Tools over Talent

[Gambit37]

On Twitter, someone posted a link to a PhotoShop timelapse painting with the note:

Some SERIOUS photoshop skills if you have 5 mins. This will blow you away!
http://player.vimeo.com/video/31333291?autoplay=1

I thought this was a really weird thing to say. The awesome thing about that video is the artist's talent and the actual Photoshop skills used are actually fairly basic: it's mainly just using the paint tool. Undeniably the guy has mastered the tool, but I think it's weird when people draw attention to the tools rather than the work or the artist. It's like me showing you a fence and saying "Some awesome hammering work went into that." No-one, except another carepenter, would care.

As a dabbler in digital design myself, I appreciate the skills people learn to develop their creations, but ultimately it's what you create with them that matters.

[Bit]

...and about music:
I won't say that this man has no voice talent, but listen what the technic made out of it:
www.cloneensemble.com/audio/cloneens.mp3

[oh_brother]

Perhaps I agree now that you point it out, but I probably would have called it "photoshop skill" also. Not that I would have thought the credit belongs to photoshop, but rather that he has used photoshop as a tool with amazing skill.

I disagree though with the analogy to the fence. Anyone (or almost anyone) could put in the nails necessary to finish a fence, there is not a huge amount of skill involved. Whereas the process of using photoshop (or paint, or crayons, etc.) to do that takes a huge amount of skill. Perhaps a better analogy would be if someone said Leonardo da Vinci had amazing oil paint skills. Not quite right, and it understates the case, but it is still in the right ball-park.

Anyway, however you phrase it, the video is very impressive!

[Gambit37]

I think I didn't make myself clear enough. It's been known

I totally agree that mastery of a tool like PhotoShop equates to "great skills" -- and half the work of an artist is in mastering their tools; the other half is what they produce with those tools.

The point is that the work produced should be more important than the skills that got you there. If you have great skills but are producing crap work... well, what's the point in having those skills?

I just thought it was weird the original guy focused on PhotoShop Skills when it's the final picture itself that should really get the attention.

[oh_brother]

The point is that the work produced should be more important than the skills that got you there.

Never really thought about it in this way. This assumes that you can easily separate the process from the finished object. I think I would agree with you, but more arty types might disagree, e.g. Yeats: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

[beowuuf]

I guess the point is should we be just as impressed by the person who perflectly painted the chapel ceiling white using the immaculate brushwork as that which put the painting on it?

[Gambit37]

Not sure if you're being contrary or not... there's no artistic expression in painting something white, so if you're being genuine -- no, we should not be impressed by an undercoat, however expertly it's applied. (That's also why I hate a lot of modern "minimal" art.)

[Paul Stevens]

there's no artistic expression......... we should not be impressed

Not be impressed unless there is artistic expression?
Oh, wow! That means I have made a lot of mistakes
in my life.

But maybe the phrase "Artistic Expression" and the
word "impressed" allows a bit of latitude. Does
running a four-minute mile qualify? If my wife did
it, I would certainly be impressed!

[Gambit37]

Insert the word "as" in front of "impressed" if it would offend you less. And your enquiry makes no sense in the context of this discussion, unless you've somehow inferred that I apply this criteria to all of life's activities and endeavours?

[Paul Stevens]

Sorry.

[Gambit37]

Sigh, sometimes I hate communicating on forums. I wasn't seeking an apology. I thought it was clear that my original point was about the creation of art -- so I just didn't really understand why you were trying to apply that to other things?

[Gambit37]

I take it all back. I was just thinking about Da Vinci, an innovative creative thinker and master artist. What I enjoy about his work is not only his creations, but how they're executed through mastery of his chosen medium. Even his rough pencil sketches clearly showed how skilled he was, which is entirely separate from the ideas behind the things he was drawing.

I think I had this all wrong and that Oh_Brother's Yeats quote might be more the point after all. Where do you draw the line between the technical skills, the creative process and the final work? Is it even possible? I look to my own meagre efforts: I've tinkered with custom dungeon design for ten years in several different engines and have not released a single complete dungeon. I've redesigned the Dungeon Master Codex site many times and never released it. By my original criteria, that's not valuable or worthwhile. But the learning I've done on these projects has been both enjoyable and valuable and my personal growth has benefitted from it.

Curious stuff.

[oh_brother]

I think I have managed to convince myself of the same, that it is not easy to separate the handiwork (or the route) from the finished product.

[Bit]

This music sample that I linked to - that 128 voice choir - that's ... software!
The artist jusr sang in four parts - and surely not the female ones!
Well - the basic talent is needed to sing in the parts the right way - and so, that the tool isn't doomed to make just distortion out of it.
I posted some music of mine a time ago, and Sphenx also has some fine ones.
How should we ever could have realized that without computer support?
Two hands can't play all those voices, and without technic no one of you had ever the chance to listen to it... Sometimes technic just opens new worlds and sets talents free, and sometimes it fixes holes in a talent
And perhaps take a look at my statement in the Skyrim-thread. Sometimes talent isn't all. When Gambit asks about 'technic over talent' I may extend this question to: 'what about technic in wrong hands?'...