[Catfish]

Woohoo! Phong's coming back!

[FaithInChaos]

phong has got to be the most over-rated garbage on the internet to-date.
i dont understand why this guy has an almost cult following.

[HumanClay]

I agree. Phong sucks, so does Mark from "Designs by Mark", and that Andyart guy.. they're all filter monkeys that don't have any real skill/talent.

It annoys me that people like those 3 get so much exposure/praise, and people like Joachim/Micke/Frost/Vortyx/Francis/Loki/etc/etc.. go relatively unnoticed in the digital art community. Ah well, that's life I guess.

[kardis]

Shamefully enough, my whole digital gfx background were base on such sites as phong.com and designsbymark.com; but as I've extended farther and farther away from them, I come to realize just exactly how much they suck (and not to be harsh either). I do appreciate what little they offer, but mainly, they were just the basics- there's a whole other world out there in digital graphics and I've wasted months in nothing. I am new to this forum, and all I can say is, I am in awe at some of the artwork I've seen here, and though I've visited Dhabin's site numerous times in the past, I've always avoided the forum. Now here I am, and very inspired at that. Hey, I'm even drawing on paper again!

-kardis

[Catfish]

Heh...ouch. Admittedly his designs aren't as arty or beautiful as a lot of stuff seen on here, but I think they have quite a bit of style. He had some very funky flash demos up before the site went done that I thought were pretty imaginative.

But I'm no artist - I just pretend to be...

[Harnish Studios]

I wholeheartedly agree. Both phong and Mark suck. I don't understand their cult following. It's almost like the cult following is saying "OMG! Look at all these tutorials! If I learn them, I could be great like phong and mark, too!! Wow!" Boy will they be surprised that there's a much better alternative (e.g., the sijun forums among others) waiting for them after passing the beginner phase.

I would like to see them attempt to draw anything related to fine art.

Of course, when I was learning the basics of Photoshop I admit I was quite in awe at the time when doing those tutorials. But now it's all old and I only see a lack of imagination and semi-skilled individuals.

It's like when you visit their (phong and mark) sites now, it's hard to do anything but yawn.

- Brian

P.S. Not to say that Dhabih or Spoogeness doesn't have a cult following. At least we know what skill is.

[wootkoos]

Phong and Designsbymark are design oriented graphic sites. If they didn't offer basics how would people new to the scene learn? I do think people look up to them way too much but it dosen't make me dislike the sites. *shrugs*

------------------
wootkoos

[email][email protected]">[email protected] |

[aquamire]

Hmm.. most everyone starts out using Filters.. few people get the concept that you can actually draw and create artwork in Photoshop. Phong and Mark are creative in what they do.. which is design. They're a lot better at it than I am, but I'm more of an artsy fartsy kind of person.. I cant concentrate on designing a fluid site, I usually end up just concentrating on one thing.

If Phong and Mark werent around, I dont think a lot of people would get the beginning steps of Photoshop.. and when they see some of the art that Craig Mullins, Loki, and all the other greats here have done, and realize that it was done in Photoshop, a whole new world is presented to them. I know I was like that. I've seized using filters.. even for simple crap like bevels, but I know I wouldnt have so much interest in the digital arts if I hadnt been exposed to filtered stuff.

Just my 2 cents.. whether or not any of it makes sense is not up to me.


------------------
/Aq
[email protected]

I'd put my wittiest remark here, but I'd scare you.

[PaK-RaT]

i dont think u guys are being fair. Design and digital painting both have place in the realm of art, compairing the two is like compairing apples and oranges. I think Mark does a fine job at web art...he doesnt 'try' and be something he's not, and you guys are critizing him for something he doesnt even attempt, thats like me saying Dhabih is the worst 3D modeler i have ever seen, but wait! we havent seen any of zab's models now have we? Make any sense guys?

[Kiyoakisama]

DBM and PHong are GRAPHICS SITES....I like DBM yet I don't like PHong to much...I think Digital Art as in drawing and stuff takes a lot more talent then what those guys do yet this type of art and their type of art are two different types....

------------------
The box said "use windows 98 or better"...so I used a mac!

[balistic]

Just so no one confuses the two, the word "phong" in relation to CG refers to a shading model that allows for specular highlights in 3D renders. Its named after the guy who invented it, ala Lambert, Blinn, Catmull, Goroud, et cetera.

