Bifrost + perseverance (Up 05/02)

[Living Rope]

Hi peeps,

here's some recent crap. I'm such a sucker at working with no photo refs, you know just plain imagination. I was so used to refs that I almost forgot everything about energy and it was boring me so much. So I decided to come back to my Loomis book, doing mannekins, perspective exercises and things like that. Well, it's hard and I'm still learning but here's what's coming out of this for now.
First comes a cover for french Magazine Bifrost:


some study with no hands cos' I was too lazy


here's something that came from scratch too, just leting happen what had to:


and some Phil Hale-y genuine poop. I believe one should no longer copy anything from Phil Hale's style and gimmicks now. I think it's bad. I'll try to post something about this in the lounge section of CA an see your opinion.

[Bomba]

I feel the same way man... gotta mix it up. I always enjoy your sense of color and design.

On a note, the first two images are all most dead centered... or the focal ponit is dead center. If you shift those to the side, it might add to your pieces.
-J-

[csteingart]

I love that top one Rope, frickin dope.

c

[RAMÓN]

Whoa, love these man. Keep letting stuff happen like this ;p

[foster]

yep,... yep,... you are good. sigh, you always surprise me in the best ways. never now where you are going to spring a knock out punch.

[Form]

that spiral text on the seated study is so wack my eyes are like weeeEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee like that. zooooOOOOOoooom.

Killer shit. CA's favourite rope is most certainly alive.

[Tentacle Eye]

Yep, ta nana aurait besoin d''une canne, elle risque de se gaufrer. ^^ J'aime surtout la dernière, ton perso a un wolverine style très appréciable. Yeah, Livingdeadrope back from the dead, rox !!

[StormrageJunior]

excellents artworks, vraiment super cool... Juste une remarque, comme ça: je crois que le type tout vert a une trop grosse tête et des bras pas assez long... bah, ca reste très bien.
Bonne continuation.

[Seraph]

these are wicked, especially #3

[nicolas]

Really cool stuff, living!!! I like the first one the most. I would really like to hear your thoughts about this phil hale topic, and why it's so bad...BTW, i like your hale-ish poop.....

cheers,

NIC

[strych9ine]

The way I feel about it, Phil Hale has undeniably influenced a whole generation. You took that influence and pushed beyond expectations and that's what matters. You work rocks man, I especially love the first and last pieces.

[natethegrate]

i really like the last piece... it has so much power and dynamic.
the first thing at scrolling down to this piece was "whooeaa"
the first is also very cool.

natE

[Living Rope]

Thanx soOo much guys for the kind replies and support. Except for the first pic I felt that I should have posted my stuff in the Sketches section since it's not finished stuff at all but simply practice and I need to have some kind of response to it. So thanks for your answers.

And, concerning the Phil Hale affair, I am now convinced that we all should stop looking at his art since very few of us use his influence correctly. I mean we all have been punched by his great ability and most of all great style and brilliant design sense. The problem with us illustrators and concept artists is that we don't have no artist statement since we aren't considered as artists but as entertainers. Many of us think they can sacrify sense to form. Today I feel like an urge to find some sense in my stuff.
But coming back to Phil Hale, I've seen so many fantastic artists trying to recreate his style and energy with more or less success. But whom of us really cares about what Hale wants to express ? Who really tried to see what behaviour lies behind the energated feet-over-head poses, behind the lighting spot focus on the chests and so on... I mean, the market is overcrowded with Phil Hale wannabes ! The same kind of process appeared with Dave Mc Kean a few years ago. This is dangerous because even artistic directors and companies want us to do it now, it's a vicious circle.

Here's an advice I'd like to give: as a french citizen and a parisian for a few months I've had the opportunity to visit great museums like the Louvres and Orsay. My encounter with Van Gogh, Monet, Lautrec and all the great masters was a shock and I then understood that sense is more important than style. Ok, many of you will argue that they already know this simple fact but shit they don't, just as I still don't. Sense means courage, sense means talking about yourself.
Again I'm not sure if I have the right to give here my point of view but I guess these days I'm fed up with hiding in someone else's shadow even if the shadow belongs to Mc kean or hale.

cheers mates

[Form]

as a very young and unpractised artist i think a lot about what effect and influence my idols will have on my future, and its something that im very conscious of. I think a lot of people are told 'your style will come, its a combination of all the art you like" kind of message. That upsets me though... it makes me feel like so many artists are just put through the meat grinder... pork, bacon, ham, its all the same animal!

