The KISS (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID) principle is something that over and over I
see a lot of newbie artists ignoring. WHYYY?
What makes us CG artists suckers for pain?
Why do some of us like to overcomplicate things?
Is is something taught, of are we just plain dumb.
Looking forward to your comments.
-R
one word::: MEL
While I believe my greatest abilities and achievements have come since I learned how to script, I often find myself thinking about how to make the uber-tool to do the job that I could use over and over, when I really only needed to do a simple task to get the job done.
I also attribute it to a bit of a perfectionist attitude. I very often find myself trying to incorporate everything in to my work on the front end to make the shot the best it possibly can be. Unfortunately I usually end up having to take it to the chopping block for trimming as the deadline moves closer because time just never permits me to do everything I want to do.
Ideally I think that if I were able to find a good balance between hard work up front that is directly related to achieving the goal of the project and to know when to stop and move on without beating the dead horse until its already been re-incarnated and starts beating me, the KISS principle might be easier to manage 
anyways, back to work, Ive got a paper due tomorrow
-Brad
insanity for perfection. All in the name of mental masturbation. At least that is what an engineer told me once when I was working too hard on the details of an animation. So what if you couldn’t see the horn emblem and airbag embossed on the steering wheel. I could sleep better at night knowing it was there.
The simple things are the hardest things to do, thats why people pick the other option. I suppose its the deviant complicatedness people get absorbed in. In a way its like acting, doing the crazed physco is easy, but doing the simple subtle person is hard.
eek
Well, the hardest part of setting up anything in any field related to computers, be it web design, programming, or CG, is making it extensible, flexible, and powerful. Principles I’ve found that work when setting up a project:
The trick is just switching your brain around until you see the most logical and simple way of doing things. Being artists, we don’t always think in the most logical fashions, and the ways we initially conceive of doing things are often more laborious than need be.
This is a good subject, and a very important one too.
One problem I find that a lot of artists with a presence on the web is the design of thier websites.
It is ironic, that when you visit a home page of a graphic desiner, animator, illustrator, modeler, etc. generally, you find it either over complicated, disorganized, cluttered, or just plain illogical to navigate through, most a combination of two or more of these.
I find it ironic, because, they are artists, and in my mind thier web sites should be an extension of thier art.
It’s even more important when the artist is a professional, has his/her web address promoted in various places, prospective clients/employers might visit his/her site, if it’s not simple to navigate and find what they’re looking for, he/she might be loosing business. Not to mention that is might reflect negatively on his/her artistic ability, which might be the best in the world, but if it’s hard to get to, then no one will care.
This is only a sub topic of what’s being discussed here, I know, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to point out, and here is a great read (it relates to interface design, but many aspect are aplicable to web disign I think, and maybe a graphic application developer could take into account the points it touches upon too)
here’s the link: [b]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000057.html
[/b]cheers.
This is a far fetched anecdote (or actually two), and I am sure there are people here that will protest. But here goes anyway
I play the guitar as a hobby. A couple of years ago I got the idea to practice on hitting one note, but to make it sound as good as possible. After doing that for a while, I raised the complexity and spent a lot of time practicing switching between two notes. (Mind you, this was when I already knew how to play, and played regularly in a choir). This was one of the harder things I’ve done, but it has actually improved my playing a lot. Some time after that I picked up a friends guitar. Before I started to play he told me that the guitar doesnt sound that good. But then I just hit a couple of chords and he just stared at me, “how did you do that? It’s not supposed to sound that good at all!!”.
Not saying this to brag or something like that, but rather that there is a power in simplicity.
I have also done the same when it comes to drawing (and actually, most drawing classes I’ve seen starts with the basic shapes… a lot). And while I am on the subject of drawing: Some time ago I saw a series of pictures that where all drawn with one continous line. It could be a dog, for instance, and you could see where the line started and where it ended. Somehow those pictures still managed to convay the image, weight and movement of the dog (or golf player, or car, or whatever) with just this single line.
