Are programmers more generous than artists?

#61 Actually, I think that aspect may have more to do with an ancient spirit of cooperation between technical people. That started way before computers.

Of course, now that I think about it, didn't Michelangelo get his start painting the cherubs and other minor details for his boss' paintings?

In general, though, art may not lend itself as well to community effort.

#62 I thought he got his start in a sewer in radioactive slime

#63 I've always preffered to think of it as enlightened self-interest, rather than generosity, actually. Mathematical and functional routines can benefit from additional hands and perspectives, hence there's a clear advantage to sharing it out when you're able to in order to better see not only potential flaws, but potential extendability and re-use cases. Art on the other hand, is almost by definition unique in terms of creative vision, and what lengths somone will allow alteration, wich is not to say, of course, that a perfectly flowing routine that slices, dices and makes julianne fries doesn't have artistic merit, note. Merely that the processes involved are almost diametricly opposed. (ie: ya write code so it *can* fit alot of situations, and some you might not anticipate at time of writing. Ya do art to get it *just* the "right" way for you)

#64 @Lee, you're thinking of Leonardo, I believe. Though that was true of *all* artists back then, since it was highly tied in with the apprentice system they had(which is actually quite interesting...they didn't consider children non-valued members of society like in modern times, but actually as small adults, so they had to work to learn/earn their trade).

#65 I just wanted to jump in and insert a couple of thoughts.

When art is shared, replicated, it is devalued. If everyone started putting Mario, or Solid Snake, or Samas Aren in their game, their respective franchises would be killed.

Art is largely what makes a game unique, special, valueable.

As mentioned before, code is more generic. It's just as important, but doesn't lend itself to the unique character of the game (as much as art). This makes it much easier to replicate without problems...an idea that GG is built on.

-W

#66 Im very generous find me a patron to pay all my bills and feed and clothe me and I will be more than happy to donate as much art as is needed.

Im sure you have all heard of the starving artist? well Ive never heard of a starving C++ programmer.

Artists have needed patrons all through history why should now be any different.

I have spent my whole life developing my artistic skills, and the last couple of years learning programs that can take advantage of my skills.

I dont eat right. Im dependant on other people for the internet, and for a place to sleep. the Art field is so dang competitive that I will prolly find myself unable to work in my field and wind up working in a kitchen somewhere in order to survive. So If I ask for a little money for my time and effort I feel entirely justified. Professional artist that make good money dont have the time to donate work and the rest of us are too busy trying to find something to eat and a place to sleep.

Art as a skill is mainly muscle memory and it takes a long time to develop. And then to make it useful to game developers there are any number of programs that must be learned and entire skill sets that need to be developed using Quark is much different than oil painting but the artist will generally start with drawing or painting as opposed to Quark or milkshape. If an artist cant draw, paint, or sculpt then it is unlikely that he will last long enough to learn some electronic medium like PhotoShop. of course formal training covers some of these programs these days which they didnt when I was growing up. Unlike the programing field It is extremely difficult to get into a distinguished art college and Its extremely expensive. I can learn programing at my local community college but a degree in art wont get me anywhere if it comes from a community college. The field is just too competitive.
obviously exceptional artist are out there the kind that make all there work look like it just comes natural but those are few and far between and generally have no problem eating.

#67 ..
this is silly.

take a look from this angle.

what type of people want a position of power to loom over others and have them do their bidding?
what type of people are content doing what they want to do versus making more money?

there are different types of people all doing things some different some the same.

in this case, we see the majority of people who program are investigative solution providers.
they want to get the answer and show everyone.

a different class of people than most artists.
who do not have an interest in figuring things out, they just want stuff to look good.

that is what is driving the difference between the work you get from each group.

I have worked with artists for Years, and they are a flaky bunch.

lol, sometimes it is harder than hell to motivate them.

I've gone as far as to place Cash on their desks.
it worked for a while, but once they have enuff cash, they get lazy again.

#68

Quote:I have worked with artists for Years, and they are a flaky bunch.

lol, sometimes it is harder than hell to motivate them.

I agree xD
I didn't yet placed cash on their desk, but in time, this is inevitable.

#69 @Grauer, Badguy

Maybe 'your' artists can sense that you're the kind of people that would bash them on a public forum...I wouldn't work with you either.

#70 Yeah, they're oversensitive, too!

#71 Artists can sense that ? Oh noes x[]

I was just kidding about the cash ^^'
But it's true that it is hard to have artist working on something that is not their own project... uh, wait, it's just the same with programmers xD

#72 Oh no, it's the token super-long post.

Hobbyist artists are only really motivated under the right conditions. It's like the planets aligning, really--we want to make a character, but don't feel like drawing one, so we decide to make one on photographic references, in which case we realize the tripod is still out in the garage. So we look for it for a while, but get tired of that. After briefly considering drawing a character anyway, we again discard that idea after realizing that the scanner is broken and then briefly consider just going out and buying a new tripod...which we then discard, because we have no money. At this point the realization hits us that we would not only have to call a friend to model as the character AND the camera is only 4 megapixels, and also that we have no earthly idea what we really wanted to make a character FOR in the first place. (I will omit the part where we then go on to make random shapes for a game, such as foliage, only to be discouraged by their not working in-engine despite working in Max and ShowTool--such is the life). This obviously doesn't apply to career artists, who have most of the equipment and necessary components on-hand...and are getting paid for their work.