I really try not to look at any one artist over a period of time. In fact the less i look at other artists work (in a focused critical way) except for realist masters, the happier i am. I think you can learn 90% of artmaking without influence, and the more you inject your own intent the more powerful your images are. Thats not to say i dont look at images and analyze how the artist made them successful, but i dont keep 'favourite artist' folders, or have other artists work around when im creating.

Who knows, i may be completely wrong. Maybe you DO learn faster with influences, and maybe thats a good way to make a living. But being an artist is about living the life you do, and i guess youll just have to call me a purist.

Best wishes, and again, great work LR.

[Pavel Sokov]

these are fucking awesome man, great work, espeicaly first pic

[lochnarus]

The horned being is quite stirring. I find myself drawn to that picture.

I wish I could draw this type of stuff. Well, I can almost draw this way, but the coloring part eludes me.

Great job!

[Living Rope]

But being an artist is about living the life you do...

my thought exactly. Thx for replying on this particular subject Form.

[Chris Beatrice]

At the risk of getting flamed beyond belief I have to offer my two cents...

First, I like your work a lot.

I've been an Art Director in the game industry for more than twelve years now, and contrary to what you said I at least DO NOT want artists to keep imitating Phil Hale or anyone else. Yet, the art I look at every day is getting more and more the same. Even individual artists just seem to focus on getting better and better at doing the same thing.

Maybe this is a chicken and egg issue... artists think that's what art directors and the public wants, and art directors think that's all artists want to do. I'm getting pretty tired of "the composition" (you know, a single figure stuck on a vague background, maybe some clouds or something, with completely desaturated color...).

[viag]

subtil, poetic and great use of colors !

nice work my friend

[Form]

livingrope: no probs.

chris beatrice: interesting insight straight from the horses mouth, per se. Ive noticed the 'trend' also - even as a student, and ive also notice just how easy it can be to slip into it. SOmetimes i will create an image for an hour or two, minimise the window, and see the internet explorer window open that i had been browsing earlier, and it will contain a pcture by someone like livingrope here, or jason manley, or whoever, and i will look back at my work and see just how much that artist had influenced that piece - because typically they are the 'spark' that motivates me to start a piece and it will be one particular quality that carries through into my creation.

But I digress

what is it you look for chris? more saturated stuff? more dynamic 'cinematic' shots? detailed backgrounds?? I get the feeling your after a full cinematic shot as if it were taken straight out of a movie scene? Thoughts?

Further to my earlier comments - its kind of like....ive never really looked at phil hale etc so i dont know what the deal is - and a part of me is curious, but the other part doesnt want to know. A bit like pandoras box.

I think also growing up in australia has something to do with it. We are a lot less 'subjected' or 'force fed' our mainstream media here. In the states, generally, so many young people are either into comics, cars, sports *cliche cliche etc* whereas here everyone is quite diverse. Unfortunately in the states you really do get plastered with mainstream images that simply become a part of who you are.

Think of it this way.

Say you have x amount of media 'sources' influencing americans. Australia has the same amount of media sources, but we have a minor fraction of the population. So what you get in the states is the same "ratio" of people with the same influences - but the number is far greater - producing, i think, that 'sameness' in qualities of a lot of artists.

Anyhow, i think this is an interesting topic, i might do a bit of research on it... i have an 'issues in art' paper due this year some time.

Cheers guys!

[se7en_]

Great work as usual rope. The first image is amazing and I always love to see the experiments by the pros on this board.

<rant>
I am not a paid illustrator yet. But I can say that artists will always keep improving their own style rather than branching out because of one simple fact. A signature style is how an artist's name is remembered. It is his/her calling card. There are a lot of illustrators out there who are capable of many differnet styles. They are the ones without a lot of commercial work.

To illustrate this point take music as an example. Lets say you need a rock band to create a title track for your FPS game. Are you going to hire some band that can do rock, salsa, pop, hip hop, breakbeat and country or are you going choose the band that does just rock. It has become a world of specialists because that the way business works.

Commercialism = compartmentalization as far as I am concerned. Everything must be catagorized and labeled before it can be successful. Most people have never heard of Ani DeFranco. Why? Because what she does cannot be put into a catagory. Poetry, spoken word, design, performance art, acoustic punk rock, wtf? she's brilliant.

As an amatuer illustrator I am looking forward to the day that all of my work looks the same - or like Phil Hale's - it will mean I am succesful.
</rant>

I personally envy you living rope - being able to draw all day for a living. Some of us at least, understand that in order to pay your bills you have to do the same thing over and over again. And that definitely sucks for you. Its not an easy life but you are lucky. Just keep pushing the envelope with integrating your design work I think you are on to something truly unique.

and have a beer : )

[Chris Beatrice]

artists will always keep improving their own style rather than branching out because of one simple fact. A signature style is how an artist's name is remembered.

