THIS IS NOT AN ANTI-SCORING THREAD!!!

[Squirrelsquid]

well I\'m definitly a noob here in the forums, still I wanted to state a few thingies about this subject.

I\'m certainly rather new on cool mini.com. but not realy new at gauging other peoples work, as I\'m active in variouse art forums, including pixelart, photography, 3D, 2D, \"pink and blue\" and what not.

anyway the point, as I see it, is if you are bad or new at something, you\'ll prolly measure the quality by the votes, it already got, and more often you will feel like \"hey that one space-marine conversion is too godly I will never be that good!\" - and you\'ll vote like 10 or 9, and either crawl in your cave crying or are furious to learn and get better at what you do.

If you are experienced on the other hand, you tend to see it from a different point of view, because you know what it takes to draw OSL, or any other wicked tech that the normal user doesn\'t even realy understand.

you start to get picky on what is awesome, mediocre or inferior, because you start to understand what\'s missing or \"bad\" even in an awesome, mini/piece/ pimped PC/autonomouse toilet - whatever you are rating...

I rarely ever rate by splitting up everything in points, I just do it by my first impression I get of the piece. I just don\'t see a point for that rating with \"units\".

if an \"autonomous Toilet\" is great but missing \"something\" - \"the final kick\" you might call it, I\'ll try to understand why it doesn\'t *pling* in my head. and If my abilities are enough to undestand what\'s missing I try to state that with a comment that fits the piece.

Commenting on cool a mini(at least to my experience) is unfortunatly \"thin ice\".

The great pieces get a lot of comments stating the awesomeness - that\'s fine for me, but why for the sake of my Autonomous Toilet are the mediocre pictures most of the time without ANY comments at all?

One might say \"uuuuh because the shity stuff does not need my attention and time.. I\'m way to good to waste my time\" and \"I comment the awesome stuff because it\'s awesome to be awesome and the awesome one needs to know my awesome opinion on his awesome piece...

sure giving a deserved pat on the back for the insanely good artist is always great and does have it merrits, but why not give the *noobs* constructive crits that help him to understand the errors he does in the process, and what new tricks he could use...

I might be totaly wrong as I\'m not realy active in the community, and maybe one with great power isn\'t always willing to share his knowlege, but sure it would be a good thing if the mediocre artists get precise feedback from the people that can see the flaws...

anyway, just my 50 cents

 

[Hinton]

Originally posted by Squirrelsquid
The great pieces get a lot of comments stating the awesomeness - that\'s fine for me, but why for the sake of my Autonomous Toilet are the mediocre pictures most of the time without ANY comments at all?

Welcome to the forums.

I absolutely agree. A long while back, I posted a mini and asked for comments on how to improve and only got few comments (three, I think). However, someone else posted an \"awesome\" mini and proceeded to get 2 pages of comments on how awesome and great it was.

This led me to believe that the reason that some of the more mediocre pieces don\'t get a lot of comments may be due to the fact that improving one\'s painting can be summed up with one (or more) of the following statements:

1) Thin your paints
2) More highlights are needed
3) More shading is needed
4) Better pictures (or more pictures from more angles) are needed
5) Practice, practice, practice

Maybe some people just feel like they\'re not qualified to offer constructive criticism or pointers, but they can easily say \"Hey, I like that! That\'s really cool!\"

Some people may be concerned that their honest attempt to simply help a painter may come across as too harsh or overly critical. So, in order to avoid causing any problems, they don\'t say anything.

While I\'m a painter that would truly enjoy an in-depth and honest critique of what is wrong with my work and what I can do to improve it from as many people as possible, I\'ve come to expect that I won\'t get a whole lot of comments (if any). The exception to this is entering the painting contests over at Wyrd; they fully encourage comments and even award prizes to those that comment on all of the entries (at least, they have in the past).

While I agree that painters that are starting out or still early into the hobby should get far more comments on to improve if they want it (and especially if they ask for it), I just don\'t think that will ever happen.

 

[Prophaniti]

For my scoring I\'ve found myself with a sort of rough compative scale.

1 No idea. Incorrectly labelled mini-abominations. Don\'t think I\'ve ever given this.

2-3 You \'can tell what it is yet\' ...just.

4 Untidy, thick paint that isn\'t far off 5

5 means colours neat and in the right place, (with perhaps perhaps a small slip or two.) Drybush highlighting if any.

6 Basic layered highlighting and perhaps a few small details. A \'good\' tabletop standard.

7 Multiple layers basic freehand stuff. Where I consider myself when I want something to look respectable. (I said it was a comparitive scale)
Borderline gaming/display quality.

8 People showing off, but I think I can do it too. It\'s also what I rate my best stuff at here.

9 Better than I can do. Spectacular effects on a good figure. Something not quite there for me to give it a 10.

10 This is my \'ZOMG! How did they do that!\' rating. Very rarely given.

I\'ll occasionally go ±1 if I think the current score is way off.
An unsuccessful attempt at a particular technique may also hamper, rather than help the score. I really ought to leave more comments in these cases. :redface:

\'Another mini\' doesn\'t get voted on by me. If you can\'t be bothered to title your picture I can\'t be bothered to vote on it. Similar for WIP, there\'s a forum for that, leave the gallery for finished work.

Anyway, that\'s pretty much a summary of how I vote. I do try and be consistent, so even if I have an inflated view of my own abilities everyone is treated the same.

 

[Squirrelsquid]

Originally posted by Hinton

Welcome to the forums.

thank you!

