Hi,
I’ve been visiting this site on-and-off for nearly a decade now and it has inspired me in so many ways, I can’t help but being mostly grateful for it. It definitely is everything that an aspiring artist can ask for, in terms of offering a glimpse at masters’ work (And masters AT work), and facilitating a creative community that supports the pursuance of professionalism.
Every time I tuned in to CGTalk, it reminded me that I can try harder, by offering a higher standard for me to match. And finally I got into “the exclusive club” - the place where the people who shape tomorrow’s movies hang out, the folks who set these standards, that people who visit CGTalk aspire to emulate, the folks that sometimes are “featured” on CGTalk’s front page.
And almost coincidentally, CGTalk seems to have drifted away from it’s glory. I find myself less and less attracted to it’s pages - granted, I was never an active user but also because the front-page highlights articles that I find irrelevant, dated, and sometimes even offensive in the way it compresses elaborated and interesting information into byte-sized snippets of information. I mean, wasting a headline link to a one-page article about loosely explained legacy technology that is hardly groundbreaking, and blindly glorifying a movie that is widely considered inglorious - doesn’t make one want to come back to the forum, especially when one visits the forum two weeks later to discover that said article is STILL on the front page, preventing great user-base artwork from appearing.
Secondly - the “Gallery” which had a great potential of becoming a notable “opinion maker” in the world of computer graphics, seems to have lost it’s relevance too - and I think it’s because of conservative nature, and no risk-taking.
I think the greatest quality an art curator should have is adventurousness. The ability to realize what’s Avaunt-guard, and push it forward, in effort to redefine what’s considered “Good”.
And it’s what Galleries MUST do, in order to stay relevant. Otherwise people will just skip that one, and go on to the next, because it shows something NEW that they haven’t seen before.
What I’m saying, is that I’ve had enough Elves, enough “God is in the detail”, and enough “Space-operas”. Okay, got the point - With all the appreciation to people who devote months into one making every square Inch of their picture perfect, that’s not ART.
I’d like to see CGTalk support people who take risks, people who have something to say, about life, about art, and about CG itself.
I really would love to see this website get back to its glory, but you must understand that times are changing and that the internet has a lot to offer - but you can make a difference by offering an ANGLE - and that’s what people are looking for so hard. Simply a place with a mission that is dedicated to it. And I think right now you are very “Entry level” centered, maybe appealing to beginners more than any other part of the community, but I think you should “grow with your fan-base”, and offer more valuable and future-oriented content for people like me as well.
My 2 cents.
David.