Not that I disagree with you though it is interesting how often designers like Feng Zhu, Noah Bradley or Scott Robertson talk about their work rather as a craftsmanship, comparable to many other professions, rather then doing simply art.
I believe that every human beeing is capable of beeing creative, and doing great art, as its a natural process, you just have to find the medium you love and do it with passion. But art doesnt really follow any rules, none which would be set in stone. Perspective? Composition? Colour-theories? Important, yes absolutely, its always good to know those, but you will also find equally good art out there that is completely ignoring any rules, I mean hell, the whole point of Dadaism was to break away from it for the one or other reason. But a creative job, like design, has not the luxury of art. I mean you are a problem solver after all, there are some incredible Designers out there but they could not draw anything or beeing really "artsy" even if their life would depend on it, in fact if you're hired somewhere as freelancer, as concept artist for example, there is a good chance that your art director will not be very good in making art/designs but he's very good at telling you what works and what doesnt - if he's a good arti director, having the eye and some sense for it. I mean you dont have to know how to draw a human beeing to spot the mistakes in an obviously bad drawing. But if someone tells you to create him a character, like a vilain or heroine, then you should know the fundamentals. That's why you are hired in the first place.
But I feel that quite a lot see game design, or design in general in some very naive way, like as it would be levitating above the usuall jobs out there. Hell, just like with many other jobs, you will spend a lot of the time doing very boring and tedious stuff. In Graphic design? Moving around blocks of texts, finding the right format spending a couple of hours just to type out the stuff in indesign, for hours, and you're close to smashing your head on the keyboard because someone sended you again 12 pages of text in open-office with a completely wrong format, or pictures that differ in colours and quality. It can get very repetitive, just like most jobs. Or if you have to paint again for the 10th time the same landscape over and over again because your art director simply isnt happy with some of the details, and once you did countless characters with just small variations between them, and you simply cant see it anymore then this whole design thing doesnt feel that romantic anymore. I am not saying those are not great jobs! But they are not above the rest of the others.
I believe that every human beeing is capable of beeing creative, and doing great art, as its a natural process, you just have to find the medium you love and do it with passion. But art doesnt really follow any rules, none which would be set in stone. Perspective? Composition? Colour-theories? Important, yes absolutely, its always good to know those, but you will also find equally good art out there that is completely ignoring any rules, I mean hell, the whole point of Dadaism was to break away from it for the one or other reason. But a creative job, like design, has not the luxury of art. I mean you are a problem solver after all, there are some incredible Designers out there but they could not draw anything or beeing really "artsy" even if their life would depend on it, in fact if you're hired somewhere as freelancer, as concept artist for example, there is a good chance that your art director will not be very good in making art/designs but he's very good at telling you what works and what doesnt - if he's a good arti director, having the eye and some sense for it. I mean you dont have to know how to draw a human beeing to spot the mistakes in an obviously bad drawing. But if someone tells you to create him a character, like a vilain or heroine, then you should know the fundamentals. That's why you are hired in the first place.
But I feel that quite a lot see game design, or design in general in some very naive way, like as it would be levitating above the usuall jobs out there. Hell, just like with many other jobs, you will spend a lot of the time doing very boring and tedious stuff. In Graphic design? Moving around blocks of texts, finding the right format spending a couple of hours just to type out the stuff in indesign, for hours, and you're close to smashing your head on the keyboard because someone sended you again 12 pages of text in open-office with a completely wrong format, or pictures that differ in colours and quality. It can get very repetitive, just like most jobs. Or if you have to paint again for the 10th time the same landscape over and over again because your art director simply isnt happy with some of the details, and once you did countless characters with just small variations between them, and you simply cant see it anymore then this whole design thing doesnt feel that romantic anymore. I am not saying those are not great jobs! But they are not above the rest of the others.
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