolute shit compared to them.
>>2323369
>We always want things to be better.
That goes off the window once you're actually employed and have to deal with a tight schedule and an art director insisting that he wants you to stick with fucked up anatomy or bad perspective because "it looks more dynamic" than your fixes or there is no time to fix it.
>>2323226
The best way to get there is going to SDCC and showing your portfolio in person to the art director who's often at the event.
>>2323537
Was just speaking on general terms and according to fan demand of the cards, but yes there's many more great ones and of course, the game would be a whole ´nother level if they still had Guay, Post, Ciruelo, Brom and the Hildebrandt Bros on speed dial.
And yes FFG pays 1/5 of what WotC pays for illustration but they pay faster and offer much more freedom. For some people that freedom allows them to deliver a 6h work instead of the 18+h they'd had to spend on a piece for WotC, wich is a lot of saved time, and time is money.
>>2323531
This. Telling a story and directing the eye is an art unto itself, and it often conflicts with just representing objects the way we think they should look. Learning to draw accurately goes into being able to make an object look believable, but an illustration is about tricking the eye into thinking it's just looking at everyday things while being pulled into staring at it way longer than you would stare at that collection of objects and people.
>>2323540
OP here. Too bad for me then since im from EU. Would sending an email to an AD directly be a decent choice?
>>2323578
Yes but have in mind they receive a whole website of portfolios each month.
>>2323578
Could try doing things like going to the reddit for MtG and posting your portfolio and say "hey guys I just sent my portfolio off to WotC let me know what you think, and wish me luck!" If people like it, it could drum up some attention and possibly be seen by someone at WotC. Also, if you have a lot of art friends on Facebook, post one portfolio piece every day or two, after you send your portfolio in to WotC. This way your work might get shared around and liked and whatnot, and a friend of a friend of a friend who works at WotC might see it. Basically bombard the social media sites when you send in your portfolio. Maybe even do it before you send it in. Instagram and Tumblr are supposedly the most successful at whoring yourself out these days.
>>2323642
Oh ye, forgot about the mgt reddit, great tip, ty!
>>2322656
<This good
Owl Bear by Bryn Metheny
I actually made a mock up card for a class, am I gud enuff?
>>2324061
It's too op for a one mana creature.
The artwork is great, but I don't think they are looking for a style like it
>>2324061
Would it be a problem getting a job for them if you've never played their game before?
>>2323268
I did a quickie 10min paintover onto it. Perspective is still off but even without being exact the brain can tell something looks off. I think the 2 biggest flaws was the lighting and scale wasn't sold. So shrunk the dragon some so it looked like he fit on the rock and then I put some fog and dropped the value on the dragon except around the face area and added more light coming through the wings.
>>2324154
Here's why this is pointless: you can't see the main featured part of the card, the dragon. In that thumbnail, the dragon doesn't stand out at all. In the other thumbnail, you can immediately see the dragon, which is what you need, to catch the eye and show what the card is mainly for instantly, and even when it's small such as it would be on a playing card. The people and castle are an afterthought, just flavor, the artist could've easily made them rocks or a pile of treasure. This is the difference between art on a shelf and art in a fancy brownback leather bound journal with hearts all over the cover.
>>2324154
Balancing values for these small cards can be extremely tricky just because the card does not read well if reduced to a very small size. That is why most cards have to have either a.) a high contrasted background with the character, b.) Very clear values with dramatic light designed to hit the main focal points, or c.) a very vibrant/saturated style of rendering with a higher contrast which mostly looks bad imo but reads well.
>>2322656
woah...
>>2324061
>TFW not the only one
I got an 82/100 on commercial art class with this. The test was hiding a card with original art made by yourself in a deck of whatever playing cards you liked, and grading was based on how long it took the instructor to pick it apart.
>>2324572
We already got past this; readability, storytelling and composition beat realism where illustration is concerned.
It's why lots of people have tried to tell us not to be so anal about muh Loomis. As soon as you get the big illustration/concept art gig those 40 hours of making sure everything is anatomicaly perfect, in concrete perspective and illuminated in absolute veracity turn into giving your shit visual impact to crank out fools' gold under your critically minuscule deadline and hope the AD doesn't demand last minute changes.
>>2324153
I imagine a lot of artists have never played the game. All of the card text is likely done by someone else.
