I am by no means a "master" wallpaper artist. no one is. however, the trends going through customize are so blatant and disturbing that i have to at least TRY to make people stop it. we've seen the 3d random polygons/3d vines with small text and "chaos" (i laugh every time i see that word in a review) elements scattered in the foreground. everyone is copying everyone else's style. the style was cool for a while, but it is getting boring now. very boring. there is no challenge in opening 3dsmax, rhino, or auto illus. making a few random shapes in 15 minutes and scattering them throughout photoshop with different layer blendings on them. sorry. it would be interesting to see others' views on this. i personally don't think there is a good excuse for copying your peers, but hey, you may surprise me yet..
i think it is clear that we see trends all around us, not only in art but with clothes, economics, etc.. it's the way the world works, so it is not surprising that many ppl will share a similar style of wallpapers during the same time period.. i think this almost justifies the similarity (although in no way am i justifying rips). however, it is also clear that originality and creativity is essential in art.. so i think we will always have the trendsetters who do new things in new ways with unique styles, but they will inevitably be outnumbered by the rest of the artists who are caught in the current trend.. the only way i can think of to increase diversity is to give trend-followers lower ratings because of the lack of orginality and encourage them to try new things, but im certain that trends will never go away
yes wraybling, but the problem is that we're not even dealing with trends here, we're dealing with people who don't even put any serious effort or planning into their 'artwork.' if people want to be respected, want to be good at skinning or graphic design it takes much more dedication than these kids who just wanna be part of the club and say "yeah i make wallpapers."
My point is that they all look the same because they all don't put anything unique in their artwork :) There is nothing that defines each piece because there isn't any content in any of the submissions. THAT is why it all looks the same. Meaningless fluff clogging up server space. People have lost sight of what 'art' is about. It is a form of expression, but it looks like alot of people don't have anything to express.
I usualy keep to myself but you have a very good point. I have some wallpapers I will upload, some older ones. I usualy take my time with what I do....like 3 or 4 months to complete. Mainly to be sure it's what I want as the final result. Im into science fiction, originality and traditional type art work and I think my work reflects that. Its differant and hopefully it will help with this obviously trend we should try breaking out of.
:P well... i don't know that duration of time spent on a work of art is necessary... a work of art, whether it be a story/painting/wp/sculpture takes as long as it takes :p if thats 12 hours or 2 years, the thing takes its own time. Its done when it expresses what it was intended to say. Otherwise its just filter tricks and something interesting to look at. I think that is one of the reasons digital art isn't taken so seriously as a medium. Alot of the stuff out there seems to be stuff that people just churn out, its more like a bi-product of the brain rather than careful concideration of meaning.
Skinning i think is totally different. The purpose of skinning is something that performs a function but looks really 1337 at the same time. It is in effect eye candy, not a coherent statement (Thats what theming is about). i dunno i'm tired and rambling. if this made sense good, if not, oh well :P
I guess the only thing we can do, is try to be individuals. and maybe the custo staff rating wall's based on originality would help. i'm not saying they should start taking off 30 points just for using 3d abstracts, but they should start taking off points if it seems like we've seen the same piece of artwork a few thousand times before.
i'm not against the style out there, I quite like it, but usually art is used to convey a message, as Pod said. not just to get a pat on the back so you can feel cool.
i already do. actually, if your wall is shards, odds are you wont get better then a 180 at this point, because shards have been done so many times i cant even tell them apart
and yeah, the names are sooooooo creative. i'll see a near exact wall called "Eternity" and "Dream" and "Firestorm". please. it's a bunch of polygons with bad text faded on top.
ah. but there's a flipside. you say "but miriku, you asshole, the wallpaper is not art, it's a utility. it's something to make icons and kde bars look pretty, not some fucking gaugin"
ah, but custo is relative. no wallpaper gets an absolute ranking, they all get relative ones, when compared to everyone else. so when i look at shinter's space travel or something i can see it's so much more better (i just got home from a bar, bear with me) then something that simply has image, no cohesion, point, or meaning
dig what i'm saying at all? again, apologies, i'm too rather drunk to be perfectly coherent, but not drunk enough to not bother posting :)
:: kulao coporation : minister of vapor and spam :: :: customize : only one moderating these shitty walls ::
It's true that you should create your OWN wall. But there are some beginners (not disrespecting) that have to start somewhere. First they need an motivation, like "i want to make walls like shinter(or someone else)". So their inspiration is shinter. So they'll start to make walls that look almost the same. But after a couple of years, they'll get an own style and will create serious stuff, because they now have the technique and they know what the digital-art scene is all about. Just give these people some time.
By the way, why does shinter have the best wall (space travelling)? isn't it just like chapter3 and a lot of other people. I'm not disrespecting Shinter, I too think he has the best walls here.
How many custo moderators are there? If Miriku and Pod are tired of seeing the same thing over and over, how does something like yesterday's "Stimulant" get an 87 staff rating? I'm not saying this to pick on ch0o, this one is just an example I'm using because I saw it today, but is there any aspect of this wp that hasn't been posted in 50 other wps? As I said in my review of Aesthetiks "Foresight", as long as the custo staff and custo members keep giving high grades for EVERY SINGLE DAMN ONE of these, why the hell wouldn't people keep posting it? People like positive feedback, when they see everybody getting pats on the back for making pretty much the same picture, of course they will make another variation on the theme looking for some praise of their own. Someone has to end the circle jerk, and the custo staff is more likely to accomplish it than a community of shard-skinning posters.
I picture an art museum of the future, with all the custo wps hanging on the wall. And the visitors come to a long, long gallery with nothing but dark-blue shards and mega-layered abstracts. 99% of them yawn and quicken their pace, while the one percent that includes custo skinners stands there enraptured, raving about the great use of software, what filter was used, how many layers, etc. This could be this century's equivalent of the 60s painting style where half the canvas was one solid color, the other half was another solid color. And these guys can all congratulate each other and talk about how the other people just aren't deep enough to get it.
QUESTION: why do people make wallpapers? Just look at some of them. The majority of them aren't usable material for your desktop. People just use 1280x1024 or whatever as a basis. Theres no creativity in dimension, and everything is called a wallpaper. People can open it up, slop a mess of pixels around, and just call it a wallpaper. It makes no sense.. and more art sites (like this) need an indy art section to discourage that behavior.
i cant say anything against anyone because i once was where they are today. i agree with illustrator.people need time to develope their skills. i wouldnt have come this far if i didnt get flamed now and then and pushed in the right direction. why do you asume that chapter 3 and the rest of the "big firms" were always that good and that only them can do stuff like they do? if i remeber correctlly james widegren of threeoh.com started makeing litestep themes and his wallpapers werent all that 3-4 years ago. i admit that i took the same road. why? because i feel at home on it.to answer illustrators question why my wallpaper is #01.i really dont know why but you can say that the people have spoken and said they like it.i like it myself and that is all that mathers to me.
look at peices and any skilled artist can see how much work went into it. this is a from of art...abtrstact. but it's about how much feel, texture, depth,...love that went into a peice. it isn't hard to see a peice and know just how much lack of passion went into it. we can notice how easy the modeling was, how cut up it is. we all are skilled, it isn't hard to pic out the ones who just toss shit at the screen. cause we all was there
