CA lose its touch?

[Raoul Duke]

^Concept art wasn't publicly shared and discussed until CA.org as far as I know. I think the closest you could get was Spectrum. Now there are dozens of workshops every year, a fist full of magazines that come out every month and an endless amount of overpriced tutorials to download. CA blazed the trail from what I can tell.

[QueenGwenevere]

There were plenty of books on concept art, though. At least as far back as the '80's. I used to find them in the library when I was a kid.

Though they may not have used the term "concept art" nearly as much as people do now. Nowadays it seems to get thrown around by everybody for everything.

[JFierce]

I'm not going to beat the horse, 2 other people posted what I was gonna say lol, thought I was on the last page when I posted

[Raoul Duke]

There were plenty of books on concept art, though. At least as far back as the '80's. I used to find them in the library when I was a kid.

Though they may not have used the term "concept art" nearly as much as people do now. Nowadays it seems to get thrown around by everybody for everything.

I'll admit that sci/fi fantasy illustration is lumped in with concept art, but that's about it really.

I was unaware of this quality of art until I came here. The closest I ever saw was comics, fringe scifi/fantasy book covers, RPG manuals and calenders with fairies. All of the realistic illos stunk of Fabio's chest oil. Character design was an animator's parsley on a very full plate. I know some game designers would doodle their own "concept art" because the limited tech and limited expectations permitted limited quality visuals. CA came around when the tech could support and demanded ambitious art if you think back to 2002.

[QueenGwenevere]

You were missing out, then, dude. I remember drooling over books of Disney concept art, Star Wars concept art, and the art for "the Dark Crystal", among other things... Though I didn't know until much, much later exactly what all that stuff was for or that you could get jobs doing it. I wish CA or something similar had been around when I was in school, I might have gotten the hint sooner.

Concept art for video games is obviously a recent thing, but movies have been using concept art for eons, and some of the old pre-CG stuff is pretty damn amazing.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

People came here from Francis Tsai's cosey Concept Design Forum which died over a decade ago (probably one of the best places there ever were to get privy with the talent posting there). At the time there was also Sijun which had a lot of concept art type threads. Concept/Game/Character art was certainly well discussed on many other art forums before that (including the animé flavor over at Pendako, IIRC). But, CA was the first forum to sort of capitalize on the theme.

[Raoul Duke]

QueenGwenevere-Yeah totally missed out. The Dark Crystal seems like a movie based on an art book. Syd Mead must have had some pimp artbooks hanging around too. All of which are probably rare collector things I will never afford.

[Angel Intheuk]

"This place isn't a great as it used to be!" > that phrase seems to crop up everywhere I try and socialise, I'm beginning to think I'm jinxed . Just kidding, but it is the way of life it seems, every time I discover a new place to hang out or go dancing there's always an old regular who has a story of the glory days.

I agree with the people suggesting a clean up though, for new-comers this place is confusing and many people have said it, but we should be cautious of changing it too much. It might turn out like my old nightclub haunt that never seemed the same after they replaced the booze soaked carpet that you stuck to, and the walls that were covered with old band posters from the 80's got repainted with glittery black paint and the metal and rock they played got replaced with nu-metal and pop (shudder).

[Candra H]

Another site CA could learn from is http://www.wipnation.com/ It's got some great features, too bad it's such a ghost town.

wow this ones good!
http://www.wipnation.com/citizen/mstewart

On an aside, that wipnation place looks pretty nice, and so does the art you linked to, Velocity. If I had more time for forums, I'd definitely consider skulking there on a regular basis.

I don't really mind if a forum is small - it wouldnt put me off joining - because like a lot of us keep saying, it's not the place, it's the people who make it. And in relation to CA, if people put the effort in, then it'll be the place they want it to be.

It's a tired old cliche but dammit, it's a good one - "You have to be the change you want to see in the world"

I also like the idea someone put forward re using the activity winners' work on the main page as a kind of advertisement for the calibre of work here. I'll second or third that one. We're artists after all, and we like looking at cool art.

[JeffX99]

"This place isn't a great as it used to be!" > that phrase seems to crop up everywhere I try and socialise, I'm beginning to think I'm jinxed . Just kidding, but it is the way of life it seems, every time I discover a new place to hang out or go dancing there's always an old regular who has a story of the glory days.

I agree with the people suggesting a clean up though, for new-comers this place is confusing and many people have said it, but we should be cautious of changing it too much. It might turn out like my old nightclub haunt that never seemed the same after they replaced the booze soaked carpet that you stuck to, and the walls that were covered with old band posters from the 80's got repainted with glittery black paint and the metal and rock they played got replaced with nu-metal and pop (shudder).

