MoonBlazE
May 24, 2009, 12:40 PM
First of all, I want to thank you all for the high ratings and feature on my tileset because it means a lot to me. The Jazz community was the first place I tried to get artistic acknowledgement, so finally being “on the first page” of tileset recommended downloads means a lot to me.
Though I do agree with the various spread-out criticisms I have received: Drawing a tileset isn’t just about making a pretty scenery, it’s also about functionality and variety. If I were to draw more anymore tilesets, those features would definitely be the steps I would be taking in terms of improvement.
However, I have also learned another thing, about reviews and artistic progress. For one, I admire Agama’s skill – but having come to draw this many tilesets, I can only make a few conclusions about this artist:
- She has without a doubt drawn within the sprite genre before.
- She is hideously good at controlling her amount of colors while using a tablet and photoshop brushes rather than drawing pixel by pixel.
- She has spent an enourmous amount of time working at these tilesets at a professional level for free.
So why isn’t there more people like Agama around? Looking back, I’ve come to learn that you never really attracted any artists. Tilesets are art without a doubt, but most of our good tileset artists work with textures or very flat colors, because "full-time" artists realize drawing tilesets in detail is just incredibly time consuming compared to what they could be doing in normal art.
Don’t think I’m asking for higher rating here just because it’s “OMG ART U SHOULD APPRECIATE IT LOL!”, when I mean appreciation, I mean two things:
1) You never expanded the site in terms of art, the only section for artists was the art forum which was already labeled as non-Jazz related.
Unlike so many other fan sites, there never was a fan art section. When I say “fan art”, it isn’t just drawings of Jazz, but any fan characters as well. By neglecting such feature, you neglected the artistic progress and character development players could have made related to the game – with other words, for art, the people went to other sites and quickly lost interest in Jazz.
I have seen Jazz Jackrabbit fan art on other various sites, and surprisingly almost none of the artists even knew a fan site existed. That’s how wide Jazz got in the art universe: People don’t even know we exist.
2) Reviews were all the same for tilesets. This is probably the biggest mistake on the site’s account all together. Reviews for tileset only helped the downloader – not the artist.
So what’s a good “criticism” in terms of a review is actually just a deep detailed label of whether the reviewer feels the tileset is worth using or not, they hardly dare to step into drawing quality or specific needs because “drawing art is hard” and it’s a territory many don’t step into.
For example, I bet some of the people who gave me criticism “outside” my upload were actually somewhat afraid of using it as a reason to pull down my rating because 1) good tilesets are already damn hard to come by, 2) it’s hard to demand drawing unnecessary tiles due to the time it takes, and 3) most people don’t feel they know enough in the area of art to properly review – they’re afraid they’ll say something dead-wrong and not be helpful at all.
While 3 is a legitimate reason to hesitate, the fact is, criticism - as long as constructive and well thought - is not only helpful to the uploader, but also helpful to other artists as well as reviewers to show them how to give criticize.
This post is probably too late and even if any changes were made, most people with developing in art have taken off. But none the less, I thought I would share my reflective thoughts with you. It's not meant to blame anyone but just some of the thoughts that passed through me the night before my chemistry exam. :P
Though I do agree with the various spread-out criticisms I have received: Drawing a tileset isn’t just about making a pretty scenery, it’s also about functionality and variety. If I were to draw more anymore tilesets, those features would definitely be the steps I would be taking in terms of improvement.
However, I have also learned another thing, about reviews and artistic progress. For one, I admire Agama’s skill – but having come to draw this many tilesets, I can only make a few conclusions about this artist:
- She has without a doubt drawn within the sprite genre before.
- She is hideously good at controlling her amount of colors while using a tablet and photoshop brushes rather than drawing pixel by pixel.
- She has spent an enourmous amount of time working at these tilesets at a professional level for free.
So why isn’t there more people like Agama around? Looking back, I’ve come to learn that you never really attracted any artists. Tilesets are art without a doubt, but most of our good tileset artists work with textures or very flat colors, because "full-time" artists realize drawing tilesets in detail is just incredibly time consuming compared to what they could be doing in normal art.
Don’t think I’m asking for higher rating here just because it’s “OMG ART U SHOULD APPRECIATE IT LOL!”, when I mean appreciation, I mean two things:
1) You never expanded the site in terms of art, the only section for artists was the art forum which was already labeled as non-Jazz related.
Unlike so many other fan sites, there never was a fan art section. When I say “fan art”, it isn’t just drawings of Jazz, but any fan characters as well. By neglecting such feature, you neglected the artistic progress and character development players could have made related to the game – with other words, for art, the people went to other sites and quickly lost interest in Jazz.
I have seen Jazz Jackrabbit fan art on other various sites, and surprisingly almost none of the artists even knew a fan site existed. That’s how wide Jazz got in the art universe: People don’t even know we exist.
2) Reviews were all the same for tilesets. This is probably the biggest mistake on the site’s account all together. Reviews for tileset only helped the downloader – not the artist.
So what’s a good “criticism” in terms of a review is actually just a deep detailed label of whether the reviewer feels the tileset is worth using or not, they hardly dare to step into drawing quality or specific needs because “drawing art is hard” and it’s a territory many don’t step into.
For example, I bet some of the people who gave me criticism “outside” my upload were actually somewhat afraid of using it as a reason to pull down my rating because 1) good tilesets are already damn hard to come by, 2) it’s hard to demand drawing unnecessary tiles due to the time it takes, and 3) most people don’t feel they know enough in the area of art to properly review – they’re afraid they’ll say something dead-wrong and not be helpful at all.
While 3 is a legitimate reason to hesitate, the fact is, criticism - as long as constructive and well thought - is not only helpful to the uploader, but also helpful to other artists as well as reviewers to show them how to give criticize.
This post is probably too late and even if any changes were made, most people with developing in art have taken off. But none the less, I thought I would share my reflective thoughts with you. It's not meant to blame anyone but just some of the thoughts that passed through me the night before my chemistry exam. :P