The new critique "feature" is stupid.

THAT'S WHAT COMMENTS ARE FOR.

Hi there. I've been meaning to post a journal about this, but I keep being too busy or tired. This semester I have been taking a painting class. It's an art department class, but it is not as serious as the drawing class I took last semester. Apparently people like International Affairs majors have to take some intro level art class to fulfill requirement, so the class is full of people who are uninterested in art and/or have never drawn before. It's a little disheartening to be doing something I love and work so hard at alongside people who don't care. Also, the peer critique session gets really deviantArt, if you know what I mean. *cough* At least no one has said "kawaii," though I think the word "cute" has been uttered.

It has been nice to be painting though. The first was the still life all in brown that I recently posted. My second painting is done, and I will be posting it soon. This evening I went shopping for a prop for my next painting, which I am quite excited about. While the class may not be as serious as I would like, it is very relaxing, and most of it gets done during class time, meaning it's not really adding too much to my homework burden (except, of course, when I pick a masochistic still life for myself and have to spend the night before finishing it up until ridiculous o'clock in the morning).

My other classes have been pretty hard on me, especially as of late. I'm also taking the continuation of the computer animation class I took last semester, but I have barely been able to work on it at all. This semester we get the opportunity to do motion capture, which is awesome, although the equipment is not that great. To compensate for the noisy data I will inevitably be getting back (probably with my limbs spontaneously flying off into space), I planned my animation to be simpler in concept than my last semester. However, I still would like to try to make it as pretty as possible, and focus on doing a better job on rigging and skinning my character. However, I have been able to devote so little time to it, right now my poor character only has his legs modeled. Hopefully I will be able to work on it more soon.

These are some of my thoughts in light of the whole tracing debacle that is currently being discussed on deviantArt, in particular in response to this news article. If you agree with me, you might be interested in this stamp and the *stop-tracing club, which tries to help learning artists not become mired in tracing.



I could care less about the fine details of copyright law and whether it or not is legal to post a traced anime screenshot on a website. What bothers me is an art site's official policy considering tracing to be art, and then seemingly welcoming it.

Art should be something the artist worked on to create. We all are at different stages of learning and improving, but I salute artists that try their best to create something on their own, even if it is not of the same "quality" as the official art they could have traced. Those are the artists that will get better, since they are trying to learn for themselves how to render shapes as they see them and what constitutes a good composition, while the tracers stagnate, mindlessly copying the predetermined lines before them. Encouraging dA members to move away from tracing or heavily referencing another artist's work is a much better way of "nurturing [their] inner artist" than simply giving tracing a blanket stamp of approval.

Based on the public outcry, it seems most members of deviantArt hold a similar view of tracing as I do. Therefore, I do not understand why, if "every staff member, volunteer, and member is a contributing factor to deviantART’s success," the community's opinions are being so condescendingly shot down in favor of merely following some legal minimum.

The ideal deviantArt that I envision in my mind is a place where all the members self-moderate and only post the art that they themselves know they have tried their hardest to create. That is primarily why I am disgusted by this issue: this policy officially lowers the standards for what is acceptable and discourages self-moderation. This policy goes against "a passion for excellence, quality and creativity" or any attempt "to instill these values in our community."

We need to stop worrying about what is legal, and instead consider what would be best for deviantArt as a community of growing artists. I believe allowing tracing runs counter to the goals deviantArt itself proclaims.

Hi all! I hope everyone enjoyed their respective holidays (or at least the time off). My break has been going well, apart from needing to deal with filling out applications. Blech. Almost... done... with that...

I also was supposed to work on my big school project over break, but pfft! Who really expects me to do that when I am home and am able to relax for the first time in what feels like forever? I'd much rather just keep drawing. *guilt*

And when it comes to drawing, I finally finished a drawing of Zero I had in the works since last winter. I tried some new things with the lines, which I might try to do more often. I experimented with a few other things that were less successful, but that's what experimenting is for.

Hopefully I can get my next big drawing done a bit faster than in 1.083 years, because I want to give it to a friend as a gift. It's be nice if it is done in time for her birthday as opposed to next Christmas, heh. While my younger cousins were over, we spent time drawing, and I drew out the basic concept with colored pencils. I'm going to draw it again from scratch because the angles got kinda wonked out. However, I would like to report, it actually looks like the character has a torso. I had to pause and silently celebrate. Anatomy! Yes!

Also, for Christmas, I received Copic markers. They are really excellent, and almost make me want to go get a coloring book or something so I can just keep on coloring with them. Thank you to everyone who already gave me hints for using them. I made a drawing of Bulbasaur and colored it with the Copics, and I have almost finished coloring a drawing I made of Ivysaur.

I'm interested in the Pokemonathon challenge to draw the original Pokemon in order, but I don't want to Jynx myself, so I'm not going to promise anything officially. I did draw all 151 and about half of the Jhoto set back when I was younger, relying heavily on Ken Sugimori's artwork. I hope I can draw them again, but this time I want to make all unique poses and actually draw backgrounds. They're only going to be on index cards, so nothing huge... but don't expect me to keep pumping them out within any small time frame, and don't get mad if I get too busy and have to stop making them altogether, eheh.

I also got the first Phoenix Wright game for Christmas. It's a good game, though I almost think of it more as a book. It's a really good book that you have to keep reading until you are done, and then you want everyone you know to read it too. It also helps that all the jokes were made as if they were specifically targeting my particular sense of humor, and the music, characters, and animations are excellent.

Hi all. This school semester is going to be tough for me, as I am taking some really demanding and crucial classes, yet, at the same time, I finally managed to fit a real art department drawing class into my schedule. Yay!

I was really feeling a need for a formal art class. The class I took last semester was computer science, not art, so the expectation level on assignments was really low. I wasn't putting in all that much effort, yet what I made still went well beyond the requirements for the projects and made me look like I was sucking up. Also, besides a little introduction to Maya, I didn't really learn anything new. It served primarily as an excuse to keep doing the art I was working on already, but it was homework, so I was able to let myself devote a little more time to it than usual.

So, overall, I felt like I was stagnating artistically. Now that I am taking this art class, I'm feeling the artistic juices coming back. I have a really good professor, and this is also the first time I have ever drawn nude models, so I really feel like I am learning a lot in terms of anatomy and new techniques.

If you see some newer things added to my gallery marked as mature, they are simply nude models, not anything scandalous.

I am also taking a class specifically on 3ds Max (no wasting time with Photoshop, huzzah!), which should also teach me a lot. I'll have a little animation to show you by Winter Break. Hopefully I'll be able to put enough time into it so that it looks at least somewhat like how I envision it in my head...