So if you ever hear a 3D guy talking about the merits of Phong, now you know that he's not talking about the famous filter slinger




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Brian "balistic" Prince
3D Artist
Eggington Productions

[Catfish]

Hmm. Well I was going to leave this at my peacemaking second post attempt at staying middle of the sharp, pointy fence. But then I reread the first few posts slagging him off, & I thought - Christ you stuck up bastards...

quote

Quote:

I would like to see them attempt to draw anything related to fine art.

That has fuck all to do with anything. I'd like to see you attempt to construct an interstellar warp drive with a toilet roll & sticky backed plastic.
Phong isn't a classical art site. It doesn't try to be. What it does have is a lot of great looking designs.

I'm not good at art - I like doing it, but I'm shit at it, especially since the last time I tried it for long term stuff was at GCSE 4 years ago. But then I saw DocOzones site, & Phong, & a big list of other design sites, & that got me interested again. I'm still shit at art, but I can throw together a (more or less) decent interface / funky logo stuff / flash intro. And the stuff that Phong does is far more suited to web design. You're busy slagging off these guys, when they're busy boosting the overall quality of the web - somebody with no serious art talent & some pisspoor geocities site might see these & think - I could do that. If the same person came to this site - sure, he'd think - wow, pretty pictures. But I sincerly doubt he'd think of attempting this sort of artwork. The sort of guys who can do that & pull it off successfully are amazing. They are the top tiny percent of the population.
But for the rest of us, if we can see Phong, or any of the other design sites, & just be inspired enough to try & do something on the site, maybe they might come up with something.

Lighten up people...

My asbestos underwear is on - let the flaming commence.

[This message has been edited by Catfish (edited September 16, 2000).]

[SewerRat]

I think you guys are being unfair in saying they suck. They are pretty good at what they are doing. However, I think the cult following they have is way too big considering what they do.

[JayBee]

Hey, never heard of either of these guys (phong or this mark dude), but thought I'd throw a quick crit at phong's site design.

Sure, looks nice, but I spent ages clicking on that flash movie before I realised that there was some nav out of view.

I suppose that counts as "challenging" and "dynamic" design, not just plain "unintuitive" and "irritating" I would be all in favour of a compulsory part in the Flash installation procedure to read and digest useit.com

(hence the reason I still haven't used flash yet )

Anyway, I have no beef with these people, and didn't even take the time to look around the phong site much, after the initial experience, so I can't really comment. Just thought I'd give my first impression, is all.

Final points:

Didn't delve into phong's site, as I said, but one tutorial caught my eye - drawing grids in photoshop. err....

Oh, and please don't take this to start a flame war - I'm just curious as to what people consider "better" interface design - ugly but functional, or cool and useless?

Later



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. . : : j a y b e e

www.sketchboard.co.uk

[Harnish Studios]

aquamire -- You're right...in a way.

catfish -- "stuckup bastards?" So I suppose that since I'm not worshipping them I'm a stuckup bastard then, correct? I'll refine my statement -- they don't suck. They're okay. They're all right for web graphics and everything, and you're right. My comment was out of line. However, they've only scratched the surface of the program on their web sites. I'd like to see them delve into other areas of photoshop and show exactly how powerful a program it is.

I guess I was expecting too much or something. I take back what I said previously until I see the new phong.com.

- Brian

[aquamire]

Well, Phong and Mark are into web design.. they like doing that, I personally hate it with a passionate vengence.. I am terrible at it.

Now ask yourself the question, if you had loads of clients who needed sites designed by a specific date, say, next week, would you want or care to spend days making a painted masterpiece for every little button, animation or graphic? "How about painting the Mona Lisa for a link to our Products page?" Filters make it a quick and easy job, and they have their degree's of creativity. Enough to make a fairly original 'design'.

Lets go in the other direction.. the Paintbrush tool is cheating..even more so the airbrush. They plots all those nice translucent/opaque pixels at once in the shape of a brush. How about we go back a decade, and paint a nice 1024x768 painting pixel by pixel.. (no offense to Danny here, he has pure skill!). Hell, skip the pixeling. Lets code each and every pixel to appear on the screen. I want inline assembler, and I want it to pop up on the screen damn fast.

Their talent does not lie in Photoshop, true.. but their true talent does lie in their ability to make a website with lots of information, presentable, readable, and easy to navigate, not to mention attractive.. something many of us fine artists cant do very well.




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/Aq
[email protected]

I'd put my wittiest remark here, but I'd scare you.

