You say you prefer storytelling, but I think it’s also important to mention (and I haven’t seen anyone say it yet) that you can tell a very complex and powerful story in a single image, and it’s often more impressive, when done well, than its video counterpart. Take a look at the work of Norman Rockwell, for instance, and you can see the narrative advantage of a single frame, letting the roaming eyes of the viewer dictate the interpretation of the message at their own leisure rather than conforming to the difficult and often subjective matter of pacing.
Obviously the other good reasons have already been said. A single frame is great practice for making something look as good as it possibly can in terms of detail and composition and color and light etc., and that practice usually translates over to animation anyway.
Great example with Norman Rockwell. When I look at one of his paintings, I drift from reality into the scene. It’s like you can feel the painting. The emotion of the scene, the sounds you might hear, the smells you might smell, your own memories of a similar situation surface… the guy knew how to evoke emotion from a single image. Also, I’ve never been a huge art fan, and in particular abstract painting. I prefer realism like Rockwell paintings convey. He was a master of lighting a scene. To me, that’s the real talent of painting… describing a scene that might be real. “Abstract Expresionism” is another term for “I have no talent, so I splash a bunch of different colors on the wall and call it art”.
Here’s the thing though: It’s not up to you to say what art is and what it isn’t, or indeed, how artists choose to express themselves. Art isn’t necessarily always about how detailed or accurate you can make something. Would you say that Vincent Van Gogh or Edvard Munch had no talent? To say that expressionism is not art is to overlook the very reason art exists in the first place.
Also, what you need to understand is that after the invention of photography in the nineteenth century and its increase in popularity in subsequent years, less value was held in being able to create realistic images on a canvas. Many artists (especially landscape and portrait artists) of the time felt that their work was either unappreciated or simply obsolete. I suppose impressionism in that sense was born out of a desire to expand upon, or go beyond the mundane reality that photography and realism captures. To not limit yourself to simply what is in the real world is much more freeing, and is just as valid an artistic style as photorealism.
People need to distinguish between traditional art and computer-generated art, or digital art, for lack of a shorter term. You don’t exhibit digital paintings in galleries and museums. Traditional paintings are more appreciated than digital ones because they’re made with spontaneity. Digital art is just one version of millions of versions. The original is a digital file. You can make the final version bluish, reddish, purplish with a few keystrokes. It’s also composed of happy accidents the creator of which would not have intended. It’s also composed of thousands of undos that you can’t do in traditional art.
Why make digital or visual art at all for that matter…just describe it in text… The Mona Lisa could have just been a nice paragraph or two.
If we’re talking purely about medium, this isn’t exactly right either. Just take a look at what digital video is doing to the film industry: Filmmakers like Christopher Nolan or Stephen Spielberg, filmmakers who want to shoot photochemically are being forced into transitioning to digital and abandoning film, even though celluloid is their preferred medium. That choice should always be the artist’s.
In principle I agree, but in the case of a big hollywood production, it is a little bit different as they are shooting with someone elses money, so that someone can put demands on how his/her money is being spent. If they want to have complete control of how they work, they should reduce their budget so that there are less constraints business can put on their art. But I guess they do like thebig budget…
Good point, but that operates under the assumption that it’s more expensive to shoot on film. It might cost an average big budget film $100,000 - $200,000 for the film stock and processing. That’s nothing! They probably spend more on craft services. The cost is really irrelevant because they have that budgeted in, but there are many reasons why the industry may be going digital, from workflow to price to lobbying by huge technology conglomerates or theaters or post production teams etc.
In the case of Spielberg or Nolan however, I think it’s safe to say at this point that studios will let them shoot whatever they want, however they want.
I guess my point is that you shouldn’t deny artists their preferred tools. Fuji ceased production on film stock, and Kodak isn’t far behind, but nobody would deny that artists should be able to choose between oil paints and watercolor and photoshop. It’s just common sense.
Market forces, man. It does suck that different media can be driven to obsolescence by economics, but what can you do? It’s not a conspiracy to deny artists their tools, it’s just gonna get more expensive for them to use the tools they want. I shoot 35mm, and I can definitely feel the pain of market forces in that. When it approaches a dollar an exposure for film and developing, it can certainly influence my choice of media, regardless of what I really want. Bigshot hollywood directors may have more pull when it comes to the expense, but it is still an important factor.
You read some funny shit on BA
I mostly get knowledge, experience and money.
Also, usually I want to master a certain technique and the result of that learning curve
is a nice render.
Also, I feel a certain passion, desire and love to create something. Perhaps you lack these attributes and thus can’t rationalize why other people do it. Because, it is indeed a very strange question to ask. My 2c.
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eraser, anyone? jokes aside, are you seriously suggesting that traditional artists don’t make or correct their mistakes?
