Walent's sketchbook
Hey Vlad! Wassup man? Long time. Been stalking your new posts for a bit, as always really great sketchy energetic figure work.

I would have to agree with Muzz. It's all good to say, the only reason for doing things is "fun" but be honest with yourself too. If you ever want to work as a pro, you have to be able to show people what "a finished Walent" piece looks like. I think rather than waiting for the perfect sketch to work up, start working up more of them that have potential. Create finished pieces, be it illustrative, or character design or just plain figurative work. But finish them!

That's the one thing missing from your stuff....completion. Actually a client of mine said he had contacted you for some character work, and I gave him my full recommendations of your skills, but it requires finishing work I guess. It's not something that comes easily. You have to force yourself over the hump...I know I did.

Another thought....have you considered delving into traditional figurative painting. Seems like that's more what you are drawn to, so why stick with digital? digital figurative pieces have much less value than a trad piece. Something to consider?

 YouTube free learnin! | DeviantArt | Old Folio | Insta
Reply
Hey Amit, thanks!
You guys have a point, the conclusion is I have to push myself to spend more time on my work.

What I realized is I'm lacking motivation. Today I had a hard time getting out of bed because I didn't actually have anything I wanted to do. Basically I don't know what to draw.

Maybe because I have 3 areas of interest that I keep bouncing between: scenery/buildings/structures, characters and storytelling. And it's so frustrating because I decide to pursue one area, make plans, what to study, what to train on, I do it for a few days and then suddenly I flip in the opposite direction and I feel an urge to do one of the other 2 things.

I'm starting to think it happens because I stumble upon something that's hard for me and my mind says "ok, this is not for me, go back" instead of pushing through.

Normally I would say you have to be so passionate about one particular thing that your brain retains information even when you look at something related. And that happens to me with the mechanical, sci-fi part. I just have to close my eyes and I start seeing stuff, panels, wires, shapes, cutouts, maybe parts of a building, maybe spaceship details. And it's not necessarily something I've seen before, it's new, I don't even know where it's from.

That sometimes happens with characters, but never happens with illustrations. I look at some amazing illustrators out there and I realize I would have never thought about that particular pose, composition or expression on the characters' faces. That means I need to add a lot more to my visual library, right?

Then, sometimes when I paint, usually when I get a good result, I have an incredible sensation of accomplishment. That happens often when I paint anatomy. Sometimes when I get a cool shape design.




I think the last character design project I had was early 2015, if I exclude my regular clients.
And I think it was for Fragged Empire, and I did finish 3 or 4 characters, 2 of them I really liked.


Maybe that's another reason, I try to push them but they turn out bad, and I lose confidence, go back to sketching.

I didn't actually think about going back to traditional because I know how happy I was when I found out that I can work digitally, no more supplies, no more charcoal smudging and no more mess.
I even tried airbrush once, and it was an absolute pain, I had to use some templates for the edges, otherwise every edge would turn out blurry, it was just like working with a very soft brush in PS. Then cleaning took 10 minutes. And I had to clean it every time when I needed to use another color. After a month I just threw it away.
Never used oils though.

But I did think about going full figure drawing. I took one of Steve Huston's workshops and I decided to push a figure to a full render. And I just got so bored that I eventually gave up. I don't know... I really liked the pose, the light and the model, so I have no idea what happened.

When I do figures, I always feel like I miss the design part of it. Also, there are a lot of references where I like a certain part, but the rest is weird, or the light is bad.

I noticed a lot of illustrators shoot their own poses, some even have the models wear costumes. And that sounds incredibly easy. Then just make a study of your own picture.
But then it would feel like you haven't created anything. At least that's how I would feel.

Instead, I try to invent poses and costumes and all that. Poses that you can't actually shoot with a camera. Something like Frazetta.

