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Not a rant, as much as an evaluation
A friend showed me these two websites, asking for my opinion. Wow, it's fascinating what people will buy...
The first one is pretty impressive in raw technique, upon first glance. However, the artist's style is fairly cramped, and he offers little artistic interpretation in terms of composition, lighting, color balance, mood/emotion, etc. It pretty much looks like he's very good at copying photos, but not much else. I'd like to know what medium he uses--I suspect computer, but can't see enough detail to tell. If that's the case, then I find it even less impressive--not because I think he's using filters or cheating or anything, but because it should be easy to achieve better effects with the tools of a digital medium.
Those photos of the artist presenting his works to the original actors just make me kinda sad and amused at the same time, because the art layman would probably be thrilled with something like that. But I'd love to see what Viggo Mortensen would think of it. He's an artist too...
The second one appears to be trying to give a little more artistic interpretation through the use of "vague" brushstrokes, but since he's still just copying photos it just looks like he didn't bother refining or finishing his paintings. His technique is underwhelming to say the least--the Legolas painting in the LotR "preview page" actually makes me physically queasy (I didn't know that was possible!). And that Argonath picture is pretty much an insult to the original matte artists of the movie who DID have to paint that scene, just with much better execution than he did.
Yet these folks present themselves as professionals. At the least, they make some sort of living off it because the common fan doesn't have enough artistic sense to know any better. It gives me hope... >P
The first one is pretty impressive in raw technique, upon first glance. However, the artist's style is fairly cramped, and he offers little artistic interpretation in terms of composition, lighting, color balance, mood/emotion, etc. It pretty much looks like he's very good at copying photos, but not much else. I'd like to know what medium he uses--I suspect computer, but can't see enough detail to tell. If that's the case, then I find it even less impressive--not because I think he's using filters or cheating or anything, but because it should be easy to achieve better effects with the tools of a digital medium.
Those photos of the artist presenting his works to the original actors just make me kinda sad and amused at the same time, because the art layman would probably be thrilled with something like that. But I'd love to see what Viggo Mortensen would think of it. He's an artist too...
The second one appears to be trying to give a little more artistic interpretation through the use of "vague" brushstrokes, but since he's still just copying photos it just looks like he didn't bother refining or finishing his paintings. His technique is underwhelming to say the least--the Legolas painting in the LotR "preview page" actually makes me physically queasy (I didn't know that was possible!). And that Argonath picture is pretty much an insult to the original matte artists of the movie who DID have to paint that scene, just with much better execution than he did.
Yet these folks present themselves as professionals. At the least, they make some sort of living off it because the common fan doesn't have enough artistic sense to know any better. It gives me hope... >P