133 god damn frames, sir.

[even]

I'd say eric is pretty justified withhis comments.  He is a pretty big contributor to the critics forum, and afterall - this isn't him asking for detailed critiques and comments for himself.  He is trying to better the overall critics forum as well as flippy's own perspective of peoples opinions of his work. Eric is hardly being greedy.

I personally have no problem with one word replies. I can understand people simply wanting the artist to know that they like the art but they dont have time to analyze it or figure out why they do.  Im sure there are people who do like praise over anything else too.  But eric has a valid point in that the critics forum does need to keep a good level of critiquing.  I certainly dont want the forum to end up being the "Seeking Attention, Praise Me Out of Sympathy or Recognition" Forum.

As far as flippy's work, it's nice and oldschool- but not very productive. If you have all that free time- more power to you. But a great deal of becoming a great artist is effinciency- by no means Im not a great artist either, but my advice would be to make it easier on yourself. If I were to shoot a student film frame by frame with a still camera- I would hope more people would tell me I was crazy and should stop wasting my time- than tell me its a great retro acheivement.  Innovate.

[Andail]

Yes, the rules recommend elaborating your criticism, since just a few words are not capable of improving anything or providing constructive advice, merely ego-stroking and friend-making.

Darth-Mandarb, I think we've also made clear that you should avoid double-posting, especially when your posts are that short. I also don't see the point with quoting yourself, although I can't say it's against the rules.

[loominous]

Even:

I believe u missed one of his posts:

this isn't him asking for detailed critiques and comments for himself

the reason i don't post art here is because i hate when people post "great!" or "WOW EYEPOPPING EMOTICON!" i'd post here to have my art critiqued not praised

Andail:

I m well aware of the rules n I support them to the extent that they encourage people to try to citicise constructively.

But they have a wierd consequence: If Bill Watterson himself would post some background in here his thread would ve no replies, save perhaps for those who don t like his style n could suggest that he oughta paint differently.
If that d happen, I think we d have seen the last of mr Watterson in here.

So wouldn t it be preferable if the rules to allowed me to post an openmouthed smiley or just express my admiration if Bill or the likes of him would pop in here?

[evenwolf]

Eric claims he doesn't post his artwork here because HE is one of the few who gives constructive criticism.  And its true.  You could only argue Eric's absence from this forum for a period of days, or a month... etc - but truth is Eric has supported this forum more than most since the forum's conception.

Therefore, he has full right to argue back to you, loominous, that doing what you ask won't solve a damn thing.  Unless eric himself critiqued his own art, which would be fun to watch- but pretty pointless in my opinion.

And it's interesting Loominous, that should Bill Watterson one day post in this forum- that you would be too lazy to tell him anything but a smiley or one word reply.  I'm glad you show no favoritism among those you deny opinions on their artwork. However, if smileys and one word replies were all AGSers offered a devoted artist such as Watterson- perhaps its best he does not post here.

[loominous]

My, my, I seem to have upset you.

Although I did mention Eric in my post my aim was set on the relatively skilled part of the forummembers and not on him specifically. If he s the regular contributor of thorough criticism as you say he is, it was unfortunate that I d include him.

My point was simply: What harm does oneword/praising posts do if they re complemented with some thorough criticism from skilled people who re capable of providing some insightful comments?

The idea was that we re all reduced to gasping smileys when confronted with superior skills. So if Watterson was to post something, we d all probably be stuck with openmouthed smileys or more elaborate text versions of it.
That is, we d all be short of constructive criticism so the thread would have to be empty if the current rules were to be followed.

To a complete novice Eric's pics would be in the relatively same league as Watterson to a fairly experienced artist. Hence, the novice is stuck with the same praise/openmouths posts which the rules forbid.

So if the novices are prohibited from expressing their admiration of Eric's pics using a smiley or a textversion we d all be prohibited to express ours of Watterson in any way.

Unless you re advocating doublestandards that is.

