You're kind of hinting here at the basis of property rights: a thing which doesn't materially exist has no value. This is the reason why so many dot-com businesses tanked at the end of the nineties.

You sure it had nothing to do with mismanagement and greedy bastards whose intentions from the start were to take VC investors for everything they had and run with it? Because I worked for several dot-bombs in the late nineties during dot-bomb 1.0, then again for them in the early 2000's during dot-bomb 2.0... Seems to me it was just poor managers and execs whose sole intent was to capitalize on the idea machine from venture capitalists who were riding an economic bubble and making bad decisions...

A) There will always be greedy bastages who take advantage of the uninformed, but there are also plenty of me-toos who jump on a bandwagon thinking that previous success = continued success. People shelled out zillions of $, £, & € blindly in the direction of what they believed would be a successful venture because it resembled that which was already successful.

B) The websites that survived, like Amazon, were a pathway to physical products with inherent value and which streamlined the acquisition process. Instead of traveling to the bookstore to get the latest Michael Crichton thriller--using up time, energy and gas--I can order it online and have it shipped directly to my mailbox. Additionally, the book store might not have the unabridged CD audiobook of, say, Jurassic Park, but the website would: goodie for me!

C) Those which weren't a path to products provided information and either charged a fee for access (Lexis-Nexis) or sold advertising space, which is why we're all going blind from hysterical, blinking ads like the ones at the top left of this page.

Clear as mud?

Ahhh, okay. I missed your original point initially because it lacked enough context to explain itself, now I see what you're saying and wholeheartedly nod in agreement. =)

My fault for trying to think cogently at 6 AM...

Whut? XD
Longevity of digital media is generally much longer than physcial media.
It's potentially just as unique as a papaer based piece of work.
CDs are considered digital media and can very easily be bought, sold and traded.

Some of it makes sense, but the rest is just wrong as above examples.

I'm generally with you here, but your idea that digital media lasts much longer than physical media is untested.
There are books, physical media, that is hundreds or thousands of years old. Admittedly in the minority out of the sum of items that have ever been created, but they still exist. Digital media has been around for mere decades and the rapid evolution of digital storage means items just 10 years old may be impossible to access, making it affectively lost.
Right now it's taking millions of dollars of work to rebuild tape and signal processing gear from junkyard scrap to access the original high-resolution footage from the Apollo moon landings.
The 1980s universal reference catalogue "The Domesday Book" was put on laserdisk, and obsolete just a few years later. Even if you can get a working laserdisk player, the software on which to view the information no longer exists.
Ever tried finding something that was put on a website back in 2000? Even if the site exists, the chances of it still retaining decade-old content is minuscule. You can hunt on text-biased archive.org for a mirror and hope it's one of those that got grabbed complete. And even then archive.org, the closest thing to the sum of all human knowledge in one place, is stored hidden and unofficial in three massive corporate data centres each located unfortunately in areas prone to natural disasters.
Even presuming you luck out and somehow the formats or the ways to read and decode them remain in use for centuries, the original media they're stored on won't. Integrated circuits have an average shelf life of about 20-25years, and that's without the added strains of running power through them. Magnetic disks (HDDs) even in perfect storage conditions will begin to loose their magnetic traces in about 50 years. Consumer burnable CDs use organic dyes that naturally degrade and can become unreadable from under a year upward. Even industrially stamped CDs are now prone to bacteria that literally eat the foil layer the data is stored on.
Copying it from device to device will give you more hope of preserving the files intact, but even then all digital storage uses algorithms to compensate for transfer errors, and those errors are cumulative. Copying any file enough, eventually it will degrade. It may be only one bit in a billion bytes, but I've transferred ten times that amount in a day without trying. Entropy will catch up with it eventually.

Digital media is just another media. It has a lot of benefits over traditional media for a lot of people. It's ease of copying and transmission enables massive redundancy as well as visual effects and uses largely impossible by traditional means. It is vastly more flexible, and can put huge creative power in the hands of anyone who is able to use the technology.
But it's no more inherently long lasting than traditional work. I can put a match to paper, and I can take a magnet to a computer.

Ultimately the over-arching argument seems to be that having something you can hold in your hand and view un-aided is inherently worth more than something you need a special piece of technology to view.
People pay for digital art because they want to see an image they cannot create themselves, and they want it in a format in which they can show it to others, or have it readily accessible without taking up physical space, or have it instantly and in a form they can readily back-up.

And for the rest, this is why people invented the printer.

Many years ago I worked for an archival service. They had collected massive amounts of data from the late 80s and early 90s, and stored them on these 12" floppy disks. There's a huge archive of those disks, and I've seen it.

They have no way of reading the data because they upgraded their computers, and shortly thereafter the readers broke down & there were no replacement parts to be had for love of money. Never, my friend, underestimate the power of stupid people with job security!

I have a 5.25 disk reader, a 3.5 floppy, a ZIP drive, a tape drive, and various other things just for such a future event. When the time comes, I intend to rent out my services for an appreciable fee.

;) I consider myself a bit future proof... I rarely keep anything of importance on optical media... Unless its stuff that I'd like to keep, but don't really care quite as much if it lasts... (Old anime that I've watched and just need to free space for example, I'll archive to DVD's. if it gets destroyed or degrades and won't work, its not a huge loss and won't effect me that much.)

On the other hand, important stuff stays on my computer. (As an example, I have subfolder after subfolder from each previous major upgrade going all the way back to my windows 95 days.) As an example, my current 300GB hard drive has this folder structure to get to my old windows 95 stuff:
G:\120GB\60GB\20GB\4GB If I ever upgrade my 300GB to something bigger, everything on the 300GB will go into a folder called 300GB on the newer 500GB drive for example, which will contain 120GB inside that, and 60GB inside that.... :)

And as an added layer of protection, I have software that mirrors my entire computer (well, select folders and subfolders of importance) over to my Server, which has a software Raid 1 set. So it has 2 identical hard drives of it. So in reality, I always have 3 copies of all my important stuff for redundancy of a failed drive, or fried computer. :) Call me paranoid, but some of my stuff I just couldn't part with, which is why I sometimes think how some people have a hard drive crash and loose everything, I couldn't imagine that happening... Though I guess I'm a bit of a hoarder, so it has its downfalls, I'm almost in need of getting 2 more 1TB drives to add to my server as my 1.2TB is slowly running out.

But a printer merely gives you a copy, a duplicate, a projection made from something which is now not even in it's original format, let alone IS original in any way. As we all (should) know, artists sell prints and they often sell for a mere fraction of what the original sells for - and the reason for that is that the original is an original - there is only one and it is the most valuable. ;)

Ah, so people shouldn't own inferior exact copies? Art only for those that can afford it! Those who can afford the only real art.
The fact you use a word like "projection" is telling. It's ethereal. You're talking about art in a very semi-spiritual sense, and if we broach that arena all works are never the same as they were. Even an original may be marked and marred by the passage of time, so at what point does it become no longer Original? And how is that aging process really different from transferring a digital piece onto paper? Or someone setting up a screen-printing system to use as part of an artwork? Is the original what went into the printer filters, or what comes out?

There's also a flaw in your argument here. You sell the original, you can only sell it once. You can sell as many prints as people will buy. Maybe less individually than a single original, but you can earn many times the amount selling reproductions. And with modern printing techniques, unless you're working with textured media, there's no functional difference between master and copy.
And what if an artist signs the prints? Makes them limited edition? Unique enough yet?

You speak as if I believe prints have zero value and no purpose. I can understand people who want prints, and that's fine, but I don't want them. I collect original pieces. Yes an artist can replicate prints forever and continue to make money from them forever, but by foregoing the creation of an original traditional media piece, you lose extra revenue potential and the phenomena of having that piece appreciate and be placed in a gallery as a unique piece of fine art. There's a sense of pride and entitlement that's lost without the backing of a traditional media original, even if you don't own the original anymore, it's OUT THERE somewhere, in one place, possessed by one individual or organization, coveted and adored.

