Scott Robertson youtube

[Xopher]

Hey just watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T8DH...feature=g-user

On 'visual library' heard about it before from feng zhu (and found out in the comments he was a student of Scotts) this first video was great, but if you stopped drawing in teens do you believe that you have to take all those years to rebuild your library to be able to make good designs?

Anyway reason for the post was to point out Scott had been posting some New vids if anyone hadn't seen them yet..

[Chronos]

Yes, art is pretty much a hopeless venture after a certain age. Just like trying to learn perspective after your teens. Your creative bone plates stop growing.

[Deadlyhazard]

The idea that you have to rebuild a visual library if you didn't draw/study in your teens is bullshit. I've never heard any science or proof to back it up. There are so many illustrators and artists that I can think of that started later in life and still made it fine.

[G@m]

Yes, art is pretty much a hopeless venture after a certain age. Just like trying to learn perspective after your teens. Your creative bone plates stop growing.

where does this awesome theory come from? lol

[Leonor]

The idea that you have to rebuild a visual library if you didn't draw/study in your teens is bullshit. I've never heard any science or proof to back it up. There are so many illustrators and artists that I can think of that started later in life and still made it fine.

Can you list some?

[Baron Flame]

Yes, art is pretty much a hopeless venture after a certain age. Just like trying to learn perspective after your teens. Your creative bone plates stop growing.

where does this awesome theory come from? lol

I'd like to know the same. I am not being offensive or challenging here, it's just that I drifted towards 3D(game development) some time ago and now that I have some time, I am trying to put some work into it and to get good at it(Incidentally I've started with Scott Robertson's Perspective series from Gnomon) . I'm 22 right now and this is one of the few things that worries me.(the question being : Am I too old to start from scratch and become good at it anymore?)

[Vari]

You guys misunderstand what Scott Robertson and Feng Zhu wanted to say about the visual library. What you understand is: If you didn't draw in your teen years then you missed your only chance at building your visual library. This is absolutely not what they mean. What they mean is this:

A spent his teen years playing a lot of games, watching animations and behind the scenes dvd's. He used to trace and redraw his favorite characters, so he knew how a hunter character would look or how a mage would look. He was also really interested in cars and he could tell you all about cars. Finally, he was also a history nerd so he knew how soldiers from different ages and countries looked like.

B spent his teen years doing sports and math. He didn't care that much about games. Games and history and all that were for losers.

So what happens is that A had 10 years of looking at all this industry related stuff. B spent 10 years avoiding it. But suddenly he has a change of heart and he wants to do design/concept art.

They both have to draw a mercenary knight now. A uses what he knows about European knights and draws one with functional armor, appropriate weapons and all that. Technically his drawing is not very correct (wrong proportions for example) but his design makes sense. B draws a knight like he remembers it from the last time he saw one, in some obscure cartoon when he was 7.

Naturally the 10 years of building visual library will give A the head start. But that's it. Just a head start. Now B can't experience in few months all that A has experienced in 10 years, so he will be at a slight disadvantage for some time, but that doesn't mean it's over for him. B can easily catch up with A in a couple of years. He can go to a museum and look at armors, he can buy books, watch documentaries. If they both started drawing for real at the age 22, A will be better for some time, at least when it comes to ideas, but if they both work hard, by the age of 30 they should be at the same level. Maybe A will be less interested then and will actually fall behind, who knows?

The point is: Visual library exists. If you spend 10 years looking at knights and learning all about them you will know more than someone who saw just a few photos here and there. You will know how a jousting armor looked like and how a combat armor looked like. But are your teen years the only time to learn this stuff? Of course not. There's no age limit for learning new things. No site will lock itself with the message 'you are too old, go find a job, knights are for kids'. Age is such an easy excuse. In sports it matters, but in brain related activities like drawing and design it doesn't matter at all. People don't get more stupid as they get older. Quite the opposite.

That's what Scott and Feng mean. Deadlyhazard demands scientific proof. Ok, that's fair. We don't have one. But until then we have the knowledge of people who interact with many professionals and students. They are as experts as one can be in their field. So I'd rather take their word, based on experience, instead of watching some TED video about brain scans that may or may not show that teens learn quicker and better.

[Arshes Nei]

Can you list some?

