Sunday 30 September 2012

"Art is dead"

"You can't earn money with arts. Who would buy that?"
"You will end up homeless and unemployed"

These were the words of a friend of mine when we were chatting about random stuff and somehow got to the topic arts. I must say that I find these quotes pretty narrow-minded and can only assume that he was referring to the traditional art as in "creating a tableau and selling it to a museum". If so I don't want to fully agree on it but I'm sure that you will have a hard time to to make it big with something like that as a young artist.

But that's not the point right now. This conversation showed me how some people are still believing in the old fashioned picutre of an artist. In which they are supposed to wear a beret, live in a mess and draw oil paintings every day. I know better than that. Time and modern technology helped to bring a big change to the art sector. For example, let's mention an artist job that my buddy might be interested in and which could show him how awesome and up-to-date art can be. I am talking about a 2D production artist that works for a video game company for example.
His task is it to create and draw characters, the setup of certain scenarios (in terms of lighting, mood etc.) and so on. By that he builds the foundation for what we can see in the video game itself later.

Image credit to Empire Building Network

Take this picture for example. On the left you can see the sketch that an artist has created. With tons of little notes and explanations. And on the right you can see the finished 3D modelled character which will appear  in the game like that.
With that said, we just let another awesome job unmentioned. Namely the 3D-artist. The sculptor of today. The sculptor that does not use marble to create his masterpieces but virtual polygons. With the use of complex modelling programs he is able to transform a harmless little 2D sketch into a movable character in-game.



So much for art is dead ! I could go on listing many more unnoticed activities and jobs that have very well something to do with arts and which are extremely profitable.