You say my logic is flawed, but I say yours is. You claim there is no FUNCTIONAL difference between master and copy - and how can you say that when there is a VAST functional difference? The intrinsic value of the original as a hand-made and unique material object that sired every copy in existence alone garners it functional superiority and a value superiority on the market. The real question here is: do you prefer to merely own the IMAGE of art, or to really own the art itself. The whole point of my post is simply to say I prefer to own the art itself, and not a reproduction.

CDs have an estimated lifespan of only 10-20 years, the medium projected reliability span of CDs and DVDs is a mere 15 years. Taken care of and archived, they MAY last up to 150 years at best projections, but they have no more permanence than a hard disk or tape or re-writable RAM. In fact, the very technology is in itself flawed, to attempt to store so much data in such a small space lends itself to easy corruption over time - a few molecules shifting or some magnetic poles changing or some copper oxidizing and you've just lost a bit of data. Mow multiply that by the millions of "bits" on those digital data storage formats and multiply by time and space... Good luck with that lifespan!

The ONLY viable potential for digital media survival and longevity involves it being duplicated and passed from one network device to another and continuing to spread and be passed on over generations of network evolutions. Basically a digital meme, if you will. And once again, good luck with anything obscure or not considered of enough cultural/social significance surviving in that longevity scenario either.

As for your (weak) argument concerning uniqueness... I'm almost certainly going to immediately COPY the image in a vain attempt to back it up or save it from catastrophic failure, and almost certainly going to give it to friends or family or even upload it somewhere public or semi-public for show-and-tell. You've just destroyed any "uniqueness" several times over. It's only unique if there's only ONE SOURCE COPY PERIOD, and since digital media lends itself to such simple and easy duplication... Where's the uniqueness and worth in that?

So your point is that you can't make copies of traditional media?

My point is that the copies wouldn't be as valuable or retain that value over time.

Worthless?

They switched all the concept art at my company to digital a couple years ago because it's easier for storage, to pass around to all the modelers and artists, etc etc. SO many upsides to it. An awesome artist got paid a lot of good money to make that art and beautiful games were produced off of it... DID YOU FORGET ABOUT THE ENTIRETY OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY??? o.O

Art is used for thousands of reasons.

The entertainment industry is pretty much RUN on art. Nowadays we are run on specifically DIGITAL art! We don't waste as much paper anymore either. ;) OR art supplies! haha.

Storyboards, character art, concept art, covers, posters, advertising, etc. That all starts out as someone's digital painting.

It also lasts a lot longer. All the stuff from the old games is sitting in a pile in a cabinet getting old and discolored.

Music has also been stored digitally for quite a while as well... do you hate electronic music too?

Some people also don't post their digital work to the internet. :| Some just make one of a kind prints and sell the one print at a very high price and that's the end of it!

Also traditionally speaking, lithographs, printmaking, and re-painting copies of your own original traditional media piece has been around for many many years.

I don't know why you would ever get this idea. I know freedom if expression and opinion, but... from my standpoint it's fiction and fact.

I think you completely missed the whole point and perspective of my argument. =) I will begin by saying I happen to work in the entertainment industry as a professional UI/UX developer and am quite familiar with the tools of the trade and how digital media and software allow us to make amazing entertainment experiences. However, we're in the business of making one-time smash-hits based on CULTURAL AND SOCIAL value in the product, not trying to profit by creating original works that carry self-imposed value and uniqueness. It's a very different market and uses very different tools and tricks. If you look at how fast movies and games devalue over time (typically, some late-blooming games and movies are exceptions, because a limited print run prior to demand presence causes a backwards scenario, but that's extremely rare) it's actually quite sad. Compare that with original artwork, which often increases in value over time, and sometimes dramatically so. My argument was specifically aimed at fandom artists concerning fandom art, and specifically coming from the perspective of a collector. Hopefully that will help narrow the resolution so my argument is better understood. =)

That's why you should differ between: "usable art" and "viewable art"... I mean the art you use for certain purposes and the art you have just to look at it and feel prestigious that you own a masterpiece one of a kind. (even though there are many fake copies... still hand-made and looking almost identical to the original. I know that they are never perfectly the same but there are artists who can make an exact copy... and suddenly you don't know whether the art you have is so unique)

Art is art... requires skills... you can use it for many purposes and cast on different media. Long time ago art was painted on rocks in caves... does it mean that using canvas later is bad? Because all traditional art was made on rocks and now using canvas doesn't make them so special? Technology is developing... we get new ways to store content... At first we were using rocks and clay tablets to write text and paintings... then there had canvas and paper (bad paper!!! bad canvas!!! it's not traditional)... not we get digital storage... The only drawback of this media is that it's not explicit... you have to translate it and project. You just can't look at the tape and see what's there. But don't expect that any new kind of storage will have the same properties as the previously used ways of storing. Still digital art requires inspiration and good skills... It requires nice ideas and a lot of effort. Art is not what you see but the soul an artist put into a particular image.

lol - Whatever you say. =D

It almost seems like you said this to get artists who use digital media pissed off with you.

Reminds me of a discussion I engaged about a decade ago. Somebody asked if the computer would eventually replace the artist, and I responded that no, and the idea was absurd prima facie.

Zillions of years ago, primitive man drew on cave walls with bits of charcoal. When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel he did what? Drew on walls with charcoal, then followed it up with oils. When I painted a mural onto a wall several years ago, the first thing I did was lay it down in pencil (charcoal) before whipping out the acrylics and airbrush. Oils didn't make charcoal go away, acrylics and airbrush didn't rid us of oils, and the computer won't ever do what any of its predecessors did, at least not in the same way. What it will do is give voice and image to the artist (and I use that term broadly to include the illustrator, musician, architect, etc.) who is either unused, unskilled, or uncomfortable with the other methods but can bend the computer to his/her will. It's just one more tool in the artist's tool box, and adding another tool doesn't mean the others become obsolete.

Well-said. =)

So... a book has value when it is printed on dead trees, but not when stored on a hard drive?

You seriously think it's the paper that gives the thing value, and not the words? By this measure, a crate of blank photocopier paper is worth thousands of dollars, instead of dozens.

Can you really believe this?

If I'm a "book collector" and by "book" you mean "original manuscript written by the author in his handwriting", then yes a book has more value when on dead trees and not on a hard drive - by multiple orders of magnitude even. =D Your argument is chock full of fallacious presumptions and a complete neglect of the scope and perspective of the original argument. I'm talking about artwork, specifically furry artwork.

Books are artwork whether they're 'furry' or not and the same question applies: if paper is what lends value to such things, then why not just print out all your digital art and stick it in a frame? People pay money for prints of artwork (furry or otherwise) all the time.

Monetary value is measured only in price. If people will pay money for something, then it has value, by definition. If someone will pay me twenty bucks to walk their dog, then dog walking has a value of twenty dollars. If anyone is willing to pay $X for access to a piece of digital art, then the digital art has a value of $X, by simple matter of definition. Whether or not you'd pay $X for it personally is wholly irrelevant to the intrinsic value of anything. I'd never pay $200 for an iPhone but that doesn't mean iPhones are worthless. Nor are dog walking, blank copy paper, or access to media collections without value. People pay for them all the time.

People have paid good money for prints since printing technology existed. The original on physical media is generally worth more than prints, but copies have value as well. These copies are just printouts of stored information.

So I ask again: how does being reproduced on paper make a piece of art more valuable? Paper is cheap. Ink is cheap. It's labour and creativity that are at a premium.

Because traditional media is tangible, material creation.

What about service from a help desk? Is this tangible? What about a concert performance? What about admission to a theme park?

These things are without value?