[StewartStudio]

I would like to make a couple interesting points quickly. I don't think you should compare web design with illustration. My site stewartstudio.com is basically like phong and mark. Designing a website for a rich conceited idiot is hardly an artistic creation. Most of the sites I have been paid to do, you would never know they were mine. I gave the client what he wanted as quick and easy as possible, and hoped that he paid me the other half when the job is finished. I like how most clients promise to give you tons of more work if you will just make this first site great (and then they never give you any more work).

My site is a little bit different than theres though. Stewartstudio and Anders Qvickers website, we both have a gallery with airbrush illustrations that were done the old fashioned way without a computer. I also have a couple of computer illustrations that I have done in photoshop and painter. I just wish I didn't have bills to pay, so that I could spend more time on illustration.

Here is a little interesting information for you fans of andyart.com. I worked for andy for almost a year and I also went to junior high with him and he was my college professor that taught me HTML. I have to say that he has no drawing or illustration ability. He also has no 3D ability.
I don't understand the happy fruity look that DBM has taken on recently. It isn't really bad, it is just not what we expect at all.
Phong has some very good design ability. Look at some of the work he has done for circle graphics. His sohh.com site that he just did is featured in the latest issue of vibe magazine on page 100. I have to say that the screenshots of the other 5 sites on the page suck by comparison to his work.

Back to andyart.com. His tutorials may be basic rip-offs for beginners, but he has made a financial killing off from his CD sales. Also there Button Vault members area that has recently gone down the toilet has brought in thousands on a monthly basis.

One last warning. If you liked timebomb.net don't expect any good content on that site. It belongs to screamdesign and andyart.com also belongs to them. They are clearly in business to make money off of the newbies to the graphics world. All of there designers on staff completely suck.

Chris http://www.stewartstudio.com

[Catfish]

Ummmm....OK - by stuck up bastards I originally meant that you seemed top high n mighty in the art world to even consider liking something as trite as graphic design or (dear god) using a filter.

Buuut - In the harsh light of day, that was maybe a tiny bit overdone, so I'd like to withdraw my comment. But only slighty...

[bizzare]

I'd like to see one of you do what phong does. I know phong can't do what you can. It's apples and oranges.



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-Bizzare

[assa]

I personally dislike those 'designbymark,
eye4u, andyart etc.' sites, cuz these
sites are pretty much based upon the
capabilities of a certain tool instead of the
artist's "real" talent.

Check :

http://www.adobe.com/web/columns/zeldman/20000821/main.html
A decent story/view about this web trend.

Then again, if bevels, flares etc. make YOU
happy, go for them! It's not a matter of
wrong or right imho.

assa
-----
pro artist.designer

[This message has been edited by assa (edited September 17, 2000).]

[Jenn]

if you want eye candy... quick and easy.. check those art sites.. if you want soemthing with a little more talent.. look inside your self.. rustedfaith.com is a good example of talent vs filters.
My site is shitty but at least i am not a filter munkey

YOU wait.. YOU ALL WILL SEE!

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DarkChyld

[psi burn]

i personally hate phong for 2 reasons.....

1. he thinks he is like the god of design or something. look at how he rants about gmunk.com. he completely insults bradley + his style, saying its unoriginal, messy, confusing, and ugly. brad (gmunk) is such a cool guy he even put phong's mindless bitching on his site, because he doesnt care about what anyone has to say, he creates his designs based on his life experiences, he lets his creative juices express himself. phone merely writes him off as an unoriginal trendy bastard, which is totally untrue. maybe its the fact that phong cant handle that he cant create the types of designs these people at the vir2l crew/etc can do, because he's a plugin jockey, and they're not.

2. because, in all honesty, his work is bad, and even if it were aimed for a newbie audience (which he thinks its not), it is very ugly, and very easy to create. i think he should stop insulting other's work and look at the pieces of crap he creates first.

[galaxal]

ok, look at all these:
>> "I wholeheartedly agree. Both phong and Mark suck"

>> "I agree. Phong sucks, so does Mark from "Designs by Mark", and that Andyart guy.. they're all filter monkeys that don't have any real skill/talent."

>> "phong has got to be the most over-rated garbage on the internet to-date."

...

I didn't collect all those CHILDISH toned critisms, but when you look at that, don't you feel that it'd been whined out by some little kid?