>>2324153
No, only the basic lore stuff. Their AD looks something like this:
Card Name and color
Description
Focus
Mood
They don't give you any hint about what the card does unless it's a reprint and you know that card.
>>2324724
my instructor told me to keep changing how the layout looked on mine, because he said the actual cards were designed like shit.. hence it being not entirely accurate. its cool to see other people doing this.
I'll probably shoot for a lesser known card game to do art for so i can increase my chances.
>>2324728
Just because its easier to be a hack if your good enough to get away with it doesn't mean you shouldn't be criticized for it.
Yeah. We all understand art is hard, deadlines are a bitch, and the average viewer doesn't have an eye for things.
Aside from the perspective errors, the lady in the Karla Ortiz piece also seems to have two legs coming out of the right side of her body and no left leg.
>>2325473
I don't think anyone is challenging that it can sell but that doesn't mean that an art board shouldn't be pointing out errors like this as we aren't here to settle for the mediocre in our studies.
>>2325486
These are the facts of life, young one. Accuracy only matters when you're learning how to draw. After you've learned, if you want to get work, the only thing that matters is knowing which rules you can get away with breaking to create the most visually striking image you can as fast as you can. The criticisms of anonymous amateurs on the internet spending hours examining it mean nothing compared to the eye and decision of likely 2 or more professional art directors responsible for marketing to thousands of people. If you want to judge craftsmanship to learn good craftsmanship, you go look for these artists personal work. If you want to learn how to be and think like a commercial artist, you have to open your mind and realize it's a different school of art altogether and learn to appreciate it for what it is, which is _not_ the art of creating masterpieces, but rather selling illusions. Come to understand the difference, or you'll never succeed as a commercial artist.
>>2325505
I think some people here actually got the point that you're making (and I agree), and would still want to dissect and discuss about the work and what could be improved on for knowledge's sake.
This is a critique board after all, so spotting and critiquing an artist's commercial work is relevant.
>>2325518
It is relevant but you're critiquing baseball for not being basketball. Commercial art is a different game with different rules and it absolutely would benefit every aspiring pro to dissect it. You're asking the wrong questions though. You should be looking past the flaws at WHY it's flawed and asking what potential benefits come from it, looking at how they used shortcuts to meet deadlines while still selling the image to the average viewer. Merely stopping at pointing out drawing issues and incomplete polish is not appreciating the purpose of the medium. It's the same as when someone red lines an anime drawing and totally changes it to western style. If you lose sight of the intent your critique is basically not applicable, and essentially pointless.
>>2325527
I doubt Karla intentionally drew the legs wonky, or meant to put the chair on a different plane than the table. They are not adding anything positive to the image by being that way.
>>2325562
That you can look at this image and really think she couldn't have made everything picture perfect if she wanted and had the time, and really not understand just how much impact the business side of all this needs to be analyzed hand in hand with the art side of it says to me you're one of those hard cases where it's going to take you actually experiencing a professional gig to understand. I hope you get the chance, but when you do you'll wish you'd have understood before, the knowing what to take from pieces like this and what not to take is really useful.
>>2325585
I'm not the one making claims as to why the errors exist, and whether or not Karla could fix them or not, under X circumstance. You are. First you were saying it was stylistically designed to be that way, now you're saying it was due to time constraints. It's irrelevant, and you don't really know, you're not Karla, you're just some blowhard trying to tell people how to critique an image.
Nobody is saying this piece is shit, nobody is making claims about Karla as an artist. We're just examining an image.
You remind me of this one time I was in a gallery looking at this small sculpture. This old cranky asshole walks through the door and within two seconds of entering angrily starts telling me I'm not looking at it right - that I need to move around the sculpture and view it from all angles. I guess admiring from one vantage point for 2 seconds is far too long. You should be in a perpetual state of dizziness while viewing sculpture.
>>2325598
Nope, you keep just missing my point. I never tried to definitively say anything about this picture. I said when you analyze commercial work, you need to consider more factors than just whether the drawing is perfect. Sometimes the reasons are for time, sometimes it's for design, sometimes it's for other reasons. It's up to you to look at each piece and ask those questions. Merely looking at it and noticing something isn't represented with 100% accuracy only scratches the surface, it doesn't get you thinking about whether or not there's some benefit that came from that error, or what you might do to solve the issue with limited time if you determine time was a factor. This shallow analysis leads to posts like >>2324154 where a misguided attempt at making it more "correct" disregards other purposes the pic needs to serve. No matter whose work it is, if you really want to get something out of critiquing it, ask the right questions.