[MrColossal]

guess i better explain myself a little more, unless you and evenwolf would like to keep arguing over me? hehe

If I come into the critics lounge and there's an amazing bit of art [and it happens a lot] and i want to tell the person that it is good and that i can't find anything wrong with it then i should be allowed to do that.

this particular thread bothered me because 4 posts... in a row... barely adding up to 5 words. that's just silly. and I'd still like to know what the hell 'AA?' means but I think evil just posted and moved on.

i also don't want this forum to become one of constant total crit but again i want to differentiate between praise and just posting an emoticon. "Wow, I really like the way the wackadoo really looks like it's flimbanging in the whooha. Nice job!" that took me 5 seconds to type, that's only 4 more seconds of your life instead of posting an emoticon.

if the art is really that jaw dropping and there is absolutely nothing you can ever possibly ever ever say about it ever, like your hands just melt when they touch the keys and you have to wear gloves just to post 8 eyepopping emoticons in a row with plenty of exclamation points... then we have a problem. art like that shouldn't be out there among the people where it can do harm!

this forum is 99.9% helpful and critical, it's just this was too much.

also loominous, there are plenty of very talented people who do post here. and if i were to post some art i would do it and not just wait for other people i found talented to post. if i posted and waited for pessi then i should have just mailed it to him. for me at least i would want EVERYBODY'S reaction to it. Just because I went to art college doesn't mean that my opinion will always be better. I think that everyone has the ability to critique art, if you look at it and you don't like something about it, tell the person. it's that simple.

when it comes to things like colour theory and composition, a novice may not know the terminology for it but i still think that an artistic person will be able to spot some problems.

"The colours are wicked bright man, they make my eyeballs bleed!"

"Reduce the saturation on the reds and yellows."

i may be babbling now but see what i mean?

and i see what you mean loom, if the majority of posts are helpful crit what does one or 2 smiley posts hurt? well i guess the answer is it's just personal to me. like i said before, if they can't spend another 3 seconds saying WHAT they find so emoticonilicious about it then how will the artist know what's so good about it? it's like general praise that will make the artist feel good sure [though it would annoy me a little] but shouldn't we at least try to pinpoint one thing that we can tell the artist that will let them know why they should feel good?

also to clear another thing up, lately i haven't posted any art because my game is going well and i don't have much to ask help on. I also like to surprise people with what i'm working on.

i guess what i should have added is that when posting art it's always with a little reserve because i don't want a lot of wowowowow. i want to know what works and what doesn't, knowing what works makes me happy and knowing what doesn't makes the art better. i hope that doesn't sound pretentious because that isn't my intention at all.

hope i didn't ramble on too much

eric

[Andail]

The rules are there mainly for these reasons:

If a lot of people just browse this board and type "Wow" or "Great" or "!!" all the time, the idea with criticism is soon forgotten, and soon it will turn into a back-scratching game where you just try to be friends with as many as possible. It will turn out a routine. "Allright, time for my daily 'compliment artwork at the critics lounge-session'". "What smiley could I use today to vary my comments a bit?".

There might be a purpose for this, but not good enough a purpose to fill this board with it.

The artists will not gain from this, they will only browse through the pages of the thread counting replies with nice emoticons, instead of really being able to improve their art.

This is the critics lounge, critics mean telling somebody what he/she has done right or wrong.
Perhaps people here are too afraid they might hurt someone's feelings, but still - pretty please with sugar on top - be sincere and elaborate your comments.

[Hollister_man at work]

I agree with the general feel in here.  I like to know that someone likes my art, but what I really came here for is to get suggestions toimprove.  It is really a pain when you post in high hopes of getting a suggestion on why the heck your sprite looks bad, and you end up having to pop it back to the top yourself several times before anyone replys.  Oh well....Great animation, by the way.

[Darth Mandarb]

MrColosssal - My first post was meant to be a joke.  I very much appreciate your opinions about 1 word posts and not backing them up with more substance (I even tend to agree with you).

Darth-Mandarb, I think we've also made clear that you should avoid double-posting, especially when your posts are that short. I also don't see the point with quoting yourself, although I can't say it's against the rules.

I did this to prove a point.  Read next paragraph.

I try very hard to not worry about things when I know full well it's not going to do any good.  I mean, no matter how much we say, "Stop doing this" or, "You shouldn't do that" or even, "Please don't do that", it's still going to happen.

You could always put a minimum characters entered on each post ... but then you'd just get smart asses (like myself) posting a lot of smilies.

:o :o :o :o :o :o :o

cheers,
dm