like yes i obviously know why this philosophy exists and why people say it so much, and yes, there is validity to it. but it only makes sense as a way to confront one specific situation: the neophyte artist who first put paint on canvas two weeks to a year ago, finds their work unsatisfying (insert entire ira glass "killer taste" quote here) and has come to people they consider Better Artists to ask "am I using the wrong brushes?"
yes, it's valid to reply to that person by saying that, you know, da vinky could still have painted the mona lisa with a house painting brush dipped in cowshit. that's true and poignant, but people love to throw this phrase around the same way forum nerds use "RTFM", as a shutdown to any and all questioning about technique and tools, and that's where it becomes insulting, dismissive, and often just wrong.
i cannot tell you how many times i've seen someone reply "RTFM" to a question that is not answered in the manual. and I cannot tell you how many times i've seen someone ask about technique or tools and get told "just try harder sweety :)" tools matter beyond an objective measure of quality.
yes, two paintbrushes may be "basically the same", two pencils might be "basically the same", and a skilled artist can notionally produce anything they like with dollar store versions of either one. but a brush with a particular texture lends itself to specific kinds of results, and even as an extremely inexperienced artist I can tell you that there is a massive difference between shading with a #2 Ticonderoga and doing the same thing with a Blackwing. they are "the same", but they aren't the same.
but that's not even the sort of thing i'm talking about. i'm talking about people insisting that DSLRs and smartphones can readily take the same pictures, or acting like "what guitar do i need to make speed metal" is somehow not a valid question (it's an ibanez RG, you want an ibanez RG.) or even worse, people suggesting that music or art software is all interchangeable.
christ. christ almighty
an artist COULD make the same picture in photoshop and krita, but if they aren't straining as hard as they can to consciously make that specific image, the software is going to heavily influence the result. a musician COULD make the same song in ableton or FL studio or reason, but if they are starting from scratch and working organically it is very likely that that won't happen. and that's only considering the physical structure of the various UIs and how they push the creator towards specific ways of making and using patterns and automation, not even considering the likelihood that they're using a completely different set of tone generator plugins. nobody would say that a trumpeter would still be a trumpeter if they bought a clarinet instead of a trumpet.
my videos wouldn't even look the way they do if I was still using goddamn Adobe Premiere, because while they're both notionally NLEs, the visual effects that are readily craftable in Resolve are very different than in Premiere. and like... canon cameras shoot redder than nikon. yeah, you're gonna swim against that current, you're going to recolor everything in lightroom anyway, but the fact that every one of your pictures is just warmer than the same picture shot on another brand of camera, and in ways that are not fully and automatically corrected by dragging the color temp slider, fucking matters. don't get me started on film stock. art is inseparable from the tools used to make it.
and i mean... all of this is also ignoring the simple fact that it's often nicer to use better tools, and if someone asks "what's the best tool," you could just... tell them? and let them waste their money on it and learn a valuable lesson in the process? answering a question with a brand and model is literally easier than replying with a scolding, every single time. it's free.
One thing I've seen is people (this is in general, not against Gravis) think of there being a dichotomy of artists who will refuse to ever talk about what they do for fear of revealing some precious secret and artists who are happy to help others learn. But there are also artists who stopped sharing because when they did they constantly had people who tried those tools out get mad that they can't do what the artist does and then take it out on the artist. (I've seen multiple artists post about this, below the cut is more about this and other community stuff.)
This is entirely valid and I completely acknowledge that it's not a perspective I considered. However, I will also say this:
One of the greatest tragedies of the internet, from a 10,000 ft view, is the slow drift towards treating every single person that any of us meet as a lunatic who will lash out at any moment, swat us, stalk us, and try to genuinely hurt us in retaliation for a perceived slight that doesn't exist. I feel it, we all feel it, but I think we have a duty, at some point, to not let our perception of the great unwashed masses blur together so badly that we are unable to treat anyone with respect, but rather treat every meeting as an aggro encounter in which we can't see any win condition beyond escaping with our skin intact and no strings attached.
Yeah, this place is fucking scary, but... Nobody at this point is unaware of the potential ramifications of opening your mouth in full view of Online. We all know what can happen. Yet we try anyway, we put ourselves out there, get burned, then do it again and again and again. if we're not going to isolate ourselves completely, we have to try to give people the benefit of the doubt, or it just sets a tone of paranoia and suspicion in every community, at which point, why have communities? Why talk at all?
And you know what, I should say: like any set of ideals, it can only be approached, not achieved, and exists in concert and conflict with other ideals that are just as important. On another day, Webster and I could have swapped places between these two posts. It's fucking hard trying to figure out how to behave on the computer.
