art sites that aren't shit

I'd like to join Pixiv but my Japanese isn't that good when reading websites and rules and whatever, especially for chats. o_o

If you'd like some hardmashed critique unabridged, this is the place to post: http://www.satellitesoda.com

If you don't want it that rude and vicious, then you may want to join this more polite board. It does not mean they will asspat you though. http://www.theillustrationboard.com/

>Here is a great thread on there of a young man in art school with major improvement in just one year from the critiqued he followed from older board members: http://www.theillustrationboard.com/index.php?/topic/84-chase-likes-to-post-work-a-lot/

I like CG Hub, but their forums suck. Slow interaction, slow community. Better to just surf individual profiles.

The forums of a similarly titled website here, CG Society, not sure if affilated with CGHub, have damn awesome forums, and frequent intensely competitve art contests, and if you win enough of them, could lead to a job, or scholarship: http://forums.cgsociety.org/
With closer relationships to the major entertainment industry than ConceptArt.

I subscribe to CGSociety and I get their newsletters weekly. I'd like to go back there but I keep getting them and CGHub mixed up, I can't remember if they're affiliated or not.

Thanks for the new sites, I'll check them out. =)

I doubt that I would go there, I only do concept sketches

The Illustration Board - Great community and crits, http://www.theillustrationboard.com/


There is a CG Channel. I don't know if the are owned by CG Hub. http://cgchannel.com

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuu

haha iscribble

drawing dicks on anime chicks is fun

CA.org used to be good, but there was some major drama about two years ago and people migrated to CGHub. Turned out Jason Manley was reading people's PMs, lied about teachers on TAD (said it would be Massive Black artists when they were never signed to teach), threatened to close forums if people didn't buy downloads/donate etc. Hence why some major CA artists are no longer in the banner - Marko, Coro, Wes, Whit, all gone. You have to be a comment whore to draw attention to your sketchbook and even then, people don't pay attention unless you draw in a CA-popular style (usually Marko/Wes ripoff). I'd be wary of it since all moderators can read your private messages.

As for CGHub, it's free although very quiet community-wise. They were silent about Azurelle because she was a moderator, but she got de-modded and doesn't visit the website anymore. Now she's busy "teaching" people in imagineFX and through Ballistic books, which made me lose respect for both companies. They KNOW she's a fraud and don't give a fuck, even though one of the concept books got bad reviews because of her.

That said, http://www.shadowness.com isn't too shabby.

guy said iScribble wouldn't accept his email, and that's why he used Pixiv

lmao I knew Manley was a piece of shit but goddamn.

I've been following IFX since 2007 and I can't remember seeing her help for quite some time. She's also part of this DA group I'm a part of and help to mod, though it's been a while since I've modded and she seems fine. Did she trace or something?

She's in the new issue of IFX with a tutorial or something. Did you really miss the drama? Everything that girl does is an overpaint, she has zero talent and it's very easy to see when she does things from scratch because it sucks. She stole mostly from Enayla and Melanie Delon, I have a few "proof" images that I saved back then. She admitted to plagiarising in her dA journal, left art communities for a few months, stealth-edited the journal several times so all proof is gone by now. Algenpfleger and Janaschi outed her when she stole an image they painted together, you could see brushstrokes still there. It was pretty bizarre. Even her "concepts" are other artists' work pieced together.

That was very informative.

Can't believe Azurelle is still on the market :I

There's an english version of Pixiv right now, that's how I got my account without the weeb youtube tutorials on youtube

Yeah, I did haha. I tried to look up her name yesterday but nothing informative came up, save for a thread last year about her work and she was plagiarizing but I didn't see any images for proof and the ones I did find were broken links. Hm, well if this is true I'll write them and ask them what's up, because I really like IFX since they're one of the only good digital art magazine's out there.

Oh, you mean the March issue. It's not out yet in America but yeah, that's pretty suspect. I saw her DA page and it does look a lot like Enayla's. But I thought she was also accused of overpaints and whatnot too? This is rather funny because the group I'm in on DA, well she's rather strict about the standards. That's good but if she's cheating, well then who is she to say such things?

Oh thanks. =) I'll check it out.

I'm not subscribed to IFX, but I get their e-mail newsletter and I just saw her tutorial featured. Look at the preview sketches, she has a blob for a face, then voila! detailed face on the next sketch. All of her tutorials are done backwards. If you look at her Livestream, she's either colouring someone else's lineart or doing "studies" and you can clearly see her colour picking from the original paintings. I'm pretty sure that's not what doing studies is about. She's also doctored her paintings to look like sketches as "proof" that she draws them on paper first. It's hilarious because you can clearly see finished, painted pieces underneath.

