another one down

[egypturnash]

I'd told myself that if the next 'normal' piece I did got bounced from Epilogue, that was it. I was cutting their opinions some slack on the weird composition I've been doing.

Well, "Seed" added "anatomy needs work" to my collection of Epilogue image rejection reasons. Funny, it got rejected in record time, too. Usually it takes several days for the editors there to get around to it.

So. I gave up on GFXArtist for good last month because uploading there's a huge hassle. And Epilogue drove me away. That leaves the VCL, Yerf, DA, and Illustratorworld. Only one every-piece-juried place. I crammed an "I'm gone" message into the "style" space of the artist profile on Epilogue.

By the way - those of you who're on Epilogue: when looking at the gallery stats, have you ever seen anyone not listed as "close to next rank" in the "promotion list" over on the right?

---

Or maybe they're right and I'm just not putting enough care and attention into my stuff lately. I knocked "Seed" out in a couple of hours on a whim. It's a doodle I turned into something. On the other hand, they accepted that picture of Fernblossom that I knocked out in two and a half hours flat.

Eh, whatever. I felt marginally more out of place there than I do in most online galleries, given that fantasy/sf art tends to be very focused on making the unreal seem real. And that's not my thing. I make the unreal seem real by assuming it's already real, and going off into weird abstraction.

I guess I just need to go set up egypt.urnash.com and hack some gallery software up to make me happy in terms of layout.

Comments

[mutleyjames.livejournal.com]

Fuck 'em.

Many of your priorities have changed in the last few months. You didn't need a jury then, you certainly don't need one now.

Gallery stats are evil. Statistics are used by advertisers and marketing executives.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much my feeling on it. I need to get off my ass and look for illustration work, is what I need. Not a juried web gallery with values alien to mine.

Thanks.

(That icon makes me want to run away and hide, by the way. Or else use it as inspiration for a monster of some kind.)

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Honestly, you don't even have to get gallery software. I've been through a lot of online galleries lately and I wish there was LESS style and composition to them. I don't want fancy, I want to look at the pictures. It's sometimes like walking into a gallery that has patterned wallpaper behind the paintings. Have a simple setup with thumbnails you can click that bring the image up in a separate window. That's really all you need. Separate by subject if you need to, but don't go crazy. At least, that's how I feel having wandered through a bunch of flash-driven crap that just got in my way.

I remember some of your earlier pieces that were rejected that I thought wonderful. Better to have them up and let the viewers decide if they like them or not. Gated communities all have their place, but as we all know, they're not always right in their beliefs.

-T'

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

There's a certain amount of infrastructure that's nice to have. Like being able to use a web form to upload a new addition instead of manually FTPing and editing the list. That's what I want to install gallery software for.

I don't even like "separate window" in an artist's gallery. And flash websites... *shudder* What I've got in progress right now has a little Javascript, but works fine without it. A little more infrastructure and I'd be ecstatic.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I actually like full images to pop up in separate windows as I can then just close the window without having to reload the index page, or thumbnail page it came from. It makes for easier navigation.

There's also a lot of java weirdness going on where images and pages take up the whole browser window, and more, but don't create scroll bars so that there's no way you can see all of what's there. Part of this, I'm sure, is because I use an older version of web software, but really, there's too much a penchant for wanting to be overly clever and all that. It's all about the images, not the site.

Good luck. Can't wait to see it.

-T'

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Don't even make me compile the Long List of legendary artists, musicians, and authors who were rejected by the critics because they were doing The Wrong Kind Of Art, themselves... :)

Well-observed about fantasy/SF, too. I think you've put your finger on why I've never been real fond of genre fantasy and space-opera. I don't care if somebody's worked out the entire regal succession of their version of the goddamn dwarves for the last 25,000 years, and I sure as hell don't want to hear about it. I'm no more interested in 27th-century mineral-extraction techniques than I am in 21st-century ones. I want to see something in this world (or one like it) that's very beautiful and profound, not get covered in reams of evidence of an author's OCD. :p I want to see that an author or artist knows how symbolism and narrative work, and push those abilities to their limit -- not just copy the equations of material reality onto another world and change the variables around.

