“Digital Art:
The New Art”
An Artist’s Personal
Exploration into the New Art Form
Copyright 2010, Eric Homan
“Digital Art: The New Art” - An Artist’s Personal Exploration Into the New Art Form
Technology and The Artist: Using the
Computer as an Artistic Tool
The Digital Golden Age
The Fine Arts Future in 3-D Painted Worlds
The Brilliant Vibrancy of Digital Color
Rising to the Challenge of Using 3-D
Space for Art
The First Generation of 3-D Artists
The Motion Picture in Digital
Transition in New Media
An Artist’s
Using the Computer to One’s Advantage
Varying Styles and Mediums with Computer
Software
The
Roots to My Love of Videotaping
My Own Digital
Still Camera
My Personal Preference with Using a “Point-And-Shoot”
Digital Camera
The Computer’s Undo Efficiency
Movies Are Art Form
Knowing Your Tools and Your Concept
Beforehand
Exploring Time-Based Art
Time-Based Display for Still Images on a Flat-Panel Monitor
How the Internet and Digital Technology Has Revolutionized Art
Presentation
Using Personal Photographs to Spawn
Creativity
Storyboarding with Computer Software
The Computer Monitor Is A Frame
Judging Time-Based Art
On Collaborating
“Aging Your Art”
Technological Software Overload
The 2½-D Canvas
Video as Time Machine
A Computer
Graphics Reality
Computer Freedom
“Digital Art:
The New Art”
An Artist’s
Personal Exploration Into the New Art Form
by Eric Homan
Statement
Introduction
The following is
a statement of what my experiences have been with computer art (3D and 2D) and
my philosophies involving the artist and educator within this new artistic
field of technology. Before you begin reading this statement, understand that
what I wrote is to spark debate in your mind of what computer art is, what the
creative process was like during its creation, and where each of us fit into
the computer art world, as creators and audience. What I have written can be
disagreed with and/ or accepted. In the end the following ideas, beliefs, and
concepts should, at the very least, make you think.
Technology and The Artist: Using the Computer as an Artistic
Tool
One
day out of curiosity, I looked up the definition for the term "art":
"the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, or
other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty in a chosen
medium." Considering the creative possibilities open to an artist, I chose the computer as my medium.
One of my biggest fears when I was an undergraduate
in college was inactivity. I was paranoid of having too much time on my
hands and nothing to keep my mind occupied to divert the fact that I was dearly
lonely and bored. I feel that having a computer at home has both befriended and
empowered me of sorts. I can type out my emotions when I feel overburdened by
them. The computer also serves me as a palette and canvas to express my
artistic desires and pursuits. It’s a near-ideal multi-task art outlet. I can
paint, model and animate 3-D objects, write, manipulate digital photographs, or
record sound mixes. It’s the ultimate compact studio for the ambitious, low
income artist!!
The
computer is an advanced, seemingly infinite canvas for the 21st
century creative artist. Their speed, interactivity, user interface, and image
processing power make it easier to create and express complex ideas than any
other artistic medium. I express myself through the computer as a creative tool
as a musician uses a musical instrument to create music. 3D modeling and
animation software now allow artists to “paint” in the computer software’s
three dimensional space, such as with Maya’s Paint Effects art brushes -
altering how society “views”, let alone experiences,
paintings. Grandest of all, a computer artist exerts the ability to express
oneself the moment one is inspired in a way that no other artistic medium can
allow one to do. (*The catch is that the artist has to first learn how to use
the software before they start creating something interesting.)
The Digital Golden Age
The
computer is not just another tool -
it is a liberating artistic medium. We can manipulate photographs, communicate
with interactive imagery, and design sound through a computer. It is the
Computer Golden Age. Creating, animating, texturing, and lighting in 3-D space
is now limitless through using computer software. How they use it is up to your
own creativity. Painting on canvas takes weeks, months, or longer to prepare,
execute, and complete. My own ideas can arrive so urgently that I need a medium
that would allow me to release those concepts in a shorter amount of time with
the same amount of creativity, feelings, and skill I would have put into a
painting on a canvas. The computer allows me to choose from hundreds of
different tools (paint brushes, airbrushes, pastels, watercolors) and choose
any color from the color spectrum and
start painting. The concept, story, or expression, I believe, are the most
important aspects when it comes to creating an image or animation; the medium
does not matter. The bottom line is digital technology has helped me advance and enhance my artwork in a way that would have taken an extraordinary
amount of money and time if I had used different artistic mediums, such as film
or canvas.
Computer Art in the 21st Century Museum
In
addition, the computer has opened up a whole new realm for the ambitious artist
to explore: three-dimensional space inside the computer. If that wasn’t all,
there are also the creative time-based elements of time, interactivity, and
(three-dimensional, 5.1 surround) sound audio that computer software allows the
artist to express with. Traditionally when one thinks of art, one pictures a
painting on the wall of a museum. That’s
history. Not only can art involve the fourth dimension of time (motion
pictures, video, animation), but also it can be in 3-D (paint strokes in 3-D
space). This new 3-D canvas for art can be displayed on high-definition
monitors in museums featuring 3-D paintings, interactive and non-interactive
movies, and animated art. SIGGRAPH’s annual
The Fine Arts Future in 3-D Painted Worlds
9-10-99:
I can say that I have seen the future of art and it is Maya’s Paint Effects.
