Blog Title: The Artist at Work

The art of technology and computer generated imagery

cattle skull

January 9, 2006

Eno, Before and After Morphing

Blogs ~ David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

sketchbook

Album 1

This is a collection of drawings done in one session with a particular model. You can leaf through and see various poses. I liked one of the sketches, and did a little more with it.

Digital+Painting

Layers

You have a wide range of tools available to you as a digital artist. I find that various software applications have their own strengths. The sketches were done with Painter. I drew the black outline using Illustrator, because I like the way the calligraphic brush dynamically cleans up my strokes. When you’re working with layers, Photoshop is a great compositing application. You can do color correction, or add a surface texture, as I’ve done here.

To Do ~ Learn ActionScript interactivity tricks for Flash

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vintage computer

A “mythical” Apple I computer

Before the iPhone and the iPod, Apple made this computer. Like a lesser known painting by a famous artist, this Apple I is tucked away in a Silicon Valley wine cellar, one of perhaps 50 still known to exist.

“Sexy” close-up

The motherboard originally sold without a keyboard, monitor or power supply. That big white microprocessor chip on the bottom row wasn’t made by either Motorola or Intel, it’s a MOS 6502.

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alien chaos

Chaotic Animation

Here’s an example of what I call "non-linear" or Chaotic Animation. What I mean by that is most cartoons run in a straight line, from beginning to end. In this case, the animation is "bounded" or limited by the number of things it can do, and it will do them continuously in random order. So even as the creator, I don’t know exactly what it will do next: Lunge, Intimidate, Twitch, or Blink.

Digital+Painting

The backdrop is a digital painting, maybe not as "chaotic" as Jackson Pollock, but the best approximation I can achieve, spattering color with a computer. Although it appears to have a gamut of colors, it really has a limited palette.

If you are working digitally, I recommend that you isolate the colors you want to work with, from the 2 million or so shades that your computer can render. In other words, your software offers lots of colors, "straight from the tube", and you should mix and blend them to make your own palette, just like artists using traditional media. It sounds less spontaneous that way, but it’s worth the extra effort.

Hacks

To do something similar using Flash motion graphics, you’ll have to use Action Script. Assuming you already know a bit about Flash, I’ll make a few intermediate level pointers. Feel free to log-in and comment if you need more.

The transformations this character goes through are ordinary "tweens" and single frame animations. The trick to making your animation non-linear is to create frame labels, and then goto and play those labels, in random order.

Now that you have a mental image of the play head jumping back and forth on the timeline, you may be wondering why the backdrop doesn’t jump back and forth as well. That’s because the backdrop is another movie clip, with its own timeline, on another layer.

Pretty impressive technology, don’t you think? And a good reason to creatively delve into Flash Action Script.

To Do ~ Learn to create your own characters with Photoshop shape layers

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two neo-cubist icons

iSpot “Face” Icon

Here are a pair of neo-cubist style icons I created for ForthMedia. The "ForthMedia" guy has been around for a while. Originally created in Flash, he has been re-done in Illustrator.

iBot “Contact Me” Icon

The “Contact Me” guy is wearing a headset, so he’s OK to drive in California. The new hands-free cell phone law goes into effect there on Tuesday. You can dial your phone, but you can’t lift it to your ear to have a conversation. Bizarrely enough, you can still text message for now, as long as you’re 18 or over. (Can you do that without looking?)

Note: These images are copyright ForthMedia, and used here by permission.

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cyber splash

The eWarrior MiniPlayer is powered by ForthMedia design technology.

energetics: sensuality

»Zoom this

If you really want to amp up your Photoshop skills, then work through Derek Lea’s June 2008 cover article for Photoshop User magazine. He uses a layered, compositing approach to digital illustrating that produces really impressive results.

Derek’s Blog “There are times when I’m working that I feel like I’m getting away with something. How is it that I can try something cool, have it published, and get paid? I have no idea, but I got away with it again.”

Desktop wallpaper

Here I am working with my own source material, as I try out the techniques. You can zoom my artwork to see the whole thing. Here’s what it looks like on a computer desktop.

you had to be there

Three Musicians (1921). Version residing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

When I was a kid, I had a small art book with a picture of Picasso’s Three Musicians on the cover. The image was about the size you see on your computer screen. Maybe smaller.

When I unexpectedly came face to face with the real thing in a museum, I was stunned by its size and true colors. To read that the painting is so many tens of inches by so many hundreds of centimeters, doesn’t explain it. Look at your wall. It’s about that big.

Four books, four Olgas

Since I can seemingly never have enough books about Picasso, I can show you an example of how hard it is to figure out what artwork looks like, without actually standing in front of it.

This is a painting of Picasso’s wife, Olga. Just looking at my version (from four different books) I think I’ve made my point. You can’t tell what art looks like from books, or on the Internet.

Knowing the artist had the color ochre in his palette, you might decide one of the middle slices are right. But the blues are different. Knowing the artist was imitating the smooth-skinned, idealized beauties painted by Ingres, you might choose another.

Olga Picasso poses for her portrait

Working from this photograph, Picasso embraced technology. Early film cameras were becoming the must-have gadgets of the day.

femmescape 1

FemmeScape 1

The above was realized with Photoshop. Below is the digital model. Her dramatic pose defies gravity, but I think it works in its intended context.

Pose

jazzy

Zazzy

I called this one jazzy because it reminded me of Matisse. It started out as a live sketch, that really celebrated the female figure, without being too overtly sexual.

Sketch - Los Gatos, 11-Feb-08