You sure know how to generalize well and wander outside the context of a discussion, doncha? Everything you just mentioned is a service, not a product. You can't re-sell a service rendered, once it's been rendered, unless it's created or fabricated a material item, the service rendered was intangible and carries no value forward after being performed. This whole discussion is about art as a service being worth less than art as a manufactured material item.

Completely valueless, you said-- not just less valuable.

If by "generalize" you mean "make analogous examples" then yeah. People tend to do things like that when directed to "Discuss."

None of your examples thus far have been genuinely analogous...

Because they don't fit into your ridiculously narrowly defined discussion window of things that support your idea?

You said that digital art was valueless because it's "intangible" so I listed things that were intangible but valuable. Obviously I can't use digital art as an example, that's like using a word to define itself.

...

Digital media can be printed. :T

...and at that moment, becomes physical media.

So, wait, it doesn't matter if it was created digitally or if it was created traditionally, it all comes down to whether it's printed on paper or saved on a computer?

...

Well that's retarded. I thought this was a discussion on whether the creation of something using solely a computer and not traditional media made something of monetary value, not whether the thing itself being on paper or not made it valuable monetarily.

Hell, if that's the case, just have everybody print out the thing they made on the computer and send it out to people. Problem solved.

You're starting to understand, tho the use of "retarded" is unnecessary.

See my previous post about people recording information to media and then failing to maintain the means of reading the information.

lol. I could sculpt a dog out of a lump of shit, and by this person's reasoning, that would have more value, in almost every way, than a piece of digital art that had hours of work and passion put into it. Because, y'know, you can TOUCH shit, that makes it instantly more artistically valuable!!11
Once again, all Im seeing from this person is 'baaaaw, I find digital art hard to do so Im going to sour grapes all over everyone who is competant at it!!!'

But then it's not an original. Then it's not art. Then it's just a printed copy. Tangential argument. =/

Didn't say it was original or art. Said it was physical media.

Quote me correctly, bee-yotch!!

Ouch, bizzam! I got put in my place. =/

But as an aside, I also don't think people should treat prints like that as carrying much value. I suppose my argument should have been widened to include original pieces of traditional art...

No worries, friend. Just givin' ya stick!

The one bendy bit with this conversation is the use of "value," which presupposes the questions, "of what value?" and "to whom?"

Take, for instance, Megan's Wish, a piece I did about a decade ago. From what I've read it had a tremendous emotional impact on a number of people, and I continue to receive mail from folks who appreciate it. But the true value of that piece is that the original and the other two pieces in the trilogy (plus their subsequent print sales) helped me raise money for the National Association for Children of Alcoholics.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1830168/

We use our powers for good.

That's fucking amazing and upstanding and I personally applaud you for your charity and effort! But then, I've always known that you are a very upstanding and respectable person. ;)

But to the topic at hand, do you feel they would have sold for as much had they been digital and not traditional pieces? Do you think whoever bought them had they been digital and not traditional pieces would feel they really had something of value to show for their contribution to your work and the NACA?

If they were digital, they'd be printouts and no one would be more unique than the other. That would have detracted from their value in a fiscal sense, but maybe not in a social sense, which is what I was going for.

Ah.

I have a friend who thinks just like you.

A while ago I had an argument with her about the value of digital art, and just like you, she claimed it was worth less because it's only a copy, and she claimed that digital art was not really art, it was "digital", as if it would take no work to do it and as if you wouldn't be painting or drawing.

But honestly, where is the difference if you drew the art especially for the person you give it to?
It's just as good as something traditional.

Oh yeahhh, since you're pulling the "it's only a copy"-card, here some art history for you:

Between 1890 and 1905 Art Nouveau (also known as Jugendstil) was developed, it came from all the artists who were sick of the growing industry and wanted to go back to traditional art and handwork.

And pretty much all Jugendstil-art is, in fact, printed.
So it's not a new-age-new-media thing, it's been there for hundreds of years. And it never had more or less value just because they were prints/copies.

The name Alphone Mucha should ring a bell. He was pretty popular back there, but all he did were prints and copies :)

Just saying.

Somehow I doubt an original Picasso painting would ever be sold for less than a Mucha print... And I'm talking the least valuable Picasso versus the most valuable Mucha. Case in point, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

That's not the point, and even if it was the point, we both don't know the price of an Mucha original (yes, even though it was printed/a copy, it still counts as a original) neither of an Picasso original.
It's only your conclusion.

Secondly, it's not even fair game because Picasso's a lot more famous than Mucha.
(and we both know that the more famous an artist the more value does their work have, regardless of the media they used)

Well, since we can't work anything out in the vast land of realistic conjecture I'll fall back to my smaller personal context. *I* will not pay to purchase "digital media" unless it's made for me or has some greater cultural or societal purpose such as what Esteban has done in the past. And since it carries no monetary/estate value forward, even then I would pay much less for it than the same piece in a traditional media format. There's nothing like an original traditional piece, especially to a wise collector or investor.

Well, nobody forces you
And of course there's nothing wrong with you personally prefering traditional art over digital art :)

Lol for someone who thinks digital media is worthless you sure enjoy all that digitally created dog dick in your favs.

You're my new best friend.

This is awesome.

You win an award.

Oh cool, I'm honored to have trolls in here, it's great that this topic was interesting enough to draw the irk of lulz and chan trolls. =D And yeah, I enjoy digitally created dog dick for it's social and cultural value, that doesn't mean it has any inherent monetary value to me though, nor should it to anyone. =)

So you just wanna have your cake and eat it too?

What about all those porn directors and actors out there? I guess they don't deserve any money either because they're creating art for the social and cultural value. For that matter people who create public art such as statues and murals and tattooists who create personal body art don't deserve anything either because they may have used a digital process somewhere along the line to complete the product. GUESS ALL ART SHOULD BE FREE! ART IS FOR FUN WHY ARE WE PAYING THESE HIPPY ARTISTS REAL MONEY?? IT'S NOT LIKE HARDWORK AND SKILL IS INVOLVED!

The media isn't what makes the art: what makes the art is the skill, effort, and vision of the artist. A true artist can create something appealing regardless of the media, and media alone should not define the worth of the piece. Saying digital art means nothing is like saying a stagnant oil painting is inherently more beautiful and worth more than a well rendered tattoo or a an animated feature film. If it takes skill, talent, and hardwork to create something, THEN IT IS ART! Doesn't matter if it's on a canvas or a computer screen or a tv.

AND REMEMBER: an artist can't create if they're dead! They should eat regularly and live under a roof with water and heat. All that nice stuff costs a lot of money, so it's unfair to put down artists who decide to create digital work as a way of saving money on supplies and postage. The poor bastards slash their prices enough as it is.

---

Sounds to me like you're one of those "art critics" who can sit there and bitch about other people's work and about how fruitless their labors are and how much better this subject is compared to this subject, etc. ALL THE WHILE you yourself can't draw at all and have NO IDEA what real artists go through to do what they do. Ever try to render fur in photoshop? Ever try to ink letters on a piece of cardstock? PROBABLY NOT! :S

So you can sit around and tell us that digital art is worthless and how we should all agree with you, but you know what? Where's the proof? How are you proving to us that real media is god and digital media is worthless? Clearly a lot of people disagree with you and you're not doing a good job of persuading them. Maybe it's because your opinion as a talentless whiner has no weight? Maaaaaaaaaaaybe you should get off the internet and go buy some watercolors and watercolor paper, or open up GASP photoshop, sit down, and do some fucking art? Maybe? Lemme know how it works out.