People are able to actually paint digitally in three dimensions to create 3-D
painted worlds… animated 3-Dimensional expressions… emotions in animation.
I’ve found myself in an artistic area where art history is about to be told.
This 3-D paint package may just kill off other forms of art and/ or rejuvenate
computer art to a higher galaxy. Creating art in 2-D is in the past. We can
express ourselves in three dimensions and in animation. Art will never be the
same. (And beyond that, art on a computer can be interactive.)
1-18-00: Most prominently and passionately, I
lectured to my fellow M.F.A. students about the technical power and artistic
dangers of using Paint Effects to create your computer animation work. With
this new animation tool, anyone can do 3-D animated “art” in a matter of
minutes. Creating a tree is as simple as pressing a mouse. All it takes to know
how to animate a field of golden grass in the wind is to read a tutorial. Yes!
You too can make a tree “grow” from a seedling to a fully bloomed tree with
buds, flowers, and branches in second. But it brings up the urgent
realization: so can everybody else! You don’t have to be an artist
anymore to create such images. A bored ten-year-old with no artistic ability
and a pirate version of Maya on his computer could do it. The programmed
software has made it so easy to make incredible 3-D images now that it’s
pointless to do if you don’t have your own distinct artistic vision and
skill of how to create it. I was so enraged to hear one of my classmates
declare that she didn’t want to change “her” concept even though that it was
very similar to one of the Paint Effects tutorials. Chapter Ten: To make a “stylized”
tree grow, bloom, and then die. It’s an overdone poetic idea. In addition,
where is the effort if it takes only a matter of minutes to do now using Maya’s
Paint Effects brushes? And if you use a manufactured programmed brush type that
thousands of other computer animators are using, aren’t you sharing the same
look? Alas, where is the effort?! Perhaps this is where my point comes in that
Paint Effects are terrific for background details. But for foreground objects
or subject matter, they are like taking objects from someone else’s 3-D and
using them in your own out of “convenience”, or because they’re there and
readily available. The artist must come in and use their own personal vision
and make their work truly their own. Paint Effects are to be used to support
the work, not overwhelm it. If you can redesign the brushes so that you’ve made
them your own, such as with the oil paint brush strokes, you can use them to
your great creative and technical advantage. Then you can achieve what you need
to as an artist. And that’s what truly important to your creative integrity and
vision.
The Brilliant Vibrancy of Digital Color
Vibrant colors never appeared in paintings until the later 19th Century because the oil pigments were not
available until that time. No one took fuller advantage of brilliant saturated
colors as Vincent van Gogh.
Being a visual artist, I feel attracted by the vibrancy of
color that one can achieve on a computer screen. Being able to use millions of
colors, digital technology has brought a sense of liberty to creative
expression that wasn’t as easily available to artists of the past. Computers
allow us to go beyond Technicolor. Highly saturated colors on a computer
monitor can exert a certain glow to
them that was impossible to represent in other traditional mediums. Imagine:
Vincent van Gogh and the other Impressionists would have used light and color
in most extraordinary ways.
How I Color-Correct the Digital
Photographs
I color correct the photos I take or the movies I
shoot in the same exaggerated, over-saturated look as was done in the digitally
remastered version of Apocalypse Now.
Everything has the feel of being hyper real… yet to the point of being surreal.
The colors simply glow! I’ve also been very fond the luminous
cinematography of the gorgeous cumulus clouds during the hallucinogenic
helicopter ride before the morning attack on the village. The red-orange-yellow
tints are blown WAY up. This is not reality – but it still is! And that
look very much excited me when I first saw it back in the mid nineties.
Rising to the Challenge of Using 3-D Space for Art
Imagine
what history’s most famous paintings would have been like if they could have
used 3-D space to illustrate their work: Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” or Vincent Van
Gogh’s “The Crows” “painted” and animated in a 3-D environment instead of on a
2-D canvas. They might have been if these artists had the availability to use
3-D software to express their visions.
Creating art with 3-D software seemed like an artistic
wonder with its ability to make anything
in the computer: T-Rexes, elephants, alien space ships, mummies, super novas, etc. Now that we’ve seen enough examples of these,
the novelty has worn off. Just because something was modeled and animated in
3-D doesn’t mean its art or even all that special any
more. The same artistic principle goes for most art forms as well, be it
photography, painting, music, or dance. One still has to rise to the challenge
of creating original and innovative content in order to keep our attention. You
have to give art your own vision. Granted that the first time I saw a realistic
looking dinosaur moving, breathing, and eating in
The First Generation of 3-D Artists
I
believe that the computer is the canvas space
of the 21st century and beyond. The fact that we now have three dimensions to
explore in our “canvas” should be exciting and inspiring to all artists, young
and old. We are the first generation of 3-D animators/ painters/ sculptors just
as Melies and Lumiere were
part of the first generation of 2-D filmmakers (with A Trip To the Moon
in 1902 and The Great Train Robbery in 1903, respectively). Because they
were both pioneers of the time-based storytelling through using film, they
invented the rules of screen composition, pacing, editing, and other innovative
special effects. We use those rules and expand on them within the vast new
possibilities of a digital medium - visually, physically, interactively, and
emotionally. It is possible to “paint” a watercolor painting in 3-D space in
the computer and let the viewer be led through it. We are the innovators of
using 3-D space to express ourselves and communicate.
