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I plan to leave tech to pursue art

liamhz.com

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Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#31

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

danielvaughn wrote: post #27
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an artist. A fairly decent one (I don't really have a gallery of my stuff up, anymore, but here's a couple[0-1]). That was a while ago (a long while ago. Over 35 years). I figured out that even a top-shelf artist (and I don't think that was my destiny) wouldn't make as much as mediocre programmer. Nowadays, I have sort of "run off to join the circus." I write software for free. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/…

Nice! I stopped about 10 years ago - last time I was active was 2011. I didn't think I had anything left up, but I was able to dig up some very old Behance stuff: https://www.behance.net/gallery/2201575/Drawings-2010-2011 https://www.behance.net/gallery/2992181/Vector-Works-2010-20...

Those are great!

Really fun.

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#32

Post by dumpsterdiver »

aiappreciator wrote: post #19
djha-skin wrote: post #16

> In the near future I want to become a concept artist in the games industry Worst industry ever by all the accounts I've heard. Part of the compensation package is that you are working in the gaming industry. Long hours, lousy pay, ill treatment. Go for the art mate but pursue a different industry.

Its also literally the worst type of artist to be. Concept art is the most vulnerable type of art to AI. AI already does concept art way better than humans, 1 concept artist can now do the job of 10. Because AI is good at variation and creativity, bad at detail/coherence, concept art favors the former, needs less of the latter. Why doesn't OP MAKE games instead of being a mere artist? If you can program, and have a p…

I have to agree. I couldn't think of a worse time to be getting into concept art. I subscribed to Midjourney's rendering service not too long ago just to test the waters, and I've already seen it improve dramatically twice.

I don't use the service often, but sometimes I'll spend an evening experimenting with prompts to generate images that I might use in existing or future projects, and it feels really cool having those images "in the bank" in case I decide to use them later. Even if I eventually wanted to hire a human artist to create the final product (for instance, to avoid potential copyright issues), the generated artwork is an amazing help for shaping an ideal scene.

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#33

Post by pmoriarty »

"The most important thing when creating art is that you know what you want to say with it."

When I make art I do so only to please myself and without any preconceived notions or intentions as to what it should be or what messages it's to convey.

It completely does not matter to me what, if anything, anyone else gets out of it.

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#36

Post by mushbino »

eludwig wrote: post #4

The grass is always greener! :-D I smile because I left commercial art back in the 80's to become a software developer! More power to Laim and I hope it works out well for him, but I have my doubts. Working as a full-time (especially on-staff) artist answerable to an Art Director sucks!! Artists are not respected, paid terribly and just generally considered disposable. At least that's how it was in my day. Again, Lia…

He could just move to Product Design for half the pay of a swe and the same treatment as a production artist. Worst of both worlds.

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#37

Post by Baeocystin »

cpsns wrote: post #25

Lots of cynicism here, typical whenever art is compared to tech, but I wish him the best. Might as well give it a shot and see how it goes, you can always fall back into tech if needed later on.

Hell, I welded in a shipyard for a while after the first .com crash. Fallback skills of all flavors are useful!

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#38

Post by dumpsterdiver »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #28
aiappreciator wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also literally the worst type of artist to be. Concept art is the most vulnerable type of art to AI. AI already does concept art way better than humans, 1 concept artist can now do the job of 10. Because AI is good at variation and creativity, bad at detail/coherence, concept art favors the former, needs less of the latter. Why doesn't OP MAKE games instead of being a mere artist? If you can program, and have a p…

I'm not worried about competition from "AI art" — am I just stupid and ill-informed? Pursuing game concept-art though appears to me to be a drag simply because of the sameness of it. I know the author of the article thinks it's become a wide open field for creativity but my eye stills see the same fantasy-super-hero-manga genre that probably keeps computer games from being seen as deserving of being called "art" to s…

The thing I find frightening about AI image generation is the speed of iteration. Some of the images generated by Midjourney within seconds would take a human artist quite a long time to create. You can take a complete work from a paid human artist and run it through some prompts to get closer to the result you were looking for while retaining most of the original work.

Even if AI don't completely displace concept artists in the immediate future, it will certainly displace at least some portion of a human concept artist's workflow. I think the "detail work" for concept art is a good candidate to be offloaded to AI. Why pay an artist to paint every blade of grass when you can just take their rough draft and apply a series of "incredibly detailed grass texture" (etc) prompts to it?

Imo, the writing on the wall is pretty clear. While I'm sure that human concept artists will continue to find work, I'm pretty sure they'll be fighting an uphill battle, and probably won't feel very valued after awhile.

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#39

Post by leetrout »

LiamHz wrote: post #29

Hi! I'm the author of this post -- it was an unlisted draft that I shared with a few friends, was planning to rewrite most of this before publishing. Please forgive the rough edges Main changes I'd make to this article - Agreed with others that I might be naive, but I'm 20 y/o and now's the right time to shoot for my dreams rather than settle - I'm applying to animation school soon (Sheridan). I started coding when I…

> "I'm just afraid that if I died today, then my life would have amounted to nothing".

> When I imagine the ideal version of myself a decade from now, I'm not a grizzled infra engineer or a founder who has raised millions of dollars.

You are 20. You have a long life ahead of you. Enjoy the exploration and I hope you continue to realize your self.

Re: I plan to leave tech to pursue art

#40

Post by pzone »

LiamHz wrote: post #29

Hi! I'm the author of this post -- it was an unlisted draft that I shared with a few friends, was planning to rewrite most of this before publishing. Please forgive the rough edges Main changes I'd make to this article - Agreed with others that I might be naive, but I'm 20 y/o and now's the right time to shoot for my dreams rather than settle - I'm applying to animation school soon (Sheridan). I started coding when I…

If you commit to eat sleep and breathe art and you are lucky enough to never get tired of it you will succeed. Draw and paint as much as you physically can. Keep an entrepreneur’s mindset and hustle. Be prepared to use technology to stay competitive. Try out 3d, VR, AI, everything at your disposal.
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