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that, but you can’t deny that traditional art is more final than digital, not just in its physicality, the state of being an actual art object to be displayed (as opposed to arrangements of pixels, which is why it wouldn’t make sense to show digital paintings in a museum), but also because you can’t undo with traditional art. If we realize that our camera should be more to the left, or that building in the background needs to be bigger, or we forgot to add a fill light to the subject, we can correct those mistakes in literally a few seconds. A traditional artist doesn’t have that luxury. Do you think excellent pianists would be so praised if they could stop and reverse time, and go back and fix their slip-ups? Traditional art is more impressive than digital art, not because of the final product, but because of the process.
EDIT: @SterlingRoth Sad, but true. 
Anyone interested in this subject should check out keanu reeves’ excellent documentary, “Side by Side”.
I was only saying that eraser is an equivalent of ‘undo’. But if we are talking about ‘seconds’ or ‘time spent’ undoing or even comparing the traditional masters with hobbyist digital creators (like most of us are), then I will politely remove myself from this debate. Because if we are, the luxury of undoing is the very least of our problems when it comes to creating art. By your line of arguments the hyper-realistic painters create the most impressive art because of the process? The process then is what makes art good and impressive? I strongly disagree and I find this logic absurd, to say the least. Also, you aren’t seriously suggesting the digital art is not displayed in museums? I wonder what will they do with heaps of Warhol’s digital creations they’ve just uncovered. I’ll guess they’ll just go This is wonderful art, but the process used for its creation is not impressive, so we’ll just ditch it.
Do you think excellent pianists don’t do exactly that when making their studio recordings? Do you think anyone in the audience could notice their slip-ups? (these are rhetoric questions btw)
You’re correct, an eraser is like an ‘undo’ for traditional artists. The only difference is the amount of work it actually takes to make the correction, or revert to the previous state, if you will. I can push ctrl-z and instantly go back a step. A painter has to erase all the lines, then re-sketch that entire portion of the image and re-paint over it, integrating it into the rest of the scene naturally which also takes a lot of work. You also make a good point about the issue of the artistic process, because there are different types of art, all with different processes. So traditional art can be more impressive than digital art, and digital art can be more impressive than traditional art, in some cases. My mistake was to assume that the processes of extremely different mediums are really comparable in that way.
However, I still do believe that the process can be what makes art impressive. Just look at Jackson Pollock’s work: this is a good example of “process art” as it’s called, in which the final piece is not what’s impressive so much as the means by which it was created. But now we’re drifting further and further away from the main point of the discussion, and indeed, the thread itself, so I’ll leave it at that.
Actually, I don’t know what reasons a financial backer might have to insist on a certain workflow. The reasons might not even be totally rational. Digital is sometimes consider more efficient because you don’t run the risk of having to reshoot after waiting for the development of the film. Probably you are right about Spielberg and Nolan getting what they want.
I keep coming back to how funny this shit is. I take it you guys are just blabbing on and didn’t actually visit museums and galleries.
Chill, my man. It’s all good! Think about it like this: when you paint something in Photoshop and export it, what is it? Where is it? It’s numbers representing a grid of colors on your hard drive. So why then, would one print this out for display when the exact data can already be seen online or elsewhere? Visiting a museum is only partly about viewing art in an optimal environment, but a big part of visiting a gallery is to see the original work. This is the physicality I’m talking about. You can’t pin digital art to any thing in particular.
Of course, this brings into question whether a piece is intrinsically valuable simply because of its origin. Marcel Duchamp’s In Advance of the Broken Arm is literally just a snow shovel hanging from the ceiling. Duchamp said, “An ordinary object can be elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” Mistaking the shovel for a regular shovel, an employee took it for use, and the art was lost. Duchamp’s solution? Hang up a new shovel!
@Zeke Faust sorry but all that you are saying is irrelevant because museums and galleries have been showing digital art ever since someone figured out you can make art using a p.c.
I am laughing a bit because I think you guys have tunneled visioned yourselves a bit and are far to hang up about art been about tangible objects and uniqueness.
I think, and this is just my opinion, that it is not about tangible objects and uniqueness but about ideas, concepts. So when you paint something either using traditional mediums or Photoshop all that matters is the expression of that idea. Why would anyone care if it is blotches of paint on a canvas or 1’s and 0’s on a HDD the important thing is what did you work say or express.
You have a good point and I agree, but I think art can be about the physical thing as much as the idea behind it, but that’s looking at it from a different perspective. I can sit and think about the ideas and emotions of a painting all day, but actually looking at it, knowing that an artist moved their brush across this canvas in front of me is a different kind of appreciation altogether. Let me ask: what is the idea or the concept in the Mona Lisa? Why is it so appreciated? If a high res scan were performed and identical copies were made, would the copies be as valuable as the original because the idea is the same? Moreover, would you pay money to go into a building to look at them when you can look at them on your computer screen or print them out yourself?