Has anyone switched sides from programming to art?

While this may be true for fine art, it is not true for design and illustration. There is a very defined set of rules that can be applied to determine if the art is working or not. Mostly this involves knowledge of the project and empathy.

For example, when I'm asked if a piece of design is 'good', I don't just evaluate it visually. I need to know who is.the audience and what function does it serve. If the target is a child, there are specific qualities that should be there and I have to imagine myself to be a child looking at it in the context of when they would see this art. If I'm supposed to be in a happy, forest, picking up gifts I would not expect FPS realism, even though that art might be amazing in another context.

Even purely from aesthetics, there are universal rules of composition and proportion that when broken create awkwardness. Sometimes we want this, when we want the viewer to feel uncomfortable. Jump cuts in film is a perfect example of this, it just feels 'wrong', but they are used to great effect all the time to increase tension and imply anything can happen at anytime.

If we only evaluate on aesthetics, and lack empathy and context, you risk ending up with the Jenner Pepsi ad! As much as it was panned, you can't fault the production values of all its parts.

 

Not sure if you disagree with anything I said, but yeah that's exactly right. My point is basically that if you want to be able to create good art, it's best to be in a position where you're able to feel the effect of what you're creating - to empathize with the audience continuously during the creative process. Regardless of the level of realism.

 

You could give that description to a four year old, and you could still understand that the character is angry. Whether it's good has nothing to do with it conveying emotion. Hell, even a mostly red Pollock painting can still make you feel like it's hostile and uncomforting.

Just imagine how much more productive they could be if they actually knew how to achieve a look, rather than relying on trial and error though.

I'm starting to feel like your entire argument boils down just to thinking sociopaths can't be artist. How many stories of blind painters and deaf composers have you heard of?

 

There's a huge difference between knowing something when you see it, and knowing how to create it from nothing. In the first case, all you need is an average understanding of the background of it, whereas for the second, your ability to arrive at a good result depends on your ability to project from extremely small gradients in the direction of where the art is going, and this means you have to be very sensitive to small changes in how the art comes across.

It would be good, but so far there are way too many unknown variables to arrive analytically at a result as good as that which can be arrived at by instinct. Knowing about some of the rules helps, but it can't replace having well-developed instinct.

Not at all, I'm trying to say that to the extent that someone is able to feel the result of their creation, they will be better at art. Everyone can be 'an artist' the same way that everyone can be 'a coder' but the question is what kind of result they can produce.

And I'm not trying to say that anyone cannot be an artist, I'm trying to say that the best way to get there is by developing an instinct for it, rather than trying to analyze it (beyond basic training). After all, the whole point is to evoke an emotional reaction, so it seems foolish to me to try to dodge the very thing which you're hoping to produce.

 

My point of view is that its easy for most people to look at a picture of a beach and say "that doesn't look like water" and "that doesn't look like sand". But they won't necessarily know why. Because presumably there are certain pattern receptors in the brain that light up in response to seeing sand. These may lead on to other neurons that light up only in response to seeing sand and in turn are connected to neurons that are activated by the word "sand". (or the sequence of phonemes s-a-n-d).

A trained artist, may be able to learn words and phrases that can describe these other sub-level processes. And perhaps connect these processes with particular artist techniques. For a simple example, when a child learns the word "yellow", he now has a way to paint daffodils correct most times instead of picking a random colour and seeing if it 'looks right'.

So, perhaps training can give you a better vocabulary to describe how your brain interacts with the world, and that vocabulary can be linked to different skills and tasks. Unfortunately there are about 140 million neurons in the visual cortex and only about 100 thousand words in english so its pretty hard to ever get a handle on our own instinctive perception.

 

There is also a huge difference between understanding the surface and understanding the depths. The unconscious is great at the first, but completely S*** at the second

Have you ever done much art? When most artists talk about a piece changing they are either talking about working with a sloppy medium that requires more skill, or they changed and refined the concept they started with. They have to be absurdly bad for the intended meaning to be completely lost, and chances are what that actually means is that they have zero understanding of how to analyze their art and gave up on trial and error.

And what I'm trying to say is that feeling only tells you that your art is S***, not why your art is S***. Look at an Escher painting and tell me if your feelings immediately guide you to where he fudged it, or do you have to stare at it and possibly pull out a ruler to see where he changed the vanishing points.

 

That's not true. People play all sorts of games without any art at all and many games just use run of the mill symbols like letters and numbers

 

If by understanding you mean conscious understanding, of course. The ability to do something well however is usually interfered with by the conscious, assuming that the person has a well-developed instinct for it.

