Hot take: I used to skip digital art critiques but now I read every single one

I always thought critique threads were just people being harsh for no reason. Then I saw this one comment on a piece I posted where someone pointed out my lighting was flat because I only used one light source in Procreate. That one observation from some random user named pixel_pusher42 changed how I shade everything now. Has anyone else had a random comment totally shift their style?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela72812d ago

Respectfully disagree, most critique threads are still just noise to wade through.

nathan_kim12d ago

Had to wade through a lot myself before finding anything useful... what would make you actually stop and read a critique thread, @angela728? Figuring out what separates the signal from the noise could help everyone here.

parker_webb11d ago

That phrase "most critique threads are still just noise" really hits on something I've felt for a while. The problem is a lot of people post critiques that are basically "this is bad" without saying WHY or HOW to fix it. That kind of feedback is useless, it just adds to the pile. Real signal comes from people who point to a SPECIFIC line or section and offer an alternative. If someone just says "your pacing is off" without saying where, I'm scrolling past it too. But the ones that say "your second paragraph drags because you repeat the same setup twice" are gold. Maybe the issue isn't that critiques are all noise, but that people don't know how to give useful ones. We need a few good examples pinned somewhere so everyone knows what "good" actually looks like.