Wow, you have created a veritable mountain of presumptions and excrement to try to sort through and respond to individually... =/ I would love to respond to each point in turn, however I don't have the time and patience to write an autobiography for you. So I will try to focus on one key point: Digital art cannot be traded, it is not a good or commodity, it does not materially exist. If I pay you for the service of rendering something digitally, then what a fool I would be to make such an investment, because to do so would simply be flushing money down an inconceivable black hole of immaterial non-existence - because I have nothing in return for my dollars. Certainly the artist has done some work, and should not go unpaid, but then we're not saying the ARTIST is the fool here - but the commissioner. And any artist who panders to fools for money, well... Read the Francisco d'Anconia excerpt linked above by Esteban, it's incredibly enlightening with regards to the value of money. =)

Whoops, actually that link is BELOW here, not above. My bad.

Wow I guess you're a fool for spending close to $20,000 a year on furry art commissions then, many of which are digital. Sounds like you just want your dog porn for free. =/

Well, if we're going to toss around presumptuous and condescending remarks then I will add that you're a shallow, thoughtless mendicant and a pretty pathetic troll to boot. =/

Brb digging for reasons to care about a furry's opinion on what constitutes as worthwhile art. I'll let you know if I find something.

BRB while I LOL for getting trolled by a non-furry on a furry site and trying to figure out why a non-furry should come to a furry site and be respected or why furries should care what a retarded out-of-genre troll thinks. I'll let you know when my ROTFLMAO subsides.

I can be an artist without being a furry. HARD TO BELIEVE but it's true! L2troll loolz.

"I enjoy digitally created dog dick for it's social and cultural value, that doesn't mean it has any inherent monetary value to me though, nor should it to anyone."

WRONG. One mans (or dogs, dragons, or whatever you identify online as) opinion does not count for others. We pay for what we feel there is value in buddy.

You think digital art is worthless on a MONETARY view, and I don't. Digital art can be as valuable as traditional art as long as the right amount of work has gone into it.

I have the right to express and exert my opinion like anyone else, pal. =)

Correct. Unfortunately the few words of yours that I quoted kinda made it seem otherwise. :/

Rather, a bit more than a simple opinion.

That's cool, I'll just be over here continuing to make mad $$$ off digital art whenever I please.

More power to you, there are MANY fools in the world, and they are soon parted with their money. =) Sadly for you, they don't tend to make much money, kinda goes along with the being fools part of the equation. But hey, there are easily two markets here: quantity and quality. You're more than welcome to shop for the quantity market and I'll happily shop the quality market. =D

If animal dick is what passes for quality, then I'll gladly be a quantity-pumping hack.

... and you say this on a furry site. As if you are somehow not a part of it. Wow. Someone needs a fucking reality-check upside the head, lol. =D

I was judging based off your favorites, which tend to center around the stuff. The thing is, I have nothing really against furry porn. I've drawn the stuff myself anyways, and if you look at my own work you'll notice a heavy dose of kink in most of my furry art. But I don't post stuff here to pimp quality or make money - I do that elsewhere in more mainstream venues, with entirely different art. The stuff I post here is just fun stuff I do in the evenings or weekends on my own time when I'm not drawing for others, and want to party with my pants off without giving a fuck if other people like it or not, so I make no claims about it being anything more special than everything else around here.

What I AM saying is that nobody here has room to snob about what kind of visual art medium is worthless and expect to be taken seriously. If this were Comic-Con, Sijun, Massive Black or something like that, then it'd be another story. Otherwise, I just see a bunch of pretentious lard baron bullshit.

Well, I can only think of a few people who could possibly be taken as seriously or more serious than me within a furry context. And from personal discussions I've had with them (not to mention many long-time and well-established furry artists who are also in larger fandoms as well) they are of the same mind. Digital artwork simply does not carry as much inherent value. Is it worthless? Only to those who do not have specific cultural or sentimental attachment - which is typically everyone but the artist and the person or people it was created for.

If you REALLY want to hop the quality market, then you should buy what is good quality. Medium shouldn't matter.

Reword better plz

Your opinion is worthless, and money carries more weight C:

"Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one, and they all stink!"

As for money, I refer to the brilliant explanation of one Francisco d'Anconia: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826

Mmmph, good stuff there. =)

My opinion is worthless in most circumstances, I totally agree. And I exercise the weight of money by spending about $20,000 every year on furry art. Which is when my opinion begins to carry some weight - you see there's a market out there which wants that money and my business. So for those who want my money, my opinion suddenly becomes fairly useful for turning a profit. ;)

Wow.

I'm going to be honest and say I find that pretty pathetic. I guess if you live on your own and not in Mommy and Daddy's basement, it'd be less pathetic...

No, what would be pathetic is any "mommy and daddy" who would give a free ride to a child who spends that much money on art instead of getting their own place, lol. =D Also, I'm not sure the artists whose work I buy finds it to be pathetic that I give them my money, I think they are usually pretty appreciative on the contrary. I suppose the line between trolling and making a genuine and rational argument is very fine indeed though. ;)

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate my repeat customers 100%. I just wouldn't be bragging about spending an entire year's salary on a luxury item like furry art/ porn. (A very low end salary, but you get my drift.) It's not necessarily a badge of honor in all things considered. Maybe if it was something akin to classical paintings...

Well, consider that it's a small fraction of my annual income and that much of the amount I quoted is spent enabling artists to sell their work because I am a patron of the arts and simply want to help them help themselves and the community. I'm guessing you're new to who I am, but a brief background is that I built and have paid for FurBuy for over 10 years now and it has a pretty hefty price tag. Some is also lost in travel to attend conventions to purchase the art as well, since convention art shows seem to be a moratorium on free and open fair trade despite living in the age of the information superhighway. A badge of honor? Good sir or madam, I value my money very much, and by spending it to purchase works of art crafted by skilled hands I'm doing exactly honor to them and my word on my money. Why shouldn't I wear that honor proudly?

Despite the fact that I am a member of furaffinity and post here regularly, I do not care about 'who is who' in this fandom. In fact, internet popularity is fleeting. You may wear it as a badge of honor, but that's where our differences in opinion are. Should I wear the fact that I draw porn for so many people as a badge of honor?

Maybe I don't take this fandom as seriously as some of you people do. I don't even consider myself a furry.

Well, then that seriously devalues your worth and potential in the fandom. =/ Why even come here and attempt to contribute to the culture if it doesn't even interest you? Are you that desperate for money or attention or... Well, whatever you're looking for here?

I'm not here for attention or money. I love my work. It just so happens that I enjoy drawing animals more so than people. The idea of an anthro intrigued me, so I gave it a shot. I draw whatever comes to mind because I love to. If someone enjoys it, too, then hey, that's great. But if no one looks at it or cares, then it doesn't matter to me. I do not need validation for my work. The process of creating it is validation enough.

Anyway, I've managed to find a good number of people who have helped me grow artistically from here and on livejournal. I have no interest in dressing up like an animal, or associating my personality as one. Arc the lioness is simply an avatar. She isn't me or anything.

If someone wants to pay me to bring an idea from their head to life, then I'd be thrilled to. I know not everyone can draw, so it does make me happy to know I've managed to make someone's dream. :) I have no qualms about sexuality, so the idea of drawing porn is not displeasing. I guess you can say I'm just conservative. I would definitely not walk into my real job and say, "Hey guys, I drew some awesome images this weekend!"

This is probably clear as mud.

Then why do you pay for digital commissions if you believe digital work has no value?

Excellent question! =) I was wondering when and iff this one would pop-up after I made my argument. I'll point out in boldface text a trailing qualifier to my argument, and explain in more detail:

"YOUR DIGITAL MEDIA IS COMPLETELY WITHOUT VALUE TO ME OUTSIDE OF ITS CULTURAL AND SENTIMENTAL VALUE."

Sometimes the sentimental and cultural value of having a digital piece commissioned outweighs the lack of ongoing material value in the piece. But I would definitely say that, as a collector, traditional pieces carry more value both initially and over time, so they demand better consideration for purchase. With a digital piece I may get a commission merely for entertainment or amusement purposes with no intention of long-term estate value, however I will almost certainly never pay as much as if it were a traditional piece and I do pay traditional artists handsomely for their work.