The Motion Picture in Digital Transition in New Media
The
most popular and recognized art form of the past century has been the motion picture. In the past few years,
digital “film”-making, interactive experience pieces, and interactive 3D games
have become a reality, being shown on personal home computers in the form of
DVD and CD-ROM. It should be recognized that good art can be found and
appreciated in places other than museums: just look in video stores, theaters,
or on one’s home PC. The computer monitor may not have a gilded frame around
it, but it is a frame none the less - appended with a mouse, keyboard, and
speakers. Let the ideas, emotions, audio, and visuals of the art piece be the
real highlight - the true special
effect.
Whether
people understand it or not, interactivity in media is a form of expression.
It’s like when language was invented. This is our new form of communication.
The mouse cursor has become our hand inside a new realm of data, images, ideas,
colors, emotions, and imagination. How we move through a screen environment is
what determines our inner self.
An Artist’s
Because
of the availability and affordability of computers and software, an ambitious
artist can create a movie of animation or video that could rival
Using the Computer to One’s Advantage
The
startling thing about doing animation on the computer is that it is changing
the rules of how much one person can do on a piece. Personally, I keep my 3D
and 2D art projects simple so I can finish
them. Yet traditionally when one is making a small independent movie, you would
still have to hire dozens to hundreds of people to assist you on lighting,
sound, editing, acting, photography, etc. The computer has advanced to the
point that it is possible to do everything by oneself, or in a small group of
computer and business savvy friends. When you work in 3-D, you don’t have to hire actors - you create, build, and animate them yourself. You can literally
do all of the cinematography, editing, lighting, costuming, and sound on a home
computer.
When
I was young and told people that I wanted to make movies when I grow up, they
asked me: “Well... what part? Director? Set Designer? Cinematographer? Sound
Editor? Caterer?” Through years of art experience, hard work, and training, I
can fill most-to-all of those roles, depending on the ambition of the project.
As a result, I am able to gain complete
creative control and artistic
integrity over my work - the great dream of all artists. I don’t have to
put advertisements in my pieces to help compensate for a large budget. Because
I don’t have to hire anyone except for myself, a budget can be astonishingly
minimal. That is the beauty of being an artist who uses a computer to their
advantage.
Varying Styles and Mediums with Computer Software
I
creatively enjoy the computer and digital technology for the different styles
and mediums it offers to digital artists. One month I’ll be working on
interactive experience art, the next it’ll be 3D animated paintings, the next
experimental digital photography and surround sound design, the next writing a
poem in colored text in a three-dimensional space... and so on. I could never do
just one medium for an entire year - let alone a whole lifetime. I’d feel
trapped, confined, and, well... bored.
I like taking on different projects in various digital mediums depending on my
mood and interests. I feel it’s important for an artist to keep changing and
challenging oneself through the various technologies, techniques, and
perspectives one can express oneself in. My artistic mission is to always
struggle with what art can be - especially on the computer. As long as the
artist puts originality and soul into the work, the art will feel fresh,
adventurous... and alive.
The Roots to My Love of Videotaping
4-8-10: Many people have asked me throughout the
years why I keep videotaping everything I come across. It’s like an addiction –
capture memories and interesting visuals no matter how silly or “obsessive” I
may seem. Yet there is a method and a reason to my “madness”. See, my impulse
to videotape as much as possible comes from a few various sources. One would be
a rather personal one: the death of my mother. She died suddenly from a car
accident when I was just 20-year-old. After the funeral it came to my attention
and deep sadness that my family didn’t have much video footage of her when she
was alive. In fact, there was just two pieces of video from 1980 and 1995,
neither of which was all that extensive or in depth. So due to this lack of
visual and audio material, I felt like I had lost her and part of my memory of her. Video captures memories. That became
a major appeal to me. It still remains one as well. The other major reason I
videotape all the time is based on my experiences as an art student at the
Columbus College of Art and Design. I was always in need of more video footage
as a student. I didn’t have a car while I was a student, so I wasn’t able to go
out to that many interesting locations to gain more of a videography portfolio.
So ever since, I have found myself compelled to videotape every interesting
place or situation I’m in. I carry a video camera and still digital camera with
me almost all the time just in case I
come across a spontaneously interesting happenstance or if the lighting is just
right! I’d hate myself if I didn’t capture that special visual. I’m constantly
wanting to improve as an artist and to expand my portfolio. But along the way,
I’m also in love with capturing memories of my life and the people I’ve known.
So these are a couple of the roots to my videography obsession.
Eric F. Homan – Video/ Photo/ Motion Graphics
My Own Digital Still Camera
2-13-02:
I got my digital camera today, starting a new age in my experimental digital
art creation. I can use it at any time and on any day without having to share
it with anyone else. It’s my boredom killer and my imagination capturer. I can
seize images from angles I never dreamed of. I can be completely loose with
this camera. I don’t have to worry about wasting film or not knowing what the
images are going to look like (let alone turn out). I adore the spontaneous
snapshot quality of the images. Plus, it’s another payoff for purchasing my new
PC since it has an USB port to download the images.
I think part of the reason why I take my camera
around with me whenever I go out is that I always hate to miss any big (or
small) moments that I may come across. I also have an odd obsession with
recording aspects around me that I find interesting or at least visually
interesting. I just like to keep in the habit of taking photos. I also like to
color correct the photos I take just to bring out the colors just a bit more.
It's than Post-Impressionistic side of me that wants life to be that extra
chromatic.
