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glennuwine —
Doc. Octavius
Published: 2006-10-22 01:17:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 27627; Favourites: 1470; Downloads: 128
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Description
Thie was a self motivating test to see how far I could push myself In terms of not only drawing but breaking the barrier of keeping my drawings 11x 14 and smaller. This drawing took me 6 months to do and approximately 58 hours. This was completed my freshman year of college and is still one of my favorites. I didnt do this peice to show the world that i can draw...I did this piece to show myself that there are no boundaries to my ability. I could never sell this piece because it's the foundation for many to come...however upon my ideas instead.Related content
Comments: 442
I really don't know what to say that hasn't already been said. Keep up the good work.
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If the job market has people like you, I think I'll give up now.
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lol, even the coat has a patter, you are right man, you have no end to your talent, GREAT JOB!
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holy smokes! true to the DD description, this is insanely detailed! *gape* amazing!
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this is wild, the details of the tentacles are just mind-blowing...
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I give props to the artist for his intense detail and dedication to his work.
I loved how you pushed you limits to see you own abilities. Now a new task is before you. Creating you own life in art. You can see how detailed you can get, now see how you can tell "your story" with your work. Whatever story that might be.
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Wow. The shading and perspective in this piece is just epic. Not to mention, spiderman. Dude, I mean, he does whatever a spider can! That's just awesome!
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think im done with art for the rest of my life now...
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I just watched this movie. It is interesting to see it up. 
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Holy crap i thought that was a picture! You're good man, really good
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OH! MY! .... wow.
You are AMAZING! THIS is AMAZING! You are so very talented! I look forward to seeing what else you can accomplish!
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A truly amazing level of detail and skill. Most Impressive.
Below the line is my personal opinion on this piece as a work of art, as well as my opinion other things directly related art and this piece (all of which is written oriented towards the author of this piece). If you are not interested in my opinion, then by all means, you may wish to stop reading now.
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What you have displayed here is an amazing, absolutely amazing ability in terms of craftsmanship. You have succeeded in reproducing an image in an amazing level of detail. That is absolutely impressive. I have seen paintings done in similar fashion, that one would not think they are even a painting. A truly tremendous amount of skill. I cannot even think of a critique to offer on your rendering of the image, it is at the point of being what one might even call "flawless." However, there are things far more important for an artist...
The great artists of old, for example, Da Vinci (if you don't like him, choose another, this method is true for many of them), did not craft their entire paintings themselves. Their students would paint less important portions of the paintings, while the masters would only take care of the most important portions (the smile, the hands). But more importantly, the master would be in charge of the composition. They would decide what actually goes into the image, what truly makes it a work of art. They would decide how Mona Lisa should smile, or exactly the pose of God reaching out to Adam, or precisely how the bodies should strewn across the Raft of the Medusa. The artist lies in the ability to CREATE, not duplicate.
While there is definitely a place for fan-art, hell, my very icon is fan-art, but for something to be fan-ART, it shouldn't be the mere duplication of an image in a different technique...
Again, your skill, your craftsmanship, is absolutely incredible. But so is a camera. You have achieved nothing that that machine cannot do on it's own. You say this piece is a foundation on which others may launch their ideas. What ideas? To copy an existing work and claim (with a complete lack of modesty mind you) that it is something profound, something incredible? I would much rather look at the original, comic-book quality (aka obviously less realistic and labor intensive) image of Doc Oc and marvel (no pun intended) in its creativity, in the idea of this new character, of his outrageous costume of green and yellow (or sometimes more of an orange), and the amount of personality and humanity that went into the creation of him.
That is what makes man superior to the camera, to the computer: we can create something NEW, where as such machines can only replicate and manipulate. If I were to call you an artist (for this piece at least. I have browsed your gallery and seen works of art there, and for those I commend you), then I would have to call a camera an artist as well.
And thus, while I am thoroughly thoroughly impressed with your skill at rendering an image, and I cannot complain on any level about your ability to handle a piece of graphite, I would rather see the creative doodles of a bored child, with new characters and scenes being developed, however poorly drawn or scribbled, than a person trying to be a camera. You have better parts and functions than a camera, you ARE superior to one, so use that creative superiority to your advantage and astound us by using your incredible skill to CREATE, not duplicate. A true show of skill, would be to create an image of this quality and realism completely from one's own mind. To show that your knowledge of lighting, shading, and the plethora of other skills involved in creating an image of this magnitude, is so incredible that you can CREATE reality from your mind.
The other artists behind this work aren't listed here, but to name a few would be creator of the character Doc Oc himself, the person who conceptualized this portrayal of him, the people who positioned the camera, choreographed his pose, decided upon the position of the lights, and the people who actually made/designed those clothes and metallic claws (real or digital) that garnish him. So I simply cannot give you the accolades that everyone else offers, because they're not all yours...
