So many child prodigies, do I even have a chance?

[Theotenai]

I think this is the best answer for this thread :
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showp...0&postcount=75

[Shorinji_Knight]

And on an unrelated note, I can't help wonder about social development while being homeschooled, since most (if not all) of my friends went to school with me. Did you make friends through hobbies and meeting kids in the neighbourhood?

For me social devlopment wasn't really a problem. I started working full time with my dad on construction sites when I was 14 and used my money for martial arts classes, so I was around a lot of different kinds of other people of all ages. By the time I went to college I was teaching. I think I probably ended up having a lot stronger social skill set in the long run than if I had gone to public school.

[QueenGwenevere]

Well let me put it like this, assuming that the whole front page is filled with ponies, only talking about the 10-dollar-commission "pros" and leaving the impression (to me at least) that those are the only popular artists on DA, combined with what I remember having read on this forum makes me think that the general consensus here is to avoid DA like the plague.

Pff, I speak from experience. I log into DA at least once a day, and I guarantee you that there will always be at least one pony on the front page due to the sheer overwhelming popularity of ponies. (The people gaming the category system aren't helping any, either...)

Front page is useless anyway, I find artists by browsing peoples' favorites...

The only real problem with DA is that there's 11 million people on there, and a majority of them are teenagers, and the staff is not-so-great at managing the site. Kind of makes it hard to take the site seriously. Though there's some fun sub-communities, and it's a great place to find people interested in comics.

And on an unrelated note, I can't help wonder about social development while being homeschooled, since most (if not all) of my friends went to school with me. Did you make friends through hobbies and meeting kids in the neighbourhood?

Truth be told, most of my friends and acquaintances were adults I met through things like life drawing groups or volunteer work or similar. One of the interesting things about homeschooling is that you break out of the weird, unnatural world of school where everyone is the same age and you end up mixing with all age groups...

[Arshes Nei]

I remember the site being founded for music purposes long ago, it allowed artwork. It started making a profit I'd say 4 more years ago with subscriptions. I actually went to one of the meets long ago after Angelo took over and got rid of Jark.

It expanded to art and I have to say it's gallery system was pretty cool, but because of ease of access more people get in and more crap gets through. I also do what Q. Gwen does and browse through favorites, or I'll do searches for items - mostly for ref or fodder.

[Frostblade]

Troy wanted to be somewhere and he got there and he keeps pushing.

I think everyone can draw if they tried hard enough. Make a checklist, it helps.

I log into DA and there is always porn on the front, what gives?

[blogmatix]

The only real problem with DA is that there's 11 million people on there, and a majority of them are teenagers, and the staff is not-so-great at managing the site. Kind of makes it hard to take the site seriously. Though there's some fun sub-communities, and it's a great place to find people interested in comics.

I have run into quite astonishing work on DA, but almost never by browsing around the site itself. Usually it is by being referred to someone's gallery there from somewhere else. Thus it is not the best place to get exposure, I would guess.

Truth be told, most of my friends and acquaintances were adults I met through things like life drawing groups or volunteer work or similar. One of the interesting things about homeschooling is that you break out of the weird, unnatural world of school where everyone is the same age and you end up mixing with all age groups...

One must always keep in mind our evolutionary history. Now I am cautious about making sweeping claims about what is "natural" or not, but if you think about how humans lived for 99 percent of their history, you'll see that our present way of life is pretty far removed from the one we evolved to lead.

There is a common perception that hunter-gatherers are "primitive" and ignorant. But when anthropologists started studying them, they found to their astonishment that in these "primitive" societies, every single individual in fact possessed an absolutely vast knowledge of the world they live in. By the time they are 18 or so, the average hunter-gatherer possesses an amount of knowledge equivalent to about a master's degree, all in his head. They achieve this without schools, without curricula, without a minister of education and an army of "experts" in child psychology working out exciting and fun new curricula, without feeding schemes, without social workers, without "no child left behind" policies or indeed any of the crapola we hear about on TV every day.

How do they do it? Well, the kids hang around with their parents and other adults and learn from them, and over time their play activities slowly morph into adult activities. None of them have social difficulties. In fact, their societies are noteworthy for the virtual complete absence of social pathologies such as drug addiction, petty crime, serial killers, eating disorders and all the other, similar kind of stuff that seems so common in western, "civilized" society.

