Can I use Premade assets in my artwork?

Is it ok to use pre-made 3d assets in my artwork? 

Over the last 16 years as a commercial artist, I've created hundreds of images, designs and illustrations and used many different programs such as 3ds Max, Daz 3d, Photoshop, Zbrush to create my personal and professional artwork. Typically I use the best program or approach that can get the job done in the quickest time possible with the highest quality possible. This often involves finding ways to cut corners. For example if I need a 3d mountain range, then I could spend time hand crafting the mountain itself, painstakingly sculpting each detail, which would likely make my client very unhappy, or I could use a terrain generator to procedural create one. Another example; if I need to populate a scene with a crowd of people, I could spend a lot of time illustrating the crowd, or use a character generator to do this in a fraction of the time. This often poses the question of authorship, did you really create this piece of artwork or did the program create it or another artist? 

The simple answer is, all of the above. I like to compare this to the role of a Photographer photographing a model seated on a chair holding a statue figurine. One might look at the final photo and assess how they feel about what they're seeing. What do we see? we're essentially seeing many pre-made assets composed together. The photographer did not create the model (in most cases!) nor did he create the seat which she is sitting on, or the room they are both in, the lights, the camera used, the statue. All these elements were composed by the photographer to create a final image that asks to be judge as a whole and not by the sum of each part. The image in most cases should be original. In the end, what I do is very much like that of a photographer. I use tools, programs and props and anything else I need to create work that aims to be original and produced in a reasonable amount of time. 

So is it ok to use pre-made assets to create your artwork? absolutely! If you have reservations, then think of yourself as a digital photographer who simply uses these tools to compose the final piece of work. 

March 22, 2018