You are an amazing craftsman, that is undeniable. Were it not for your exuberant pride in your work, I would congratulate you further. But this just is not a work of art in my opinion. That's it, my opinion: take it, leave it, play with it, eat it, love it, hate it, do with it as you please. By all means, share your opinion back with me if you like, because you are absolutely entitled to. Flame the hell out of me if that would please. Insult my own works of art, tell me they're not works of art, your opinion is just as good as mine, or mine is just as pointless as the next guy, however you like to frame it.
If I have offended you with my words, I assure you that was not my intent: I seek only to forward what I can offer through my opinion, so that in the event that it is useful to someone, then they have it. To those who feel that reading this has been a waste of my time, well, I tried to warn you 
To those artists out there that may feel daunted by the magnificence of this piece, remember: if you can be creative, if you can actually CREATE, then you have something worth having, and by all means, go with it. Find the medium that works for you, or trudge through a medium that doesn't. Express yourself, be yourself, create for yourself, create for others, create for no reason at all; but without creation, we are nothing more than cameras and computers, except worse: because cameras and computer are way faster...
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this is exactly what i want from each and every piece i enter in this site. thank you so much. im currently sick now with the flu, and can barely work but i do agree with what you said. I did this piece almost 4 years ago. i was a freshman attending CCS (College for Creative Studies) and my department chair told me everything u said and its true. now i am developing my own ideas and taking my own references. but its all a growing process. thank you so much for the input. ill take a look at ur gallery as well.
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Well get better soon, and I hope to see more work like this from you 
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heh, you talk to much.
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WOW. Now that was amazing. I see what you mean by not being the creator of the piece, and as an artist (not meaning to offend either) I agree with what was said.
Also as an artist that does the same thing, what would be considered as a "camera"? Would you consider Monet and Degas, the fathers of Impressionism "cameras" because they when out into the world and recreated?... Seeing them as the early "cameras" of art? I'm just curious on that subject.
Also as an artist that does the same thing, I only see that work as practice. That is why, personal, I refuse to sell those pieces of work that I do. But there are also piece that I do that from compiling piece from other things that I did; from gestures and expressions that I see.
I guess what I am asking in a more in-depth of what you mean as "CREATING" an image and copying it. I'm glad you said what you did. It gives an understanding of what a artist is. Taking us out of a generalization and into more intense categories.
For this I thank you.
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Ah, I see what you mean about an impressionist (or any other style for that matter) being a form of camera. By the way, thank you for your (kind) reply and your interest in what I said, I truly appreciate it. So, now I will try to answer your questions to the best of my abilities: an Impressionist is still an artist (as in not JUST a camera) in my opinion, because while they are taking something they see and just painting it, they are still choosing what angle to paint from, what's in the "shot" etc, and most importantly, their painting is a display of their /impression/ of what they saw. However, even a painter who is simply painting what they see somewhere and trying to make it as real as possible (like someone who paints picture-perfect landscapes) is also an artist, because they're not JUST the camera, but also the "photographer."
That is the key: being a camera, while impressive, is nothing unless you are the photographer too, because the photographer is the one creating the art portion of the work. If I were to say an impressionist or anyone else who paints subjects that aren't of their own creation wasn't an artist, then I would have to nobody is an artist, because nobody here invented people, trees, the sky, or even colors and sounds for that matter, and that would mean we are all just cameras regardless. However, there is an art to so many more things that go into an image than just the rendering technique. For the photographer, while they don't have to toil with rendering the image (at least not AS MUCH as say, a painter or graphite artist), their art is in choosing the proper angle, lens, lighting, composition, and so many other things that it is just as difficult as any other art. Notably, a camera can't do any of those things on its own. The creativity lies in the creation of the scene, of the view, of what we see. For a photographer, everything in the view was already created, but they are creating the view, which can be an amazing amazing thing. But if one is simply taking a pre-made view and re-making it exactly, just in a different way, that's like taking a picture of a painting and calling it art. What did the "photographer" do? Nothing except decide to take a picture of said painting. But if someone were to see a painting, and repaint it in their own style (for example, if someone were to take the Mona Lisa and repaint in their own personal brand of comic-book styling), then I would say that is art, because they're putting them self into the piece through their style and creativity.