My Personal
Preference with Using a “Point-And-Shoot” Digital Camera
6-3-10: I want to also go over the aspects of why I
use a $300 “point-and-shoot” digital camera rather than a “professional” $2,000
digital camera with a $3,000 lens. Now the lens part, I wish I had. Yet I find
my $300 camera to be much more freeing and spontaneous to use rather than
something more professional where you have to adjust so many settings to get
the right exposure. Changing the F-stop and the rest just removes me from the
emotional moment. I love the spontaneous quality of whipping out my camera,
turning it on, framing the shot, use the auto-exposure, and pressing the
capture button. Boom! I’m done. I’ve got the moment. Then I can turn around,
see more things to capture, and take more pictures. The camera is so small and
light-weight that it doesn’t get in my way. I can hide it in my jeans pocket.
It’s a perfect weapon of creative choice.
One half of making photographs is taking the actual
picture. The other half, where I feel the picture truly comes alive, is in the color
correction. In this later step, I spend hours upon hours dodging and burning
each photo, color balancing it, sharpening it, altering the brightness and
contrast until it looks what I want to envision it to being. Taking a good
picture is always the most important part. Without good composition, subject
matter, design, detail, or content it’s really nothing. But there is also an
issue that there are plenty of photos with all of these qualities. I use the
digital imaging process to take it to the next step. Some photographers use
filters and special lens to achieve their unique visions. I use the computer
like a camera tool. It’s just that, another tool.
The Computer’s Undo Efficiency
Making a mistake on the computer is different than making
one on a traditional medium like paper or canvas. The computer allows the
artist more speed in correcting a mistake by going back to a previously saved
version of one's work, or by pressing an “undo” key as many times until the
last occasion one has saved. A mistake on paper would often mean starting over
from scratch. Also, the computer artist can make as many high-quality copies of
their work as they want. In most traditional art forms, there is only an
original.
“Art Is Not Just in Museums”
11-9-98: I question if art is for everyone
anymore. Once art could be defined as aesthetically pleasing. In the mid to
late twentieth century, we have surrounded ourselves with so much beauty,
thanks to advanced methods of communication and technology, we’re developed an
apathy for most of art. The world has taken it for granted. We’ve seen and felt
so much “art” that our senses are no longer as impressed by it. There is so
much mediocre art in our corporately sponsored society that are being exposed
in museums, television, movies, the internet, and book stores that it drags the
entire creative standard down with it.
So
we need to look for and find what is considered “good art”. I believe the only
true form of art is personal. In my own opinion, I adore some of van Gogh’s
work because I have empathy for his life (through reading his letters and
viewing the van Gogh biographical dramatization Lust For Life). I feel
emotions when I see pictures of my significant other, old girlfriends, my
family, and close friends. The Star Wars figures I played with as a
child are art sculptures. The emotionally bare songs of the albums “Bob Dylan:
Blood on the Tracks” and “John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band” are like religious
hymns to me. I know that other people like the same things I do - but most
don’t consider them art to themselves. I’d even call my own girlfriend “a
priceless masterpiece” - because of her flaws, her eccentricity, her sense of
humor, her moods, her courage.... Other people don’t see her the way I do. They
usually don’t feel for certain aspects of life because they either didn’t have
the time, patience, relation, or empathy
for an artwork or a person. Our lives have become too crowded with information
and beauty that we don’t have room for sensitivity and imagination. It’s art
fatigue. Too much exposure goes to commercial ”art” with all its superficial
visual beauty and conservative, inoffensive nature. It kills off our
individuality as a society by seeing so much mediocrity. I feel a major problem
with people not using their emotions, imagination, or intellect since they
won’t be able to decipher what is good and what is bad. If everything is “fine”
and “happy”, we won’t change and immorality will continue thriving without
argument or protest.
These
words will be considered “nothing new” and will be forgotten. They will be
forgotten. Yet, an impression lasts in type. ...Is it art?
Movies Are Art
Form
I
denounce art museums for being out of touch with artists. They are too much for
snobs and superficially “intelligent” cultured elite. A gilded frame around a
painting in an elegant museum doesn’t make it better than a copy of an American
Beauty DVD at the local DVD/ video rental store. Content is still the most
important thing about the arts. Cinema is an art form.
Depending
on how to you look them, video
pieces and animation are actually action paintings.
In the future, electronic art will have the option of having a frame visible,
not visible, or animated. Art on a computer monitor really doesn’t need a frame
to make it art, though some people still believe it does.
