Friday 25 May 2007

DeviantART

I am so fucking sick of DeviantART

It's always the same when I visit there. I find amazing, beautiful peaces of art, I look at the creators profile and I'm lucky to find anyone who's over 25. That may seem relatively old to some, but that's my age too, and I'm shite at drawing, not that I'm good at anything else. But since I was pretty young (as far back as I can remember), I've always thought myself as a bit of an good artist. The fact is, I'm not, not only that, but it seems the world is teaming with supurb ones. They're all there on DeviantART posting their perfectly colour cordinated wacom tablet master peaces, waiting for their hundreds of teeny bopper positive comments to roll in. I often find art that I've seen in a comic, or a video game. I gleefully think for second that all these "deviants" aren't good at all, that they actually just copy off others. But then I read into it and find that they are in fact the originals, that they did for that video game, and most likely got paid. I just found some guy who did some art for a (popular) Darkstalkers comic, as high quality as any of the original official art that some capcom artist did years ago. Thing is, he must have painted it at least 2 years ago, which means he would have been about 23 at the time. It makes me sick, it really does. How did he get so good? Has he spent his life since he was four in his room, drawing everything he sees, for 20 hours a day?!

I don't know why I'm even bothering, it's not like the world needs another artist. There's a shortage of programmers at the moment in the video games industry. Everyone wants to do the 2D and 3D art for them, but not many want to crunch numbers to make huge, complicated MMORPGs. This is why the coders get paid so much more than the artists, because artists are a dime a dozen. If your not happy with your job, bugger off, there's another wacom wielding sap cued up to take your place. One who's dieing for your job.

So what chance do I have? You have to be the best to get a decent job in this field. I know an artist isn't supposed to be doing it just for the money, they have to have a passion for it. But I must think about money as well, I'm getting on a bit, and I've been a total failure at looking after myself.

The one negative thing about DeviantArt is that a lot of the work is pretty unoriginal. Most of it is the usual big titted manga girl, but it's not like I could do any better. And the problem is, that's pretty much the kind of art I like as well. Back in the day, I thought of myself as having fairly original tastes, I was watching dodgy bootlegs of anime a while before the UK's Manga Entertainment came along with Akira. I watched crap like Orange Road all the time. Now it's a different story, manga and anime is HUGE. It's very prominent on the internet, and everyone is copying it, some of which do ok with acquiring their own style, so they don't look like ripoffs of Dragonball or something.

So yea, I'm ranting and moaning again, it's been a while, not that post that often, that is. I shouldn't moan, it only makes me more ashamed to tell anyone about this blog. It's nice to have something that could be entertaining and enlightening to give to people. They aren't going to want to just read about how sorry I feel for myself. And the thing is, all I'm doing is being jealous. I'm moaning about DeviantART because I'm jealous of it, it's pathetic. You know what, I actually have an account on there. I haven't posted on there for years, and I only have one crap drawing up.

Yeah so why do I bother? Why do I even bother writing all this crap? No one reads this. I've told four people about this blog, three of them almost definitely don't ever read it (two of them probably don't even remember I told them), and the one remaining (probably YOU), have already heard all this before. I've said these kinds of things to this one person all the time over the phone. Even then, this one person hasn't left any comments (not even on my positive posts), and probably won't even read these kinds of posts in full, because they are so sick of hearing me go on like this. They probably just speed read over top of it, missing the details. Not that I blame this one person for doing that, all I write is drivel.

I don't know why I keep trying to be an artist, who am I trying to impress? Only myself I think, because know one else cares. I could get a job at McDonald's, casually moan about it every now and again, and no one would think for a second that my dreams had been recently chattered. Does that make sense? Maybe not, I didn't get across what I was trying to say, oh well.

Hay guess what, I'm gonna say how totally alone I am now, just like some generic emo prat. Just like a generic, self pitying blog. There's thousands of them, this is just like all the rest.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an amazing post to anyone that follows deviantart artists. I also fucking hate that damn community. I want to leave it but there are so many good, inspiring pieces that it's worth having an account just to be able to keep track of them. Regarding your issue of age I want to bring up a couple of encouraging arguments:

In the animation, comics, or most any kind of visual medium, no one cares what the hell age you are. Sure it's great that you're only 20 and have so much talent. But while impressive, all that matters in the end is the work you're able to produce, not your age. Keep pushing yourself. There are things more gratifying than being the best at traditional rendering. There is always someone younger and more talented than you are. You think 23 is bad try finding some wonderkid whose 17 or 18 or some shit.

Secondly, more and more kids are getting wacom tablets at an earlier age. Wacom tablets. At like fucking 12 years of age. Think of the huge advantage that gives someone in terms of color and rendering experimentation at a young age. Not only that but wonderful programs like Painter and Photoshop are available to them for download online when you would have had to have had paid hundreds for them back when you were the same age. I’m sure that if forced to use traditional mediums, a lot of these kids would be frustrated to find themselves without an undo command.

So keep watching deviants. Keep finding wonderful art that inspires you. Don't even look at their age.
It sounds like you'll never be able to escape being an artist so don't even make it sound like you'd try.

Oliver Wilmot said...

Thank you for your comment, it's great to hear some encouraging thoughts! It's also good to see someone's actually read my blog, it makes me think about it in a different light, makes me think more about what I write. Makes me read what I wrote and think "oh my, I was so depressed that day!".

I shall trek on, see how it goes.