Now, this might bring up the question: well, let's say a photographer sees a painting, and takes a picture of it, but at an angle. So they're not directly reproducing the image, but at the same time...perhaps there isn't really all that much to it is there? They went to a museum, saw a painting, took a picture slightly angled to the left, and called it art. Is it art, or a picture of art? Where do we draw the line? That my friend is a debate that has been going on for centuries, so the place I draw line is here: it's up to the viewer. Everyone has their own opinion as to what is art, and it's hard to draw the line. For me, when I see an image, if I see what some might call "artistic impulse" in it, then I would call it art. But if it strikes me as simply "documentation," then that's what I call it. To the photographers out there, I'm sure you recognize a difference between artistic photography and documentary photography? It is indeed a blurry line between the two, but there is a big difference between taking a picture of something to simply store it as a permanent image, and taking a picture of something to create a work of art that one made by specifically creating a certain "view." But the reason this is up to the viewer, is simply because to one person, an image may appear to carry the artistic impulse, but to another, it might not. How artistic something is depends on the viewer. On side note, level of creativity in works of art is never constant: someone might draw just a single made up character, while another might make up 20 characters. Perhaps then the image with the 20 new characters is more creative, but perhaps that other single character alone is far more creative than all of those 20? Its highly subjective and really does depend on the viewer, because in order to create someone, it can't have existed before. If you create something that already exists, then that is actually duplication. However, since everything we make is still BASED off what exists (in the very least, every image somebody makes is made using the colors that already exist. But if somebody makes something with a person in it, then the fact that its a person is based on people. If its just person-like, still based of a person. I think you catch my drift), the inherent creativity depends on how different it is from what we have seen before. For example, to someone who has never seen a car before, a painting of car would seem highly creative, while for someone who sees cars frequently, they would probably say "big whoop." So even how creative something is depends on the viewer, because we all have different experiences that determine how apparently unique and creative something is.
The only reason I can say with near certainty that this (lovely) picture of Doctor Octavius is not a work of art, is because how can there be any artistic impulse when it was made with the purpose of precisely recreating an existing image? Yes, he decided to do it in graphite, white-out the background, etc. So on a certain level, there is an art to it...but not very much in my opinion. That's why I would better appreciate the work of a 5-year-old's doodles of their imaginary friend monster thingy, because that's far more creative (but if, somehow, I had that exact same imaginary friend monster thingy when I was 5, then I wouldn't find it so creative and say "You stole my friend you little punk!" Ok, not really, but I think you see my point). I mean, honestly, image the all the people who actually made that original Doctor Octavius image that this is a duplication of: they would likely first be amazed and say "Daaaaamn, that looks just like it!" But then they would probably feel like "but hey, that's ours, we're the artists behind that image..."
So in the end, even the line between creating and image and simply copying it is fuzzy, and thus it comes down to personal opinion...
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..." I could never sell this piece because it's the foundation for many to come...however upon my ideas instead...."
the sentence above was posted because i want everyone to know that this is not my own idea, creation, concept, etc. and that i only did this as a test of what i can do. i know that art only comes from the mind and after this piece i started developing illustrations and not just drawings.
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I'm very glad to hear that my friend: good luck, I look forward to them. (+ watch, hehe).
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i see what you mean, as the photographer; the artist. It put drawing things in a new perspective on how to view them.
Thanks, you're very insightful. Like to know your feeling on other subjects. Thank we would have very interesting conversations.
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Thank you for your (very good) questions, they helped me explore the topic further than I had. Feel totally free to ask any questions you have, and I'll do my best to answer. Though we may want to move our conversation to a different "location," haha. Send me a note, comment my user page, whatever you like. If you would prefer I can IM you.
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Did you look through my work yet? Like to get your opionion on my stuff.
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0.0 Holy crap!!! That's freaking amazing!! Great job!
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Wow, thats all I've got to say.
Oh, and...
Keep up the fantastic work
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wow, thats amazing, almost hard to fathom putting that amount of time into a drawing but it really shows in its perfection.
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Well, most people here said it all. This is , for sure, the best work with pencil I have seen in a while. I applaud you and admire your skills.
People should spend their time in dA appreciating artists like you, instead of worshiping some trivial and appealing things we see as DDs or popular stuff.
Great job! :+fav+:
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When I first saw this I tought to myself "Why is a somewhat average photomanip being given a DD?"
Then I hit full-view...and my brain imploded.
Great job dude.
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Really stellar, 
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This is the most amazing piece of art I have ever seen in this style and on Deviant Art. You did such a fanominal job. I just LOVE it!
I bet Alfred Molina would be very flattered if he saw this.
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Such amazing detail there. A DD well deserved. Congrats!
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One of the best drawings I've ever seen hands down
GREAT JOB!
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This is the most amazing drawing I've ever seen...
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I'll never be able to look at other graphite art again with the same level of appreciation after I've seen this. It blows just about everything else I've seen done by graphite on here right out of the water. I'm sure it will inspire many artists working with the same medium on DA.
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holy moly! i thought it was photoshoped or something at least...thats amazing.
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umm ok, lets try this again, Did you Do This Drawing on Paper or PC???
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NM, it's done on paper and scanned why bother
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The depth and detail with this graphite image is simply amazing. You are a wonderful artist, and I hope you keep at it!
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