Now things have changed, and parents are not necessarily equipped to teach children all the knowledge they may want anymore, so far be it from me to reject schools in their entirety. Especially seeing as I'm a school teacher by profession. But I get to witness first-hand the kind of damage inflicted by bureaucratic government schools (lucky for me I work in a private school, and I intend to stay there if I can even though they can pay me only a fraction of what I would earn at a public school).

One has to add, mind you, that the bad stuff happens mostly to kids from homes where similar damage is inflicted by parents. In a sense we are still where we were fifty thousand years ago: you, the parent, are wholly and solely responsible for the education of your children, whether they go to school or not. The school is at most an aid, to help with subjects you may be somewhat unfamiliar with, and cannot take the place of parenting.

Anyway, as far as I know in most of western Europe the question is moot: home schooling, and in some countries even private schools, are quite thoroughly illegal there and kids have no choice but to go through the meat grinder of public schools.

[JFierce]

I never see any serious comics on DA, it's always little humor mini comic pages. There is some sweet stuff in the 'all time' section. But in the most popular by weeks and months it's usually crap.

[QueenGwenevere]

You have to dig. The interesting comic creators aren't on the front page.

I think the creator of every web comic I've ever read is probably somewhere on DA... As are hordes of professional inkers and pencilers. (And wannabe pencilers and inkers.) (And colorists.) (And even a few comic writers.)

And DA has VAST hordes of people who read comics. So if you make comics or plan to, it's not a bad idea to have some presence on DA...

[Medelo]

There’s a capacity for learning and seeing that children have that gets “straightened” into a sort of mono-brained, linear and very impoverished form of knowledge acquisition

Oh man, that quote is extremely validating to me.

Where I grew up, we had it really bad. At age 8, 9, 12, and 14 we had to take these things called 'streaming' examinations where it was determined if you were a dunce, mediocre, or a special fairy, and after that you got 'streamed' into different tiers of ability. It was cumulative too so if you did badly at age 9, you'd have an even worse chance of getting into the 'good tier' at 12. At age 14 you pretty much decide what you want to do in life, we didn't even have the same range of choices kids in the US have in high school. If you chose to do sciences, you could only take mainly science subjects and it was hell to try and get administration to let you take something else, like literature. The education system in my country is so abysmal that when you enter a local university they even want to know your primary school scores just to make sure you're somehow eugenically good enough.

It took a lot of struggle to get through that whole school system because I was constantly drawing in textbooks and getting my parents called up for it. Teachers would grab my sketchbooks and hurl them across the floor in front of the other 40 kids. I didn't see the logic in drawing being a bad thing and it made me angrier and angrier to get punished for something I deemed perfectly innocent, so I'd draw MORE just to piss them off. I did succumb at about 13 or 14 to stop drawing, but at 16 I got all rebellious and pissy again and I resumed the whole art thing despite the school system trying to get me to 'straighten up'. If I'd given in, though, I would likely have not become an artist.

For the past 3 years I've become more and more conscious of what that whole process did to me (when I left high school finally I was still stuck in a very linear mode of thinking despite all my efforts), so I started actively working to counteract it. I'm nowhere near being a great artist myself, but I've made great personal inroads to shirking off that narrow, linear field of vision. Like that quote says, if you identify that invisible monkey, that eternal demon, you start to see wondrous things happen.

[otherscape]

I never see any serious comics on DA, it's always little humor mini comic pages. There is some sweet stuff in the 'all time' section. But in the most popular by weeks and months it's usually crap.

There are hordes of wolf and animal comics and on there and predictably most of them are bad. The two that get on the front page occasionally are Lackadaisy Cats and Off White. Lackadaisy is awesome and Off White is above average for DA standards. Wurr is probably the most underrated though. The art and story are so interesting.

[otherscape]

Oh man, that quote is extremely validating to me.

Where I grew up, we had it really bad. At age 8, 9, 12, and 14 we had to take these things called 'streaming' examinations where it was determined if you were a dunce, mediocre, or a special fairy, and after that you got 'streamed' into different tiers of ability. It was cumulative too so if you did badly at age 9, you'd have an even worse chance of getting into the 'good tier' at 12. At age 14 you pretty much decide what you want to do in life, we didn't even have the same range of choices kids in the US have in high school. If you chose to do sciences, you could only take mainly science subjects and it was hell to try and get administration to let you take something else, like literature. The education system in my country is so abysmal that when you enter a local university they even want to know your primary school scores just to make sure you're somehow eugenically good enough.

