Very dumb 'complaint' of sorts.

[surskitty]

Obviously. Have you ever met a spriter who tried to claim sprite edits as being entirely theirs? People don't specifically mention it simply because it's a given - we've all seen Game Freak's sprites and know a splice when we see one. :/

Occasionally, yes. Usually when they're using semi-obscure things as bases and feel that no one will notice. :/

 

[Zhorken]

ok "real art" wasn't a good phrase to use; I'm not trying to bend the word's definition to what I want. I didn't mean "it's not art by definition" or "if it's not good enough, it can't be called art", just "it doesn't have a ton of artistic merit or take as much talent* as a lot of people seem to think if you restrict your pixel art to using large portions of someone else's".

Sprite editing would be more accurately compared to TV clips strung together to music on youtube. There also isn't as much room for skill in sprite editing as there is in film editing, and it's a completely different value of "editing". Film editing is part of the finished product, not a derivative work. Filming a film and editing it are different processes; editing sprites is essentially just making your own little shards of pixel art but using someone else's as a base for them instead of actually creating something from scratch. Sprite editing is a good start, and can go a fair distance, but you have to start making your own art at some point. (Eventually, your edit is so different that it's mostly your work anyway.)

You can be great at sprite editing, and can put as much effort to it as you want, but making your own pixel art, even basic, is still a step further.
You can be great at putting a piece of paper over someone else's drawing and then tracing it, and can put as much effort to it as you want, but drawing your own things, even basic, is still a step further.
You can be great at gluing bits of a TV show together, but it still doesn't compare to actually helping piece together a film.

I'm assuming the goal is to improve as an artist and not to just pick up some simple form of art as a hobby for some time then lose interest, though.

Also I'm only addressing the first comparison because the rest are stretching it and don't look parallel to me; I assumed this was deliberate to convey "well you're being absurd!" or something.

*I do mean learned talent, not "oh you're just gifted" talent

EDIT: Slso a lot of things (recoloring!) still take absolutely no skill, and I honestly do think that threads pretty much devoted to them should be outlawed.

 

[Lucas₇₅₅]

Slso a lot of things (recoloring!) still take absolutely no skill, and I honestly do think that threads pretty much devoted to them should be outlawed.

Why? Because you dislike them?
That's no reason to get rid of something.

 

[surskitty]

No, because he can do them in one line without ever actually opening an image editor.

 

[Zhorken]

because 99% of them take absolutely no effort or skill

Recoloring to a *scheme* would be harder to do from to command line (rather than recoloring to a specific color), but it would still take me less than a minute in the GIMP.

 

[Kai Lucifer]

Just joining this thread to say thanks for seperating the sprites from the artwork, as I too had a problem with people posting rubbish over my thread.

I also believe that recoloring only sprite shops are a disgrace, and that some spriters here really need to up their game.

 

[Butterfree]

ok "real art" wasn't a good phrase to use; I'm not trying to bend the word's definition to what I want. I didn't mean "it's not art by definition" or "if it's not good enough, it can't be called art", just "it doesn't have a ton of artistic merit or take as much talent* as a lot of people seem to think if you restrict your pixel art to using large portions of someone else's".

Sprite editing would be more accurately compared to TV clips strung together to music on youtube. There also isn't as much room for skill in sprite editing as there is in film editing, and it's a completely different value of "editing". Film editing is part of the finished product, not a derivative work. Filming a film and editing it are different processes; editing sprites is essentially just making your own little shards of pixel art but using someone else's as a base for them instead of actually creating something from scratch. Sprite editing is a good start, and can go a fair distance, but you have to start making your own art at some point. (Eventually, your edit is so different that it's mostly your work anyway.)

You can be great at sprite editing, and can put as much effort to it as you want, but making your own pixel art, even basic, is still a step further.
You can be great at putting a piece of paper over someone else's drawing and then tracing it, and can put as much effort to it as you want, but drawing your own things, even basic, is still a step further.
You can be great at gluing bits of a TV show together, but it still doesn't compare to actually helping piece together a film.

I'm assuming the goal is to improve as an artist and not to just pick up some simple form of art as a hobby for some time then lose interest, though.

Also I'm only addressing the first comparison because the rest are stretching it and don't look parallel to me; I assumed this was deliberate to convey "well you're being absurd!" or something.

*I do mean learned talent, not "oh you're just gifted" talent

EDIT: Slso a lot of things (recoloring!) still take absolutely no skill, and I honestly do think that threads pretty much devoted to them should be outlawed.

Oh, sure, sprite editing is a limited art form that takes less skill than original pixel art, traditional drawing and so on. I was just objecting to your statement that spriting in general is "a bunch of kids who think they're cool because they know how to use MS Paint". There is less skill on their part involved in a sprite edit than in a drawing, but that doesn't mean there isn't any or that a sprite edit automatically has no merit as a piece of artwork simply because it requires less effort and skill than original pixel art. Technically, it requires less effort and skill to draw from visual reference than to draw something completely out of your own imagination, but that doesn't mean that drawings with a visual reference can only serve as a gateway to drawing from imagination alone. It requires less effort and artistic skill to adapt a book than to write a completely original screenplay, but that doesn't mean adaptations are therefore without merit.

 

[Zhorken]

That wasn't my statement, it was Departure Song's.

My only other real point (aside from "sprite editing is hella simple as pixel art goes") was "if you've edited someone else's work, you're not the artist"; I was tired and meant "you're just one of the sprite's artists, not the artist, and chances are most of the thing is still not your work" but didn't get that across too clearly. Most people acknowledge that the sprite wasn't entirely their work, but they still seem to think that the sprite belongs to them as a piece of art. I have no idea why I went as far as "absolutely all derivative works should be against the rules"; I really only wanted to take a swing at the useless stuff (again, simple recoloring).

And again, yeah, "real art" was really not the best phrase I could have used to get across what I meant. ^^;

 

[Departure Song]

I was just objecting to your statement that spriting in general is "a bunch of kids who think they're cool because they know how to use MS Paint".

I was referring specifically to our own spriting forum in its current state, not spriting in general.

 

[ultraviolet]

Does my profile say less than a month? Because I'm almost certain I was here for longer. (Plus, the old forum had the same problem, which I was on for a while)

Wow, I'm really sorry. Now that I think of it, I have seen you before, I think I mistook you as Anche or something. I'm sorry. D:

 

[Tarvos]

the issue is not whether spriting has merit but whether spriters suck at what they do

clearly you don't want to clog up a forum with 2000 useless pixelation threads, no matter how much artistic merit they have, if it means other art forms get lost in the forum. in that case give the spriters a separate forum where that interest can be practised. this so that talented artists don't get snowed under and receive their due attention.

 

[Butterfree]

...uh, that's the way it's always been? Spriting has been a subforum since Conforums; the issue here was only about the last post on the main page showing threads from the more active subforum more than threads from the main forum, and if you haven't noticed I went and split it off entirely just after I made my first post in this thread. The other issue was about sprite request threads clogging up the sprite subforum, and I split that off already as well. There is no need to go on trying to convince me that it needs to be done.

The entire squabble about the artistic merits of spriting wais just a little off-topic aside about whether sprites deserve a forum to begin with.

I'm sorry for the misattribution of the quote to Zhorken. In any case we've cleared up what we were trying to say and I don't think there is much of a disagreement left, so we might as well just close this since the issue has been resolved.