Who determines the border between art and non-art?

[Dowlphin 463]

You could replace the term "art" with "creativity" or "originality" if you like.

 

Recently I posted some of my creative expression in the Fan Art section.

 

The thread was closed with this explanation:

 

"This topic does not contain artwork that was created by the topic owner. Octavia's Hall is a place for showing off artwork and other creative mediums that you, the poster, have made. Memes, pony generator images, artwork that was not created by the thread owner and alike do not belong in this forum. They are significantly more suitable being posted in places such as status updates, blogs or the forum lounge."

 

While the forum description reads:

"This is the place to post all kinds of creative works based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Fan fiction, art, music, games, videos, and more - it's all welcome here!

It is crucial that you do not post any content you did not create. If you didn't sit down with Photoshop and draw that picture yourself, you didn't make it.
For the purpose of clarity, you do not need to have created a character, setting, or other intellectual property to post a piece of fan labour depicting it. That means that yes, you are allowed to post Twilight Sparkle fan art, even though you didn't create her. Just be sure you made the drawing."

 

So this means, while you don't have to own the intellectual property, it must be eclusively your own work. It follows logically from this that if you create a comic using backgrounds and pony vectors from deviantART, it has no place in that forum section either, because you combined your own art with other people's art.

It is still art though, so it is again a very strict limitation. It sends the message that if your creative expression doesn't meet a minimum requirement set by whoever, don't bother presenting it. Not very encouraging. It creates class division within the art community.

 

To use extremes as an example, a caption picture or an animated GIF can be more creative, artistic and original than a brush painting.

 

This reminds me so much of my conservative art teacher back in school. He gave the task to create a picture of a scene of our choice that depicts a kind of symbolic meaning and morale (or something along these lines). He said - and emphasized on inquiry - that ANY TYPE AND MEANS to make it were legit; that it was really about the result, the artistic expression.

So I started up my Half-Life map editor and created a 3D modeled scene and printed it out.

When I showed the fruits of my creative expression to him, he grumpily said: "You were not supposed to do it like this!"

Experiences like that weakened my confidence in the artistic community back then... If I have to explain the principles of art (and point out his self-contradiction) to an art teacher.

[MeanBlackHawk 147]

You post was simply removed because you didn't create it yourself.  I understand where you are coming from but Octavia Hall is meant for your own artwork more or less.  If you want to post artwork (that you didn't make) it would be in beyond Equestria. 

[Dowlphin 463]

You don't have to repeat what the forum/mod posts already say and which I quoted.

The forums are only for postings that you created yourself.  

[Jokuc 8,173]

You post was simply removed because you didn't create it yourself.  I understand where you are coming from but Octavia Hall is meant for your own artwork more or less.  If you want to post artwork (that you didn't make) it would be in beyond Equestria. 

 

I'm not sure if you understood the OP correctly.

 

Anyways, I see what you mean. Just like there is no real answer for what art exactly is, there is no real border of what can be posted in OH or not. Well there is one, but you can't just write it down yourself. It's just something you'll have to understand.

 

It may sound stupid but

Drawings

Paintings

Vectors

and things such as requested avatars & signatures

belongs in Octavia's Hall

 

while things such as

comics created by different images

pictures with text on

generated images

belong elsewhere.

 

 

Anyhow, it would be quite unnecessary to have a section for each type of thing.

DRAWINGS

VECTORS

GENERATED PONIES

blah..blah..

...yeah.

 

And if we allowed every type of art in that section, it would be full of meme pics and OCs.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Jokuc

[MeanBlackHawk 147]

Jokuc I understood it but I was just addressing a single point within the whole scheme of things.

 

[Dowlphin 463]

Should be clarified like this in the subsection descriptions.

Also, making one additional subforum for the kind of creative work we're talking about here might help keeping it out of the nonspecific forum where this stuff is supposed to go now.

 

Strangely though, the thread in question was not moved. It was merely locked. Should be unnecessary. If there is no feedback occuring for it, it will move down in the list naturally. If there IS fedback for it, I'd say that gives it some legitimacy in the art section.

[Vexx3 1,540]

Just as a heads up, there was a Guide to Octavia's Hall that was posted recently that should help mitigate confusion on what is and is not allowed to be posted.  

[Dowlphin 463]

Great! Could that link be included in the forum description? Ideally for "Pony Artwork" and subforums if the forum software allows that. Only by chance I accessed the "Octavia's Hall" level directly and saw the description there.

 

Generally I must say though, as evidenced in some parts of that guide as well as in the names of forum sections, there's confusion about the term "art". Sometimes it's used as a broad term, sometimes for the visual arts excluding other forms, sometimes including other forms except those not specifically listed, and that might contribute to (or be a symptom of, or both) the common disregarding of art past a certain threshold of own contribution or less mainstream branches. And this is a highly philosophical matter, because nobody does anything completely on their own, since we are all highly interdependant.

 

Currently the forum structure is:

Pony Artwork -> Fan Art, Fan Music, Fan Fiction, Other Fan Works

 

More logical / less mistakable would be something like:

Pony Artwork -> Visual Art, Music, Literal Art, Other Art

 

It doesn't have to say "Fan" because it's about pony art, which very likely makes the creator a fan, but not necessarily.

 

If one wants to be even more precise, "Music" could instead be "Acoustic Art", since we wouldn't want to exclude stuff like voice acting demos, right?

And then all subsections contain "Art", which we could technically scrap, since it's already in the superior section's name (which is part of the shown section tree on the top of the page), leaving us with:

 

Pony Artwork -> Visual, Acoustic, Literal, Other

 

Neat, eh? 

 

 

P.S.: Can you please integrate

http://mlpforums.com/topic/59835-playing-around-with-the-pony-creator/

into

http://mlpforums.com/topic/263-post-your-oc-ponies

 

Then my locked thread could be removed completely and my OCs would be presented in the right thread. Or should I repost it there first and you delete the locked thread then?

Edited May 10, 2013 by Dowlphin

[NavelColt 22,881]

Great! Could that link be included in the forum description? Ideally for "Pony Artwork" and subforums if the forum software allows that. Only by chance I accessed the "Octavia's Hall" level directly and saw the description there.

 

It's worth mentioning that, that topic, as well as a god-tier level of other resources are all linked in the Resource Map. The Resource Map is not only linked as a subforum on the front page of the site, under the Site Questions & Tech Support section, but it's also a global announcement, found linked to at the top of every single forum on the site Adding it to the description would be rather redundant, seeing as the Resource Map would be but a few inches below it.