Scene Reflection 2 by The Night Angel
Scene Reflection 2 by The Night Angel
07-31-98
I know how long that text is. If you dont wanna rea
d it, please jump
at least to the last paragraph line 78.
Pretty much everyone knows how bad the scene is today. T
hough it seems
to be getting better. The few next lines are just to point o
ut what I believe
are two things that cause this so called art scene to be tha
t messed up.
Id say the most influencing factor is the general bored
om of everyone.It has always been like that: people s
tarted drawing, got good, got bored,
dropped the scene and they were then replaced by new artists
who got good, etc.
But for some odd reason, new artists dont seem to get as go
od as theyre
normally supposed to be. Can you name only one good artist w
ho started drawing
this year? So what happens is when people that have been dra
wing for a few yearslose the interest in ansi, or sim
ply cant find the time to keep working on thisintere
st, they drop out of the scene, but dont get replaced
by new artists.
People dont seem to realize how bad this is. The scene
is slowly goingto die, even though people say itll a
lways be around, because what keeps peoplein this sce
ne is the love of ansi, not the use other people make
of it. Of
course this is true. I dont see why we should stop drawing
only because people
arent gonna use the ansi we make. But the problem is that t
here are more peopledropping out of the scene than go
od people joining. Dying without having
children pretty much sucks if you ask me. Whos gonna benefi
t your experience?
For myself, having children and showing them things Ive lea
rnt is somehow a wayto thank my parents of raising me
. They are the ones that make me what I am
today. Else, you have no way of thanking them. Sharing your
knowledge has to be
one of the most important things in the world. Same goes wit
h the art scene. We
have worked our ass off learning how to draw and no ones go
nna benefit of this
when we drop out? This is stupid.
This is a call to every good artist out there. Get t
o know someone who
is in your area code, whos not really good, whether he
be drawing ansi, ascii,
rip or vga. Teach him how to draw, give him tips, share
your scene experience.
Help him be part of the scene, as much as youre helping
this scene get better
and rewarding yourself of all those years of hard work.
Knowledge is way too
important to just let it go with you when quiting. You d
ont need to do much.
Working only a few blocks help the person so much and yo
u wouldnt even believe
how happy it can get someone.
I, myself, feel to have contributed in that way to the s
cene. I helped
Fluor out when he started and am still helping him today, go
t Grindstoned to
draw good ansi and got him in Dark after hes been drawing f
or about a month,
taught Mass Murderer how to draw. I helped several people on
irc.
The second thing that causes this mess up would be relat
ed to the
internet, though I believe if everyone helps the new artists
, this wouldnt be
a problem anymore.
Before everyone could access the internet, your scene li
fe all started
out on local boards, where you would see your first ansi pac
k, start drawing
until youd wanna join a local group, or even create one. An
d by the time youd
reach the international art scene, youd be pretty good. But
now that pretty
much all of the boards are gone and that anyone can get acce
ss to the internet,
what used to be everybodys local scene is now ansi. Sad, b
ut true. I dont
wanna start saying shit about how lame ansi is, cauz Id ha
ve enough to write agoddamn book. I simply wanna say
that the expension of the international scene,
or of the local scene, I guess you could say it both way, br
ought a shit load ofnew, not so good, groups. Now, th
e number of good groups versus the number of
not so good groups if I can say, is kinda disappointing. It
seems like the
quality of the whole scene dropped because of that.
I dont really know what to suggest beside helping all t
hose new
artists out. Its pretty much the only way to make the scene
quality better,
because we have pretty much no control on this, since the sc
enes not owned by
anyone. Another way would be to only let packs of decent gro
ups on archive siteslike acids artpack archives, rev
iewing decent groups, etc. Now dont get me
wrong on that, Im not trying to eliminate groups that dont
get at least 5 out
of 10 on review sites/mags. Hell no. Id be saying the oppos
ite of what I said
in the previous lines. I do believe we need new artists and
doubt anyone could
say the opposite, without being wrong. I just think we need
to help them out andget things organized. If we wanna
go further in ansi exploration, I think we
need to help the most people possible and the fastest possib
le. We need to get
them passed the ansi level when you really suck and have no
inspiration. If we
can get them to do in only a few months, what they wouldve
normally done in
more than a year, I think our jobs done.
This made me think about the differences between the art
scene and reallife. I havent really been able to fi
nd something that different. I mean, werea community
of people, that talk to each others. As artists do,
we produce art
and show it to other people. Then, I thought of something. H
ow do we educate
people in the art scene? We do not. They educate themselves
and waste valuable
months doing it. People only start producing decent art when
they know their
medium. There are things you need to learn in ansi, tricks y
ou need to know,
before you can say what looks good and what doesnt. You nee
d to be educated andno one could say the opposite. Lo
ok at an ansi you liked before you really got
good. Look at it now. How does it look like? Lemme tell you:
it looks like shit.I know, Ive experienced the same
thing. Thats why I had this very good idea,
that looks very silly: Ive decided to create some sort of a
n association. Its
called the Big Art Scene Brothers. Im pretty sure y
ou all know what are those
big brothers associations, in real life. The purpose is pret
ty much the same:
having someone older better in that case than you, who you
can count on. With
this association, I wanna offer free help of course to jus
t anyone who needs
and wants to be helped with any of the scene mediums. If you
wanna join me as a
big brother, email me at tna@free.xtel.com. Im not
paying anyone for that, the
only thing you get is pride, because you should be proud of
helping someone as
much as your scene. If you wanna join as a little brother I
guess, email us me
for the moment at bigbrothers@iname.com. With this associat
ion, I believe we
can get a few people to become alot better in a few months.
Please support your
scene.
Please think about it.
Alexandre Menard,
aka The Night Angel / AWE Lettering.