I agree a lot with the fact that art is very game-specific, and most won't work on another project. That doesn't mean that I don't think that people should have a decent variety of available options to practice with. I am working on getting together a good default model working, which I plan on releasing free if I ever get it done (such is the problem with working for a living and having other projects--I hardly ever have time for Torque). I know there's the blue block-man that comes with TGE, but I figure I may as well make my own instead of that since I have to start clean with TGEA. So I wouldn't say that artists are less generous as a rule, but rather that with programming, it's a kind of "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" type thing.

Also, there's the fact that with programming, unless the usage is exactly the same, it's hard to tell if someone took an idea of yours or just developed a similar idea in parallel with you. Art, on the other hand, is often distinctive enough to be able to tell if it's what you made or not.

I think it just comes down to that nobody likes to work for free. In watchmaking (my day job), we are constantly admonished by other AWCI peers that life comes to a nonalgebraic equality, TIME=MONEY. Those of us who are fortunate enough to enjoy working on the things we do in our free time aren't as bound by that as others, but it is still effort on top of our work. I think we just need to make sure we all understand that what we're asking for when we need art OR programming isn't just the product, but the time needed to make it.

Sorry about the long post, and if any parts don't make any sense, it's because I'm tired.

#73 I'm trying to figure out where all these generalizations and stereotypes of Artists comes from. Because someone had a bad experience with one or two artists, that makes them all "lazy"? I've known a few "flaky" programmers as well.

#74 One thing I think is funny, and this goes counter to the thread's prevailing pseudo-opinion/wisdom, is that I've seen cases where an artist will post looking for contract work, with a great portfolio, and will get a few responses along the lines of "Well, I think your art is great, but you're so good that I don't think you're in my price range." The amusing part is that they say this without actually contacting said artist, who is in fact quite generous and (in the particular case I'm referring to) was entirely willing to halve his normal rates for indies. It never hurts to ask (especially when the art is so darn good!) :)

I think it really just depends on the person. Just like everything else.

Also, to some degree, many programmers that post code are posting their mediocre resources, and will keep the coolest/best features they've written to themselves for their own work and/or release it as payware. This makes perfect sense, of course, but still goes against the "artists less generous" idea.

#75 Lol, Weston.
I would not wanna work with a sniveling whinner anyhow.

face up to the facts, it was mostly a joke.

it's not that they "Wouldn't work"
it's that it took them Forever to work, and incentive to get the job done is most certainly required.

where as with people interested in something, and driven to it, need less incentive.

#76 @Badguy

"but...but...I was joking!" you've just picked my favorite craven apology.

Alright, so I also wouldn't work with you because your jokes aren't funny.

We should spend a few more days working together to come up with reasons we won't work together.

Love and kisses,

Weston

#77 Bah, c'mon people, don't let this become a flame war....

#78 I'll echo what someone far about said (since I can't find the "quote" button)...

Art is hard.. really hard. And insanely subjective. Any art asset will generate love and hate in various viewers, it's not a black-or-white thing. Revising art assets is a time-consuming process, as well.

Coding is pretty simple, chances are someone else has a design pattern you can use, and it pretty much either works or it doesn't. Fixing code is fairly quick, depending on your debugging skills and tools.

Being both software engineer and artist, I find that cranking out reasonable, modestly optimized C/C++ code is 10x easier than creating a decent animation. Maybe that's because I'm not the worlds greatest artist (lol) but every game I've been involved with has taken a LOT more manpower on the art than the code.

As far as giving things away, well, there are a lot of basic 3D meshes out there that are pretty generic... so SOMEONE is giving things away. But like has been said, since a lot of it is generic, you're not going to find "the perfect model" unless you're making a very generic game.

Here in Silicon Valley I get decent pay for my embedded multimedia work, and I can afford to spend time in the evening making free stuff since I have my bills paid and beer money. I'd hate to try to be a working artist here, though, the pay is crap AND the hours are miserable (unless you're a Flash/Flex UI designer, or a Javascript/Ajax interaction designer, in which case you'll do OK). I can't see how these people have TIME to work on decent free content!

And, I've worked with as many flaky engineers as artists, in my 29 years in the software engineering field I've come across some REAL losers! The gamedev field is no different, there are flakes in every business, from retail to biotech.

#79 Lol, I did not say I was joking...

I said it was mostly a joke.
and that was in reference to calling them a flaky bunch.

no big deal, don't get your panties in a knot.

considering we are talking about them giving up free stuff, I am comfortable asserting my statements.

which I will reiterate for you
considering motivation for artists to give free stuff, it is harder than getting a snippet of code for something.

As for Ed, I agree.
performing complex code to suit embedded solutions is much easier than pushing pixels, polies or bones.
cause my art sucks too.

#80 @Ed Averill

Quote: I can't find the "quote" button

Quote:Coding is pretty simple

Since coding is so simple can you please take a few minutes to code the rest of my game for me (not to mention you can't find the 'quote button' ... since you have to "code it". Both art and programming are difficult. Sure programming 'hello world' is simple, but so is creating a box in Maya. Try coding Maya then tell me how easy it was (and yes I'm talking about coding the actual program you make your art with... It's not simple). And either is modeling and animating characters.

this thread is dumb