I like the Pre-fix idea 
Abussive crits forum :)
I tend to agree, why not just put
[HARD CRITS] my topic blah blah
easy enough no?
cheers
I sent an email (to Lil’ dragon, I think) suggesting something along these lines.
the title “brutality” came to mind.
I don’t think the general crit forums do this enough. Part of the problem is a lack of clarity over what is needed, and the overall defensivness one feels over one’s own work, or that of an admired artist.
The brutal nature of the forum’s title would also imply a no hard feelings attitude that would be condusive to a more constructive atmosphere.
And if you really can’t take it: don’t post there.
I vote yes.
:bounce:
Different individuals view things differently and express their thoughts differently, of course. Many years back I was in Paris for the first time and was eager to view the real painting of Mona Lisa. I went to the Museum with a friend. When I saw the artwork, these exact words came straight into my mind " Wow, this is magnificent! She is beautiful and mesmerising!" If Leonardo DaVinci is alive and posts this work in CGTalk, will I post the same exact words that first come into my head, you bet. So now my WOW ( =appreciation ) is butt kissing and serve no purpose. My friend on the other hand (who don’t even know who Mona Lisa is ) took one look at the artwork and laughed. His words " So this is what all the fuss is about! She looks wierd like Whoopi Goldberg without her eyebrows! I think she is a little overweight" His comment would be classified as “brutal” and unconstructive. I appreciate artwork as a whole first and see if it appeal to my senses and can provoke any emotion. My friend however will first disect the work and criticise the details. Allow me to rant some more…Thank you. I took part in the Feb Challenge, I received all sorts of comments. One commented I was crazy ( yes actual word used), several “useless” appreciation comments, several insightful and constructive comments and a few comments stating how they liked to see my model their ways. I think it is a healthy mixture of variety of critiques ( I hope this sentence is grammatically correct
) I remembered someone ( can’t remember who ) was so excited that his thread exceeded 100 posts but more than half of those posts were “damaging WOW” comments. Let’s face the truth, regardless of what level of expertise your work is, it is a great feeling to know your hard work is appreciated. It is an important key motivating factor. The essence of creativity is to be enjoyed by people. If you think you have perfected your artwork technically through constructive comments but no one commented they like it, I wonder what is the aim of creating it - pure self satisfaction? (I do agree some WOW comments are overboard but majority are sincere appreciation) If one should misinterpret some encouraging “WOW” comments on their average work enough to inflate their ego, I feel sorry for their maturity. Likewise for the brutal comments. If Madonna could not survive the brutal crits at the begining of her career of how she sucked as a singer, she would not last till today earning several Grammys. Besides it is only a small minority of people here who give bashing comments, why create a special forum to inflate their egos and cater to their needs. IMHO totally unnecessary. Like Lildragon said, you want hard crits ? Indicate it on the thread title and like ACFred, Bassamintor etc said BE SPECIFIC what area you like to get feedback on and take things in stride when you don’t see the comment eye to eye cos Hardcore Critique Bashers will give it to you regardless of what forum it is or what you indicate in you thread title or first post…end of rant.
My Fault !!
I think that i have done a poor job of representing this idea!
I see great feedback on both sides of this issue, but I feel I may have misrepresented the outlook of the forum! The idea was to create a forum where there would be no doubts about the reasoning for posting in there! That reasoning being your either in there to give 100 % honest feed back witout worrying about offending someone or posting a pic to get the best most honest help you can ! that is the core of it and what i mean by brutal or abusive i was saying this in a joking matter to let people know that all crits would be very honest
I dont think you can honestly give a 100 percent honest crit to someone you dont know i f your not sure that person may or may not get offended. I thought this forum would make both people comenting and people posting feel better knowing they would get crits to help improve and better your eye
I think the {hard crit} soft crit idea is decent but people simply dont read and i think it would become something that realy wasnt useful IMO
To wrap it up Jean Erich and the crew are going to give us whatever we want as long as its good for the comunity ! Jean was even cool enogh to Let me start this forum today however both jean and lil d thought it probaly was a lil to contoversial and may lead to flame wars and or no post at all ! The last thing i want to do is cause controversy unneadlily or screw up the good vibe here! I turned down this oppurtunity for now i think if there is enough demand and support for a forum like this it could possibly be the best forum here but only if it doesnt cause troubles and remained focused with members using good tact maybe in the future this will be a possibilty thanks to jean and lil d also for thinking this through
Trav
Dzogchen:
Hm, funny, that was exactly my point of view. 