So here's me trying to push stuff:

[Image: sketches14june_041.jpg][Image: sketches19june_02.jpg][Image: sketches19june_01.jpg][Image: sketches19june_03.jpg]

Reply
Hmm, you know what I've always felt about you man since all those years ago at the sketchathon is that your skills have always been way way in advance of your mental game. And that's not an insult, but I mean, it seems like you are swayed too much by this notion of needing everything to be perfect before it is worth anything. You seem to want everything to line up, including your own "motivation" or passion before you consider it a worthwhile endeavour. It just doesn't work that way.

You do SO much awesome study and work, and I\m pretty sure you are capable right now of doing amazing finished work...I mean it's so obvious to anyone looking at your work, but the thing lacking is conviction and succumbing to this self-doubt way too much. I'm not going to say any more on that, because I've already written essays on other people's sketchbooks about the mental game because I know how important it is. Just be aware that perfectionism can be beneficial on the skills development side up to a point but after that point it becomes totally debilitating. Being objectively critical of your own work is fine, but it should never get you down to the point where you think nothing is worth finishing. I think you reach that point too soon, get discouraged/bored and end up abandoning things early.

From what you said, to me it sounds like straight out concept design is WAY more your thing right now, than illustration is. It lends itself to that "getting bored quickly" tendency you have. It means you can bust out 10 ideas well enough without having to go too far into render polish. Alternatively you can do what I did about two years ago, when I realised I had the same problem, and that was to force myself to finish just one single illustration to as high a polish as I could. I fucking hated it...but I learned I could do it. The next time was easier, and I actually liked it! Now I have to do it for every piece, and boredom doesn't even factor in. it's just part of the process. Before I was trying to be a "concept designer" now I realise illustration is probably more my thing, because I take pride and joy in the process and the finish...not just banging out ideas. But even then....like don't worry about just doing one thing for a while...and then switching streams for a while...just don't bounce often between wildly different things I guess, since a bit of focus is a good thing.

Or perhaps you need to just do more concept work, and concept work that is tied together into one related project. That way you can do Enviros / scenes /vehicles and characters but still have them feel like a cohesive set, that you can present in your folio that will get you lots of work. A personal project is very fulfilling as well, so if you can find something to work on, I definitely recommend it. I'm actually curious about your folio, do you have a link?

I agree that with your characters, you tend to make them all about the anatomy. Even that minotaur for example....very neat man, but it's pretty generic. Just start to add things to it...accessories, tattoos, weapon inscriptions and design: basically the next step. What you are doign is cool for study, but start to add more design for sure. You only learn design by applying it, so if you keep not trying to do finished designs and abandoning them, you will only learn half the lesson.

That would be my suggestion, on top of trying to take things to a stage where regardless of the technical finish, they actually feel like finished ideas.

*Edit. One last thing I forgot to mention: That thing about using reference and shooting your own, etc. I have no idea why people feel there is some sort of greater merit involved in drawing representational things from out of their head rather than using reference. It's frankly a ridiculous notion. All the great artists used reference. Gurney always uses reference, would you see him as some sort of lesser artist? Leonardo, Sargent, Zorn...I mean anyone really except some savants I guess! Even Frazetta who may have been a genius with imaginative figure creation, certainly didn't get that way without using no reference at all in his development. I'll bet he would still use reference if he was having issues. Granted when you get to a certain level you may not ever need it (eg Kim Jung Gi) but essentially I think they are actually still using reference...the visual reference in their heads. What difference does it make if all things being equal, it's in your head or it's from a model? None at all to the final product, in only matters to the process. Generally the only people that care about your process is yourself, and maybe a handful of other artists interested in learning from you. The wider world doesn't give one crap about it.

 YouTube free learnin! | DeviantArt | Old Folio | Insta
Reply
Wow, I have nothing to add. I just want to say reading these last few exchanges made me realize things about my own art journey. That balance between wanting to have good ideas versus wanting to execute. Maybe Im just high and ordinary things are blowing my mind...

Reply
Have you considered that getting bored and losing focus could be because you haven't developed the skillset required to polish a drawing yet and not that it just isn't your thing?