There was an excellent article about this in the Boston Phoenix arts section once, about the shortcomings of Peter Jackson's LOTR films -- they compared them to Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and noted that while Jackson relies on trying to make his fantasy world totally photorealistic and leaves nothing to the imagination, Cocteau just went out on the streets of Paris and filmed things at funny camera angles, relying on misdirection and decontextualization to make it seem like another world.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The question is how to turn this Blazing Uniqueness into some sort of legendariness while I'm still alive, and can move my stuff for the big bucks. To be shameless about it.

There's something to be said for creating a world that really feels like it could work, one you could live in, whether it be through words or imagery or what have you, and I can appreciate the evidence of craft and attention to detail it needs - but it's sure not the way my mind works. I work increasingly by mood and metaphor!

[radd.livejournal.com]

You already know my opinion about Epilogue's "critisisms". As for turning your uniqueness into cashmoney to get you the coveted central heating and MTV, well you need to put that uniqueness in a context that will make people stand up and take notice. Unfortunately, illustration work will only fit that requirement after you're famous (wich you are, to a degree, but you could be moreso).

For myself, I'm going the web comic route, with possible Flash animations later on when I have the equipment. You have lots of experience with Flash, right? You did a lot for Spumco didn't you? I would seriously suggest choosing a character, or even some illustrations you've done, and creating a Flash series around it. Nothing too fancy, mind you. A short series, made up of really short episodes, only a couple minutes long each. Each episode consisting of a little bit of exposition, a little bit of story (each episode furthering that story a bit more) and a quick, jabbing punchline.

To make this series ironically delicious, I would base it off of some of your images that have been rejected from Epilogue. Like making the girl from the Seed image the main character, and using ideas from some of your images like the Tentacle image and the Night image that were both rejected from Epilogue as well.

You wouldn't need voice acting and I would avoid subtitles. I'd go with simple, haunting music (there's an abundance of classical pieces to choose from), and dialogue or narration would be delivered via text worked into the image itself.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

I always just figure that online galleries are good for exposure more than anything else, so I put my work there in order to get it out to the public (and ideally get the public's money out to me!)

As far as critique and so forth, eh, that's another kettle of squid entirely.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's the eyeballs. I've really got to get prints of my stuff available so those eyeballs can possibly translate into money. And if a gallery gives me more hassle than eyeballs, I stop using it.

I've only been bitching about my stuff being rejected from Epilogue because it's kinda mystifying. My initial batch of old stuff was accepted there, and for most of the past year everything got accepted with no problems, then all of a sudden nothing was good enough for them. And I keep on worrying that it sounds like a 12-year-old artist whining 'But it's my styleeee" when the flaws in their work are pointed out, but I think my artistic vision's just come to a parting with theirs. Only once have I altered an image to try and get it accepted there - I draw something, I throw it at the gallery sites, it's done, move on to the next piece.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Just keep in mind that "but it's my style" usually translates as "I'm too lazy to learn the necessary skills to properly draw the kind of subject matter I want to depict". :}

[radd.livejournal.com]

I think that's exactly what she means when she says she's afraid of sounding like that, when in these circumstances it is clearly not the case.

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

This is why I never upload to Epilogue anymore. Hassle.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Heh, speaking of egypt.urnash.com, I'm reminded of an article I read once about singer India.Arie wanting the dot in her name to be included in the URL of her website, like "www.india.arie.com", but then she found out they couldn't do that, and she had to settle for "www.indiaarie.com".

And I thought, why didn't she just register 'arie.com' and then set up 'india' as a subdomain? Then her site could be india.arie.com.

Unfortunately, some company called Arie Associates already grabbed arie.com. Ah well.

[ghostangel.livejournal.com]

I hate Epilogue so much. They just seem like a bunch of artwanks with no sense of style. -_- Or creativity for that matter...