>>2325598
By the way, you comparing this to some old dude ranting about appreciating sculpture really shows you don't get it. My whole point has been about how analyzing commercial art is literally the opposite of analyzing art. I'm saying you need to factor in time, money, demands from clients that detract from art, everything that has nothing to do with creating art and everything to do with running a business. It couldn't be further from some abstract bs about interpreting feels, or even just basic crafstmanship. Like I said, it's going to take you working a gig to really get it, so I'll just leave you alone.
>>2325600
Yeah I can agree that edit didn't really help the dragon image.
The drawing errors in the other piece, however, make her look like shes tipping over in her chair and about to inadvertently throw herself out the window. Not ideal for a character who is supposed to be in a position of power.
>>2325606
But for the average viewer doesn't see it as her tipping, instead it adds an interesting angle that leads the eye, rather than having a static line going straight up and down in the image. Sometimes the right amount of wrong is needed. There's a saying that you've only got 3 seconds to catch the viewer's attention and make them stare, and sometimes making something or leaving something wrong or undefined helps with that. If everything looked perfectly balanced and straight up and down, you run the risk of making it boring and not leading the eye around the picture. I can't objectively prove any of that is happening here, all I'm saying is be open minded of these things, because there are many more layers to creating marketable imagery than just drawing what you see as you see it. Now, I'm going to bed.
>>2325562
I bet she did, for the sake of the figure 8 composition.
This shit is made to be looked at about 4x6 cm, the most important parts are her face, hands, the window, cane and quill. Karla broke the rules of perspective and hip anatomy so that she could draw a striking and original (for the game) scene and direct the viewer's eye through these elements.
Critizicing it is irrelevant because it assumes she didn't do it on purpose for the sake of storytelling same as with the dragon picture above.
It's really like going to see a comedy movie and complaining because no serious and realistic character would do all the dumb shit that makes the plot move in comedy movies.
This is why I hate /ic/ some times.
Niggers, fuck the fundamentas.
Most people on the drawthreads are good enough to start studying design, storytelling, composition, etc. And actually start producing real art and moving forward. Instead you keep on forcing a cycle of crippling self-doubt and destructive criticism that has you rethreading the fundamentals ad-nauseaum and actually end up getting worse the more time you spend on it.
You're never gonna make it untill you realize how little the public cares about how well you can render the pinkie from a worm's eye view.
>>2325585
>made everything picture perfect (...) and had the time
Kek, while I agree about you with the general point you're making that not everything needs to be perfect, saying that almost 2 months were not enough to place a chair in perspective is a bit out there.
>>2325650
>2 months
Try 12 hours at most.
I want to see you get a professional gig and the look of the AD when you tell him you need 2 months for a single illustration.
>>2325984
This, I mean what the fuck. This just shows these misconceptions come from having no experience with commercial art at all. My first illustration gig, I had 2 weeks to do an art test, some character designs, then turn around two hand-drawn, hand-inked 6-panel comic sequences all with time for editing and color. The first major project I was given, I had 2 weeks to turn around 7 fully rendered digital paintings. Thankfully some of the approvals got held up and I got an extra week out of that one but there's nobody getting 2 months for a single illustration, and if they are they're not getting regular work doing that, they're likely being commissioned/contracted for one or two of those once in a while, and doing more reasonably paced lower level work in between. I guarantee you none of the artists doing card illustrations are spending even close to that long on any single card, unless it's some special edition thing, and they're not gonna be doing that every month.
Art exists to tell somehting to the viewer, be accurate only helps in that task, but it's a tool to reach a far more important goal.
>>2326076
There is no such thing as a perfect piece of art. Even if you copy a photo, it's not ever going to be a perfect copy, no matter how close you get, and at that point it's no longer art anyway. There is skilled and unskilled, interesting and uninteresting, these qualities are much more worth looking into. The artist is clearly skilled enough to do a fully representative piece with greater accuracy than shown in that image, you can't produce an image like that without having learned how to draw what you see accurately. She's just past the point where adhering to reality and expectations is beneficial. Learning to copy is only the first step of actually becoming an artist and inventing images people will remember.