We just need some ferns. Why can't some ferns be implemented?

[Reptile]

i still like this site but i did notice that the number of visitors and user on the forums went down, maybe half a year ago there would be over 500 people in the sb forums and now its rare for it to hit 300. i think a lot of people are being scared away by the site malfunctions too? hope it doesnt get worse for the site :/

[Raoul Duke]

I just tried the bulk uploader. It only pissed me off a little! Huge improvement!

No more stupid name+genre+media=waste of fucking time! The size limitation still gave me grief, but I can live with that.

[Velocity Kendall]

hahaha!

[Angel Intheuk]

I also like the idea someone put forward re using the activity winners' work on the main page as a kind of advertisement for the calibre of work here. I'll second or third that one. We're artists after all, and we like looking at cool art.

I like that idea as well, I didn't notice the banner had gone at the top til someone pointed it out here, now I miss it, it gave some inspiration. Sketchoholic do a similar thing where they'll feature a shout out to different members works on the front page each week, usually contest winners or a picture that has had a lot of views. Makes you feel more part of the site as well.

Also ferns...Jeff has hit on something there and maybe a water feature?

[Raoul Duke]

No Water ONLY FERNS will do.

[Candra H]

^ Haha, excellent! Ferns galore.

I like that idea as well, I didn't notice the banner had gone at the top til someone pointed it out here, now I miss it, it gave some inspiration. Sketchoholic do a similar thing where they'll feature a shout out to different members works on the front page each week, usually contest winners or a picture that has had a lot of views. Makes you feel more part of the site as well.

Totally. It'd be a nice inclusive feature for the folks who put all that effort in. I really should try to take part in some activities round here too. Try to be more of a contributor myself, since I prattled about it so much earlier.

[Andrew Sonea]

I like that idea as well, I didn't notice the banner had gone at the top til someone pointed it out here, now I miss it, it gave some inspiration.

To be honest I'm pretty glad that banner is gone...out of all the artists that were featured, you can probably count on one hand the number of people there who are still contributing to the site. A lot of them haven't even signed in for years, or personally I felt didn't really deserve to be there (not going to call people out...but yeah, a few there didn't even post or contribute to the forums, and I feel there were other people who deserved it more). I'm not opposed to having a banner featuring artists, but I think it should be more reflective of the current state of the site and have more attention to which artists get featured. Otherwise it's a waste of space and bandwidth.

[mecos]

i used to post here long ago. i only submitted artwork once and got lots of good feedback.

i mostly liked to look at people's work and provide critique if needed. it was fun to look at new work in the WIP and Finally Finished sections. but after a while everyone had all their work in a running thread and it became tedious to look through and not a good way to focus on one piece or the latest piece by any particular artist.

so really, i don't like the format of art dumps in the It's Finally Finished section. it makes it not ideal for a discussion and the front page gets cluttered with old work. i think there should be a gallery section for people to display their body of work but not in the finished section.

anyway. that's one of the reasons i lost interest in checking out the site every day.

[SmallPoly]

I just tried the bulk uploader. It only pissed me off a little! Huge improvement!
No more stupid name+genre+media=waste of fucking time! The size limitation still gave me grief, but I can live with that.

This is one of the best changes about the current iteration of CA. Though I somewhat see the point of the old way, it tedious even for a singe image let alone multiple.

I'm also in favor of bring back a "best of" bar, especially one that has some amount of automation to help prune the old and highlight the new (with mod approval, to prevent abuse). Whether this should be focusing on Sketchbooks, Finally Finished, competitions, etc. I'm not sure. If I had to pick one I'd go with by the X of the Week contests.

[JFierce]

The only kind of banner besides the standard ad ones we have now like I said before, I think should involve community activities. It probably isn't even hard. I've been on countless sites where they have a setup of a banner, that every few seconds the image changes (then you can click a little mini bubble, or arrow beneath to go back and forth if you saw something interesting). They change out the images regularly and it's a very basic site I see them on. All it would require to update is someone to just do another picture banner, then replace the previous pictures etc.

Then once you click a link it just takes you to the thread with that weeks finished CHOW results or whatever other threads are being portrayed in the banner. Though it would take someone to switch out the images, but that probably wouldn't be hard depending on how it's done. Could just simply take one or even several of the images use that then pop in some text.

Couldn't find the exact style banner I was talking about but ya know they're kind of like the ones on news sites which you know they have to be easy to switch in and out for regular update.

http://www.yahoo.com/

But obviously visually pleasing.

