Jesus H, you people are really picky. I'm sure anyone could find a fault in anything if you look for it hard enough. Sure, it might be a bit sloppy but I'm sure hes a busy guy. Also DT must appreciate his work enough to keep working with him for nearly a decade.
Actually, I don't think we're really picky. Syme, nowadays, has become extremely lazy artist which makes me wonder why DT keep choosing him. The guy uses fairly common stock images, and sometimes he even shares 'em (Remember ADTOE and Circus Maximus?)
It's not just you who does this (far from it!) so this isn't aimed at you specifically, any more than anyone else. I'm also not defending Hugh Syme, (cos I think he's been fairly slipshod right from Octavarium, and sweet lord am I ready for a break,) but I think it's a little rich to berate him using an example that quite neatly demonstrates that stock images are by no means a Syme-specific thing. Pretty much every digital artist uses them, and it's entirely routine. Mattias Noren didn't get the unicyclist to pose like that. I'm not sure how everyone manages to get themselves in such a tizz about this.
More digital art in the prog metal genre --
Thomas Ewerhard didn't ship this guy out to some canyon in businesswear and get him to scratch his head a bit:
Very few of these shadows ever met:
This never happened:
I mean, fine to slag Syme off, but can we at least slag him off for his actual shortcomings? It feels a bit like we're moving the goalposts - "That picture is bad cos the stock image has been pasted in badly!" "This one isn't." "Well, that one's bad cos it uses a stock image!" If you want your album cover to be a man unicycling over the tail of a plane, as the tightrope frays, there are a lot of health and safety barriers that make such an image very difficult to stage. Yes, you might need to source something from the world's online databanks, and you may find yourself slightly limited by the number of faceless unicyclists available for your delectation. I think to berate Syme for having the audacity to use stock images kind of threatens to undermine any proper, valid points about his work.
ETA:
Seriously, you're focusing on a small section of a two-page picture, and you're not even seeing it in the context of the booklet itself and how the pictures work together.
I think the problem is that people
are seeing it in the context of a booklet - and it's a booklet where angles are confusing, light bends round corners, and lens flares have had great big stonking lines bisecting them. On its own? Fine, unfortunate but ignorable. But it's the culmination of a few weeks of discontent.
Topic: Dream Theater self titled album discussion - [SPOILER FREE DISCUSSION ONLY] (Read 912558 times)