Still and time-based digital artwork, that being created
entirely on the computer, is the purest form of creative expression. It also
makes a devastating statement and ultimatum to the art world that it had no
real commercial value since it can be replicated and reproduced. Being a
digital source, there is no one original, unlike an oil painting. Hence, does
that make the work “diminished” in value and power? The pretensions of the art
world are immediately exposed. Can they only judge things based on their price
value or how gilded the frame is? Can’t they “value” past something that
doesn’t have a value? It’s the ultimate judgment call. Now let’s say, for
example, an obscure artist had produced some digital artwork that is new,
breathtakingly original, and exciting. Yet it’s computer-animated imagery. It’s
not meant for a mainstream audience like most “special effects” pictures that
are using CG to create digital characters and environments. It’s art. Now it
can’t be sold for $50,000 like other great works of original art. So it must be
valued in the hearts, minds, and emotions of those who experience it. That is
its worth. That is what makes it great. Yet the art world will have to alter
its concepts of what art can be in order for the art movement to continue to
grow. Of course, the digital artwork has to be good in the first place. But
once it is, the world has to drop its limited vision, its elitist mindset, and
its ritzy lifestyle. Art is for all. Digital art will break down the walls the
separate the rich from the poor. The kings and queens of the
Museum Void
8-13-03: One of the most upsetting contradictions of visiting
a museum is that one is forced upon digested over 300+ pieces of art on
display. Because there are so many to see in a given environment, one cannot focus
one’s attention. In a way, the massive number of artwork cancels them out. It’s
a grossly overwhelming experience. This is the feeling I get when I am in a
museum. There are too many style, colors, personalities, forms, ideas, and
concepts to take in enough to fully and personally appreciate. Understanding
art needs to be a personalized experience like loving another person. You
cannot emotionally love 300 at once. Perhaps you can narrow down your
favorites. Yet still, it’s a trying, exhausting experience to disregard so much
beauty.
Art – Private
8-13-03: Also,
viewing art should be a personal experience – meaning being one-on-one with the
work of art. Visiting a museum with a group of people will rush a highly
intense experience for you. Never allow a friend, family member, or stranger to
talk to you while taking in a work of art (unless they’re also on the
same emotional and mental wavelength as you are). You’re communicating back and
forth with the art by reacting to its hues, concepts, figures, emotions, and
ideas. This is an extraordinary form of exchange that’s occurring. Remember –
it’s your private reactions that are communicating back. Don’t let
someone else break this special connection.
As an example, when you’re watching a movie, it’s
critically important to not get distracted when you’re deep into the
experience. There’s a trance-like state when your mind is hooked up to the
imagery and story before you. You’ve removed yourself from reality and you’ve
entered a fantasy world called a motion picture. It’s usually a highly
personalized experience where you sit motionless and passive with your mind,
intellect, senses, and emotions taking in something extraordinary.
Having people around you talking or making interruptions will usually break the
hypnosis between you and the movie, hence, lessening the movie experience. If
the trance is not broken, the experience can be highly satisfying (also
depending on the quality and originality of the movie itself). There are
exceptions to movies being even more exciting if they are experienced with a
group of people as opposed to by oneself. Finding Nemo, the Star Wars
films, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy come to mind as being huge
crowd pleasers that ultimately create a grand sense of unity amongst all in the
audience. Yet there are also other films with a more personal nature that
demand concentration and isolation that reward the viewer with sophistication,
intelligence, and greater depth than most other films. The Last Temptation of Christ, The Deer Hunter, Bad Lieutenant,
My Own Private Idaho, The Elephant Man, and Being There
are excellent examples of more personal, meditative, and mature films than
Many
of my art pieces are meant to be seen on a monitor screen with headphones for
people to have a more personal, intimate experience with the work. Headphones
make the time-based artwork feel like a one-on-one experience rather than a
group showing. I feel this type of intimacy heightens the emotional experience
greatly. Headphones blocks everything around you out and leaves one able to
concentrate on the emotions and visual experience before them. It’s like being
in love with someone. You want to be with just one person so you can
concentrate all of your energy and feelings to that one particular person. I
feel that my artwork feeds and fuels those who experience it. Most of my
time-based artwork is not meant to be loud, explosive, commercial, family-friendly
theater seating work. I feel that the monitor is also a canvas where the video/
animation work can be displayed. The only difference between it and a painting
is that time-based work uses the element of time
and sound.
9-28-04:
I listened to the new Björk album, “Medulla”, on headphones while reading the
lyrics this afternoon, and it was practically a religious/ sensual experience.
Hearing her voice on a pair of sensitive, all-encompassing headphones is like
having her kiss my ears. Each song was such a gloriously sad, beautiful
experience. It’s like playing and splashing in a heaven of tear ponds.
Knowing Your Tools and Your Concept Beforehand
Creative
conceptualization for computer artists is different than other art mediums. The
challenge of creating art in the computer is in knowing your tools before you
begin your art-making process. When working in 3-D, I believe that 95% of the
time is spent on technical issues and problems. In contrast, in 2-D computer
art, one spends 50% on technical problems and the other 50% on the concept.
Therefore, when working in 3-D, a well-planned storyboard and a strong concept
are extremely important to lessen the
amount of time and information you have to learn in order to complete your
vision. It is so much easier to be spontaneous in 2-D work since it demands
less training, expertise, and preparation. In both cases, one must always
consider their creative concept in a higher regard than the technical issues
since anyone can learn the techniques. This is common truth in any artistic
medium. One’s personal vision is what sets one apart.
Exploring Time-Based Art
After
studying and working with oil paint, pencil drawing, and charcoal, I have found
time-based mediums (digital video, interactive art, computer animation) to be
the most expressive and direct way to release my ideas. In video, I explored
the surreal as a short movie experience (i.e. an “imaginary documentary” about
a hand falling asleep and dreaming off into the world around it). In my
interactive experience pieces, I used computer interactivity as a means of
expression. In my 3-D computer animations, I sought to explore the 3-D
environment and reveal it as an environment of expressions. Because of the
element of time, art demands the attention of the viewer for a longer period of
time. This means a greater amount of effort from the artist to keep the
audience’s attention. Time-based mediums also offer a chance for the artist to tell
a story - which is one of the greatest ways to communicating throughout
known history. Art has evolved from looking at a still image to experiencing
moving images.