[Raoul Duke]

^Ah very common sense feature.

[Mr. Corlan]

Other than the ferns, what you guys are describing is called CGHub.

- A large row of recent staff-picked art at the top, which also shows occasional links to the community activities

- A changing grid of recently popular art, which can be customized to show newest art or most popular of all time, and sorted into 2D or 3D. Even better, it's only visible on the homepage, so it's easily accessible but doesn't clog up your viewing space or load time anywhere else.

- An image gallery for each user arranged chronologically, new-old.

- A somewhat customizable personal page for each user (hey, you can have ferns!), which has thumbnails of recent art and favorites at the bottom like DA.

Plus all the usual forum stuff of course, though it's very quiet there compared to here. And what do you know, CGHub doesn't censor CA links! Sad that the reverse cannot be said. Also, as far as I know, it's never been down. Certainly not for what, a month? Two? Sheesh.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget:

- A quite high caliber of art. Just about every big professional that I've heard of is on there.

[Edit] - Wow, I should go into advertising.

[Xopher]

Most already know this but just wanted to post it anyway!

ANY forum has haters and people who will flat out disagree and get angry and ALL forums have cry-baby's and people who get offended by the wrong comment, its just the nature of the Internet and has been since before the www. After awhile its easy to ignore or just play with them if your bored enough.

CA does have some people with strong opinions and a firm hand but I think with the struggle it takes to stay focused if your aiming for pro the hand is welcome.

And at the end of the day no one piece of advice or critique is the golden answer or law, gather any info that helpful and works and either pass on any advice to someone it might work for or just move on and find a better alternative.

just a note: Lost images and the rest cant be helped when they are hosted outside CA, mostly because their usually free image hosting that after awhile remove inactive accounts or the site shuts down.

Just my personal opinion.

[Harmageddon]

disclaimer: usually I just lurk on the site and basically I post in my sketchbook. Sometimes I comment and/or critique, but those moments are rare.
Partly because I'm lazy, partly because I'm very chaotic and mainly because I'm busy and want to create more stuff.
So, sorry that I've not been more active on the forums, my bad. Also I therefore had no clue as to this fight on the forums people have mentioned.
I guess ego's got in the way of finding an adult solution. But hey, we're all just children at heart, so it happens.

I think CA is a great place: to keep a personal sketchbook, to get critiques and/or suggestions to improve your work (work harder! lol)
But more than that I feel this site has been an inspiration for me and I think many others. The fact that you can read up on the
experiences of seasoned veterans, the hardships they went through, the self-doubt moments we all face, and the perseverence that got
them where they are now....to me that is invaluable information. Very inspiring.
It makes me realize I'm not alone in this endeavour. I definately get a "keep going, you'll make it someday" vibe from it all.

Top that off with an international sauce of likeminded people, that are all struggling to find their artistic voice, that are all working
to create things (be it fine art, conceptart, sculpts, animations, whatnot) to make the world just a little more interesting...
and not to forget the weekly challenges in which I very occasionally have participated. Great stuff.

Of course there's room for improvement and good points have been made already in previous posts in this thread.
Maybe some of them will be implemented in the future, I surely hope the moderators/builders will take them to heart.
Other than that, all I can say is I'm grateful I discovered these forums 6 or 7 years ago now.
This site has definately helped me along the road of the artist I've started exploring.

So, to everyone that has ever commented in my sketchbook, or in the wip section, to everyone that has ever made a
sketchbook so I can see a little of your personal travels along the road of artistic creativity, to everyone that has ever
participated in the weekly challenges, that has ever written awesome tutorials on whatnot, I thank you all.

[Raoul Duke]

Mr. Corlan
I don't know about the censored links to I've seen it in a few sigs. I go there to look at art. It's way better than CA on that front. I just like the community here.

I think there was censorship in that big thread o drama a few years ago. That was shameful and I don't think we'd be having this conversation if it weren't for that one thread. If there has been any censorship since please let me know.

[Raoul Duke]

Hold on. The CG hub link was censored.
Fucking seriously. Real classy.

[Deadlyhazard]

What's the story behind censoring CGHUB?

[Raoul Duke]

The crew from Massive Black got banned for shit talking about Manley on CG hub after he demanded we buy his $60 downloads and enroll in his new streaming classes or he'd have to pull the plug on the site.

[Velocity Kendall]

What's the story behind censoring CGHUB?

hmmf id wondered about that.
hey if you chaps are on CGHUB friend me up if you like; VKRS1

[Star Eater]

friend me up if you like; VKRS1

DON'T DO IT!!!!