Hm, I think you need to make that much clearer in your original entry.

All I did is boldface part of a line that was already there... How much more clear can I make it?

After explaining it like you did above it makes a lot more sense.

Also as an aside.. I never plan on reselling any of the traditional art I have commissioned and gotten from people so to me, it's worth the same. XD

Well, something does not have to be sold to have more inherent material value. =) It's an investment either way, and you'd be all the wiser to spend your money on an investment that carries the ability to be used as money down the road if needed than to invest in something immaterial that doesn't materially exist and carry resale value. The point of my argument is not necessarily to belittle digital artists and praise traditionalists, but to warn digital artists about the path they are on and educate them about a path that most likely leads to greater value for their labor. At least in this patron's consideration. =)

Yup, what Synchra said. You need to be more specific, especially when your opinion comes off as arrogant and hypocritical as it did.

Well, I didn't know the troll patrol was coming to my town, I figured this was more or less only going to be seen by my watchers, which is 98% people who know me or know of me enough to be able to assume the context and perspective. I suppose anything can sound mighty pretentious when taken completely out of context...

Ah, so someone having a contrary opinion as strong as yours is trolling now?

Gotcha.

Pardon me? I believe you were the one who started the name-calling about arrogance and hypocrisy... A contrary opinion based on sound logic and reason would be one thing, but one laced with words of inflammation and assault are something quite different and uncivil. I asked for a discussion, not a flame-war.

The key words would have been "come off as". Now that you've explained yourself, you've become much clearer, which is something I stated in the comment that you've claimed that I called you names in.

So what about the calling me pathetic then? Was that just sentimental humor? ;D

I found the situation pathetic, not you.

Reading comprehension is such a gift, isn't it?

Taking a look at this makes me think you put too much thought into the wording of this journal. Not trying to sound nasty or anything but what you say here almost seems a bit different than your original journal/some of your other comments. O_o

Well, I don't mean to come off judgmental or critical here, but perhaps you're reading too deeply into things. It's just a discussion thread, ya know, for discussion. I expect to see the full gambit of perspectives taken, and perhaps at times I stand in different points for the sake of debate or discussion.

Perhaps I am, perhaps I'M not. Perhaps YOU came off too strong for a discussion, perhaps YOU didn't.

That's the joy of life. Contradictions and conflicts. Personally I feel I didn't read too deeply because reading it again and again I see an incredibly strong opinion combined with comments that ALMOST (in my mind) make you look like an ass, and at the same time make you look like an interesting individual to talk to, and a cool person.

It probably depends on the comment, the context, the mood and attitude of those who read and write your comments but whatever. I've already started saying too much on a mere reply XD

A mere reply... Because nothing interesting or exciting ever happens in replies. ;D

Quite so! XD

I can see what you are trying to say, but... on personal point it's pretty meh to me, same as the way you come off, especially with the title.
Personally if I do traditional commission/commission someone I don't neccesarily mail/want the original and probably trash it so though it started as a traditional thing it ends up being "worthless". I collect things too but I don't generally put monetary value on anything based only to the fact that I can hold it in my hands.
Only thing different with digital is that I can share it easier, and if I'm able to share all my real life arts in the same way (like with wood/texture printing, photocopies) I'll do it.

Unless you're painting with liquid gold, traditional art has no intrinsic value other than its cultural and sentimental value.
That's the art business for you. Making money out of something worthless is as easy as finding the right chump to pay for it.

~*~The true artist makes worthless shit for rich people to buy~*~

Why are you on FA then? lol

Because FA doesn't cost me anything. Public works are nice. =)

I think that this is a great topic and could be viewed in many different ways.

I do believe and see that traditional art has more value to it and more likely will always have more value to it. On that note, digital art has its own unique value based on how it is done. For example, a popular artist that only does digital work can change the value of the art pieces simply by printing the art piece out and traditional signs the art and dates it as an original print, or choose to print out 10 and print only 10 being signed, dated, and numbered. That does add value to the art. Sure, somebody else can make a print off the internet if displayed, but it will not be signed by the artist giving it only print value.

To add value to my point. An actor is a type of artist. You can print a picture of an actor from the internet any day of the week, but if the actor is popular and well known and signs the print, it becomes valuable. You can add this to any type of print or digital media.

Take a well known artist in the furry community that does traditional art like and decides not to sell traditional art anymore, but will be more than happy to make signed prints of digital art, there could easily be value there.

The value to anything is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

I'm certainly not arguing against your point at all, quite the contrary! Everything which you said adds value ends up being a material item which can be bought, sold and traded over the long term. However, a print should still never exceed the value of an original for one important reason: the original is utterly unique, it is the SOURCE of every print and every digital copy. Therefore it should always retain more value, it is the producia ultima and the apex of the item. Even if all digital or printed copies are lost or destroyed, the original is most likely to remain because it is most valued.

My only 2 cents about this subject is that trads and digitals have one valuable thing in common: what the picture looks like. That's all that matters to me.

you're entitled to your own set of opinions but not your own set of facts. Fact of the matter is that any media has value if it's worth something to somebody

and not just social or artistic value. If somebody pays money for it, then the libertarian in you should see it as an expression of the free market doing its thang

I happen to be a free market Libertarian, yes. However, I am also an investor, and I choose where and how to spend my money based on the best return and long term economic value for my dollars spent. And that happens to be in traditional art, not digital. =)

I figure if the people making digital art are making money off that system then that's their "problem", hahah

You know what they say about fools and their money... Soon parted. =)

Oh and those fools accidentally put a value on it.

As a stock image creator, I have to whole-heartedly agree. Not only are my digitally-created works bought and paid for online, but the buyers use them in a multitude of ways; sometimes it's printed, but sometimes it stays digital and gets added to various multimedia applications. See: http://www.istockphoto.com/Kattywampus .
Also, try going on the forums on there and saying what you just said, and see what happens.

Haha, I also need to rid myself of all these damned distractions, because I MEANT to say "whole-heartedly DISAGREE"..

Your stock photos and media are worthless to me as a collector. I never said that nobody will pay for them or that they are worthless to everyone, I said:

"YOUR DIGITAL MEDIA IS COMPLETELY WITHOUT VALUE TO ME OUTSIDE OF ITS CULTURAL AND SENTIMENTAL VALUE"

If you make money on your digital media, then that's great, bully for you! Then the free market works and your work isn't going without respect in the form of greenbacks. But I do sort of feel bad for the fools who'd invest in such, my guess is that most of the time they realize down the road that it was a poor investment because what they purchases immediately lost any value and probably didn't earn them any profit. Then again, they probably never even noticed that, consumer society spends blindly on whims and compulsions and rarely ever does so with any wisdom or smarts. Congratulations for fooling the fools, it was indeed probably quite a challenge! Meanwhile I've suckered you into a poorly thought-out response by using a sensational headline and your neglect to carefully read the fine print. ;)

Okay, fine, you win. It's worthless to you in digital form. But the point of vector graphics is, they can be used in many different ways(without losing quality), digital or not. Embroidery, vinyl stickers, billboards, flash animations--it's endless. (Hell, one of those designs ended up as tattoos!) Don't feel sorry for my clients, though, 'cause they got a pretty spankin' deal. And they certainly weren't purchased on a whim. How's it not earn them a profit if it causes their ads get noticed?

Also, as a collector of rarities and one-of-a-kind artwork, myself, I gotta sit back and think--damn, it'd suck if the house caught fire.

you know what I like the most about vector art? It can create a bunch of "readymades" that are collectable for their pop culture value 8)

Like bumper stickers :0

I still want this as a bumper sticker: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1821510/

Unfortunately, the same can be said about compootars catching the spark. :c

Or worse, an uprotected laptop CRASHING DOWN TO EARTH, as opposed to a sketchbook that just flops to the (hopefully dry) earth.

