My View on a Few Issues

Im going to be addressing a few issues in this article. The first of which is whoring/tutorials. Then I'll talk about 'inspiration'. Then I'll move on to the making your own resources argument.

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Some people think that tutorials shouldn't be given out people that are new to GFX design whore the styles to a point where you only see one type of signiature everywhere. Perfect examples of whored styles are smudge style sigs, pixel-stretch sigs and pop-outs. Alias makes a lot of great tutorials but his tuts are always whored. He created the pixel-stretch style and made a tutorial on it. For a period of time after the tut all you would ever see was pixel-stretch. You still see the odd pixel-stretch around just now. The same thing happened with his soft grunge tutorial and it happened with a lot of his tuts. The more recent smudge-style of signature is seen all the time just now. I'm not actually sure who started this style because there are so many of them. it get annoying when you see the same style in every-one's signature. Only a few artists can now capture pure originality and trap it into a signature. Something that is overlooked as a whored style is grunge. Grunge is the most whored style of all as almost every single sig has some aspect of grunge in it. Most new and appealing styles get whored anyway but tutorials just help them on their way. I have mixed opinions on this. I think that good tutorials don't give you a step by step guide to making a sig. Good tuts should give you a technique that you can customise and create your own style with. I don' t think tutorials are good if you copy thme word for word and get a textbook reult. Thats what starts whoring. You need to make your own techniques and add them to techniques you have picked up to create your own style that no-one else uses. If every one did this there would be no whoring.

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Another issue is 'inspiration'.People will make a signiature that looks almost exactly identical to someone elses and then taking all the credit and saying they were 'inspired' That is just wrong. Ripping = Stealing and that is stealing the idea which is as bad as ripping in my eyes.

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Some artists think that if you are truly skilled you will use only resources you have made like your own brushes. I actually agree with this because it will make you a better artist.It will also ensure that people can't whore brushes you make if you don't release them to the public. At the moment I don't do that but I plan to start using only resources created by me which I hope will make me a better artist. A great example of an artist who only uses his own resources is flipn0tic. He is a great artist and he doesn't use anyone elses brushes. There are artists whose sigs look just as good as his but they used downloaded brushes. This makes Flip a better designer in my eyes.

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Thank-you for reading this article. I may be writing more depending on what people think of this one.

~Silver


P.S. This took me a long time to write so it would be greatly appreciated if I could get some constructive feedback and critisicm.