Sure: http://www.painterly.co.uk/

[Deadlyhazard]

The thing about visuals and designs is that you're learning 3D forms as 3D designs and perhaps translating it into 2D if you're doing an illustration of it. Studying history and seeing uniforms will not help you memorize those uniforms in 3D if you're not studying it seriously at the time. Feng Zhu could have looked through history, and maybe he knows that Nazi officers may wear a trench coat, but what that form actually looks like as a design is probably not memorized perfectly unless he was consciously trying to memorize the exact visual design that it has.

It appears to me a visual library of correct form can only be built through deliberate conscious studying of aesthetic -- that's why drawing from life is so recommended. Building a visual library of flat shapes is probably what you would be doing if you were reading through history and seeing pictures of things. To really understand a design, you would still have to go back and draw, draw, draw and consciously study it meticulously as a form with whatever it is you're trying to learn. Just looking at things and reading about them alone won't help you design.

[SweatiestDegree]

Glad i was a total freaking nerd all my life xD

now that I've decided to take art seriously i have no problem coming up with design ideas, i just can't draw them yet xD

[Care]

basically.....

Double rainbow.

[Shorinji_Knight]

What you feed your brain is what you're gonna get out of it.

[Xopher]

Thanks for all the great replys, well I must be a expert on the female form that's all I remember from my teens ... but if yous want a definitive answer, I'll reply to this thread in 5-8 years when I'm working for Massive Rainbow, If I can get the time off to disconnect from the matrix, but even if my project "Blade Runner 2040" keeps me busy I'll get my personal android assistant Steve to enter the VR i-cyberSpace and post on Concept Art.org 8.0.

But seriously, I did understand that feng was saying it was a disadvantage, not a don't bother kind of comment, same as when your older their is not as much free time to devote to learning. But I think dedication and attitude will win over any argument about it, but I would love to hear from 'Anyone' who started Art later in life and what their take on it is.

I'm assuming a lot of the comments were sarcastic, I'm hoping anyway

And I will try and reply in 5-8 years

[sone_one]

The thing about visuals and designs is that you're learning 3D forms as 3D designs and perhaps translating it into 2D if you're doing an illustration of it. Studying history and seeing uniforms will not help you memorize those uniforms in 3D if you're not studying it seriously at the time. Feng Zhu could have looked through history, and maybe he knows that Nazi officers may wear a trench coat, but what that form actually looks like as a design is probably not memorized perfectly unless he was consciously trying to memorize the exact visual design that it has.

It appears to me a visual library of correct form can only be built through deliberate conscious studying of aesthetic -- that's why drawing from life is so recommended. Building a visual library of flat shapes is probably what you would be doing if you were reading through history and seeing pictures of things. To really understand a design, you would still have to go back and draw, draw, draw and consciously study it meticulously as a form with whatever it is you're trying to learn. Just looking at things and reading about them alone won't help you design.

i disagree...

form is not what studying designs is about... its about the shape and positioning of that collar... of signs... flowing lines or lack there of...rhythm!!! etc. those things make up design. form is a matter of underlying structure to give it a believable background... having it rooted in a visual language we accept as beeing realistic depictions. but thats not what design is about. design is an effort, forcing given facts into a representation that contains/provides information for the audience thats not inherently there just observing the facts.

id go as far as saying... you could draw like 1000 lifemodels wearing a ww2 uniform without even coming close to understand the design. youd come closer and closer to beeing able to visually replicate it. but thats an entirely different matter than design.

[sone_one]

But seriously, I did understand that feng was saying it was a disadvantage, not a don't bother kind of comment, same as when your older their is not as much free time to devote to learning. But I think dedication and attitude will win over any argument about it, but I would love to hear from 'Anyone' who started Art later in life and what their take on it is.

as you get older youll more and more accept the simple fact, that theres always something keeping you from performing idealy. now it might be the fact that you havent been drawing as a child, later it maybe the fact that you spent some time with girls/boys/whatever.... the ideal is not to be chased. thats why its called that... an ideal. a theoretical situation where every contributing fact adds up to a perfect and conclusive result. life is not like that. you either want to draw and earn a living doing it, and as it later on proves, got what it takes, or you dont. asuming that attempting something you aint got the perfect conditions for, is doomed to fail, is an assumption, where if it would be true, no invention would have ever been made.