The Critique Award ~ Congratulations ium!

[RitterCat]

The Critique Award​

Welcome fellow Smeargle-goers!

Critique is one of the best things an artist can ever get. It encourages them and helps them improve with an outside perspective and constructive advice. However, excellent critique hasn't really had a way to be specifically rewarded, and the Critique Award hopes to remedy that.

This award will be given to users giving helpful advice to the many artists in our Studio hopefully every one to two weeks. Their names will be recorded here in this thread, and winning the award will definitely be taken into account when choosing users for Community Contributor — for example, our Community Contributor Bummer was partially nominated for his excellent critique with posts such as this.

You might be thinking right now, fine, but what makes good critique? Here are some handy hints on how to help improve your advice.

• Look at examples of good critique.
Looking at critique by our Community Contributors and other respected artists/contributors can give you a great idea on how to structure your critique. There are many great role models to follow in critique with many great posts; Bummer's post linked previously is a great example, as is this helpful critique from ium in the Smeargle Card Project.

• Critique where you are knowledgeable.
While looking at the critique of artists is helpful to improve your own, if you're not as experienced then DON'T feel you have to match their level of detail or give advice on how to improve. In fact it'd probably be better to stay away from these things, but this doesn't mean you have nothing to say. Anyone can tell what they dislike in a piece or feel is badly done. In the words of lovely smod Zracknel, "you don't need to be a chef to know the steak is burnt." Critique in your comfort zone.

• Don't be afraid to critique other critique.
Critique works best as a discussion. If you disagree with a point somebody else made, then feel free to respond saying that! This is just as helpful for an artist, to see the opinions of what people like in their work, and often these discussions will resolve with a single piece of improved advice, rather than two pieces of advice offered separately, which can be confusing. A great example of this is Zracknel's post in Art for Articles.

If you combine all of this with a friendly nature you'll be a great critic in no time! So get out there and get posting :)

Happy critiquing~!

 

[BattleStar]

I hope this is not out of place but I kind of have a question. You touched on this a bit when critiquing a piece when it's not in your experience field of how to improve it. Would this kind of be the same as having somebody not necessarily be an artist, giving a critique? What I mean is how would a critique be taken from somebody like me who isn't consider as an artist? That might then translate as a disregard for a critique given. This type of post seems like a kind where it's mostly for artist to critique even though non-artistically gifted can still give a decent critique. Could you elaborate more please.

 

[Bummer]

What I mean is how would a critique be taken from somebody like me who isn't consider as an artist? That might then translate as a disregard for a critique given. This type of post seems like a kind where it's mostly for artist to critique even though non-artistically gifted can still give a decent critique.

No artist talent whatsoever is required if someone wants to make a few pointers against the work of an artist. It IS true that artists themselves can feel more adequate to offer advice since they're more aware of the effort and process behind the final product, along with offering suggestions on how to improve it. But not once did Ritter mention that you need art skills to offer critique, which is because anyone with a good knowledge about what makes an image 'good' can offer their thoughts about it, as reflected by Zracknel's quote.

Sometimes, critique doesn't necessarily require one to find the faults withing the images the artists has already made public, but to also suggest what other areas they can improve on or what they should experiment with in their next creations. Not all critique results into changes being made to the picture, but if your words help artists to either re-evaluate their work or make them aware of what their audience like or dislike, it broadens their horizons and may affect their judgement for the better.

 

[RitterCat]

After looking through the great critiques in Smeargle's Studio these past few weeks, we have decided on excellent user ium as the first winner of the Critique Award. Congratulations :)

He has maintained a high level of activity with many great critiques, such as these ones.

Juicy Fruit was also a great contributor, running a close second, with posts like these two.

I can't list everyone who posted critiques but here are some of the many. With users paintseagull and Snowpeashooters both critiquing well, it's obvious to see that both established artists and new, aspiring users can both contribute! Also, don't feel you can only critique art threads; feel free to critique art in projects like the Card Project or even banners and sprites in the General thread, like Homeslice did here.

So no matter who you are, if you've never critiqued before or just missed out this time, get critiquing and help artists improve their works! We'll see you in a week or two with our next winner, and once again, big congratulations to ium :)