I would give anything to be able to draw this well...
Pretty cool demos
Pretty cool demos
Not to be a smartass but if you'd give anything, why not buy some art books and put in a few hundred hours of practice?
Although I pretty much gave up on trying to improve years ago. I switched focus to creating things with code, and have been faaaar more successful. So your comment is fair, in that I certainly could put time in to learn to draw and animate well, but I have a lot of other focuses for my life right now that can't spare that kind of time.
But, it doesn't stop me from dreaming :)
Well, mostly the fact that most people lack "a certain artistic eye" until they develop it, including people who later become competent artists.
>So your comment is fair, in that I certainly could put time in to learn to draw and animate well, but I have a lot of other focuses for my life right now that can't spare that kind of time.
A valid choice. So when you said you'd "give anything" what you really meant was not that you would actually give anything, but rather that you just wish that you could draw well.
Have a look at this before/after (a 5-day workshop) gallery: http://drawright.com/gallery.htm
I don't think that you'd qualify as a "true master" with 5 years of experience.
1. The concept of "mastery" is both relative and subjective, so if a skill is particularly common, then an aptitude which could be considered "masterful" in another field might simply be considered "experienced". In addition, for some skills there is not that much difference between competent work and masterful work; as a result, we'd be unlikely to consider someone a "master" of, say, bussing tables.
2. Most jobs are "unskilled", and those who have them are not practicing what they do with an eye toward improvement. They are completing the task to get their paycheck.
3. Jobs that do involve some skill typically also involve a fair amount of unskilled work (note that "unskilled work" in this sense can still require education and experience). They also tend to involve splitting one's time between multiple skills. Working full time as a lawyer for 5 years does not mean that you have spent 10,000 hours in a court room, much less arguing in front of a jury.
Now, with all that said, it's true that practice doesn't scale linearly such that you can simply say "you need x hours of practice". The human brain stops responding well to practice in the short-term and needs time to incubate, so practicing 40 hours a week for 5 years is probably not as effective as practicing 20 hours a week for 10 years.
Still, if you actually did practice the same small set of significantly overlapping skills full time for 5 years, you would be extremely good at those skills.
Actually, I boggle at anyone who thinks they're at 'mastery' at just ten thousand hours in. That's the point that you're competent, really. Masters are people who are in it for the long haul, the folks over on ConceptArt clocking in twenty+ years are masters.
Working in reduced resolution and color constraints is actually something rather challenging. Lesser artists are going to particularly suffer because they won't have experience to fall back on when they need to find workarounds, especially if their color theory is weak. You aren't going to hit Ferrari's level unless you've already got a solid foundation in place. That's easily five years to be competent at, then you can learn to work within those limitations.
I personally oversee a number of artists around five years in and I wish could get that quality of work out of them consistently.
Why I suggested you see his other work is because I don't think you're actually qualified to assess just how difficult the work is and you should see whose work you're dismissing as amatuer/entry level.