I have toyed with the idea of practicing doing simple things in 3d. Of course, just making basic shapes is an exercise in clicking. But, what if I am only allowed to make basic shapes… what can I do with that? How much can I do with a cube to make it look good.
Same thing goes with animation? Infact, here it is a bit easier. I can try to animate different simple objects to make them look as living as possible.
And of course, same thing goes with all the other crafts in the 3d-industry. I think… but it would be interesting to see more examples of simple things to do as a practice, where the challenge isn’t the technical aspects of it, but the artistic.
McWolfe
Well this is in a way what nature really is. Its something very very simple multiplied by 1000,000^1000,000^ 100…
I love fibernachi numbers and the golden ratio - but try adding this stuff to 3d - your’ll be screwd! Really were like cheap emulators of nature running on low end ms 3! hehe
eek
Because it sucks :shrug:Pure efficiency is as silly as pure art. Of course, some go over their own abilities (ehhh… hi) but nevertheless, artist make art and whilst that may involve senseless details sometimes artists just need that to make greater work.
It’s perfectly simple.
It’s very hard to simply things, it’s takes a lot of intelligence. This is something the average joe does not possess. Hence they make simple things complicated.
besides that, you have to make it look complicated. Otherwise the client or boss will think they can get any monkey to do it or do it themselves. Unless they are a supervisor that has more experience in what you do. Then there is no hiding. I have found that sometimes when you get in really deep and start to loose focus on the purpose another viewpoint can help you see a simplier way.
I’ve had a supervisor say “Why are you banging your head against the wall on this?”. Then shows me a simple solution. Then I wondered where he was 2 hours ago.
I think a lot of new artists want to make the “coolest biggest baddest craziest insanest” thing ever when they first get their hands on the tools…so they inadvertantly skip the (more important) basics.
Me too. Have you read chaos, fractals and power lawsby Manfred Schroeder? It’s a really good book, if a little heavy on the math occasionally. The golden mean rocks, I still can’t get my head around how perfectly it fits so many different situations.
What I came in here to say is that I think a lot of newbies just haven’t figured out how to ‘see’ simple things- they look at a room for example and consider it boring because they overlook bits like the detailed wallpaper and so on- more advanced artists see these things and incorporate them more. Newbies tend to overcomplicate BIGGER things. How many times have you see heavily worked tablecloths from a newbie? They usually just crowd the room up with furniture or something.
Also, a big part of painting is value arrangement. This is hardly taught at all and overcomplicating things is ‘their way’ of putting in something that’s missing and that something is often value arrangement.
Just my 2 euro cent worth…
Wow, that looks like a fun book. Some of these things I’ve always been curious about, like the natural body clock and sleep rhythms.
Another one for my christmas list…
BTW: Have you ever read The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene? It’s one of the most fun popular science books I’ve ever read, good for settling down with for the afternoon, coffee in hand.
Ive only read parts of it, but its a great book. I also pick up new scientist every week, as its a fantastic read too. Im gunna send you my MSN. Be great to discuss more of this stuff.
eek
I don’t think it’s limited to just “newbies”, it just depends on the person. Sometime ppl overcomplicate things just because they think it’s better than a simple solution.
I managed to make this out of ONLY primitives (except for the text) when I was a couple of weeks into Maya class. I kept my method of creating this nice and simple.
Because we artists love pain and torture in our work :-P. We are the Van Gogh’s in the CG world. J/k
Seriously, we overcomplicate our work because some of us are influenced, and tempted by the cool effects done by artists, like there is one effect I saw in the Tekken 5 CG when Feng Wei killed his master with a punch, and the tree broke. And newbies want to jump into that.
I am guilty of this too. When I started learning character modeling at age 11, I jumped quickly into patch modelling, and rigging, failing to grasp the concept of edgeloops and modelling for animation. I also had the habit of making models so overly dense, thinking it would look cool, boy was I wrong.
So, I am now with the ideals of KISSing.