Screenshots of DirectX 11 have recently come out and I have to ask if there really is any point in upgrading?

Tough Choice... (click for full size)

This one is a tricky one (click for full size)

You can check for your answers here at Gizmodo.

Can anyone really tell which ones above are DirectX 11 vs DirectX 10? And more importantly, is the difference really worth new hardware?

Personally, I think that the hardware wars are coming to a close. If the screenshots above are any indications, we are well past the point of diminishing returns and everyone knows it because we cannot sustain a 2-3 year period of obsolescence in gaming technology.

And with the rising cost of game development going up and developers barely breaking even with every technological leap, only a bare handful of games are going to be using the latest technology.

The opportunity is just right for indie game developers to take the industry by storm. People aren’t looking for better graphics, but new and inventive ways of using the existing technology.

If you are seeking an education in how to illustrate, draw and render artwork like the great masters, the place not to go is to college. Academic colleges of art do not teach people how to draw. They do teach art history, color theory and composition, but if you are interested in going to art school to learn how to illustrate and draw characters, going to an atelier is ideal.

But even then, art is like computer programming – it is a technical field. It is all about directed practice and skill – not about getting A’s by parroting a professor’s philosophy or appealing to their aesthetic sense.

One of my favorite 3D artists is Monty Oum. In his interview with Screw Attack, Monty Oum admitted that he never went to college, and is in fact a high school dropout. He doesn’t endorse the path he took, however, it is impossible to argue with his talent.

After he created “Haloid”, he got enough publicity and attention that he was recruited by Midway. At Midway, in his spare time, he created the “Dead Fantasy” series and later landed a job at Konami. He is arguably one of the most talented 3D artists in the industry.

Anime USA Mascot for 2008 - Unpublished

I’ve only mentioned it my profile that I am an “aspiring artist” but I just realized that I haven’t actually posted any of my art on my blog.  To the left is an unpublished piece I proposed for Anime USA 2008, a Japanese Animation convention held near Washington, DC.

The theme for that year’s convention was “kami”, the spirits or gods of Japanese Mythology.  My piece was not selected (and thus unpublished), but in all fairness, it could not hold a candle to some of the amazing digital painters who did the art for the convention.

I’ve long tried to do digital painting, but I can only do cell-shaded artwork.  The reason for this is that I am color-blind and so when it comes to the subtle shades of painting, I cannot see them.  But cell-shading is very high-contrast colors and I can use the assistance of the eye-dropper tool to pick out colors I know to be correct.

The piece was sketched, inked and colored in less than 8 hours because it was a rush concept piece I did for the convention.  The inking and coloring was actually done in Adobe Flash CS3.

I realize that I can do all the art as well as programming for any Flash game I would develop, but I’ve found that I can make very little headway if I start working that way.  When I start programming, it is hard for me to disengage from the code, and start drawing the assets I need.  The reverse is also true.  When I am drawing I just want to draw without the time pressure of getting back to programming.

Thus, I am reteaming with the artist of Space ROX, Jonathan Stuart, to see how much further we can get on the project and attempt to release our final product by the end of summer.

As much as my ego wants to do everything for the project, my experience as a programmer as well as my sense of the project scope dictates to me that the work needs to be divided.  Specialization of labor will allow us to produce 4x-8x more than if I continued as a one-man team.