>>2326091
Pic related - these animals' legs don't look like this in reality, but Dali did this to exaggerate the feeling of how much larger they are than humans & their exoticism. All the figures could've just been shapeless blobs but the parts that are accurate are just vehicle for the viewer's understanding. You understand what a horse is and a person is, so when you see this you get the idea of a horse being bigger than you, and the legs making it some majestic strange thing beyond comprehension, translating a feeling into visual communication. Sticking only to drawing what you see without any deviation doesn't lend itself to making interesting pieces, and thinking all art should be is photocopies is a juvenile mentality.
>>2326097
The last thing I want to say is that accuracy in modern illustration and concept art is important to the extent of being functional in a pipeline production. If you're concepting something that someone else has to model and texture and animate, you do need to make sure you capture what you want everything to look like as well as you can in the time you have. Bayonetta's concept art is a good example. How do we know she's supposed to have super long legs and that she's not just proportioned like a normal woman and the artist just screwed up? It looks intentional in the concept art, because the artist knew how to draw well enough to convey that intent. You need to be able to do that, and your draftsmanship has to be at a certain level for it, even if you're not using realism, so yes, fundamentals do matter, but they're not the end all be all.
>>2326097
This is a surrealist image. Not a magic card.
>>2326097
This is a video game with a stupid Asian aesthetic, not a magic card.
Both look more intentional than the magic card's goofs. And both are serving a very different purpose.
You're full of shit and don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Everyone in here that has a weird hang up with us critiquing these images and everyone in here saying we won't understand until we work professionally... post your work please. So we can see how retarded it looks.
>>2326076
An artwork with some flaws can still be interesting and tell a story, but mathematical precision alone cannot.
/ic is way too extreme, if something isn't 100% accurate, everything else becomes magically useless.
>>2326348
Except nobody in this thread said any piece posted was "useless", fucktard. They just pointed out some obvious flaws. Get over it.
>>2326305
>>2326303
I started to put a compilation together along with more explanation, but stopped. You've already made up your mind. All you'll do is look at my work, find it's not perfect either, because it's not, and say "see? Why should I listen to you, you're no better than her? You'll see, I'll make perfect art. I'll get hired based on my perfect craftsmanship, and everything I draw for my client will be perfect." Despite my getting work without being perfect, you'll dismiss me and my point that perfection isn't everything, anyway. I'll just give you this post to dismiss instead so you can feel like you won, since this is all about winning and not discussing or learning of course, and save myself the time I was going to spend compiling everything I had to show and wasting more time on this. Life's too short, you'll either learn this or not, and I'm not getting paid to make sure you do.
>>2326305
Repaint that shit "accurately".
4x6cm 300dpi, CMYK space, you have 12 hours.
Go on, she already solved 80% of it for you by designing scenery, lightning and the character.
You're obviously too dense to understand why she broke the rules untill you see how little it gains from strict naturalism and how you'll be unable to replicate that eye-directing motion betwen the foreground, hands and face.
>>2326362
I'm sure pointing out those "flaws" will help her get published, oh wait, she already did.
This is not so much about Karla's art as it is about how ridiculously elitist /ic/ is and how useless it is for you all to be so anal because you don't even produce art. You don't know shit about storytelling, design or business practices yet you rant on the people who from the standpoint of your delusion.
You're that fat guy who can't run a yard but keeps yelling at the screen calling million dollar contract pro NFL players a bunch of losers for not palying their game how you want them to.
this thread is giving me cancer+autism
>>2322939
>Algen is better than 99.9% of people posting on /ic/ though.
Actually, drawing-wise he's not. I know that people like to say this, but I have seen anons who post here draw 110% better than Algen does. If anything, his digital painting looks a lot better than people who may post here, but that's because he spent more time learning how to paint than he did learning how to draw.
I have always been of the thought that learning how to digital paint is way easier than learning how to draw. Sometimes things will be beautifully rendered, but the drawings are TERRIBLE. If Algen's drawings were better he would be way more successful artist.
>>2324154
I like that there's more breathing room for your eye now,but now you have lost the focus of the picture. In this picture: >>2323268 the dragon is easy to notice and the light on its tail leads your eye down to the bottom of the pic.
In yours the darkness frames the picture, but everything is too dark and there's no solid focus on the piece nor does it lead your eye to anywhere in particular.