I'm not talking in terms of whether the meaning of the art is completely lost, it becomes pretty mundane a long time before that. Anyway I've mainly written stories, done some drawing and game modelling.

Here's an example of something I've done that I quite like. In fact, I think it's probably the most expressive face I've made. I've rarely sculpted in my life, though I have drawn a fair bit - but I wouldn't be able to tell you anything really about how a face should look like, except that it needs to look like a person. And this was produced when I was feeling pretty emotional at one point and I needed to do something meditative, and as far as I can tell you, my conscious mind was pretty switched off while I was doing it.



It's one of those things that reminds me of what I'm preventing myself from doing a lot of the time. I've sculpted a couple of faces since then, but none are interesting enough for me to enjoy looking at them a year later.

This is not true. Instinct very often gives you a very good answer without you knowing why, in fact it can be much more efficient at providing a good answer, and very fast, than the conscious is. The example you provided is not particularly relevant, since it's a mathematical property of a mathematically inspired art. Sure, if you want to make art inspired by mathematics, you probably need to learn that, but that's not what most art is.

Here's a fun fact: when you feel a certain emotion, your brain tends to serve up memories or concepts that are associated with it that are hopefully relevant to the situation. It's a simple question of association. So when you enter an emotional state and you think about a person, or a monster, or some kind of environment with certain characteristics, what comes out of your brain - your folder of reference memories, so to speak - is relevant to that and helps to guide you. But if you just feel normal and comfortable, but you still want to create something with strong emotion, nothing relevant comes out - your treasure trove of relevant concepts are as good as locked away - and you work very inefficiently.

Tell me where all the rock and roll musicians are that sit there and analytically arrive at classic songs using social engineering concepts and formulas? How many authors of classic stories do you think do this? It's not an efficient or relevant way for a human being to create emotional concepts. A computer yes, because it has no other way, and it has the ability to handle huge loads of information and not get tired, bored or start wondering why they would ever pick that vocation to begin with if they are trying to avoid the results of their own work.

Anyway, I think I've made my point, we may have to agree to disagree but I think I'm just repeating myself now.

 

I found some opinions on reddit and it doesn't really sound like it's worth it for me.

I often struggle with this kind of switching, but also between different projects within one discipline. The problem is, I can't really avoid having to do that constantly. I'd be interested in what other people do to minimize the irritation from such switches and ease the transitioning process.

 

@Martin_H my approach is basically to draw a line between them by doing something completely unrelated. It's also helpful if this intermediate thing is relaxing, as it makes the inevitable annoyance much easier. I go for a walk, do some manual work and/or meditate. And don't consciously think about anything related to the work until I'm about to start. IMO you have to give your mind a chance to dump the cache and relax a bit.

Also when I start a new thing, I try to just get in the right frame of mind. For art I listen to music and look at concept art, and for programming I basically just tweak and fix little things in the code for a while, and clean up/comment things.

 

Deviantart.

Artist here.

OP posed an intereresting question and the first half of the thread was pretty interesting responses.
To me the two options really dont give enough variation although as indie I can see a lot more cross over between diciplines.

I think its important to make the destinction between artist and exceptional artist.

I dont classify myself as an exceptional artist however Ive been employeed by companies for nearly 2 decades as an animator, so Im not pudding either.
The point Im interested in that others raised is about cross dicipline.
No disrespect to the talented cross disciplinary individuals - To be an exceptional artist IMO - those artists have to dedicate most of there time as artists. I think cross disciplinary people are good at both art and tech but rarely are they exceptional at either.
I think most professional character artists could create higher quality content than most tech artists if equal in experience. But having a tech artist is kind of like having a comradre that knows how to speak and understand another language -- from another universe.
I think this is also true with specialists in art. As an animator I admire in awe the artists who create high quality characters for competitions like dominance war and art station challenges. Those guys are top of there games. I know it would take me a month of Sundays of more time to create a character close to the quality they generate, although I often think I'd love to animate that character, or critically think - that character would be very difficult to animate because even though it looks awesome, it is functionally not a good design.

I wonder if programming is like this also?
Can cross diciplinary people create elegant code or systems that are exceptionally crafted - just as well as a dedicaded programmer can?
Like the professional character artist - do specialized (maybe network or physics) programmers create 'stuff' that would take a general programmer or tech-artist a year to complete?

For me - Ill never cross over to the dark side. Even if I wanted - Code hates me.

 

Let's put it another way: the programming makes your game play a certain way--likely the same as dozens, if not hundreds of games out there.

The art (and limiting it to drawing characters is unrealistic) is what makes the game/picture/song/book yours. It makes it unique. Programming really doesn't practically (one might argue it shouldn't practically).