Still, that's not enough to warrant complete dismissal of value when trads and digital are technically of equal importance and/or value, and should be used in tandem when the situation calls for it. That's like hearing a repeat of Bernie Stolar's No-2D, No-RPG games policy that tipped the iceberg of Sega's downfall.

This is true..! However, that's why I have an obscene amount of copies backed up.

I don't need a lesson in the usefulness of vector graphics, I happen to be a UI designer by trade and primarily work in Illustrator, WPF/Silverlight and XNA, which are all vector-based engines. =) For the industries they are used in, they are indispensable, but to a collector they are virtually worthless because there is no unique original to be owned which will appreciate in value and be able to be sold or traded for that appreciated value over time. If you give me a COPY, then you also keep a copy, which devalues the worth of my copy - it is not unique and one-of-a-kind.

Concerning my home burning down - it would be a travesty yes, but that's why I have a hefty homeowner's insurance policy to cover any and all damages in the event some "act of god" destroys my collection. I won't get the art back, but I will get the money (value) back. I doubt any insurance would cover the loss of any digital art I had purchased or acquired in that event, quite honestly. ;D

I'm pretty sure the Nike logo is a vector graphic that has been sold and traded for an obscenely huge value over time. And no one else uses it. Haha!

Money bedamned if something one-of-a-kind is lost.

"it carries no uniqueness, it carries no entitlement, it carries no empowerment"

lol okay, man.

what I wanted to say was
"what makes you think this?"
gret job touchpad

Watch the data on my hard-drive sparkle. A myriad of tiny points arranged in an incredibly delicate and elaborate order. I drew some cub porn - take your electron microscope and notice the elegant, swooping patterns it has created, the whorls and loops of data. Is this not art? Is this not creativity?

I reject your opinions, and posit that as the mere creation of my digital art creates complex, beautiful, abstract art in the real world, digital art is, in fact, of worth.

Hmm.

i loled

I read most of this and basicly got this .. orignal art.. done by hand on paper has more meaning that digital art. Now correct me on this if I'm wrong. I'll wait to say more till I'm sure I got this right so not to make a fool of myself.

No, not more meaning, more long-term monetary value and capability to appreciate over time. To be sold for more than the price it was purchased for. Make sense?

a I gotcha now, I have nothing to add to this then atleast not at this point.

I scrolled past most of the comments due to tl;dr.

I understand your point, but I want to point out something realistic. Artists on here post their digital works online as a means of creating a fanbase, and forming a following. By doing this, they have a pool of people that would gladly commission them and a body who would, theoretically, bid on that person's art if sold through an auction. What I mean is, perhaps posting digital things online robs them of their monetary value, but it's not stupid to post digital art online at all.

If you already understood that, then excuse me. :B

Yeah, I understand that. My point is a warning to artists who do ONLY digital art, because they are missing out on a major part of the market which is very important for value and permanence of any appreciable sort. If all someone does is digital art, then they'll never cash in on the treasure trove of selling originals.

Alright then, I guess you're not as dumb as some people are claiming. I guess it was just your word choice in the journal that put some people off.

Aiight, later.

I've dabbled in both digital and real media for years, but have found digital art to be much more profitable for me than selling my original work. It's what people want these days and it saves me money on expensive art supplies, so I don't believe I'm missing out too much when it comes to $$.

When I go to major conventions such as FC and AC, there are a lot of beautiful, original pieces that go unsold (I'm not counting sketchbook commissions or con badges since they're on such a small scale). Why? Let's face it, most furries are cheap and typically can't afford the high-dollar stuff since a good portion of their money has to be spent on travel, motel, registration and food expenses. Also, I wish I had a dollar every time I heard someone say.. "Man, I'd bid on that but I can't afford the shipping." ..or.. "Awww, I'd take that piece home but I'm ashamed of customs seeing it." ..So sometimes the tangible aspect of a piece can get in the way of a piece being sold, as silly as it may seem. If all of these people could afford original art, I still think the demand for digital will be about the same. On that note, yes, digital is usually faster and easier for most artists to manage. A lot of commissioners are rather impatient and picky, so going digital gives the artist much more freedom and flexibility if they have to make multiple sketches, color changes, or other tweaks to make the customer 100% happy. Unfortunately, commissioners aren't the only ones with a limited amount of money. Not all artists can afford reasonable art supplies. ^^'

Digital is simply a different medium, and a lot of people desire it because it's so easily shared, especially since the furry subculture is very internet-based to begin with. I don't find any of my customers to be "fools" since they're still paying for the time and effort I'm putting in. Some people try to gather as many commissions of their character as they possibly can for a quick popularity boost, and that's a good investment if they want to advertise something in the long run. For most, the furry subculture is about image. Whether the art is digital or painted in oils, it's the visual end product that people are looking for. A lot of people pay for digital commissions. Does that make them foolish? I wouldn't say so.

I can't think of any artist who does ONLY digital art aside from wannabe beginner artists who are too caught up with the Photoshop smudge tool and lens flare filter. Typically, artists who are worthwhile and know what they're doing rarely ever stick to one medium. ^^

I'm sure you get plenty of people dropping assloads of cash on your digital commissions - after all you still hold the record of $4,000 on FurBuy and it was for a digital piece. GamiCross/DarkNekoGami holds the number two slot at $3,000 and it was also a digital piece. There's definitely a market and people definitely sometimes spend major sums of money on digital work, but this journal is mainly about m personal perspective. Do I think people who pay that much for digital work are fools? Absolutely, but that's just my opinion. When it comes to the money I pay for artwork, I'm going to stick with traditional for my greenbacks to support art that I can collect and will last a lifetime or more.

While I do both and there IS a noticable price difference between my digital and traditional works, I don't think digital art is entirely worthless. There are whole industries, such as the concept art industry, that revolve around it. I apply the same techniques to my digital art that I do to my real media paintings and both mediums definitely require skill and patience. I have found actually, that I can transport things I learn via digital art into my traditional media, but that may be largely due to the fact that I tackle digital like a painting and do not rely on filters. Digital does have some added luxuries such as layers, undo, and the ability to move elements around as needed, where as with a painting, if you mess up you're sort of SOL.

I use digital commissions as a means of a day to day income for bills and general spending, as well as to finance my traditional media works. I sometimes offer my realism works as well for a higher price, although doing realism digitally has taken an awful toll on my wrist and left me with crippling pains lasting almost a month. That downtime was certainly a drag, and I find that traditional media does not strain my wrist at all, no matter how many hours I work. I also agree with orange04 on the cost issue. I make my works with conservation in mind, so I only use acid free, archival supports, lightfast pigments, and then frame with acid free mat board under museum glass. I currently have three completed wildlife paintings that are in storage because I'd be looking at around $1,200-$1,500 to frame all three pieces, and that is going the DIY method (buying the frame, cutting my own mats, etc). It is definitely easier on the wallet to churn out digital media, but at the same time the price of digital tends to be lower as well. I would never price my digital media the same as my traditional works, but I don't value them the same anyhow. Then again digital artists don't need to worry about the gallery taking 30-50% of their sale price either. ;)


Personally, I am a traditional artist and if money wasn't an issue, I'd do nothing but paint all day and use digital art for conceptualization mostly, or cute doodles and ideas to be shared among friends when I want to unwind from a long day of painting. I would however like to one day see digital art respected and exhibited in galleries the way traditional art is and recognized as a valid art form some day. Much like photography, there is no tangible 'original', since I can take my negatives and print as many in the dark room as I want, but it is still a valued art form. Digital deserves the same, I think.

Digital taught me a lot and I will never discredit the medium (except those filter jockeys who think that filtering a photo is art) but painting with real media just makes me happy and satisfied with the end result in a way that nothing else does.

I find that traditional media does not strain my wrist at all, no matter how many hours I work.

