Framing the Critique
A few words on giving effective critiques while also taking them in stride.
I had a friend who grew up wanting to be an actress. She idolized what she saw on TV and in Movies. She would watch old films with her friends and memorize the lines. I think it was her way of learning how to act, much like how I learned to draw from tracing Dragon Ball Z reference. She even went to college and graduated with a degree in theater. Unable to move directly to LA, she moved to Chicago and took odd jobs to pay the bills while she started auditioning for plays. It was during this time that, as she would get feedback notes from auditions, that she realized that she hated the auditioning process. It was mostly the nerves associated with the act of auditioning, but the feedback process was a continual hit to her self esteem as well. So, she eventually stopped auditioning and took a different path.
That story is an example of what it’s like to be an artist. We may not think about it, but each time we apply for a position at a studio of any kind, we are asking for any number of people to look at all of the cumulative work we have done and judge us. Based on that judgement, we are either selected to continue on through the process with interviews and tests, or cast aside with a polite email if we’re lucky. An artist’s life is difficult no matter the profession. Some people are wired to automatically handle this type of feedback and stress in stride, while others blow a fuse and come unhinged. You may be surprised, but I’ve heard many stories of job applicants replying back to rejection letters from HR or other artists with vulgar and unprofessional filth.
Most of us fall in the middle; we aren’t going to short circuit when we’re rejected from a job, but we may want to argue with the anonymous forum poster or Instagram commenter when we post our work and ask for feedback. Human egos can be fragile, but it’s on us to find ways to deal with feedback from others when it isn’t what we want to hear.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the often blunt feedback I had from Polycount after I graduated college. This blunt feedback continues to this day, and I am almost always better for taking these critiques to heart.
Critiquing can be an art form in and of itself too. Francois Gilbert, currently the Development Director at Sony Bend (and my Art Director on Golden Abyss) introduced me to the concept of the compliment sandwich; a “This is nice, this is trash, this is nice…fix the trash” approach to delivering rough critiques (I may have gotten a lot of those at the time). Throughout the years I’ve been on Polycount, I’ve learned how to phrase my words to get the idea across while also respecting the work an artist has put into their piece. Today, while less glamorous than making AAA games, I’ve learned how to structure critiques around the function of the piece as a whole and what specific elements are missing from it even if the actual art is wonderful.
I have been the artist who knew nothing, who thought he knew better, who was silent and kept watching and learning, and who has taught the next batch of up and comers. I’ve been on all sides of critiquing, and I wanted to share some of what I’ve learned with the GameTextures community. Critiques are hard to give and can be even harder to take. I want to try to help reduce that friction.
Giving Critiques
- When giving a critique be respectful. Refrain from “that looks like crap” with no real justification. Things can just be bad, but find a way to frame the critique with a positive tone by saying something like that “it isn’t working for me and might benefit from some re-work or a new attempt”.
- It is often best to have some sort of reasoning behind your critique. These reasons can range from breaking well established norms (rule of thirds), to the layout of a piece not drawing the viewer’s eye, to multiple combative vanishing points. It can also be the simple fact that the work isn’t matching reference close enough. As the viewer who is offering feedback, it is on you to hone in the why question as best you can.
- Think about form following function in the context of the whole piece and not just assets. It can be easy to get lost in the weeds of the small details and completely miss out on the whole picture.
- Keep critiques simple at first and then expand when asked. This can be an important aspect of offering online feedback. Some artists can start to feel offended or attacked by a wall of text.
- When giving compliments, everything stated above also can be applied. For example, if their color scheme is really working well, share with them why it is. Positive critiques can help and artist identify what they are doing right and foster growth in turn.
Receiving Critiques
- Remove your ego and be accepting of all comments. This is an important step in growing as an artist in general. Don’t be all absorbed with your work and realize you will always be on a journey of self improvement.
- While you can be accepting of all comments, filter out the critiques that clash with your vision of the project. This will become easier the more seasoned you are. However, if a critique is on the technical merits of your work, don’t use “vision of the project” as an excuse to not fix bad art.
- Every critique is an opportunity for you to learn something so take it. It can be as simple as how to adjust a UV shell to as complicated as using color and light theory to draw the viewer’s eye through a piece so you can sell a product.
- Ask questions of your peers. As they critique your work, if you have a question or need a clarification, ask. This helps to reduce re-work in the future.
- When in a professional setting, you may have to accept a critique that makes your work look worse than before due to technical constraints or the needs of the project. Don’t argue too much with the requested changes, be humble and take them in stride. You can vent with co-workers over drinks later.
