I know somebody on another forum who has been in the graphic design field for 10 plus years and makes magazine covers for a tokyo magazine and he has been telling all of us that we should drop sig making because it's not going to get you anywhere in graphic design. If you want to use it just for hobby then good for you but, he said making sigs will make companies and developers laugh at you. Same goes with DA if you post sigs on there it's a joke nobody will take you seriously as a artist.
I have no intention on going into gfx design, so LP's are of no use to me and I don't do them. But I do consider them art more than sigs.
Depends on how the LP is done. True LP's, done totally by the creator, are Art. But then, so are 100% home made sigs, imho, as long as they become something worthwhile. Just taking a stock and messing it about in photoshop, although it makes a great outcome, isn't art. It's a hobby. Although sig making may not help get you into GFX Design as a RL job, it does teach you a whole load of skills that are useful for doing just that.
I think sig making still falls under art even though its a smaller piece you are still taking elements and putting them together to create something that is appealing to the eye. But i do feel that sig making is more of a hobby I dont think a person who makes sigs for a hobby can consider themselves a graphic artist because they are still not eduicated in the field they just learned it as a hobby or something to do that they passed the time but they are an artist none the less. Here is the defination of art and artist. . . . art1 /ɑrt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ahrt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun 1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. 2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection. 3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art. 4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture. 5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art. 6. (in printed matter) illustrative or decorative material: Is there any art with the copy for this story? 7. the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling. 8. the craft or trade using these principles or methods. 9. skill in conducting any human activity: a master at the art of conversation. 10. a branch of learning or university study, esp. one of the fine arts or the humanities, as music, philosophy, or literature. 11. arts, a. (used with a singular verb) the humanities: a college of arts and sciences. b. (used with a plural verb) liberal arts. 12. skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature. 13. trickery; cunning: glib and devious art. 14. studied action; artificiality in behavior. 15. an artifice or artful device: the innumerable arts and wiles of politics. 16. Archaic. science, learning, or scholarship. art·ist /ˈɑrtɪst/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ahr-tist] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun 1. a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria. 2. a person who practices one of the fine arts, esp. a painter or sculptor. 3. a person whose trade or profession requires a knowledge of design, drawing, painting, etc.: a commercial artist. 4. a person who works in one of the performing arts, as an actor, musician, or singer; a public performer: a mime artist; an artist of the dance. 5. a person whose work exhibits exceptional skill. And as your statement about taking other peoples images and building around it not being art i think you are sadly mistaken. If you look on deviant art they offer stock images for other members to use to make art pieces. Does that mean that some of these amazing artists at DA are not Graphic Artists because they use a stock image that someone else provided? I agree with some of your statements compleately making sigs is just a hobby and nothing more I know i personally wont be going out in my community announcing to everyone im a graphic artist hire me.
No, that is fine because it's a STOCK that you had permission to use. I wrote in my originol statement that people use images from games/anime/misc things that they dont' have the copyright too and it's considered ripping. P.S. I p/med you back.
Haiku's are art. A novel is art. I'd say novels are way harder to write than a haiku...but it does not make it not a form of art.
ok sorry about the DA thing I do agree about the ripping thing. I personally use stock from DA and give credit to the person at da that i used the stock from. Most of the other images I use are of movies and actors/actresses its so rare i use a anime/or gaming thing to make my sigs. Im sure the makers of games dont mind the free advertisements though. Other than that I hope most people are like me and are careful what images they use to create their sigs. But sigs are still a form of art just like poetry and dance are.
I agree with the first post if the word artist was interchanged with the word designer. That is, making sigs doesn't necessarily make you a graphic designer. But yeah as Izzy points out, it does make you an artist. About starting from scratch or using resources i.e. stocks, it's true that traditionally art was basically from scratch - drawings, paintings, sculptures etc. but the concept of art has expanded so much and is so wide now that I think it's stupid to make it a requirement to that all the resources should be made by yourself. About the sigs shouldn't be displayed in an art gallery comment - that's saying that sketches and small drawings shouldn''t be displayed in an art gallery - well oftentimes they are, just that many are grouped together to create a larger compilation since like you said as an individual piece they're too small. In the same way there's nothing wrong with people who post a bunch of their sigs together in devart as a "tag wall" Overall I agree with you that taking a gaming picture which already looks great and adding in your own stuff within a tiny canvas, has a lot less merit than creating a life-sized painting on your own. Still you can't tell someone that their sig isn't art if they wish to say it is. That'd be like telling a little kid that his simple house + sun + tree painting isn't art. Not everything has to be a masterpiece to be considered art.