Edit: How many games are people playing with mediocre art, but because the code is fantastically written? I couldn't name a single one. On the other hand, how many games are people playing with mediocre or straight up bad code because the "art" is compelling enough? I could certainly name a few (Alpha Protocol, any Yoko Taro+Cavia game, every P&C adventure game ever, etc.)

 

So do you know where the flaws are?

The only two ways an artist has ever gotten better was by studying and tearing the subject apart, or by having someone else point out where their flaws are. It's not even uncommon that someone who does study something to an extreme still has to have someone point out their flaws, because they came to false conclusions.

At this point your argument has boiled down to competent art can only be made in flow, and skill can't be taught. Ask a professional artist that and see if they don't laugh or sneer. Why do you think Da Vince's Vitruvian Man exists? Why do you think Greek statues employ the golden ratio everywhere? Have you ever measured head heights? Have you ever drawn in perspective?

The hardest truth for any natural-born artist to accept is just how left brained art actually is. Art is fundamentally about understanding the world and humanity.

Have you ever heard of music theory? It's mostly composed of several dozen Italian terms that all have descriptions which illustrate what emotions they evoke.

So no author has ever brainstormed, concepted, and drafted a story? Authors have only ever worked straight on the final draft, and never reread it for fear of finding out just how terrible and disjointed it is? You might also want to look into a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, in which he applies Freud and Jungian psychology to the archetypal transformation of a hero. It's also been used as a template for every Hollywood movie made in the last thirty years

 

Really? Look harder.

Factorio. Kerball Space Program. The entire Civ franchise. Anything by Paradox Interactive. Dwarf Fortress. AI Wars. Mushroom 11.

There are plenty of games where the programming stands out more then the art work.

 

These games (at least KSP, Civ, Paradox games--I haven't seen the last three in action) are played for their mechanics, not their "code" or programming. The code's purpose is to allow those mechanics. It can be good code or bad code. it really doesn't matter (that much anyway, as long as the game isn't broken or something), as long as it fulfills the mechanics requirements. And multiple ways of building the code that provide the same outcome won't be visible to an end user.

While one can say that art is a means to an end (to convey some emotion or "essential experience"), the reality is that there is an infinite (practically, anyway) number of ways to get to that end, and many of them are visible to the user, and most importantly many of them affect the experience.

Look how many different types of horror games there are. Dead Space, Alien Isolation, Outlast, Resident Evil, Soma, no doubt others I don't know because I don't play horror games. These are all "horror" games, but their art design undoubtedly "colors" or has an impact upon the essential experience of "horror."

I may be taking a too high-level approach to "art" and too low-level approach to programming, but I feel it's a valuable distinction.

Consider music. How many bands are listened to for the quality of their musicianship, and how many are listened to for the flavor of their musicianship? Programming is plucking a guitar string, art is stringing those tones into a meaningful melody.

I may be wrong. I'm not afraid to be. But I feel programming is purely a means to an end, while art is a sort of end in and of itself.

 

There are games out there that are ugly, but still great games. Ultimately I think programming is really the backbone, art is extremely important and most successful games have wonderful art, but a programmer can get away with making a really good game with programmer art, can an artist make a game without a programmer? I don't know, but chances are the answer is no.

 

*grumble grumble visual scripting grumble*

Anyway. It's not just about being able to make something, but being able to make it yours. And when I say art, I'm talking about things like story too (I may be taking liberties there). I'd rather play Alpha Protocol or KotOR II, both of which were a buggy mess, than something that's technically polished but bog-standard in its design.

 

Visual scripting is not exactly as flexible as actual scripting, and even so, it still requires some sort of knowledge to get the hang of it (Like Blueprints for example), it's not straight forward.

I'm not denying the importance of art, I'm in an agreement that the majority of successful games have at least decent art, but you're more likely to succeed solo as a programmer than an artist.

 

Not really, no. Neither could I when I was drawing stick figures. I've sometimes tried to learn anatomical art concepts but I was never all that interested in it as a vocation.

Not true at all. Most people who practice any skill get much better at it through practice, regardless of whether or not they know what they are doing, as long as they have some means of knowing if the quality of the end result.

See, the conscious is only a small part of the human brain. Underneath the surface, millions of instances of analysis, pattern recognition, and memory formation, to name a few, are going on without you even knowing. And from this your nervous system and your instincts, your reactions, are being developed unawares.

I would say that it's easier to come to a false conclusion through analysis, than it is by instinct - because instinct is necessarily formed over a long period of time and filtered through many iterations, so presumably most disfunctional methods would not reach the level of the instinct.