Time-Based Display for Still Images on a Flat-Panel Monitor
I feel the way
that modern still-based art is going to go is in a time-based fashion by being
shown on a flat-panel monitor. One can showcase as many other images as wanted
to be programmed into this display method. Why print, frame, and hang just one
image on a wall when there is the possibility to present hundreds or thousands
through time?! In a museum or at one's private home, one can program a
flat-screen panel to show a different image once a week, every ten minutes, or
every ten seconds. Personally, I have several personal favorite movie posters
hanging up around my house. They've been hanging up for several years and now
I'm finding myself a bit tired of seeing the same images up. And there's so
many other movie posters I'd just as much like to see up. So the idea came to
me that why not rotate the images around by showing them on flat-panel
monitors, which in its own way became a canvas and frame for the work. You can
now download movie poster in very high resolution off the Internet if I wanted
new images. With original still art (paintings, digital photograph), the image
files just need to be scanned in at a high-enough resolution to be presented in
high detail, or the digital photos need to be taken at a high resolution. I no
longer see any reason to waste money and time with printing paper and
developing prints when the process can be faster and less expensive. Printing
and framing photos is about holding on to the past because that was the way
they did things years ago. It's time to stop living in the past and live in the
present and look to the future. As an analogy: prints fade while digital lasts
forever.
How the Internet and Digital Technology Has Revolutionized Art
Presentation
Now this type of
digital art presentation is offensive to certain "art lovers", art
owners, and artists themselves because it revolutionizes the entire value
of art. A painting can be worth and sold for thousands or millions of dollars.
Yet a high resolution digital image of that same painting can be downloaded for
free off the Internet. A painting is an original, which so-called makes it more
"valuable". But isn't art about the image and its content - not if
it's an original. You don't necessarily need the original masterpiece painting
in order to enjoy and appreciate it. The major problem with digital
representations is that anyone can have them. Most art patrons are of the
upper-class and prefer to be "cultured" by being surrounded by
expensive works of art in expensive gilded frames. But that's living in the
past. Digital technology has created new methods of seeing and presenting
images. There's absolutely no reason to hang one image on a wall anymore when
you can present as many images as you wish over a programed
amount of time. Imagine going to a museum and always seeing new images on the
walls. Yet now with the Internet, the majority of the images in a museum and
hundreds of millions more are now available on the web... for free anytime of
the day! This is a major shake-up of how we've always looked at art. Some
people may still find browsing through a museum a nostalgically pleasing social
activity, but they're really just walking through the past because that's it is
anymore. With the ability, accessibility, speed, and freedom of digital
presentation, the financial value of art drops dramatically! Artists in general
will suffer the most because people will one day wise up that you can just put
up a large flat-screen over their sofa and program multiple images of
what they wish to view in their homes. Those artists who embrace this type of
digital display will at least be part of the movement. Yes, to see a physical
painting with its tactile brush strokes is much more impressive and effective
in real life. But not everyone can afford that. Art should be for everyone, not
just the upper-class. Yet there are more positive aspects to digital
presentation than their are negative. High Definition
flat-screen monitors are what will alter how we experience art forever. And
with computers in so many homes, there lies the other major form of art
presentation. The other downside to all of this is the digital avalanche of too
much art available all at once. With too much to chose from, they tend to
cancel each other out. And the "name" artists end up getting more
attention while just as deserving "little-known", obscure artists
continue to fight for recognition and for financial survival. It brings up the
question if there are just too many artists in the world to support when
there's too much art in the world and the web already...?
One morning, I went downstairs and noticed sunlight
hitting an oil painting I had made. This made me realize how exciting it would
be if an actual beam of sunlight or another heat source hit other pieces of art
and people could watch them melt into a new image. Then I realized that the
best solution would be to create digital images to be displayed on a high
resolution flat screen monitor so they can slowly morph, change, evolve, age,
or whatever through time. So if one person goes to see a museum’s works one
month, the next month they’ll all be altered in some way. It gives people a
reason to come back to the museum (in a week, a month, three months) to see how
things have changed. An outdoor landscape’s environment will change because the
seasons changed. The people get older (or younger). It’s all about doing
multiple, alternate versions of an image in order to morph that image into
something always new through time. An image doesn’t have to be frozen in time.
It can “appear” to be frozen in time (like life does when we look at it on a
casual basis). But give it time and it will change. I believe in letting
artwork age just as we human beings and all life ages. It’s like a way of
giving art an even greater personification. We have the technology to do this,
so why not do it? Technically, what is happening is an extremely slow
animation. It’s just that the morph/ fade from image to image takes days or
weeks instead of seconds.
Using Personal Photographs to Spawn Creativity
In
order to experiment with images and time, I needed pictures that were already
available to me, legally and personally. Having gotten into trouble with
copyright problems by using other people photos in the past, I resorted to
using my own family photographs. I’m not hung up on my childhood as believed by
some. Yet it was through using my family photos that spawned introspective art
examinations about memory and remembrance, such as in “Memoria”.
Of course, it was through my own personal association with the images that led
me to be personally involved with each piece. If I were using someone else’s
life photos, the art pieces that followed would have been considerably less
involving or truthful. I’ve discovered that the photographic images that my
family and I took have sparked ideas in me later on when I reopen them into my
life. Personal memories spawn creativity in me.