So putting the WOW! posts aside, which I admit don’t add much to the discussion but at least usually are very short and easy to scroll past…
…what exactly is so bad about the critting going on in this forum? I must admit I haven’t had time to read a lot of threads here. What is the big problem here? Is the c&c too soft here? Too polite? Do you think a lot of people are holding back their true feelings, actually lying just to keep the status quo?
Well, anyway, I maintain it’s possible to tell a person everything that’s wrong with his or her image, in a no-nonsense way, with one or two polite phrases thrown in, and without even once resorting to words like ‘crap’ and ‘suck’, ‘terrible’, ‘horrible’ or even ‘bad’, and still have it understood, taken seriously, accepted, learned from. Anybody who DOESN’T learn from a good and civil crit, doesn’t deserve to.
No matter how direct and honest you get, it MUST still be possible to observe a minimum of normal common decency on the internet, such as you would with a waiter or bank teller, or any stranger you bumped into on the street (except for the mugger).
That’s not being a whimp… it takes strength to still be polite even when you’re tired, lazy, or upset.
ok ok where all artist’s here and to know that there’s a few people responding to this form. So for whether we should have another form is to be said for but at least it out in the open. I for one I don’t mined my ego stroked sometimes but I would like to see some harsher comments from people I find it can help you improve on what you may or may not see in your work. And my be it’s that we just need to get it out in the open .Which we are doing now .
Hi steven always gotten good feed back from you espicaly on the dog i did so thank you
I knwo that you got some messed up feed back recently sorry for that but like i said abouve i think i gave the wrong idea and i dont realy have a problem with people saying wow or what not doesnt happen on my threads much anyway ! lol
When i started i exagerated the meaning by saying that people are close enough to be able to say that to each other in a goof off way not meaning any harm but I do think that the comunity could benifit from getting strong feed back alot of people simply stop posting becasue they get no feed back and that is as bad as saying it sucks i think
here is a example of what i mean ill use my work to try and show what would happen
ok theres the pic im using! Blackarts as an example cause he can tear a great model down to tel you exactly what it needs even when you think your close to finishing!
I asked him to crit it for me as I know he always gives me honest feed back
Basicly he gave me about 20 things to work on
Like the knees arent very good! Fix them make them look moore like the sketch.
Tthe feet defiently need work!T hey arent very good right now, narrow the ankle and define the shin make it stick out from the muscle so it doesnt look like mush.
The stomach needs work, maybe define the lower abbs more, also try to atach the muscle at the center of the chest so it looks like its stretched correctly
Several other crits that were more on making it look like the sketch etc.
These comments arent exact just using an example of what a typical crit between us is like !
This is what I think is great criting honest to the point and makes you look at your work again! I rarely see this level of criting going on anywhere in this tforum maybe cause people are nervous or not picy enough I just want a area this could be done! I think it would benifeit all, not the topic of bashing each other or sayin g you suck or this looks like sh-- somthing like my example where posters would be expected to give focused hard crits
peace!
Fanboys posting “wow cool” comments make browsing any thread containing anything remotely interesting a real drag, but I doubt you could open a “harsh crits” forum without it degenerating into a flame fest. The same people who insist on flooding the crits section with such gems as "amazing work!!! You are my hero!!! would no doubt poison the Harsh Crits section with nothing but thoughtless insults.
Couldn’t we just ask for/ enforce a morotorium on fanboy comments?
wait a minute, what’s wrong with posting these kind of replies?
say if i don’t want to critisize an image, then i lose the right to give my congrats to the creator? and besides not everybody’s a critic… not all of us are THAT good ya all… might wanna remember that…
Stahlberg:
Glad at least someone shared my point of view. 