That is because the hand movements are much less monotonous and call for more changes in wrist position when painting with traditional media - in a paint program the movements are essentially the same for every tool you use, and even for changing tools. You are straining your wrist because with digital painting, you don't get to make all those little motions of taking the other brush, washing the current one, mixing the paint etc., all you do is performed with the same strokes of the pen over the tablet. You may try to have some squeeze toy, or even a few of them of varying softness/moldability around while painting digitally and go for it every now and then to relieve the stress from your wrist - maybe it'll help some! *^^*

Negatives were, actually, pretty tangible as originals of photography, as the contract could require the photographer to give the negatives of commissioned/bought photos to the commissioner/buyer. But now with the digital photography it have become less tangible, yes. Though it never prevents the digital photos to hit the exhibitions and galleries, and I guess the same will be true soon (if not already, at least in some cases) for digital art :)

Having carefully read your initial topic and the discussion arisen by it, I've come to think that while you have a reason to distinct between the digital and traditional art's value, I have to disagree on the basis of this distinction. As I see it, it's not the ability of such or such media to create an unique original of long-lasting, increasing monetary value, but the complexity of obtaining such an original.

Firs of all, I'd like to point out a point of view that was mentioned, but not precisely formulated in the above discussion: that the art piece can be created as either a service, or an item. And when a digital art commission is created as service - a service of rendering a commissioner's vision into viewable media, it is very natural when the commissioner pays for that service. People do pay great amounts of money to experience things - they visit foreign countries, eat at expensive and unusual restaurants, jump off bridges on banjo ropes etc. - and the amount of money spent on such things can be quite big. People love experiences, it's in the human nature to crave them, and what is a better experience than to have the ventures of your imagination, the visions of your soul put to a form that can be shown to others? That is what digital art commissioners par for, I believe.

Then, I'd like to point out that a unique original of a digital piece can, to my perception, exist. While furry art trade is not vastly regulated by legal means, in the wider industry a uniqueness of a digital creation can be readily created by law. You must have a more first-hand experience with this concept as you work in the industry, so I am ready to be corrected at this assumption, but isn't the creator of a logo, or a design, or digital illustration bound by law to never distribute the original in any form that may be used towards the same means as it is used by the commissioner of such work? And more so, isn't it prohibited by law to copy and use such logo, design etc. for anyone but the copyright holder? Thus, for all means and ends, and especially when the monetary/investment value is considered, such a digital piece may be seen as unique original. This state is created not by the existence of the sole tangible original, but by the legal environment, but for the means of monetary value it's veritably the same. A good example of this is given above - the Adidas logo, along with the trade mark/brand, is a very good investment while we cannot point to the tangible, unique original of it.

Similarly, when an illustration is done by an artist for a magazine cover, an appearance of print-worthy copy anywhere will be a serious fraud against the contract, at least in most cases. Thus, despite the fact that it appears in millions of printed copies, it still retains its investment value (a good example of this would be a magazine reprinting one of his old covers as a centerfold or even for a "vintage" value - noone else can do it but this image's copyright holder).

In furry community, this way of creating an unique original out of a digital drawing can take a form of selling the unique (or limited), signed print - which is actually is a non-registered form of the same legal procedure where and artist is obliged to never distribute the original in any other form or mean.

Thus, 1) there are two ways to create commission art - as a service or as an item, with the purposes differing between them, and both being wholly understandable and respectable 2)an unique original of the digital piece can be created by the legal environment, agreement, or some other additional action.

If we look at these two statements and all the respective above discussion then, we will see that the only difference between digital and real media art is that in real media, the tangible and unique original is produced, inevitably, through the very act of artistic creation, while in digital media, an arbitrarily large number of exact copies of original can be created, and there is a need for additional means to limit this possibility and create an unique original.

Thus, I accede to a degree to your message, though I would have posed a question a little differently. Is there additional action needed to create the unique original of the created work? Is an artist willing to do so, and if it's possible to do so with the digital artwork this artist creates? Isn't it a great choice (and a great artistic experience) to opt to do some real media work, even if digital is preferred by a certain artist, and not put every bit of effort into the digital media (which, as all media, has its limitations)?

P.S. I wish to note here, for the sake of preventing a possible flame, that the terms UNIQUE and ORIGINAL are meant here in their meanings of SINGULAR and SOURCE meanings, and not creative and different meanings. Also, I DO NOT DISCRIMINATE against one or other artistic media here, merely discussing one, quite narrow, difference between them, while leaving many other advantages and disadvantages of both out of discussion.

THEN WHY DO YOU PAY FOR IT =/

And I quote: "[...] ITS CULTURAL AND SENTIMENTAL VALUE"

I think my issue with this is that you say "Digital media is worthless" rather than "Digital Media is worth less (big, bigbigbig difference ;3 )." or "Digital media is worthless >to me.<"

There's also the difference between original value, and re-sale value. Initial worth versus lasting worth.

Digital art is not worthless, in that there are countless people who will pay for it. It's >re-sale< value is, of course, next to nothing as the tendency for purchased digital art is almost exclusively personal commissions which would hold little to no value to most anyone beyond the commissioner even if it was a real-media art piece.

Yes, if you paint on a canvas a general appreciable theme, with generic characters, your piece stands MUCH more likely to maintain value over the years, and allow the person who purchased it from you to sell it, and that person to re-sell it, etc, etc. To a buyer, real media holds a potential for possible future re-sale, where digital media has pretty much zero value in that regard.

To the original artist though, whether or not your buyer can potentially make money off your art some day is usually not something you're going to care about. Whether you work with real or digital media, so long as someone buys the work from >you,< that is where your concern for its monetary value is probably going to end. ^_^

Real Media pieces can, and I agree that they >should< in most cases, hold >more< value and gain the artist more monetary compensation due to difference in worth. But the >reason< digital art is so massively more prolific than Real Media art is that the loss in initial monetary value or worth is very rarely greater than the savings in time, energy, and of course, materials cost.


So, no. Digital Media is not worthless. It is often worth less than real media, and it is clearly worthless to you, which is of course fine, you decide what holds value for your personal dollars. But simply leaving the blanket-statement that it is worthless, period, and a heavy implication (whether intentional or not) that those who think otherwise are foolish or oblivious to reality, is quite easily something that people who do primarily digital work could find offensive, dismissive, inflammatory, or insulting. I'm sure that's not your intent, but it's really hard for >anyone< to hear that their work and passion, whatever it may be, is simply worthless. Especially when they have no real problem getting paid for it, thus establishing that there >is< a market for it, and thus worth to it for most people, even if not for everybody. :3

The title was intentionally sensationalized, to be clarified by the full journal text inside. It was just an attention-grabber.

As for the original artist making money off re-sales, I often offer 10-15% of the sale value to the original artist in return for having them promote the auction. It's a pretty good deal for both parties since I make more from the sale due to the extra interest and bidding and they get "something for nothing".

For most of my concerns though, I still stand by my original statement based on observational assessment: aside from emotional and cultural value, digital media is worthless to me, especially in a monetary sense.

To try and see if I understand this now - you're pretty much talking from a viewpoint of personal opinion and how you'd feel your money is well spent?

How the hell are you gonna' say it has no monetary value when you're the one paying for digital commissions? :\

What the Hell are you talking about? I almost never buy digital pieces! Where did you get the impression that I commission digital artwork? o.O Further, I only buy digital commissions from artists who ONLY do digital work and who are doing it for a low or otherwise reasonable price for the quality of the work they do, with the knowledge in advance that the work will carry no value forward outside of emotional and/or sentimental value. I think you need to re-grok the point of my journal...

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2861201
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2683971
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2684102
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1862437
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1723251
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1966703
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1211346


huh.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2861201
Cheap commission

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2683971
Cheap commission

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2684102
Freebie

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1862437
Never saw this before, thanks for pointing it out! A friend commissioned that, didn't even know about it!

