While taking a break I went over to Renderosity and noticed that the interview with this month's AOM has been posted.  This month's the AOM is denko an artist of some considerable talent.  I first saw his work a few months ago on another website.  Do youself a favor, if you have not seen his  works  [i:6180e9c3f6]My Love[/i:6180e9c3f6] and [i:6180e9c3f6]Female Anatomic Study[/i:6180e9c3f6] go see them, they are worth the effort.

Considering my recent return to 3D art and relativly little recent experience, I hope you don't think I am being too presumptious in my opitions below.

While reading the interview, I started to think of how I would answer some of those questions,     They would not be happy with most of my answers .    My answer to the last question about parting comments and advice would be the one that they would dislike the most, It would be somthing like this:

[i:6180e9c3f6]Practice your art and develop your own style or styles.  Be an artist create what you can for your works on your own.  Don't be just a point and click button pusher who buys merchant items and downloads free items to create your works.  If you limit your vision to what has already been made available by others, then your art will me limited and trite.  If you use the same models, textures, poses, and backgrounds as almost everyone else then your work will an expression of their vision and not your own.  Even if you use the newest ones available the no one esle has used yet, when enough others do, your work will be just one more of so many others of the same kind.

In my case, I am grateful to all those who have made materials available for us to use.  I do use items provided by them in my images.  However, I hardly ever use those items as they were made.  Rather, I use them as convenient stepping stones to be adapted to become what I need them.  If you need a particular model and can not or do not want to create it yourself, seek help from what has already been provided on-line by others.  You will never find a perfect match but that does not matter, a close match is can be good enough but only if you adapt it to fit in with your  vision for the work rather than adapting your vision to fit the available materials.

Just how many naked and almost naked Victoria 3 and Michael 3 standing around for no particular reason and how many NCC-1701s going nowhere, do you need to see and render before that becomes tiresome?  Well why wait for that to happen?  Build a story for your artwork, make your art tell that story.  Other than for simple portraits, a picture without a story is like a movie with opening and closing titles and nothing in between.  Become an artist, be creative, create!

I have much more respect for a poorly made artwork created by the efforts of a (so far) poorly skilled artist than I would for a beautiful artwork assembled by a skilled button clicker who used a purchased  human figure, background, texture, and clothing; while he himself created nothing for the rendering.[/i:6180e9c3f6]

Pangor

      Very well said Pangor, I believe exactly that myself

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I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to just try and keep control over this group of bozo's at the Nut house errr...Clubhouse! --Guilty Pleasures Chief of Bozo's

I agree to a point. All is right except for the noobs. I really don't mind a person coming in with no knowledge and doing just the point and click technique. That's how you learn. Just as in painting/traditional work where everyone at one time draws the cone, ball, square picture to help them learn shading. I guess the big question there would be when is a person considered knowledgable enough to be no longer considered a noob? That's one question that's very difficult to answer.
I don't visit many forums anymore for the reason stated. How many Big boobed, no clothes, women welding a sword can you look at?? Most forums are over flooded with these.  I do have my favorite artist list and when one post an image I go look. Although a couple of them now are like you say "Look at these wonderful gifts I am trying out for so and so!" renders.
Another thing I really get bugged about that I am starting to see allot of.. "What no comments!" posts. These are where someone post an image and with in say half a day no one has commented on it, the poster gets all pissed off because no one comments.
And the other item that bugs me are Images with the word Portrait in it, then when you look it's a full body  image. I was always under the impression a portrait was that of a perrson from the shoulders up.....I could be wrong and I wouldn't mind be corrected if I am.

From my understanding, graphical and sculpture portraits has two definitions.  One of them is in accord with your definiton, being an image of the face and only the beginning of the sholders.  The other definition overlaps that of a bust.  If the artwork depicts an idealized version of the subject, it is a bust, on other hand  if the artwork depicts a realistic image of the subject it is a portrait, also sometimes called a "bust portrait."  A portrait of this kind normally show the head and down to the upper abdomen.  Although in practice, I have seen portraits painted by the masters of the past few centuries that are titled as portraits that go as low as the upper to mid waist area.  Also the subject should be depicted as posing for the artwork, if the subject is doing something else, then it is not a portrait.

The pictures that I posted, [i:380d72079a]Portrait of Betty[/i:380d72079a] and [i:380d72079a]Portrait of Betty, The Second Sitting[/i:380d72079a] are right up against the border but have not yet crossed the line.  That is why I framed those two pictures as I did, so they could still be titled as portraits.

Pangor

I think it's sad when you post a picture and no one comment it. Spme "good relationships" job is mandatory at the beginning: a lot of artist begin to see your pictures when you write (good) comments under their ones. It's a little unfair but I think that it's a good start. Personally I have basically 3 types of people who comments my pics:

1) friends   : they will comment my pictures because they know me and I know them and we comment each other pictures for friendship above all, out of this community I have very few of them. I accept critiques and suggestions without problems if coming from this category.

2)  People who comment one picture of mine when I've commented one of their pictures: I consider them unnecessary, because even if I liked their styles, my style could not be liked by them, it's normal...

3) People who really like my pics, these one could be also part of the first category (   ). I'm very happy when an unknown user adds me to his/her favourite's artists list at Rendo and I'm happier if it's only an user who never painted anything. I noted that this category is made mainly of women when I post a picture with Posy, probably because in this case I paint romantic pictures, with mild eroticism and/or humor but never explicit naked character, who are liked by men (less clothes I use, more views I get).

I tend to leave a comment on pictures who has not been commented with some suggestion, even if I'm not a pro and I like uncommon styles. Usually pictures made with an uncommon style has no or only few comments under them, but sometimes they are very special...

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Oh that is a shame. As Bertrand Russel said, it must have taken ages for people to realize that a brace of pheasants and a couple of days are both instances of the number "two. "Just three? I haven't heard anything like that before:  TORMENTOR said it tend to leave a comment on pictures who has not been commented with some suggestion even if you are not a pro.   A lot of people like that.                   I like science fiction.              I like to talk about movies and music.

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I won the Loebner prize !

Thank you Posy. What's your favourite music ?

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I get into disco, techno and hip hop House music.

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I won the Loebner prize !

I knew you like disco (   ) honey...

And What's your favourite movie ?

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