First of all, those 2 sites are very resourceful. Second, think and see if you can do at least something similar. Even if you are better than them, I don't think you should say things like "they suck", because THERE ARE JUST SO MANY MANY ARTISTS OUT THERE WHO ARE BETTER THAN YOU ARE AND THEY DIDN'T SAY YOU SUCK BECAUSE THEY ARE TRUELY GOOD(it's the inside). ::::Thomas Edison is such a great inventer, and he never posted any contemps about how suck those some one was on the internet. (maybe because internet was not invented, otherwise he might, like you did, and he wouldn't be my role model anymore).
What the hell is wrong with using filters, companies like Meta Creations are making filters to sell? they didn't post anything like 'we are very talented, we are very artistic', and some of your kids starting to yell how non-talented they are and how non-artistic they are, WTF??????????? and some of you guys were fair, "you can't compare orange with apple", "they good at what they are"...

SHUT UP, TO ALL OF YOU WHO ARE HURTING SOMEONE ELSE ON THEIR BACKS.

[Paqmann]

Guys.. come on.

You whine about Phong crit'ing other people's style, then you crit his. In addition to the whole apple/orange deal, its a matter of personal style when you come down to it.

Ya kinda have the situation of like a rap singer and a country singer. Two semi related things.. but very different at the same time. Rappers can say that country artists suck, country artists can say rappers suck. But it comes down to they both have talent, its just in different areas, and they appreciate different things.

Please? stop bitching just because he doesn't do exactly the same art you do, you talk about how he says he's all high and mighty. LOOK AT YOU (some at least).. He could say the same, you think you're high and mighty just because you do a "better" kind of art than he does. Admitted some ARE better artists over-all.. but still!

By the way, I think you all and Phong basically all the same. Good artists that are willing to commit time to help out newbies. Who cares if you're doing it with different styles of art? Its still great, and I for one appreciate it a lot.. But its kinda disconcerting to see my "role models" bickering and bitching over stupid stuff.

BTW.. JayBee,this Phong design is only temporary until he comes out with the new Phong. If you had read.. he had a very nice design (in my opinion) but his server took it down, this is temporary.

-matt

[Rinaldo]

That stuff is not Graphic design, it's Photoshop hack work. It's worth a base wage with no oppertunity of promotion.

It's not worth much because anyone can do it. Same goes for it's value in terms of skill. Anyone can do the same stuff once they do the tutorials.
Value is based purely on availability.

[Sc00p]

Well. There's such a thing as design for a client, and design for the masses. Phong, andyart, dmb, are all designed for that certain demographic that likes to see flashy raster tips and tricks. It's not for people who know howto design, or howto paint, so I do see where they are coming from there.

Doesn't mean I have to like what they do, but I understand it. I certainly do not like it at all, no designer would. But thats not who these sites are for, right?

------------------
Rene Antunes
www.nytro.org
[email protected]

[Sc00p]

Well. There's such a thing as design for a client, and design for the masses. Phong, andyart, dmb, are all designed for that certain demographic that likes to see flashy raster tips and tricks. It's not for people who know howto design, or howto paint, so I do see where they are coming from there.

Doesn't mean I have to like what they do, but I understand it. I certainly do not like it at all, no designer would. But thats not who these sites are for, right?

------------------
Rene Antunes
www.nytro.org
[email protected]

[Sc00p]

Bah, sorry for the double post. This happens when I refresh pages sometimes :/

[Rinaldo]

There is design for a client and then there is stuff you do because you want to. things get mixed up here and there one doesn't exclude the other. But I wish people would stop excluding themselves from critisism by saying stuff is "design".

These guys do stuff in PS that has no real application in anything else but Graphic design yet it is for themselves. The masses are the client in a sense I suppose. a misguided lot who are impressed buy cheap tricks. What's the stuff for. Seeing as it has little value in terms of skill. I mean I have no problem with it. just don't pretend it's something it's not.

[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited September 18, 2000).]

[Sc00p]

I seriously doubt that Mark and Andy of dbm and andyart respectively do their websites ("designs")for themselves. Maybe to put money in their pockets, thats about it. They certainly are not contributing to the design community.

My site used to be all about catering to first-time photoshoppers, but that's a crowd that I no longer care much to attract. A first time photoshop user is now known as a first time photoshop pirater nowadays.

Ever see a beveled chrome button for an ad posted in Communication Arts magazine? I don't think so.

PS: For the love of god andyart, talk about some PRINT media for once, and quit trying to sell those useless cd's of animated gifs. "Littering the web, one automaton at a time."

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Rene Antunes
www.nytro.org
[email protected]