I thought i was an introvert until i realised that... no wait, i actually was just retarded and hadn't learned social skills.

Drawing out of perspective is like singing out of tune. I'll throw a shoe at you if you do it.
Sketch Book
Reply
Walent man, your sketchbook is bloody awesome!  Thanks for sharing your stuff.

I think Amit and OtherMuzz have already made some good points for us all to consider.

I'm in no position to offer assistance on your art skills but I have learned a few things about motivation over the years so if I may I'd like to add some stuff that has helped me.

For me the secret of motivation is about having a compelling reason for doing something.

Why do you want to achieve a higher level of finish to your work? What would it mean to you? Imagine you could push pieces to a high finish at the drop of a hat, how would you feel?

For me, having a compelling reason allows me to push through tedium and boredom.

Just my two-penneth, please feel free to ignore.

Looking forward to more from you mate - keep up the awesomeness!

Edit: Another thing that helps with motivation is to ask yourself: What would I be missing out on if I did not do this? What pain is it causing me right now?

“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

CD Sketchbook



Reply
Holy crap! How did I miss this? Your sketchbook is amazing. Great confident lines and brushwork. In terms of sketching you're probably the best on the entire forum, but I have to agree with previous statements - you need to do some more finished work. Don't loose yourself in your comfort zone, it's a mistake I'm constantly repeating so I'm a horrible hypocrite right now but who cares.

You should definitely join the CC. It'll give you some motivation to finish your work!

Reply
(06-25-2016, 07:21 PM)OtherMuzz Wrote: Have you considered that getting bored and losing focus could be because you haven't developed the skillset required to polish a drawing yet and not that it just isn't your thing?

I have considered it, yes,  that's why I'm trying to push myself to finish stuff.

---

Hey Artloader, thanks!
I've already asked those questions over and over again, the problem is I can't find a straight answer. The closest answer would be that I want the viewers to get a deep feeling when they look at my work. Maybe it's too generic, maybe every illustrator wants that.

---

Piotr,
thanks so much man, though I doubt I'm the best at sketching in here, I've seen a lot of cool stuff around :)
I'll check out the next CC.

---

Amit, wow, thanks for taking your time to write that. It definitely helps.

You're right, I do tend to want everything to be perfect, and I realize it made me abandon a lot of my paintings.
I've also tried some design stuff lately, and it's pretty fun, especially if it's sci-fi stuff, but they're sketches and I would have absolutely no idea how I would render those if I'd ever have to. Here's a recent one:

[Image: sketches26june_02.jpg]

I love how it turned out and yeah, I would probably spend a whole day doing these.
I'm pretty sure I'm more into illustration because I tend to care too much about how my stuff looks. I could say I put more time into laying a beautiful line than thinking of the actual design. Of course, sometimes I do get some really rough ideas, illegible sketches that only I can understand.

Again, you're absolutely right about the minotaur. I guess I lose myself in the anatomy and I get some nice cool looking stuff and then I'm like "fuck it, that looks too good, I'm not covering his arm" but I guess I have to get over that.


About the using reference stuff, I guess it's about the actual "create something unseen before" thing. Maybe because we live in these times and we're heavily influenced by the industry and try to constantly come up with new stuff. So when you take a photo, copy it / study it, then call it finished artwork, it's not really original. That thing exists, you just did a study of it. Maybe as an illustrator, that's fine, but as a concept artist it's not. Instead, taking 5-7 pictures of different stuff and putting them together into one illustration, that's something you create. A centaur is something you create, you can't take a photo of a centaur because they're not real, but you can combine a man and a horse in your own unique way.

I guess you brought up an interesting fact when you said using an actual reference of using a reference that's in your visual library is kinda the same thing. I never saw it that way.

Frazetta, for me he was awesome simply because even if he worked with reference at some point, he was always adding, exaggerating, modifying stuff, and you can see that in his work. That's why there are the "Frazetta girls" because no woman looked like those in his paintings.

Never said I'm against using reference when you need one. The point in my previous post was that all the old master were starting their work with gestural drawings and composing figures and all, and then they would have models pose for them, placed in the same pose as the initial sketches. And they would paint the models as they would paint a study, meaning they wouldn't change much about them, as far as I know.
Now even if I would love to be able to do that, I would probably have no chance of achieving it, since I can't just create a specific sci-fi armor, have some model wear it and then have them sit for me while I paint for 3-5 hours. I would just have to invent, combine, and so on... so that's why I think visual library is better and faster than reference photos

---

Now I wanna share some of my progress.
I've been working on this project, basically I need to do a bunch of illustrations. It's been taking half a year now, I don't know, I haven't had the right mood for it and it's also way underpaid for the level it got to.
But I thought I could ignore all that and give my best on this project, maybe even add them to my portfolio. It's time to add some more stuff in there.

So I started with the main character, which was maybe a 30 min sketch done last year.

[Image: fat_frumos.jpg]

Pretty bad now that I look at it.
And then I started doing the cover, which was the main thing, so had to be pretty cool.
And I got this sketch:

[Image: cover01.jpg]

Which I pushed to this stage:

[Image: page1a.jpg]

And at this point I got really bored with it, but I though the lower part of the character was really awesome.
This was happening early this year.
Then there was this big break, didn't work on it for months, but then eventually I had to get back on it.

And since I hated what I had so far, I tried something else.

[Image: page1_2a.jpg]

So now I'm thinking like "hmm I like those streams going from the bottom pointing to the character, everything seems balanced and all" and I called it final.

Then the last couple of days I was thinking of all the stuff that's been said here and how I should try to push things further.
And I decided to do one more version.
Mainly because something clicked in my head. It was when I found some sketches done by Justin Sweet that were ink style (but I'm pretty sure they're digital) - link here: http://justinsweet.com/?page_id=369
Once I saw those brush strokes I was like maaaaaan I wanna do that. And since I already started doing more and more ink sketches every day I though I could apply some of them.

Then, the click. It was when I printed some of my stuff and some stuff from other artists like Justin for inspiration and I saw how clean and sharp their work looked while my work was all blurry and soft.

So then I tried taking a painting I did and applying some hard edges on it. And I got this:

[Image: sketches14june_0a5.jpg]

And this was mind blowing to me. I like the right version so much more and I had so much more fun with it. I may have added too much on the sharpen filter though.

Anyway, point is I realized I got so used to my one brush (which is pretty soft) that I thought I should be doing soft stuff, you know like Karla Ortiz for example. But even though Karla is definitely and amazing artist, her work never inspired me, at least not as much as maybe Sergey Kolesov's work did. Also, lately I've been watching Cedric Peyravernay, and his work simply blows me away.

So at this point I thought: "well, that's my problem right there, edge control!"

And finally, back to the cover, this came up tonight:

[Image: page1-2a.jpg]

Still a wip, but damn, that reads so much better. And the good thing is, it does motivate me to push those details. It's like I have a new toy.
Now it's all about designing the elements, like those rocks and branches.

OK, going to bed now...

Reply
Woo! Seems like you just found a new path! The horse sketch looks great!

Drawing out of perspective is like singing out of tune. I'll throw a shoe at you if you do it.
Sketch Book
Reply
Nice, glad to hear you've found a direction to go! I think you're onto something there with the better edge contrast.

About the reference it just sounded the way you worded it like you meant the idea of using reference was to be seen as just copying. I definitely never meant to imply you had to construct or use reference that showed everything you needed to paint in its entirety. I meant that taking bits and pieces and being inventive with reference and using aspects for design cues and to plug up skill/visual library gaps is just an obvious and arguably mandatory part of the process, whether you are an illustrator or concept design focused. Anyway, less words from me from now.
Carry On!

 YouTube free learnin! | DeviantArt | Old Folio | Insta
Reply
Awesome!

Creating blurry images was my huge problem as well (probably still is to some extent), too much soft edges. I see a lot of potential in your paintings, but you really need to start finishing them up. Next CC is a must for you. I know your pain, when I encounter a problem or something isn't looking right I don't want to work on it anymore. Better planning and doing more initial sketches should help. I suck at sketching but with your ability you should have no problems with that.

Reply
Hey Walent, I agree, I like the sharper edged horse waaaay better than the softer edged one! Lookis like edge control is the key for you. I'm glad you figured this out. :-)

I have a few thoughts regarding your sketchy SF environment. It's very sketchy, so of course it isn't meant to be super perfect, but some parts of it seem skewed in relationship to other parts. The tower or a building suggests one perspective, but then a causeway looks like it isn't aligning with it. Overall, the concept seems pretty neat, but the perspective just feels wonky. I hope this makes sense? I'm only mentioning this 'cause you mention not being sure how you would render this. It seems to me that it would maybe be easier if you first put the concept on a firm foundation in the realm of perspective and line.

I'm master of nothing right now so none of this is meant as "advice", but I wanted to say something more useful than "oh cool keep drawing man". XD Keep on pushing!

"Drawing is a skill like hammering a nail. You might not be great at it yet, but there is nothing stopping you from gettin' down and hammering away." -Irshad Karim

Sketchbook!
Reply
Hey guys, thanks!

Mechanizoid, yeah, the perspective is just eyeballed, not even bothered with it. And yeah, it's probably off in some areas, but the angles of those buildings are also pretty diverse, they're not really aligned, some are even tilting. I'm trying to practice that as much as I can.
What I find is I kinda tend to forget stuff I don't use. So if I haven't really used perspective in a complex environment like this one for more than a year, I got pretty rusty.
But I'm joining the CC, so that should fix it.


---

I've been having a lot of shitty days this month. Not really because of my art stuff, but because of other issues in my life. Like when I decided I wanna start eating healthy, one month ago, and stopped eating processed food, meat and dairies. And the problem is, the more I read about it, the more depressed I get, like a lot of articles about "that is unhealthy, that is a lie, that is poison" and so on... And there's always 2 sides, some say you shouldn't buy, for instance, salad that is prepacked in bags, because well, they contain a lot of bacteria. But of course, there are also articles written by people who visited the factory where they make these salads and they say everything is of high standard and all that.
So who the hell should I believe?

To cut it short, I really don't know what to eat anymore. I live in the center of a city, and it's not like you can find fields of vegetables anywhere close. And I read that even those who grow their own vegetables use pesticides and all that crap, even on the food they eat. That says everything about how desperate the world has become.

I had 5 or more days in a row when I just couldn't get myself in the mood for drawing. Like literally, nothing I had in my inspirational folders had any effect on my mood.
So I took a break, spent some time in the garden, sometimes just doodling nonsense in my sketchbook.
And then everything I read about war, terrorists, killings in America, all that hate, really makes me lose my faith, makes me wanna buy a house in the mountains and stay isolated from all these people who made a joke out of this planet.

It really reminds me of the Avatar movie... the exact same thing. Of course I'd want to be part of the natives, because they care for nature and they live peacefully, not chase for money (which aren't worth a damn by the way - I mean how much money can one person spend in a lifetime? Why can't some people get enough of it?)

Then I hear about robotics, and the things they're developing, real looking skin and real movement. Again, I think they're playing with fire, and there are so many movies that are totally plausible, like Blade runner, where you just couldn't tell humans from robots. The Terminator movie, same thing. But still, they're pushing stuff and I'm pretty sure one day, the subject of one of those movies will become a reality.

Hell, maybe even Jurassic Park will become a reality, now that they want to clone and grow dinosaurs again. How retarded can you be to even think about that?

So yeah, I'm really trying to ignore all that, and focus on what's around me, but I do think I've been born in a wrong era.

And above all that, I'm in a relationship that's identical to my art problems, today I think she's amazing and she's perfect for me, tomorrow I wanna leave her. And it goes on and on, over and over again. Just like my art thing, today I wanna focus on one subject, tomorrow I get excited about a new one. Then I get back to the first one and so on...

On the other hand, I've been adding people to my team and my game ideas are getting closer to becoming a reality. I guess that's what I have left that motivates me.

As a matter of fact, I did see something from a friend, a creature, that made me wanna experiment more with the anatomy. And so far I find it very attractive, making arms longer, different shapes, wide to narrow, play with the design, add more limbs, think about how they could function and so on.
Can't show anything decent yet though.

I think I mentioned I managed to get a project for each type of subject that I'm pursuing.
So far, the fantasy illustrations are the most painful. I don't think I'll take on another fantasy project any time soon.

I love the mech/robot projects, but I feel I still have a lot to learn in terms of design, and it's frustrating.

And I even managed to get to work on a combination between a robot (hard surface sci-fi) and a humanoid creature (anatomy stuff) which is a lot of fun.

Hope to be able to show some stuff soon.

Reply
hey, I know what you feel. Try not to overthink it. Meat and diary arem't healthy that's for sure. As for other stuff - how about a goal - become a freelancer, buy a house in a more secluded area in nice environment and grow your own stuff. It can be very fullfuling and probably would go along well with your preferences.

Reply
Hey man, I know those feels. You gotta start taking ownership of your emotions though. When your girl does something that gets you irritated shes not injecting you with a syringe filled with bad emotions. When you read news articles that depress you no ones holding you down and forcing depression pills down your throat. You're doing it to yourself. You cant control anything outside yourself the same as anyone else. If feeling a certain way isnt helpful for you, only you have the power to redirect those feelings. The same with positive emotions. You have to be the source of your own good feelings and not rely on external sources.

Reply
Sounds like you gotta resolve some issues and likely come to acceptance with some of them.
I used to have some internal conflicts about the world/the future a year ago and yeah it sucked, but I found that self reflecting lead me to solve the problems I could and come to acceptance with problems I had no control over.


Also heres some stuff that can help you deal with stress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96aW31KdQXI
http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-7698.html
https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/...t-r-morris

Reply
Hey Walent, sounds like you got a bit down, sorry to hear that bro. But hey, it's important to realize that while there are bad things in the world, there are good things as well! Like Mariyan said.

Quote:To cut it short, I really don't know what to eat anymore. I live in the center of a city, and it's not like you can find fields of vegetables anywhere close. And I read that even those who grow their own vegetables use pesticides and all that crap, even on the food they eat. That says everything about how desperate the world has become.

Well, I can only speak from my experience as a gardener, but this is certainly not true for a lot of people. There are lots of people who refuse to use pesticides and even artificial fertilizers in their gardens.

I never used pesticides on my garden plants. When I grew tomatoes, I picked all the tomato hornworms off by hand. When I had aphid or whitefly issues, I made a gentle soap spray from a mix of dishsoap and pepper in water. It worked pretty well. Most of it was loving care and diligence. No chemicals! So when you think of gardeners, think of me out there catching big green wriggly worms that spit and try to bite and tossing them out of the garden! XD

On the robots and dinos, Mariyan is exactly right. Those are Hollywood fantasies, nothing more. We can't clone dinosaurs with modern tech, and probably never will. Our techniques for cloning a species require both DNA (which will be hard to get) and a cell of that species that has had its nucleus removed–and where are we going to get a T-rex cell? Frogs won't cut it.

And many, many good things will come out of robotics if we don't let military uses dominate the field (and that is up to us, not the robots). Think of what robots can do in repetitive and/or dangerous tasks, like firefighting and ocean exploration. And in our own lives, robots will eventually be able to act as helpers and companions. A little robot for elderly care would be totally awesome. :-) Hollywood is Hollywood, real life is real life, and as Mariyan said people have a lot of irrational fears about new technology and new ideas.

Hang in there man! I look forward to seeing your flesh-and-robot creatures. :-)

"Drawing is a skill like hammering a nail. You might not be great at it yet, but there is nothing stopping you from gettin' down and hammering away." -Irshad Karim

Sketchbook!
Reply
Oh man, these last couple of weeks were pretty weird.
I finally managed to create a small work place outside, so I can enjoy the wind and flowers and doodle everything that goes through my head. I find it pretty different from sitting at the computer, even though here I have all the resources I can think of. But when I don't have those, I'm forced to pull stuff from my imagination and I know there's nothing else to rely on. And also there are no distractions, I can focus at a different level.

Thanks for all the replies guys.
Thanks Mariyan for helping out.
Thanks crackedskull for all the resources, I didn't manage to read/check everything yet, but I will!
Haha, that's nice to hear Mechanizoid, it seems you really love your garden.

Even though I feel better overall, my view hasn't changed. I still think AI is gonna be trouble at some point. I'm looking at the Google cars, they said they're so cool but then they had accidents. There's such a big chance that at some point something will malfunction. And yeah, if a military robot malfunctions, we get Skynet... haha sounds kinda funny right now.

So lately I keep getting flooded with creature ideas and I love working out stuff like solving the function problems when having a 4 armed humanoid creature. I don't know how much this vibe will last, but I kinda gave up thinking about it, I'll just go with it.













Gotta go work on the CC stuff.

Reply
Glad to hear you are feeling better, Walent! Those creature sketches look pretty damn cool, keep exploring this while the vibe lasts. And yes, I did love my garden, I took a break from gardening this year to focus on art and stuff but I will do it again. :-)

Quote:Even though I feel better overall, my view hasn't changed. I still think AI is gonna be trouble at some point. I'm looking at the Google cars, they said they're so cool but then they had accidents. There's such a big chance that at some point something will malfunction. And yeah, if a military robot malfunctions, we get Skynet... haha sounds kinda funny right now.

Except that Google cars aren't AI at all–they are just controlled by computer programs following a precisely programmed set of instructions. They rely on a very high-definition inch-precision map to find their way around. What that pre-programmed route data, they are pretty much lost. Also, they have trouble dealing with unexpected things like potholes, debris, or even policemen flagging them down right now.

Honestly, I don't think they count as AI at all. I'm pretty sure Ultron could avoid potholes. XD I just wouldn't worry to much about this. We aren't anywhere near true AI, not of the form you are thinking of. People sensationalize this stuff, but it's not a realistic issue. If we invent strong AI when day, maybe it will be worth worrying about. Not right now.

And fatigue and error prone humans already "malfunction" at guiding their vehicles quite often enough. Each family car has hundreds of thousands of times more energy than a rifle bullet, and we expect people to operate them in crowded urban centers when they may be tired or inattentive from a long day at work. Self-driving cars could prevent a lot of tragic accidents and save thousands of lives. :-)

Can't wait to see what you come up with for the CC man!

"Drawing is a skill like hammering a nail. You might not be great at it yet, but there is nothing stopping you from gettin' down and hammering away." -Irshad Karim

Sketchbook!
Reply
Thanks Mechanizoid! Yeah, you're probably right, not worth worrying about AI stuff.

I started working out my diet, getting to know better what I'm looking for on labels and stuff. And yeah, I'm feeling a lot better. Motivation is back, I wanna draw!
And the creature vibe is still on. Damn, I started doing anatomy stuff again and it just feels amazing.

I wanna push myself into doing one sketch a day. But I'm only gonna start posting once I know I have it as a routine.
I'll also try coming up with a finished creature piece, I'm thinking maybe I'll do a creature that fits in the Silent Hill universe. I remember how those designs blew my mind a few years ago.

Anyway, here's some stuff from today:














And BTW, I'm using this https://tinypng.com/ to compress my images, since my PS is broken when it comes to compression, and it's absolutely amazing, I mean, from 2mb to 70kb with just a slightly, almost unnoticeable loss of quality? I'd say yeah!

Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 93 Guest(s)