Storyboarding with Computer Software
Instead
of using storyboard sheets to plan out my ideas for my storyboarding process,
I’ve been using Director as a storyboarding program for years now and have
completed together hundreds of pieces using 2-D images and audio files. They
just need to be “completed” three-dimensionally and shown to the rest of the world.
Director has aided me for so long with allowing me to release my creativity the
moment I was inspired and wished to quickly piece the pieces into a whole.
The Computer Monitor Is A Frame
With
the advent of the computer to make art, I feel that seeing and experiencing art
has forever been altered. It has been frustrating to break society’s norm of
displaying two-dimensional art in an expensive gilded frame on a museum wall.
Just because a museum is a place designated for “art” doesn’t mean there can’t be art shown outside... even at
one’s own home on their personal computer. The computer monitor is a frame just
as the television is a frame. Because there is such an overwhelming amount of
mediocre movies, computer art, and computer games, people consider TV sets and
computer monitors with less regard when something artistic is shown on them.
Judging Time-Based Art
I
consider Terrence Malick’s film Days of Heaven
to be just as priceless and beautiful as Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa”.
Because anyone can own a copy of a movie for fewer than ten dollars and watch
it in their home shouldn’t make it less important than a Monet in a
Computer... Artist?
Since
the computer can allow anyone who can learn “user-friendly” software to create
spectacular visuals, I find it rather dull and hapless that, for some
"artists", the computer does most of the work. The fact that
"artists" can download "their" models and textures off the
web and consider it their own is something of artistic fraud. One should go
through computer animation tutorials when they are just beginning, but they
should be a point where they start using their own vision of how things should
look and feel. They shouldn’t end up relying on online tutorials to do their
piece... how to make a realistic tree... how to make a flag wave in the
wind.... It almost turns into paint-by-numbers in a 3-D sense. There’s nothing
original about their work when 50,000 other student animators are doing the
exact same thing - a semi-cartoonish, photo-realistic style. Make your own
worlds and visions! But then again, in realistic terms, those 50,000 all know
that they are all competing for jobs that want semi-cartoonish, photo realistic
stuff for movies, commercials, and computer games. No wonder hardly anyone is
doing anything different and creative with the 3-D medium. You won't get a job.
The reality of the situation is... our society subconsciously supports a lack
of creativity because original thought is not marketable. More speed! More
money! Bigger explosions! Bigger budgets!! Whatever sells.
7-30-03:
Jason, John, and I attended more of the SIGGRAPH
'03 Animation Theater and the Electronic Theater. While watching those selected
prestigious animations, I came to the realization that they were (mostly) not
the work of a single individual, but a team of dozens or hundreds of talented
artists and technicians. Computer animation is a collaborative art form – a
team animated painting. Each person does a separate function, such as lighting,
technical director, modeler, digital painter, and so on. Creating a great computer animation takes so many
people, which makes it a lot like the movie business. Realizing this can be
extremely disillusioning to thousands of us ambitious fine art computer
animators who like to do things our way.
We don’t want to work on someone else’s vision. Isn’t having a personal vision what making art is all
about? Yet in computer animation, the closest it comes to art is a team
time-based personal vision.
The Compromise
7-5-01: Idealistically, I believed that I could
do all the elements of my time-based artwork by myself. The problem was that I
am a perfectionist. Unfortunately, I cannot create professional sounding audio,
Hollywood quality 3-D visuals, groundbreaking 2-D compositions, or
award-winning poetic words all alone within a mere lifetime. This has been a
cause of great misery because I dearly wish to impress people. Instead, I have
created flawed, imperfect works of “unfinished” art. There’s always something
lacking, aesthetically, technically, and artistically. I always have a problem
that cannot be corrected in the amount of time I can give or the amount of
knowledge I can hold to solve it.
So
I’ve been compromised and become an art professor at a university. I couldn’t
quite make it. I had to accept my limitations or else I wouldn’t be able to
sleep at night or live happily during the day. And this is all total sincerity.
My present goal in life is to advance computer art into a higher level of
expression and communication. Teaching is my present occupation. Creating art
is my secondary vocation.
On Collaborating
I
am not against collaborating with a project, yet I do recognize that something
unique is lost when too many artists become involved. Though collaborating on a
piece means considerably less work and stress on each person involved, you do
lose the unique purity of personal expression. This all depends on how complex
the piece is. Keeping the piece simple adds a sense of intimacy, personality,
and closeness. If van Gogh collaborated with other artists to draw out his
scenes on a canvas so he could paint on top of it, the imagery - the very
feeling - would have been severely compromised.
“Aging Your Art”
As
an artist using the computer, I have the ability to keep making changes to any
of my artwork that was created digitally.
Even when I feel that an art piece is finished at the time, I may look back
and find something wrong or that should have been changed to better communicate
the ideas. I can always go back to the digital piece and enhance what I have
done before. I think of it as a book that came out initially as a first edition
followed by a second and third edition until the author feels that the book is
as good as it is going to be. I describe this process as “aging your art”.
Movie directors often go back to a previous work and re-edit particular scenes
that weren’t as effective the first time around and re-release the movie as
“The Director’s Cut” or as a “Special Edition”. Computer software makes it easy
to make the corrections I feel are necessary when or if the time comes to
strengthen a work.
Size Matters?
Some
naïve people don’t recognize art unless it’s twice as large as they are and in
a museum. I believe the image, no matter its size, is what is most important
(as long as one can see it). Yet size and scale do matter in the art world.