I can upload the comparison images for you if you'd like to see them.

As for her attitude, she knows how to sell herself, she's excellent at it. In the journal where she admitted to plagiarism she said that she's interested in marketing and selling pretty images to gain money and that it's her main drive. Which is okay, actually, but not if you do it by stealing other people's art and writing how you're an artiste~ whose soul is in it 100%, when it's not the truth. It's like she knows all the components that define being an "artist" and she likes the idea of it, but simply isn't one, so everything she puts out feels forced and flat. Her journals have always been about teaching people and discussing important issues, but I generally dislike her because she says a lot of crap and intentionally stereotypes herself as gamer grrl ("YES! I'm a GIRL and I play GAMES!" - go fuck yourself) and poor female who is having suuuuch a hard time in male-dominated industry. I can't deal with people who use shitty stereotypes to paint themselves and victims and draw attention.

not sure which annoys me more, tracers or girls who pretend that playing videogames makes them unique.

EVERYONE plays videogames these days, the term "gamer girl" doesn't make SENSE

Thanks for the information. As for her tutorials, yeah I just looked at her site and I seem to remember stumbling upon her work a few years ago and I was confused about her methodology.
Like in this tutorial: http://azurelle.deviantart.com/gallery/191054#/d1oh48a
I can't tell if the last image is finish or still in progress. Not to mention that yes, like you said, she does colour pic from the reference image which is weird because that doesn't help someone learn about how to choose the right colours. And not to mention you don't always have to use the exact colours when painting from a reference. I've done that before, so I can get a better colour palette since mine were somewhat washed out, but from that I built up more colours and learned where I went wrong when picking colours.
She seems to use it all the time.

She smudges her work a lot and I've noticed a lack of consistent lightsource in some of her works.

This tutorial about hair: http://azurelle.deviantart.com/art/...50318262?q=by:azurelle in:scraps&qh=sort:time

Always made me go 'what?' when I first saw it in 2007. I was starting out in the digital realm and I wanted to paint like that but her methodology made no sense and it looked like she just painted over or used a photograph to get hair like that.

Oh and then I just saw this: http://azurelle.deviantart.com/art/...115059990?q=gallery:Azurelle randomize:1&qo=0

She claimed she dressed up the model and took the picture and then painted over it. Hmmm yeah, I'm glad I'm now aware of what she's been up to, it's putting a bad taste in my mouth. I would like to see some of the images you have of her 'work' though, if you don't mind.

And yeah, I'm a female artist but I don't use it as some crutch to gain attention. The art needs to speak for itself, not the painter, or 'artist'. The fact that she wants to sell art is fine but using other's work and not even crediting her sources makes it appear as if she did it all on her own. Egh. Not cool.

I_Cant, yes, exactly.

Synthia, here you go: http://galaxies123.imgur.com/azurelle/

Those tutorials are truly terrible! And yes, I agree, studies are about studying - even if you don't match colours 1:1, you will learn a lot about how they relate. That's the point of it!

If you go through her work you will notice all of the flaws. Faces are perfectly polished, while everything else is wonky and blurry. Then you'd have a random detail that is clearer than the rest, probably something she found a fitting photo for She also tends to re-use faces, certain brush-shapes and patterns. Lazy to the T. I just noticed that she added "image inspired by ___" to certain pictures on her website, what a smooth move. I have nothing against over-painting as long as one is honest about it and uses their own resources or resources they have permission to use (stock and such). But blatantly stealing popular pieces just because they appeal to large audience and thus are marketable? No, just no.

PS. sorry for derailing the topic

It's okay haha, I just didn't know about her and from viewing her gallery...uh yeah, it's pretty bad. I found her latest work here: http://azurelle.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4iv5yg
And upon further inspection you can see it's completely lazy and a hack job. I'm so embarrased for her. What kind of person thinks they're doing a study when there's obvious paint-over texture via Painter's lovely filter, which I hate, and some blurry crap brush marks via Photoshop. I couldn't believe it when she said this was a master study.

This made me laugh though:

Yeesh.

As for the images, I don't see anything on the website. Nothing is loading for me and it says there's 0.kb of bandwith. Hm.

Oh and yes, sorry for de-railing. I just really hate art thieves and people like this who give digital artist less credibility than traditional artists and the like.

It's still kinda relevant to CGHub and ImagineFX thought.

I think I have more images, just let me find them, my computer folders are a fucking mess...