It took a lot of struggle to get through that whole school system because I was constantly drawing in textbooks and getting my parents called up for it. Teachers would grab my sketchbooks and hurl them across the floor in front of the other 40 kids. I didn't see the logic in drawing being a bad thing and it made me angrier and angrier to get punished for something I deemed perfectly innocent, so I'd draw MORE just to piss them off. I did succumb at about 13 or 14 to stop drawing, but at 16 I got all rebellious and pissy again and I resumed the whole art thing despite the school system trying to get me to 'straighten up'. If I'd given in, though, I would likely have not become an artist.

For the past 3 years I've become more and more conscious of what that whole process did to me (when I left high school finally I was still stuck in a very linear mode of thinking despite all my efforts), so I started actively working to counteract it. I'm nowhere near being a great artist myself, but I've made great personal inroads to shirking off that narrow, linear field of vision. Like that quote says, if you identify that invisible monkey, that eternal demon, you start to see wondrous things happen.

Oh Jesus, and I thought the Detroit Public School system was bad. That sounds like an absolute nightmare. I'm glad you managed to break out of it.

[JFierce]

My face every time I see DA furries.

[TinyBird]

I never see any serious comics on DA, it's always little humor mini comic pages.

Well, DA isn't exactly most refined when it comes to posting long comics (linking to previous pages is kind of a drag, and before the folder system there was no way to keep the pages archived, meaning that if you wanted to get to the start or next or previous page and if it wasn't linked you had to search through the artist's whole gallery), and those who do any more serious comics usually host them in their own sites (or occasionally will publish them and only post snippets).

Here's couple more "serious" ones (though like said, most of them will be hosted somewhere else):
http://homarusrex.deviantart.com/gallery/801324
http://hellstern.deviantart.com/art/...fox1-284107840
http://bobbaji.deviantart.com/gallery/8535220
http://soulkarl.deviantart.com/
http://cinderscar.deviantart.com/gallery/6609003
http://sonny123.deviantart.com/
http://cheeks-74.deviantart.com/gallery/24641422
http://alexds1.deviantart.com/gallery/10671
http://shadowumbre.deviantart.com/gallery/35748325
http://shardglass.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://zsabreuser.deviantart.com/gallery/

[LordLouis]

I think this is the best answer for this thread :
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showp...0&postcount=75

WOW this is so bloody spot-on!
Printed it out and hung it on my wall, next to one of his character designs. The only thing missing is the "I'm a f*cking slacker" neon sign now!

Best bit:

Here’s what I ACTUALLY found I spent most of that 3 years doing:

Talking about being a better artist with friends. (guilty)
Spending hours looking over awesome artwork for 'inspiration' (guilty)
Spending hours reading forums. (guilty)
Spending hours surfing the net. (guilty)
Hanging out with friends.
Spending hours playing Games.
Having a life.

Loved that, thanks.

[Velocity Kendall]

"Here’s what I ACTUALLY found I spent most of that 3 years doing:

Talking about being a better artist with friends. (guilty)
Spending hours looking over awesome artwork for 'inspiration' (guilty)
Spending hours reading forums. (guilty)
Spending hours surfing the net. (guilty)
Hanging out with friends.
Spending hours playing Games.
Having a life. "


You should continue doing all those things.
But also work a lot.

[Max Challie]

Personally i don't like DA because of their mascot character, and many elements of the site seem unprofessional, unserious, and the site's overall vibe just feels like it was made to appeal to high school kids obsessed with anime. I'm still a kid too (under 25), and i like some anime series' (understatement; Evangelion obsession). A lot of professional artists have accounts there (including artists with thumbnails above) but DA in general doesn't have a very healthy culture as far as progress is concerned. Not that i think its stigma here is very healthy either.

To the OP: you posted SamC's sketchbook as an example; particularly, you posted the first page twice. Shouldn't it be obvious that practice is everything? I do understand where people are coming from though, at least seven times i have wanted to post a thread in art discussion asking how i can feel less hopeless and depressed about how crap my work is, refraining only because i know how many of these threads we've had and how sick of it the community is. I still get it sometimes, too. But, i have felt this way far less often after reading through 2/3 of Art & Fear. There will always be better artists, but i think the state of flow is worth mentioning. The faster you can manage to get the ball rolling, the more exciting the velocity will be!

Vision is always ahead of execution, and that's how it should be.

@Max Challie that is a beautiful kukri knife. I have one almost just like that but its not damascus steel like yours.