Cerreto:
No apology required. We all can see your good intent but it is too idealistic to have a forum full of nothing but polite constructive comments. Blackarts is able to give you fabulous feedback maybe becos you guys are friends and there is mutual care and support for each other.
Not everyone in the forum has that kind of rapport for one another. There is a Chinese saying that goes :" One kind of rice but it feeds thousand kinds of people" . I feel instead of pointing finger and telling people how they should give critics to your work (though they should follow basic guidelines stated by the forum), learn to point the finger at ourself and learn how to evaluate the critics received. The process is very much like gardening :
a) Disregard comments that are destructive and useless are like removing weeds in the garden.
b) Constructive comments are like fertilizers. Add them to your plant to help it grow.
c) Comments that show appreciation - they put a big smile on your face 
It’s a nice idea, but like dzogchen says, it’s a little too idealistic. In a perfect world there wouldn’t be anything but polite constructive crits. I think that many of those browsing these forums simply lack the will to give such insightful comments that, for example, Blackarts do.
It takes time and concentration to analyze a wip, and it seems like most are just in a hurry to post a comment, be it “wooooow” or “You suck!”. A little more self-moderation would be nice. Take the time to evaluate the wip, try to see what needs doing instead of rushing it… In a perfect world etc 
On the other hand, who doesn’t like to get their ego stroked now and then?
I don’t think there’s any way of having one without the other. Fanboy comments, harsh contructive crits and bs are inextricably linked 
Hey, Cerreto, I hadn’t seen that before, you deserve to have your ego stroked over that one! J/K, but it is VERY good - this is my honest feeling, and I must be allowed to express it! 
I see what you mean now that you’ve explained exactly the kind of crits you’re looking for, and I agree. If it’s true that many people are nervous to give such crits then that’s sad.
But I’m not sure it’s because people are nervous… you know another reason for the lack of such excellent crits could be that many are lazy, or just not observant enough, or simply not up to your level of modeling, and they’re just not sure what should be done with the ankle for instance. Or they don’t even see a problem.
Yup, I that’s the general problem, people see work that is very good, and are just not quite used to seeing it. Perhaps this hard crits thing could become almost an eliteist area.
I for one think such critiques could be absolutely incomparable - Having someone crit something you barely even started started to discover really opens doors. Hopefully it would bring even more artists like stahlberg (:)) and Francois Rimasson etc. to show work and improve each other.
On a related note, violation of the rules would be absolutely untolerated.
-Farley13
PS mm I wonder how old this thread is, must have missed it 
Over at highend3d they have a disclaimer stating that if you post your pic…
“…please try to be specific as to what type of critique you are looking for. The more specific you are the better results you will get.”
Just my 2.35 cents.
I have to say that this is a darn nice thread,
i absolutly agree with ,stahlberg, dzogchen, cerreto, on every point given!
most importent thing about giving critique, is not critisize the design/style and the persons vision, by saying for example:
:you should add 10 inch teeth to it and make spears shooting out its the mouth :
:or change the color on the wall, the texture should be this and that:
i think all of the community members should read this thread,
Maybe by adding a ‘Student WIP’ or make people post what type of crits they want would solve this problem.
i want hard critiques, thats for sure, Hard but fair!
.
:hmm: here is an idea…people needing harsh c&c could use a spesific indication on their thread…that is a symbol or even thread color.Thet could show the diference between a simple ‘showcase,c&c thread’ and a ‘hit me hard without mercy’ thread!And both would use the same section.
Yeh I think that’s what lildragon, DrAdamDinosaur, and a few others sugested. That wouldn’t be too bad, but I think some poeple have already tried that in the past and received the same kind of feedback, if any. The traffic in the general WIP section is rather dense. If it were to make a difference, I think a different color, like the cgchannel orange be used. And to keep these educational for everyone, a minor screening would be done, to make sure it was not just a hacked half an hour effort. (send the pic to mods, they setup the post)
-Farley13
