[Francis]

First off I aplogize for starting a new thread for this. I don't even know how many threads here are dedicated to this issue, and I'm not sure where my little diatribe would go anyway.

As I am a lumental member, I guess my comments are going to lack a certain credibility.

I got an email a while back from Snake Grunger telling me about lumental. The concept sounded very appealing - low traffic, aggressive moderation, art-intensive. Even at that point however, I was already pretty discouraged with the state of sijun. I don't consider myself one of the "elite," far from it. I am nowhere near where I want to be with my art - I have a long way to go, and not enough time to get there. In fact while I was still posting regularly at sijun I had made a conscious decision to stop handing out crits so freely. Not because I thought that people didn't need or deserve them, but because I was afraid that I was just proliferating my own current state of misinformation. I came to that conclusion after reading a few old posts I made that I felt differently about later. An example of that is Fred Flick Stone's and Spooge Demon's cube tutorial - someone had asked about drawing the cubes accurately in perspective, and so I threw together a short demo on how to accurately project a perspective drawing from plan and elevation. I think in doing that I diluted the main idea of the exercise, which was to observe and draw what you see. The perspective construction was just a distracting crutch, and I didn't really think about that til later. There were other crits I had written that I read later and thought "Oh crap that's not right."

I never really had a problem with the attitudes, beginner art or off topic threads on sijun. Most of the time it was pretty entertaining. I am still naive enough to believe in the ideal of complete freedom, coupled with personal responsibility. For me the main issue just became volume. My main motivation for checking out sijun was looking at cool art and reading through and learning from the crits. After a certain point in time though, it just got to be too much data. I'm pretty behind on my email as it is. That was the reason I started a forum dedicated to conceptual design, which is what I do for a living. I figured that having a much more concentrated topic would give that forum what I was looking for, which is a small, dedicated population and low enough traffic that I would be able to pretty much see everything that came through. In addition, hopefully my crits in that area would be somewhat better informed than in general art and painting. Interestingly enough, that forum seemed to go through some of the same issues as sijun, although on a much smaller scale - very young kids posting dragonball z art, off topic stuff, "5 minute art," 27 wacom threads, etc. I'm not sure what the solution is there either, but anyway...

The reason lumental sounded good was that it had a small but dedicated and serious population. Not that it was the Justice League or whatever. Ideally, an art forum community would have a good vertical representation in terms of skill and experience. As many people have said, comments and critiques from "non-experts" is just as valid as those from industry leaders. I do have to take issue with something Craig said (someone please correct me if I'm misinterpreting what he said...), which is that there is no basis to judge whose art is better. If each and every one of us was interested in ALL types of art - Jackson Pollock crap, fractal animations, mashed potato sculptures, cave paintings, etc. - then it wouldn't matter. But I believe that for the most part a lot of us are interested in improving our ability to create representational, illustrative type art. When it's more narrowly defined like that, then there is a basis to judge who is doing that more convincingly than someone else. Within that narrow definition, there is of course room for personal preferences, as art is always going to be a very subjective thing.

Obviously the invitation-only nature of lumental has bent a lot of people out of shape. Maybe that part wasn't very well executed or thought out. But Frost and Snake Grunger are artists, not writers or politicians. It's possible that English is not their first language (or at least not their only language). It's not really their job to make everyone happy. I think they had the same concerns that a lot of us have been having about sijun, but they were the ones with the stones to go out and do something about it, which turned out to be a very unpopular move. Like I said before, my being a lumental member is going to affect my credibility here, but had I not been invited, I would still wholeheartedly support their freedom to set up another forum for a much smaller group. Really. I would still go there to see the art and read the information, knowing that the signal to noise would be easier to deal with than it is here.

Anyway that's it in a nutshell. I kind of feel like a lot of the anger here has been directed at the membership of lumental as well as at the moderators there. Sort of feels like each of us has to stand up and make some kind of statement addressing that.

Thanks for your time
Francis

[Pat]

Francis,

Without question this topic has generated a lot of hate, much of it unfairly targeted to the Lumental members. Curiously, the majority of us regularly visit (some even host!) other forums without incuring a similar wrath. If asked, you'd be hard pressed to find an artist that doesn't think an aggressively moderated, art intensive forum is a bad idea. Being a Lumental member doesn't mean your comments lack credibility or really affect your standing here. But recognize that, in principle, a lot of us --including me-- object to the deceptive and arrogant tone of the board. A number of Lumental members have stated they were invited and went without understanding the dubious selection process by which the community was going to be formed, or the elitest political stance the "inaugural statement" was going to bind them to.

While Snake Grunger and Frost both deserve kudos for shelling out the money and time for forming a new forum, the net result so far has been a lot of hurt feelings, anger and a splitting of the online digital art community. Their poor execution and subsequent handling of this situation have hurt and insulted a lot of people --and they ARE directly responsible for these actions.

I, for one, find it difficult to contribute to such a selfish effort. As tempting as it might be, I've always felt a responsibility to those inexperienced kids posting Dragonball Z art, "5 minute art" and wacom questions you spoke about. It's probably because I was once one of those kids and wouldn't be where I am today without the patience of a lot of strangers. This doesn't give those kids the right to act irresponsibly as they have been, but it also doesn't excuse the lack of patience I've seen around here either.