Oh.. oops. That's not my blade, i just grabbed an image off google. I have one, but it's just a display model thing.. blunt, sheath is made out of plywood, pretty shit lol. I should clean the rust off it, and invest in a proper blade, as there's some nice ones out there!

Heh, cool. I own one of those, my one is the standard police issue
Nepalese Kukri knife. My father in law gave it to me when he went to
Nepal (...after being captured in Sudan) he's a decorated SA Cop,
he traded it for some of our local police gear.

It's a helluva dangerous weapon. Much more devastating than it looks.
The blade is specially weighted down to deliver a chopping force that
magnifies the strength of the blow. They are actually meant for severing
heads and hands.

lol, i think Kukri's look pretty freakin' dangerous! I loved them ever since watching Resident Evil Extinction, haha. My curiosity has led me to read up on them more, and yes they come from Nepal. Apparently enemy belligerents would often flee upon seeing the silhouette of the Kukri as Gurkha soldiers raised them to the air. I've read that the small handle on traditional models reflects the Gurkha soldier's small stature, so it's more like a small sword for them. I have been told differing opinions about the negative space at the hilt; some have told me it's to prevent blood from dripping onto the user's hand, others say the blade's curvature is designed to drive its way through the neck, and upon finishing the hilt would latch itself onto the spinal cord, with a simple twist completing the decapitation. Traditional Kukri's are quite hopeless when it comes to stabbing (there are modern blades which are straighter, more balanced), but i think nothing is as effective for a slash. Seems a simple 45° bend makes a big difference in striking speed. At some point Gurkhas started working with the British Army, and found the leaf springs on UK Army Jeeps could be fashioned into excellent Kukri blades!
There is a larger version, like a full sword but that was created specifically for the ritual beheading of an Ox, not for combat.

Ah yes, the Kukri... An elegant weapon for slaying competing talent.
Just to get an idea of what this thing is capable of, this guy... (NSFW) And he got lucky.

Holy shit, indeed.

[Slothboy3000]

My great grandfather was once given a kukuri by his Gurkha friends during the early twentieth century. I'd suppose that's quite an honour, and he must have been a badass to receive such a gift.

I also like to think he once ate a monkey.

[JDSart]

No one in this thread saw Indiana Jones apparently...



Just sayin´...

[Trixtar]

However, since all of those "child prodigies" it feels like i never can establish as an illustrator. i lack the money to get myself an education as an illustrator so I have to teach myself all the time.

Erm......?
Now I'm gonna be hard on you because I sense you may fish a bit for older people like me saying you are waaaaaaayyyy better than them? -I may be wrong, anyways...

If you can't set a goal saying "in ½, 5, 10, 15 years..." and live accordingly then you WILL end up with burger flipping.

Reality check:
Do you feel good enough to get an illustration job? -According to your post apparently not.
Then how long will it take you? Let's say you work your butt off and aim for being ready in 1 year and go all in, or at least revise your goal by then current situation.
Now, how are you planning on affording living until then?
If you aren't ready in 3 years, but close, you still need to feed yourself for 3 years unless you live by your parents. Geez, then you are 23 by then! The (very aged mummy) horror!!!

In 3 years I'll be 33.
In 5 years, I hope I'm good enough to start doing very serious art, starting maybe minor art jobs in 1 year.
Until then, you hear me cry primarily about webdesign and webdevelopment, because this is my current choice for getting money to feed myself for the next 3 years. I will possibly try out writing since I'm naturally'er better at that according to people's feedback, and I do it anyway on the sideline so I can just as well sit and try and make money out of it.

And guess what, not only am I without an art teacher, I'm also all alone and unemployed in webdesign and webdevelopment and writing!

I need to eat, and I HATE the rules of the unemployment system so guess what...
I will now go to Burger King in a bit, stare at the job-ad-note in the door and consider applying for the job (probably not though, but still...) of being a highly skilled BURGER FLIPPER!

And when I have been there, I will resume my webdesign doodling implementing as much art in them as I can get away with to make my portfolio as great as possible to get a job in the web-area for the next 3-5 years to come.

Well, I was on my way to Burger King...

[ezion]

You know what? Whatever you do, whoever you are, no matter how hard you work, there will always, always, always be people who are younger and better than you. And the older you get, the more of them there are going to be.

So, what are you going to do about it?

I agree. But then again.. few (actually I have never seen one) young people produce mature work. Being technically perfect in drawing does not make you a perfect painter.(if that's your goal) That needs time. Colour and composition are the difficult parts of it..so don't worry. I you dedicate in drawing and painting I believe in some point, you, I, everyone will be in the same level as those kids who seem to be masters while young.