- Don’t be the person who thinks they are above comments. I don’t care if you have been a professional with 300 years of experience, 16,000 shipped games and 4500 creative director roles, you can still miss something.
Two Short Stories
How I grew Up
I personally have been almost all of the good and bad artist types during my career. When I first started, I knew I needed to improve and was very easy to work with at Sony. But after shipping Golden Abyss and moving on to WB Games in Boston, I ended up letting a mix of factors (low pay, uninteresting projects, and an un-deserved inflated ego) shift my attitude towards the “I know better than all y’all” end of the spectrum. I bounced from internal project to internal project (Infinite Crisis for 3 months, DDO for 6 or 8 months, and a prototype for a few months) partly based on need, and likely also based on the fact that I was difficult to work with during this time. It came to a head while I was working on a project code named Goblin.
Goblin itself was a game that made no sense. The easiest way to describe it is Paragon using the Lord Of The Rings license mixed with Fortnite’s building mechanics and janky combat (even for a prototype). I didn’t understand it then and continue to not understand it now, but it was an opportunity to make some cool art using the latest version of the LOTRO game engine. Unfortunately, I had difficulty making some of the environmental assets. I wasn’t taking direction well and I thought that I knew better than the art director. The AD also was getting frustrated at my combative attitude. I remember that at one point he was asking me to viewport align a concept for a prop so I could model directly off it. I did it, but I did it incredibly begrudgingly and at some point I decided it wasn’t working, so I ditched it. Not long after, he and I had a meeting and he let me have it, saying that I had a poor attitude and that from what he had gathered at the studio, I had a reputation for being a pain to work with and not taking direction well.
My reaction was to ask “who said that” and to not even try to humble myself. What came immediately after the meeting was professional suicide at that studio.
Something about that confrontation with my AD did shift my perspective however. I started taking direction with less friction and decided to adopt a ‘yes man’ approach. At the end of my time at WB, Maarteen and I had a sit down and it was the opposite of our last meeting. He complimented me on my attitude change and he noticed that I was growing. He gave me some suggestions on how to improve and said he’d try to help out with finding a new gig if he could.
The moral of the story is to both know where you stand professionally and that it’s never too late for you to change your approach. I needed to grow up a bit and truly learn how to internalize, and it took for some rough months at WB or that to happen.
A Misplaced Self Evaluation
I’m now 32 and working at Dreamline Shower. It’s not a video game company and yes, I do have a ‘touch’ of a “I know a bit better than you” attitude at times today, but the difference is that it’s actually true and I have used that attitude for good. I have a wealth of technical experience that I can share with the team. The big difference between myself now and myself in the past story is that I know that, as an artist, I still have a lot to learn. Dreamline uses a lot of architectural visualization techniques for their renderings and I have only a little bit of experience with them. I’m still learning a bit about how to do our style of “surrealistic realism” (as I see it) renders. I welcome critiques from our team with open arms and in all the chats I’ve had with my manager, I’m one of the easiest to work with here.
My former coworker, let’s call him Davin, did not.
Davin had been working at Dreamline for the past few years. He’s was a talented visualization artist who knew how to kick out our visualization renders quickly. His quality was usually pretty consistent, although some of his work had occasional material oddities as he relied a lot on simplistic, textureless materials (this is common in architectural visualizations). Regardless, his work was approved pretty quickly.
In the early part of this year (2019) we had a bit of a shake up at Dreamline and as part of it, the Creative Department got a bit more freedom. As part of that, our manager wanted our input on bringing back a critique meeting for our visualizations every few days based on how many scenes need to be reviewed. This had been done in years prior, but as Product Development became more involved in the creative process for traditional business politic reasons, it became less important for us to critique our work, since it would often be changed dozens of times for reasons that had little to do with selling our products.
Davin, during the meeting where this was being discussed, did not take kindly to it. I believe the general consensus on what he was saying (English isn’t his first language) was that “we aren’t artists and thus can’t critique him”.
Over the following few days, he had multiple meetings with our manager and he then promptly left the company. I spoke with him a few times and he made it sound like he found a new job, but I found out a little later that he just quit. He was unwilling to take part in group critiques because of his perceived supremacy over the majority of us as artists and instead decided to leave.
From what I know of Davin, he is a very quiet and sensitive person. I don’t think he’s a bad guy; I think he had no wish to have his work and his ego exposed to criticism from others.
Critiques of your work are a necessary part of growing as an artist. It’s best to start early though posting on artist communities and online forums dedicated to giving feedback. No one responds positively to critiques all the time, but if you can take some of the lessons I’ve shared and combine them with your experiences, you can grow has an artist, a person, and help others to grow in the same way.