-Pat

[gLitterbug]

Hello Francis!

As I said in other posts even if you WOULD(but you haven�t in any way) have lost your credibility, you would have all chances you want to get it back. You�re a great artist and I would love to see you around here in the future.

I think that whole debate heated up all our minds (also mine) and we didn�t talk in a civilized enough manner to each other and give everybody the chance to explain his feelings without prejudice or anger against him.

I for myself am clear with myself and also the founders of lumental. I do think they made mistakes, but we are all human and I think their motives weren�t half as BAD as we thought they were.

I hope all people here and there give others the chance to explain themselves and forgive them. I do.

I also think that people who hate all lumental members because they post there or don�t give them a chance to explain themselves are no better than the motives they dislike the people for.


btw. I will check out your forums for some time. If I think I�m better than doing 5-minute off-topic dragonballz art, I�ll maybe join.

[Red Leader]

Francis,

Don't be offended by people's kneejerk reactions to Lumental, it seems to be a case of close to +/-4500 people feeling left out of a 50 person houseparty...obviously a 4500 person houseparty (Sijun) ends up sounding like a mob, and it's hard to sort through the noise to find relevent things to listen to.

SnakeGrunger and Frost can invite anyone they want to their forum, it's their party, and staring it was a good idea.

You just can't have the kind of rapport that Lumental will allow without limiting membership, and lurkers there will get a chance (hopefully) to see intelligent and relevant critiques of some skilled artists work. Hopefully those same lurkers will come to realize that just because they are not "inside" does not necessarily mean they are not good enough to be let in, there just isn't room for everyone!

It looks like SG and F stepped on some feelings to get this thing started, and that's really unfortunate. I hope it doesn't put you guys off from making the board what it aspires to be. Good luck with it.

[ August 04, 2001: Message edited by: Red Leader ]

[Jabberwocky]

Francis -

First off I just want to say Congrats on getting into lumental and I hope it helps you out with your art.

Second if you have any thought of not posting here again, don't. Keep posting here. As you had said that after you posted you learned something. So apparently you learned something from you posting.

Well I wish you luck on whatever you choose and congrats again!

[Impaler]

Dude. Chill. Just because you post on Lumental doesn't mean you're Satan or an adulterer bastard. It just means you felt like posting on another board that you thought would further your own skill. It's the same reason a lot of people left other forums (DBM, Maxforums) to come here.

You can still draw really well, and you're not married to Sijun. Do what you feel will bring artistic profit in the end. (hehehehehe.. 'in the end")

*shrug*

[dr . bang]

Hi Francis!


"Anyway that's it in a nutshell. I kind of feel like a lot of the anger here has been directed at the membership of lumental as well as at the moderators there"

one the reason why there's alot of anger because many serious artist here did not get invited and that kinda insulted them. Although. this has NOTHING to do with the Lumental members and i think it is very wrong to pour this anger on those member.

[c]

the fact that you looked over your old crits speaks volumes about your attitude towards art.

but i dont think that should keep you from posting as often as you'd like. i'm sure a lotta folk gleaned very useful information from your perspective on perspective (ho ho) for the fred/spooge cube thingy thread. criticism is pure opinion, and how can anyone's opinion on art be wrong?

regards.

p.s. lumental needs more people dangit!

[Blade]

hey dont worry about it
a very wise friend once told me that...or maybe it was someone on this board that said it...anyhow its very very true.
"Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one"

[PlantMan]

Lumental? Invite me - i want to join ! memememe !!!!
if you don't invite me i'm going home and taking my football with me

[Sedone]

I feel I have to write something about this, too. I've only tuned into this soap opera a day ago, and since then I've been hopping from Sijun to Lumental to see what all the fuss is about. I think responding to your (Francis') thread seems appropriate because I found out about this forum through your website.

First, I dig most of the artists who've migrated over to Lumental. Those were the same guys whose posts I checked first when logging in to Sijun. That said, by the time I began to understand the situation, I couldn't help but feel a bit of disgust. I really can't stand cliques, favoritism, and things of that ilk, especially when the word "elite" is thrown around. I know it happens all the time, in the real world, and I hate it when it happens there, too. I've been part of these so called elite groups all my life, whether it was through academics, art, or sports. I've also lost some good friends along the way, because I thought they couldn't "hang" with me. I used to make up all kinds of excuses for my way of thinking, but ultimately it's just a way of excluding people. Whether you care that their feelings have been hurt or not is up to you. That's why I get such a negative vibe from this Lumental thing.

But hey, it really isn't as big a deal as it seems. I think this situation's been blown way out of proportion. As long as you keep doing cool artwork, I'll be checking it out.

[LordArioch]

Yes, the rhetoric has been a bit overblown. I understand that people can't help but feel excluded, but I'm amazed at how personally many people are taking this situation. For myself, I have mixed feelings about Lumental. On the one hand, here at Sijun I mostly just skimmed the art posts looking for certain names (I don't have the time to look at all of them... who does?), and almost all of those names are now at Lumental, in one neat package. On the other hand, as I peruse the postings on Lumental and instinctively want to respond, I'm constantly reminded that I can't, that my comments are not welcome or valued there. Which can't help but leave a bad taste in the mouth.