No-one is saying that the work has been deemed “unfinished”. The message states that work is not at the level that we expect from finished work being submitted. It’s basically a very nice, non-confrontational, non-hurtful way of saying that the work isn’t good enough. The suggestion, which follows the message, to post the work in WIP is an encouragement to improve the work instead of getting demotivated or pissed off. In other words, it’s a polite suggestion to the artist to re-examine their work and consider making improvements.
Additionally, you can’t compare works of different types. Work being submitted is judged according to what type of work it is, in other words cartoony works are judged as cartoony works, realistic works as realistic, etc. They are also not simply judged from a technical perspective, but from a creative one as well.
Jack, your baby image was not accepted because the lighting is really blown out and has a detrimental effect on the appeal of the model in that it doesn’t compliment the model at all. All the lighting creates a lack of contrast in the image which makes it visually somewhat confusing. All the shaders appear to have similar specular properties which also contribute to this issue. I also find the image compositionally problematic because of all the headroom.
Sure, weaker pieces occasionally get in. I’m a human and make mistakes. This really depends on how much time is spent looking at each image - this can vary from a minute or so to a few seconds, depending on how much free time I actually have. During the week, I generally do first validation of the day during my lunch break at work, and when this happens, I always ask for the opinions of my colleagues sitting nearby when I am unsure about a piece. In the evenings, I don’t have the second opinions, nor do I always have the time to carefully study each submission - I do, after all, have a life. Yeah, there have been a few complaints from people recently, but considering about 40-50% of submissions on a daily basis are rejected, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of people don’t have a problem with this system.
When CGTalk started, our WIP forums were the heart of the site. People came here to learn and grow as artists. Over the years, a lot of this spirit has disappeared, and people posted more in the showcase galleries than the WIP forums, and we let the standards of the galleries drop a lot to try to accommodate everyone. A few months ago, after a discussion amongst the mods, we decided to become stricter about what gets accepted in the galleries, which is why so much more work is being rejected than has been in the case in the last few years. The rejection message which includes a suggestion to post in the WIP forums is an attempt to get people to look at their work more critically and to take a positive approach to developing as artists.
I try very hard not to be elitist about this because I really don’t like elitism, but at the same time I really want our galleries to be inspiring and full of cool work. I don’t expect perfect work from everyone, in fact I have a soft spot (especially in the case of 2D work) for quite rough images, but I do look at each piece and consider it in light of what type of work it is.
At the end of the day, the gallery is not a democracy. If we allowed everything that was submitted in, you would have to wade through a lot of bad images to get to the good ones. As nasty as that sounds, that’s a fact - you should see some of the stuff that I have to go through every day, from wireframes to screenshots of viewports to “my first vase with a Blinn shader and a spotlight” to loads of other totally inappropriate images that are absolutely unsuitable for what is a SHOWCASE GALLERY.
The only validation standard should be, in fact written in submission instruction, is finished work.
So basically what you’re saying is that you want me to accept the hundreds of poorly done images that get submitted every day, just because the person who did them has decided they’re finished with it. Sorry, but that’s not how this works. That’s not how we’ve ever run the gallery - there has always been some quality control. And now it just happens to have become stricter. I’m sorry if you don’t like this, you have your opinion and that’s totally fine, but as I said before, this is not a democracy. People are free to submit anything they want to their portfolios - we do not exercise any quality control over that, because every artist has the right to display their work, which is why we set up the portfolio system. But the Showcase Gallery will always have certain standards, just as it always has.
