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From: Classic_-_Concepts@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Was Faith in Amiga, now where's the artists?
Message-ID: <27317@cup.portal.com>
Date: 25 Feb 90 19:50:12 GMT
References: <7461@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 75

> it that the Amiga community is really lacking?   Now I
> do know there are quite a bit of talented folks out there
> but the Amiga's graphics is lacking something else other
> than ultra (1280X1024X24) graphics, it's it's human resources!
> We don't have enough graphics artists on the Amiga.  
> Just the other day a friend of mine told me Jim Sachs 
> and Joe Conti were looking for some people to help
> them out in some Amiga graphics project and couldn't
> find any real artists.  They eventually found some
> high school kid who could draw on Amy during a high school demo.
> This same thing happened to Compu-Animate in Arizona.  I hear
> some church organization wanted a 30 minute animation and
> Compu-Animate found a local highschool kid who knows his way
> with DPaintIII.   Pretty amazing, huh?   

>                    -Viet

Don't kid yourself.  There are MANY talented artists able to use the Amiga
superbly.  I know more than a few.

And what do you mean by 'real' artists?  People who can copy photos?  There's a
lot more to art than that.

The problem is money.  People like to think artists can afford to work for
peanuts.  We spend our entire lives practising and studying and receive
little or no compensation.

I'll give you a few examples.

I can research write, type, proofread and submit a manuscript for publication
in about 4-15 hours (average 8) and I receive payment averaging $400 - $800
for my work.  That's $50 to $100 per hour.

I can create an image in Deluxe Paint III which is so realistic, it looks
digitized (and would fool almost anyone unless they looked closely enough to
see that the dithered pixel patterns are regular, which a digitizer doesn't
do).  For this I am lucky if I am offered between $50 to $100.  Such an
image takes me from 8-12 hours (average 10).  Get out your calculator.  It's
$5.00 to $10.00 per hour.  That's not taking into consideration the 8 years
I spent in University learning design, composition, imagery, etc. etc. and
thousands of hours of practise.

In contrast, the very first article I ever submitted to a magazine was
published. As was the second and the third and the fourth.  I've invested very
little time and energy learning to write.  This isn't bragging.  It's just a
sad comment on how little people appreciate how much more difficult it is to
learn art skills.  So they pass it off as 'a gift' (I've heard that a million
times) and assume I enjoy it so much that, hey, what do I need the money for?

Animation is worse.  It takes me an average of a month to do a 10 or 15-minute
animation.  Here we have not only the time it takes to do the graphics, but all
the scripting, storyline, debugging, animating, etc.  I think it was Amiga
World that recently had an animation competition.  I seem to recall those which
were accepted would receive $50 as compensation.  No we're looking at 25 cents
an hour or less.

Everyone promises us 'fame and recognition'.  I've never had any desire for
either.  Fame and recognition are easy to achieve.  You can't eat fame.  And
don't tell me it leads to jobs.  In my experience, it leads to more people
promising you fame and recognition.  If I had my choice, I'd be drawing instead
of writing.

There's a very simple solution to the problem of finding good Amiga artists.
Pay them what they're worth.  I wouldn't be surprised if that quickly brought
them out of the woodwork.  How much did they pay those high school kids?

                                                        \_                
           Julie Petersen (LadyHawke@cup.portal.com)     )\_            _/
                   portal!cup.portal.com!LadyHawke       `/)\_     __  // 
        __ _____________________________________________  `\\)\_  / '~//  
       ///                                                 `\\//\\/|'//'  
      ///   "The lack of money is the root of all evil."    (\/Yyyy/'     
__   ///                                                   /Yyyy/'        
\\\ ///                                  Ayn Rand         //\\   LadyHawke
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