The only one I can think of being a true master while still young is Anthony Van Dyck..but aren't there other painters who have produced work equal with his ( mature work) ? Probably they couldn't paint as him when they were 18, but they reached him.

So being a fast learner is an advantage but not enough in its own.
Keep working

[Saraiva]

I see you posted a link to SamC and Miles. Those guys really are young and talented, but did you follow them since page 1? I know I did and they are an extremely hardworking bunch. Thats all there is to it, they started working hard before you. They are not geniuses and, even though I love their progress, they have long ways to go to compete with actual pro concept artists.


The way I see it: You just havent done your research on what actual pro work looks like. Go see the concept art work for Diablo III or Guild Wars 2 (or whatever your favorite games are), for example. Thats what you need to be shooting for, not anorexic, big eyed, over rendered paintings of girls in awkward poses.

[bish0p2004]

"Here’s what I ACTUALLY found I spent most of that 3 years doing:

Talking about being a better artist with friends. (guilty)
Spending hours looking over awesome artwork for 'inspiration' (guilty)
Spending hours reading forums. (guilty)
Spending hours surfing the net. (guilty)
Hanging out with friends.
Spending hours playing Games.
Having a life. "


You should continue doing all those things.
But also work a lot.

Yeah, I'm guilty of a few of those. I was pretty bad with video games, so I had to cut that out completely.

The only thing that bugs me now is that I don't spend as much time with my girlfriend as I would like, but I keep reminding her that it is only a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things.

[MXJSPH]

If you're intimidated by another's work, it means you're not confident about your own potential. This is regardless of your current ability or skill level, it is about what you perceive to be your maximum potential.

If you look at something you think is ace and just appreciate it for what it is and what the artist has tried to convey, you secretly think you can do something as good or better eventually in terms of skill and finding your own voice.

Make desire your discipline. If you can't, you don't want it enough.

[Star Eater]

The only thing that bugs me now is that I don't spend as much time with my girlfriend as I would like, but I keep reminding her that it is only a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah its tough when you are dating. But if she can see how
serious you are in your studies, then I'm sure she will understand.

Friends as well can become resentful, but that's how you realise
who your friends actually are.

[Velocity Kendall]

"If you're intimidated by another's work, it means you're not confident about your own potential. "

thats bollocks, theres no necessary causal relationship there.

Youre intimidated by someone elses work because its really good, not because "you're not confident about your own potential" whatever that means.

The more i learn the more im intimidated by amazing work; you cant paint a little and not look at a Van Dyck and go wowwwwwwwwwwwww.

[ezion]

"If you're intimidated by another's work, it means you're not confident about your own potential. "

thats bollocks, theres no necessary causal relationship there.

Youre intimidated by someone elses work because its really good, not because "you're not confident about your own potential" whatever that means.

The more i learn the more im intimidated by amazing work; you cant paint a little and not look at a Van Dyck and go wowwwwwwwwwwwww.

I agree. The more you draw/paint the more you understand..that's why we go wooow as kendall says, because we see how far things can go..And we appriciate it , we don't lose confidence. Personally I get more confident.

[OldJake666]

No, there's no hope for you. You should quit.




(that's what you wanted to hear, isn't it?)

[vineris]

http://mleiv.deviantart.com/ is a good underrated comic artist on dA.

My only real problem with dA is that I want almost everybody who posts on their forums to expire most painfully. Posting there is like a compulsion to eat glass but I can't stop doing it.

[MXJSPH]

"If you're intimidated by another's work, it means you're not confident about your own potential. "

thats bollocks, theres no necessary causal relationship there.

Youre intimidated by someone elses work because its really good, not because "you're not confident about your own potential" whatever that means.

The more i learn the more im intimidated by amazing work; you cant paint a little and not look at a Van Dyck and go wowwwwwwwwwwwww.

To clarify: what I mean is that when other people's work make you feel negative, you'll seize up. There's a difference between being in awe and saying "wow" and being in awe and being paralysed by whats before you. I guess intimidate was a bit too vague.

I've known a few people who have seen some amazing work by peers or old masters and are simply paralysed by it, regress, and eventually not produce anything because of the whole dumb "what's the point?" feeling (re: original post).

[otherscape]

My face every time I see DA furries.

And sparkledogs



Though DA furries are waaaay better than FA ones.