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1723251
This was a traditional sketch and inking, the originals were sent to me, then just digitally colored.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1966703
Never saw this one before! Man, you're good at finding pieces I didn't even know about. =) Since I certainly never paid this person for the commission, must have been a freebie. Prolly commissioned by a friend.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1211346
Another cheap digital commission.

So, have you found anyplace where I've spent GOOD MONEY (i.e. more than $50 or so) for a digital commission? Versus the typically hundreds and sometimes over a thousand dollars I've spent for real paintings? I still think you're missing the point.

Still. They're still digital commissions, therefore they're not worthless.

Also, you just gotta' search up "Jurann"

Yeah, they are digital commissions. And I said: "WITHOUT VALUE TO ME OUTSIDE OF ITS CULTURAL AND SENTIMENTAL VALUE". What about that "outside of" clause was unclear?

Thank god there is a furry online to tell me my work is worthless, I must cease immediately.
The day the opinion of a furry who spends most their life browsing a porn site for cartoon animals says ANYTHING that remotely makes me doubt myself is the day I throw myself off a cliff.
Get over yourself. Or are you just jealous that there are a fuckton of digital artists out there that would absolutely SLAY you, artistically, and the only way to make yourself feel better is to declare their media of choice 'worthless'?
Honestly, a true artist would see the artistic value in any media.

Also, for not having something physical that you can hold, ever heard of getting prints made? Shit, most art traded commercially is prints of originals, whats the difference?

Hahaha, good grief, shows what you know, asshole. =D I'm a COLLECTOR, I'm the "jealous" person who spends thousands of dollars on the artwork artists make, maybe because I feel sorry for them, or maybe because I appreciate their work. Jesus, who needs to get over themselves here? Take a flying leap, fuckwad.

Yeah, I remember my first beer, too....

Irony:

"Don't rub your shit in my face and I won't rub mine in yours. We'll get along great.
Yes, I'll rant, but I'll do it on my own page so don't come whining, you CHOSE to read it."

From your userpage. Hi, this is MY journal, kiss my ass. =)

Your journal in a public place, openy inviting people to comment? Might I suggest a locked livejournal if you don't want people's opinions on your junk?

The journal was posted for DISCUSSION, you know, the mature and rational kind - not for insults and name-calling and use of bawdy words to describe the poster or the proffered opinion. Come back when you have a reasonable, rational argument without the use of mud to sling like a monkey flinging it's shit at passersby.

Scan your own posts for insults, aggression and name calling before you accuse anyone else. Might be a good idea.
You are insulting every digital artist out there from the OFFSET by calling our work 'worthless', what do you expect?
You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but equally, we are entitled to ours, and to call you out when you post ignorant bullshit :)

You didn't even READ the post, you incredulous mendicant. =P The title was intentionally acerbic, it was an attention-getter, and if you read the meat of the post it levels that out into a rational argument. Try again.

Your telepathy is incredible. Teach me? After all, how did you know I 'didn't read' the post? Just because YOU think an argument is rational, doesn't mean it IS. I'd have thought the bunch of comments pointing out what a whinebaby you're being would give you a clue that maybe, just maybe, you're talking out of your arse. Also, loving the way you've dismissed anyone who disagrees with you as a 'troll', classic.
Maybe once you've spent 10 hours or more on a digital piece, poured your heart and soul into it, learned a lot along the way, and produced something you can sell prints of for this 'money' you're so obsessed with, you'll get it.
And btw, most digital pieces start with a traditional media sketch....

Oh snap, you sure showed me! =D

If digital media is really worthless then isn't your career kind of flawed? You DO make money, don't you? :P

My industry makes money by selling an experience, not a piece of art you can hang on a wall and admire or that values over time for it's uniqueness and value as a one-of-a-kind original piece. The games and software I craft get mass-produced and sold for demand, then tossed aside once the next big title comes out. If there wasn't such a huge and ridiculous consumer market bent on buy-buy-buy and dropping oodles of money on the latest, greatest craze, I probably would do very different work for a living. While there is definitely some pride in making titles of legend and repute and gaining respect and attention for it, the benefit is as fleeting as the value in the product - there's a bitterly fast vacancy of appreciation and value to the work I do. That's just the game/entertainment/software market for you. =/ I respect pieces with more permanence though, which will only improve over time, there's something more noble and majestic there.

What company do you work for? What titles have you worked on? What was your position?

I've worked for Square Enix, GameHouse, RealArcade, and most recently Wizards of the Coast. I'd honestly rather not say what titles I've worked on since I don't like connecting my fandom person with my professional person, but I work as a software engineer and tools developer, mainly on front-end UI and graphic design elements like animation and integration between the engine and the artists/assets. I'm not an artist, but I work with artists all day every day for the most part to bring their work to "life" in applications.

Ah cool, only curious because I am studying game design right now, and am particularly skilled and interested in level design.

Level designers are a dime a dozen, sadly. =/ Anyone can do level design, but few are actually good at it. I would do it myself if it paid better and made me feel good about working in the industry... The best place to be is Producer, obviously, but IME the number two spot is as a dev. So it's where I'm at until I can land a Producer gig somewhere, sometime, if ever. I know lotsa locals here at the DigiPen Institute, sadly 90% of them graduate and only get to do QA work. =P

Yeah I'm aware that level design isn't too difficult, but it's something I like to do. I don't plan to do that forever, but it's something I know I'm good at, at least compared to the rest of the people in my class. I don't know if I would ever be a producer, I don't have the skill set for that by any means, but I'm only 21 and I like to learn so who knows, maybe one day... I'm not in it for the money though. If I'm doing what I love while still being able to afford the bills and some fun things here and there I am fine. Luckily I live within walking distance of some great developers. I pass several just on my way to school. :P

Well, it's good that you seem to know what you're looking at doing. =) I'm not really in it for the money either, if money was what I wanted, I would have stayed in the corporate business development world where I could easily make 50-70% more cash. Which would be nice because I want a house of my own. Ugh. =P So it's tough - do I live where I love to live, or do I work where I love to work? Because it seems I can't have both. =/

ouch

Heh =)

I can understand where you coming from dude but it does still sting a bit , i know , its just s point of view , still it does sting

People keep missing the part about "... except for it's sentimental or personal value". Just because I don't place much trade value in digital pieces doesn't mean I don't still commission personal pieces in digital format, or enjoy some pieces for sentimental value. I just don't back it with the same kind of dollars. "Real Estate" got it's name for a reason - it's real, it really does exist, and it has inherent value in possessing it. Same goes with traditional media.

oh sorry ^^; then i was the victim of my own eyes XD

sorry dude ^_^;

question for ya ..... graffiti is traditional art ;) ?

Graffiti is like... Vandalism, right? I mean, in a traditional sense it's painted on signs, sides of buildings, billboards, etc... How can one own that? I mean I suppose if it's done on a canvas, it just becomes a STYLE of art rather than a media of itself. The trouble is that graffiti in typical use is both a STYLE -and- a MEDIA, so you have to separate those out before I could answer whether or not it's traditional artwork. Without them split up like that, though, it would be traditional, sure. But in that sense it's also vandalism and caries little to no "real value".

he he let me just roll back a bit you said something you can own right ? and something that you can get your money back later (not in those exact words) but graffiti is not just vandalism , it can be a way of doing signs also ^_^ in my case thats what i do , signs. :) in the first place its something a company owns and second getting your money back might not be the same thing as selling the picture off. But it is getting the company more visable and therefore brings in more cash. Still i do understand what you mean but think of it like this. how many furry art pieces, digital or traditional, get resold ? and with so many artists out there you can get anything you want done :) not something that someone else has already had. Collecting art is not ment to be a "I can sell it later" thing IMO it is however something that you enjoy doing for 1 and do cause its your passion :) Either way I'll stop babbling now ^^;