>>2326543
He spent just as much time drawing as painting. Anyone familiar with his CA sketchbook knows this. He would post like 50 pages of pencils every few days. His current drawing skills seem worse, but I'm sure it's just bad taste/stylization more than a lack of skill because he has demonstrated numerous times that he can draw well.
>>2326100
This is more in the lines of fashion design/illustration. That is the real reason why this illustration is exaggerated. Fashion design illustration requires its figures to be longer than normal human proportions.
>>2326552
Then he needed to spend even more time drawing, because his drawings are awkward as fuck. They look weird and the anatomy's off. Kim Jong Ji is much better example of someone who spent more time learning how to draw.
>>2326555
KJG has been drawing decades longer than Algen has even been alive. Not really a fair comparison. You can say that pretty much any pro alive at the moment should practice drawing more when you compare them to KJG. Besides, KJG specializes in drawing and comics, whereas most MtG artists specialize in painting because it's illustration.
>>2326552
>His current drawing skills seem worse
he broke his hand or whatever, after that he never practiced because he couldn't. that's why you take breaks, kids.
Algen is shit as stylization because, like most of you, he believed he would magically understand that shit just because he learned anatomy.
He didn't take a single moment to learn design, and it shows.
And Kim is a meme.
>"Hey Cam Newton had an awesome season didn't he"
>"No, because Joe Montana"
You sound like this.
>>2322656
>tfw you will never reach this level with your art
I have an idea for maybe revitalizing this thread. Can we do some mock-ups? And then maybe crit each other on making it MtG hire-worthy, or at least trekking down to comic con with a portfolio that wouldn't be a waste of time for everyone involved-worthy?
>>2327259
Op here. Thats a pretty gud idea. Could use actual mtg briefs that can be found around.
>>2327306
All the better, although I admit I wouldn't know where to start with it all. I've never even touched a Magic card, I don't want to be responsible for leading this charge, I just had the idea lol
>>2327309
Will post some brief and stuff tomorrow, too tired. I'll just leave my small wonky wip here.
>>2327332
Cool, be looking forward to it.
And nice.
>>2327332
Ruan jia influence is a bit strong here. Look at other artists more.
Overall not bad but there are many small issues. The nose looks upturned and ugly though, the breasts are sitting a little high, the ears are a different hue from the rest of her skin, the eyebrows look dumb, the cloth around her neck doesn't sit on the form well, the design of a hood with ear holes is silly, and the hair looks like straw.
Is this a crop? Feel very incomplete otherwise.
>>2327342
Ty for the crit. Its only 40% done, like i said wonky.
light bump
Op here,
For those who want to give it a shot, here's the assignment: (A fairly ok brief I found for starters)
--
Color: White Creature
Location: Plains clearing near an ancient village or something of that sort
Action: A weathered but virile middle-aged battle-cleric sits, wearing the remains of his tattered studded leather armor, cross-legged in front of a small stylish pyre. The fire is surrounded by a ring of short standing stones (maybe 2 feet high) that are engraved on all sides with pictographs/runes. He is coaxing a magical tongue of flame (maybe it burns yellow, or pure white) from the pyre and has been using this magic flame to set alight the stones as if they were some sort of impossible candle. Maybe we see two already lit in this fashion. The pictograms/runes glow softly on these two lit cairns.
Focus: The cleric
Mood: A weaver of magical tales
-Create 3 sketches which work for you and post them. Afterwards we can crit each other and vote which sketch works best among the 3 created.
>>2328338
Probably better to make that a separate thread just for the exercise.
>>2328342
Yeah you are right, omw.
>>2328338
>a small pyre
Who was the pyre for then? His wife's aborted fetus?
>standing stones... cairns...
Make up your mind, art director.
>virile. battle-cleric.
Christ. Maybe I'm not cut out to work for WotC after all.
>>2322764
>If they noticed a small imperfection, they should critique it. Why would you leave that out?
Critique should be useful, and nitpicking often isn't, at least at the level that people here do it. Carefully scanning a piece of work just so you can point out tiny imperfections that would normally go unnoticed doesn't make you a good critic, it makes you autistic.
>>2328434
>I'm not cut out to work
Glad you noticed.
>>2328434
Not cut out to work with WotC, or anyone in general, clearly. Nitpick ahoy.