This sounds great in theory, but what happens (especially now with this wonderful communication tool we call the internet) is artists become hyper-sensitive to the subtle differences between their style and the next guy's that they don't realize that the differences are unreckognizable to the rest of the world. This builds on itself, to where new artists unwittingly and unconsciously fall in line, and so on.

Some of us at least, understand that in order to pay your bills you have to do the same thing over and over again. And that definitely sucks for you.

se7en_
As a long time professional artist and art director, I understand this as well as anyone. The professional environment is much different from the rest of the world, and in it you gotta do what you gotta do (and being paid to do it is great). But that's not really characteristic of this forum or of the submissions I'm talking about. I'm talking about an entirely different phenomenon, where artists and students start to imitate one another because they think that's what impresses the other artists, or gets them in the club. That's entirely different. I'm not talking about getting hired by Disney and having to draw Cinderalla a certain way all the time, or getting typecast for making a certain type of illustration and needing to do that perpetually for income. That's just life.

Form:
What do I look for? Creating art for games is very demanding because it is very limiting. Despite the constant technological advances, it's always the artists that can do the most with the least that make the best looking games. There are always big gaps in what the technology for the given game, and filling those gaps and maximizing the technology falls squarely on the artists' shoulders.

So no, I do not at all specifically look for a penchant for using certain types of colors, what I look for is a deep and thorough understanding of how light, color, form and space work. Above all I look for someone who has come up with his or her own solutions to the massive amount of issues confronting any artist wishing to make great images - everything from formal issues like composition, light, color, form and space, to creative things like character design, facial expression, costume design, architectural design, etc. Because, especially in the creation of games, you're always having to figure out how to deliver the image you want with an ever changing tool kit. For example, our current front line title is set in a very specific time and place, where getting the lighting right, and being able to do some controlled exagerration is very important. This means not just simply setting up the in-game lighting correctly and creatively, but making all the textures and the standalone illustrations deliver this same dynamic as well. Game art is very collaborative, and it takes a fair amount of versatility, sharp perception, and the ability to understand why things in the world look the way they do to create successful work - work that makes the game environment compelling, convincing and consistent. So I look for evidence of these abilities when I review submissions to hire new artists. I look for the trajectory they are on rather than the particular height they may have currently reached. I look at their thought process. I ask them why they did something a certain way. I ask them to comment on other people's art. A median level artist who never satisfied with his current level, is working hard and improving dramatically is going to go a lot farther than someone that has peaked, even if his stuff looks as good as so and so's.

The overall quality of picture making has improved significantly thanks to the internet, forums like this, and digital media, but at the same time this has provided many artists with quick solutions to the age old problems of art making, whereas before they had to figure a lot of things out on their own, and take risks to do so. This is still the only way to wind up with a deeper understanding of art making as well as a truly unique "style" (e.g. one that is recognizable tonon-artists!


-Chris

[Form]

beautiful insight, thanks for that

[se7en_]

Chris - yeah I completely get that. I am one of those artists that doesn't really fit in anywhere so I know exactly what you mean. I am a graphic designer and programmer thats trying to illustration. haha

I think as an artist the most important motivation to most, myself included, is props from your peers. It means a lot. Even fame in out industry is really only within the art world. Aleksi, Android, Sparth, Mullins, Church, Zhu and Foster are heros to me but no one outside of my little universe has even heard of them.

It is definitely a closed circuit though where things begin so reflect each other so much that it all starts to look the same. Thats why when someone like McKean comes along everyone drops their jaws and says "holy shit!"

Just like any other trend based industry it moves in cycles so right now there is someone out there that will change our world again. Thats why I love looking at this forum. You get a sense of where things are going and you can choose to go in the opposite direction. or to follow... : )

[Living Rope]

trying to get out of my sleepy life these days. I'm looking for the fighting spirit that's supposed to lay inside of me. listening to hardcore bands like Hatebreed, KSE, Walls of Jericho... simply to stay awake. The sleeper must awake.

[Tentacle Eye]

69 fighting?

Traditional or digital painting ?
As usual ::

[Manu is malin]

this last one is brilliant, and inspiring !

[Warhead82]

this stuff is seriously so rad.

[Sanby]

The last one is incredible. The way you did the flesh is just amazing.

I wouldn't want my head where that guy has his.

SAnby

[tegehel]

tres tres joli!

bravo!

I'm just gonna say this: influence is good as long as you learn from it and find your own style. Copying for learning is okay, I think - after all, the old masters did just that, then found their ways.

C.