/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

lack of unified direction of creative vision for the whole.

> muh this is not a definition

imagine modern games where every asset is made in a third party sweatshop and then glued into the final project, instead of everything done in-house with small teams with clear communication and direction towards a common goal, that's soul vs soulless.

souless is designed by comitee, soul is when the unique artistic vision permeates all aspects of the work.

focusing on the wrong thing

if you talking about videogames i'd say usually games that have soul are the ones who have a main art directors who carry the whole project. like miyazaki and his dark souls. it is basically his personal project. he sincerely likes it. he sincerely wants it to be good because it is a direct translation of his creative endeavors and he is personally invested.
or kojima and his games. yes they are cringe and not a lot of them even decent, but they have a soul because this one man gave it to them.
video games are souless usually when there's no main figure behind it and it was made by basically a group of wagies

>>6558938
Easy
>You like it but don't know why, though it's usually nostalgia, and you simply aren't good enough to explain why? Soul
>You don't like it but can't pint point out obvious flaws? Souleess

Think of the extremes, imagine a cute girl that just opened her birthday present and it's the toy she wanted the most and she's very excited about it and jump and dances all around the room while giggling.

That's soulful.

Now, imagine a barbie doll laying on the floor.

That's souless.

And that's it, when you look at anything you can see if it relates more to the former or to the latter. You can replace the barbie doll with the most beautiful doll you've ever seen, and she'll remain souless, because if she moved, she'll fall into the uncanny valley, because they're not supposed to do that.

>>6558938
>what makes a work of art "Souless"?
unnecessary sexualization

>>6558938
generally, when if you look at the piece of work, and it feels like the person who made it gave less fucks during the several hours it took to make it then you do in the few seconds you are seeing it.

but calling something soulless is retarded, its what brainlets to rather than analyzing what gives it away.

>>6558938
>what makes a work of art "Souless"?
lack of human hand & human psyche.
in ancient texts the word "soul" was synonymous with psyche. great works of art gives us insight into the human psyche, where the artist creates unselfconsciously and reveals themself. the artisan has better access, as work done by hand is an embodiment of body/soul.
too much current work is mediated by machines, some is ok, but the more machine, the less soul, as work becomes an egregore rather than emanation of individual psyche.

>>6560449
>unnecessary sexualization
naw, it's the role of sex in the art—because sexuality is an essential element of the human psyche, it cannot be deemed 'unnecessary.'
An artist like Crumb is a good example—someone who explores his id and shadow through rather crude depictions of sex.
Yet when sex in art becomes mere commodity, catering to fetishes with little reflection, then of course it becomes soulless.
But the lines blur—why did Eric Stanton have more soul than the average coom artist of today? Maybe because despite working for the mail order sleaze market, he still revealed psyche in his work.

>>6558938
Insincerity.

>>6558938
The issues is that they all look like Fortnite.

>>6562849
Can you go on deeper detail about all of this shit in a dedicated thread about taditional art and human mysticism?
I am thinking that with the advent of AI, traditional art will have to rethink it self, not as just a skill or a trade, but as a connective ritual to the ancient human memory. I mean, someday we'll all die and be replaced by something else. But in the mean time, we still wonder where did we come from, who are we, and the answer is dormant in our own psyche, in our dna. But we can't remember, whatever we were before, atlanteans, "anunakis", adam and eve, we still are the living reproduction of that forgotten origin. It is in our heads what happened, and the only answer can be produced only by ourselves.

Everytime a person grabs something to draw and express what he sees inside his mind, a gate to the ancient past is being opened. That's why I think drawing in particular has a very deep importance in human culture. Someone in the ancient forgotten past did the same, is the most basic human creative ritual, to draw what he sees inside his mind, make real what is unreal. Before we disappear we have to find that forgotten memory. Our dna carries it. After we're gone, A.I. will be a clean cut. It will never find by itself the answer. It will only remember what we could recollect in the last 10.000 years. Beyond that only the still alive human mind can find the answer.
I think that's the angle traditional art will have to embrace to bring up its own value.

>>6558972
I think outsourced work can have soul too if the main branch has a good art director with a vision and clearly oversees what the chinks are pumping out. Most of the time they just get sent a list of specifications and shit like "we need 12 modern day car props fitting the realism of the Call of Duty franchise", so of course they gonna make the most bland shit and not put in any artistry.

>>6562932
This. You can be glaringly corporate or outright propaganda and still be soulful when you're true to yourself and believe in what you're peddling.
Art loses it's soul when it's pretending to be something it's not, and the people making it don't give a shit.

>>6558938
the amount of effort.

>>6564498
AAA works are extremely high effort yet most people would agree they are soulless corporate tripe

>>6562871
>someone who explores his id and shadow through rather crude depictions of sex
idk sounds kinda *ewish

>>6558938
>what makes a work of art "Souless"?
I personally dont like it

>>6558938
When 4chan doesnt like it