Not at all! I'm simply saying it's much more efficient to be in 'flow' than it is to not be. And skill can be taught, it's just another way of training instincts.

I never said that art does not have a background that is impervious to analysis - I simply said that to the extent that the art is driven by emotional concepts, it's not efficient to work that way.

Maybe. So my question is, do any of these famous rock and roll bands use this to arrive at a classic song?

I wonder if you were reading my posts. I never said that instinct allows you to simply arrive at the optimum result without iteration. However, to the extent that instincts are trained, the more optimum the result will be.

I'm a fan of Freud (and somewhat of Jung) but again, you seem to misunderstand. I'm not saying that art and emotion is impervious to analysis, simply that for a human being creating emotionally-driven artwork, it's very hard to do this outside of an emotional state.

Think of it like this: one can 'realize' that one very likely does not have a free will, but who can act like this? If someone's state truly represented an understanding of the reality of the lack of a free will, they would very likely not be able to function whatsoever - fortunately, it's not really possible anyway.

In the same way, simply knowing that art can be analysed, does not mean that this understanding is necessarily useful for creating art.

Anyway, that looks like a good book you recommended, so I'll recommend one myself: Incognito, by David Eagleman. It's a fantastic look at all the stuff that goes on in the human brain unawares, and how closely these hidden mechanisms work with the experience that we have every day.

 

That's a meaningless division. If you want to cut the cake there, how about dividing between game design and programming? One of these abilities doesn't indicate the presence of the other.

Besides, the notion of what one can 'get away with' is even more meaningless.

 

More likely to succeed, I agree. But after succeeding, I feel the more notable games will be the ones with strong art.

 

Guess you've never played bingo, wheel of fortune, or dozens and dozens of games where art is irrelevant.

And in contrast, I've never had to wait in line at a museum to see a work of art. Sorry.

 

I think you are splitting hairs here. These are games with mediocre are played for their mechanics. And their mechanics are a direct result of skilled programming. I picked games that were difficult to solve from a programming perspective. Not just popular games with mediocre art.

 

I learned programming while studying music.
While dealing with programming I had to boost my drawing and modeling skills.

Spoiler

However, drawing/modeling skills are not good enough to list them as primary skills.

In my experience, drawing from imagination is highly logical (see loomis books), same applies to modeling. Skills are very similar to programming and ability to sift through documentation helps. One annoying thing is that in case of artistic skills you HAVE to sink required number of hours on it, and can't really speed the process up.

But I think that any decent programmer wouldn't have trouble switching job to artistic one - after they spent enough time on it.

 

Not sure what that has to do with programming vs. art, but okay.

Fair enough, though my troubles with Civ's AI makes me wonder about that one...

 

I'm not in favor of dividing anything, I'm just saying that a programmer can get away with making a decent game without significant art (The mobile app stores are filled with addictive games that have very basic art), but an artist will likely need a programmer if they want to create their game, there are always exceptions of course.

Agreed.

 

As you point out, there are specialties. For example, my strength isn't 3d character art, I can do it, and do it at a professional level, but I don't do it enough to perform at level of speed as a someone who does it day in and out. 2d character art... yes, that I can perform at a exceptional level professionally. Most of my early career was illustration and design at a very successful professional level. At 7 I decided art was going to be life (May 23rd specifically), and never wavered from that, and have been working professionally at it my entire adult life. I am exceptional at it , though not at every specialized field within it (in terms of speed). The tech side, well... that was always just a "natural" ability, programming has always come very easy to me, and I get a lot of joy from it, particularly when it is challenging. And I am exceptional at it as well. While in art school I was working evening as an industrial engineer writing simulation, voice recognition and (early) ocr software. By my mid 20s, I was a senior architect in communications and education platform development. While working as a illustrator/designer I would code on the side, while a engineer I would paint/draw on the side. I am exceptional at both, but epic at where the two meet. For the last decade or so, my professional career has been defined by that. I can fix bugs, paint characters/assets, design and build systems, I can basically do whatever needs to be done, and do it well. I am also very good at style aping. If an artist leaves or goes on vacation, I can pick up slack until we replace, or my other duties take higher priority.

Though uncommon, there several of my ilk out there, and we tend to always have work. Being exceptional at two things isn't uncommon, though it isn't common that they are often in fully complimentary domains. There are many people who are exceptional at multiple, divergent skillsets. I know several exceptional engineers who are exceptional musicians. I know a phenomenal UI/UX guy is easily a professional level legerdemain practitioner. Those skills do not often coincide in a professional capacity. In my case they do. But I suck at music, pretty meh at writing, most performing arts, and well... a ton of other things. Art and engineering are the two things I am exception at. It is just very convenient they can be used together.