1) Thin your paints
2) More highlights are needed
3) More shading is needed
4) Better pictures (or more pictures from more angles) are needed
5) Practice, practice, practice

you got a point there, still I don\'t think that these 5 tips, as valid as they are, make up for real indepth critique.

The phrase \"more shading is needed\" prolly could apply to anything for example, and that is a main part of the problem: giving feedback on how to improve is vital... not only to show what\'s \"wrong\" or unclean.

Maybe some people just feel like they\'re not qualified to offer constructive criticism or pointers, but they can easily say \"Hey, I like that! That\'s really cool!\"

yes that\'s true. but a good thing about constructive crits is, that you have to properly think about what would make things better, bringing your art forward as well, because you learn a lot about it while thinking about the piece in question... and help the one that\'ll be happy because he got a HELPFUL comment.

Some people may be concerned that their honest attempt to simply help a painter may come across as too harsh or overly critical. So, in order to avoid causing any problems, they don\'t say anything.

an artist should NEVER feel attacked by feedback!

if someone striving for good results, good feedback is the key to actualy get better. ( like I said above)

While I\'m a painter that would truly enjoy an in-depth and honest critique of what is wrong with my work and what I can do to improve it from as many people as possible, I\'ve come to expect that I won\'t get a whole lot of comments (if any). The exception to this is entering the painting contests over at Wyrd; they fully encourage comments and even award prizes to those that comment on all of the entries (at least, they have in the past).

see, like I said... it just helps all to crit

While I agree that painters that are starting out or still early into the hobby should get far more comments on to improve if they want it (and especially if they ask for it), I just don\'t think that will ever happen.

absolutely correct.
everyone that is interested in making a community better should just become active... realy! ^_~

if you want to look at a critique-community you should visit Pixel Joint a fun place about Pixel-art that I frequently visit... you\'ll see that it can work for the fruition of the community.

 

[matty1001]

Best crit I ever got was on here, I posted MASSIVE straight from the camera photos of a Barbarian I painted.
I WANTED people to see the flaws, I think I got a good 30+ comments all on how to improve.

I cried for weeks after that. My skin had been torn and left broken upon the cold floor of my existence.

Nah, just kidding. It was fun

 

[Hinton]

Originally posted by Squirrelsquid

Originally posted by Hinton
1) Thin your paints
2) More highlights are needed
3) More shading is needed
4) Better pictures (or more pictures from more angles) are needed
5) Practice, practice, practice

you got a point there, still I don\'t think that these 5 tips, as valid as they are, make up for real indepth critique.

And they don\'t. They are a good starting point, but something more in-depth would certainly help. I\'ve seen several threads where artists are asking \"How do I improve?\". This tells me that they aren\'t getting decent feedback on how to improve, so they have to go asking for it. Just my opinion, but an artist shouldn\'t ever have to resort to posting that kind of thread.

Of course, asking something like \"How do I paint OSL?\" is different since it\'s addressing a very specific technique.

Originally posted by Squirrelsquid
The phrase \"more shading is needed\" prolly could apply to anything for example, and that is a main part of the problem: giving feedback on how to improve is vital... not only to show what\'s \"wrong\" or unclean.

Exactly. Many critiques only point out a problem, but not how to correct it. Can\'t improve if you don\'t know how. And while there are plenty of articles out there on how to do these things, a lot of painters that are just starting out don\'t know about them. If people aren\'t going to give the advice themselves, at least point people in the right direction.

Originally posted by Squirrelsquid

Originally posted by Hinton
Some people may be concerned that their honest attempt to simply help a painter may come across as too harsh or overly critical. So, in order to avoid causing any problems, they don\'t say anything.

an artist should NEVER feel attacked by feedback!

They shouldn\'t, but some do. There are threads aplenty where people are complaining about the comments that they are getting (no, I\'m not pointing fingers; just saying that it happens quite a bit). It can make people a bit leery about offering constructive criticism or a critique for fear of the backlash.

All in all, I would like to see more people comment on the work of others, either in the forums or in the gallery, especially for those just starting out or struggling to improve.

 

[Squirrelsquid]

^___^!

I see we are completely on the same wave-frequency

anyway you got a valid point, with the back-lashing... but there are ways against it:
add a public queue!
the \"Pixel-joint\", that I mentioned uses one.

it uses a system where users vote if a piece should be accepted in the gallery, before they even get there.
all users can look at the queue and leave comments already, so they are still on the net and are recognized by the community.

members vote yes or no for the art the users post. the Admins can see who voted yes and no, so they can identify scammers that vote no on everything (and exterminate them [banned])

an admin has to manualy approve the art, but that (should) be a matter of a few clicks for them. ( and probably is like that atm too)

pieces that don\'t get approved usualy lack quality, and are sent back with an automatic private message alert with the request that the art requires revision.

That might be to harsh for this site, so it can be bended a little: it could be devided in 2 sections: \"show offs\" that got their minis right and just want them in their highclass-gallery, and a second category with the ones that the users with \"errors\" have in their pieces. these are not neccesarily bad, but they are pieces that NEED proper feedback. Users could also even specify their pieces for seriouse crits with a simple Checker mark-box when they realy want constructive feedback.

I\'d advise the admins to think about the actual structure of coolminiornnot.com implement a system that increases the message level, because it is absolutely not good that the comment ratio is so diverse. [god: 13 normal \"noob\": 0].

it would make the whole site so much more fun to visit, instead of just looking at pretty pictures.

again, just my opinion :duh: