Re: Is this list still alive?

[ajr@ecs.soton.ac.uk]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 01:48:11PM -0000, The Corruptor wrote:
> > I think the programmers are up to snuff for creating 'commercial quality'
> > games, but I think we're lacking on the artist front. This has been
> discussed
> > before :)
> 
> 
> Time to throw my 2p in here as I didn't really get involved in the 'Artist
> discussion' last time around. I was too busy being encouraged to join a
> project! ;-)
> 
> As an artist keen (and working for) the OS gaming scene on Linux I think
> it's fair to say that there are several things that stop, or slow artists
> from joining projects. For one OS project support is  geared towards
> programmers. I can only think of a few places or tools that aren't:
> LGDC-Artists list, Linux GFX and a few others (not pretending to provide a
> full list here). This annoys me greatly.
> 
> Does Advogato supply anything for Artists? Not really, you can list your
> projects and set yourself down as a 'developer' (which, although
> semantically correct isn't that attractive to the 'Artist'! ;-). I'd much
> rather have myself listed as a 'Lead Artist' for project Civil.
> 
> Take Sourceforge. It offers a great deal of useful, free functionality for
> /programmers/, but there's very little point me using bug-lists for stray
> pixels. It's very hard for an artist to stand out from the programmers in
> the OS scene when the majority of people setup, support and provide tools
> for programmers.

Most projects I have been involved with use few or none of these free
facilities, and most projects that have got anywhere have been around
longer than sourceforge, and did perfectly well making do for themselves.

I think what you have hit upon is that it is actually quite hard to join
an Open Source project. Most of the time when I have approached projects,
noone has been there with a tidy job waiting for a newbie to start
on, and there is never a list of things that have to be done for you
to pick from. Joining a project means spending some time going
through the materials, finding out how it works, getting to know
how members interact, and graducally building up a clear enough picture
of the project that you can work out for yourself what needs to be done.

At worldforge we are doing are best to try and bring in the things that
artists need, like technology to store and distribute there work, mechanisms
for making sure that the creator of a work can be identified and credited
by someone playing the game, and list of artwork that needs to be done,
but we have only got this far due to our shear size and the number of artists
already working with us.

Whenever someone new turns up, they will always say things like "Hi, I'm
a 3D modeller, and I'm interested in helping out with WorldForge. What
can I do?". I find it enormously frustrating that most of the time I
don't know what to tell them. Everyone else involved is usually too busy
getting on with their own work to know what needs to be done, and
much of the time these artists will get bored and leave.

I will ask around to see if anyone has made any progress with the
Free artwork archive that was suggested a while ago. I personally think
that building an archive of material which any game can use, and in which
authors are clearly identified and credited is the best way to make progress.

Rest assured that those of us programmers who have tried to create artwork
for ourselves recognise the talent it takes to make good graphics.

Al

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