Concerning digital art, I feel dismayed that most people disregard it since
most images are 720 x 486 (screen resolution). Like most digital artists, I am
waiting for technology to advance so that digital art can be enormous! It could
be shown on a giant flat screen monitor. It can be a virtual 3D hologram so it
doesn’t restrict itself to a computer screen. Digital artists can then create
image with a resolution of 30 ft. x 20 ft. (or even 6 miles by 4 miles so their
work can be viewed from outer space!!)
Technological Software Overload
6-18-99: I found myself
sinking emotionally in the afternoon. Victor aggravated me by telling me that I
should start learning another new software program called Flash so we could do
a website short movie about the CEC student experience. I tried asking him
about just doing it in Director. “People don’t use Director anymore - just
Flash,” he snapped bluntly. Such news really upset and annoyed me. It was like
learning a new language, and one that I rather liked, and suddenly no one is
speaking it because a new language has along that people like more. So I tried
learning this new program while still learning the tools and trade of Maya, as
well as working with Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Composer, Sound Edit
16, Pro Tools, Painter, and Director. It was like learning one foreign language
after the other until I’ve learned about eight different languages and only
understand two of them. It’s idiotic. You end up forgetting the existing
information in one’s memory in order to have room for the new load of info. I felt
lost in the technology when I wasn’t being creative. Victor then showed me
about a dozen different websites that were using Flash. Some were very impressive, yet they were
exhausting and emotionless. Just Flash.
The 2½-D Canvas
The
astonishing concept aspect to After Effects and compositing in general is that
your canvas can be as infinite as you want it to be. This is thanks to the fact
that you can now move your camera in 2½-D (simulated 3-D) space. You can move
into the Z Depth, or scan your camera around an area vastly beyond your normal
locked down 720 x 480 camera view. You can move, rotate, or scan your camera
around the space you build within After Effects so that you camera can move
around to capture all the environment and action therein. You can even simulate
depth of field to heighten the sense of space and focus. Suddenly, the chains
that once restricted how you use a camera with video and 2-diminsional imagery
has been blown wide open. Take advantage of it!
Video as Time Machine
Out of my total boredom with sitting around my place
with the school year being over, I pulled out an old videotape of old footage
from 1998 to capture and see if there was any good visuals. Boy, did I enjoy
myself with what I was seeing. I was always a compulsive videographer with an
eye for detail and unusual sights. I captured everything I did and everywhere I
went. It was also a shock to see old friends, girlfriends, and places before my
eyes. Video is such a time machine. It truly awakens so many old memories and
feelings.
The Importance of Treasuring Your Artwork
Concerning
artists who believe in discarding their work that they made when they were
young and feel it isn’t good, I must declare that I save everything I do. I
believe in documenting my development as an artist. Art tells a story of who I
was and where I was, emotionally and imaginarily, at the time. I can judge what pieces of mine are good or bad, on an
aesthetic, artistic, and technical level. Yet, I consider everything I’ve done interesting in some respect. There had to be a reason for me to do it.
Maybe
all the great art and movies have been made and we shouldn’t make any more.
We’re just flooding and suffocating ourselves with bland retreads of past
storylines, plots, and characters. There is no need for the thousands of
“important” little-to-no budget independent movies that are made each year.
Same goes for the $130 million
Upon
watching the behind the scenes material of The Matrix Revolutions DVD, I
am more convinced than ever that more and more movies are going to be done
completely in the computer. Why use real actors or build real locations when
you can make them in the computer?!?! It will all come down to cost. What is
cheaper and easier to create one’s fantasy worlds with? Filmed movies will
always have some place, but I can now see that it will be greatly diminished in
the decades to come. Digital cinematography is the new tool of the future of
movie making. If you aren’t aware of it as a moviemaker, you better learn about
it soon. Animators and their technology are the new actors now. There are no
dangerous and costly real special effects. There is no longer any need for
human stunt doubles. Just as motion picture film was a revolutionary step in
how we are entertained, I can easily foresee how computer technology will
completely alter how such movies are now created. With Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and now this movie,
it’s already happening. There is simply more possibilities and control in the
digital realm. There will be no real need for $25 million dollar paychecks to
actors. There are no benefits to pay, no trailer for the actor, no driver, no
5% of the movie’s gross. The computer eliminates all of that. Technology has
finally caught up with mimicking reality. Now anything's possible. You can
finally motion-capture emotions by
setting up multiple cameras in front of an actor’s face. This is all new
technology that has been quickly developed and invented to suit the needs of
the script and story. Finally, the steps are being made to get an emotional,
believable performance out of a synthetic actor.
8-2-05: Critical impressions from this year’s
SIGGRAPH conference: Has imagination grown old form having realized so many
amazing visions in CG? Computer animation is old now because it’s been around
for so long and we’ve seen so much of it and what it can do. We have indeed
become jaded by it. We expect to see incredibly visuals now… but they’re no
longer no big deal. Perhaps this puts more emphasis on story and great
characterization. Perhaps it is a good thing. We are seeing so many children’s
computer animated feature films that resort to the same old stories and same
old characters with fantastic visuals and terrific animation. There’s no
originality there anymore. The competitors are simply copying each other to
death and taking few chances to do anything different. They want to please a mass
family audience with fluff and what’s worked before. But it’s now grown stale.
It’s just not exciting anymore. It’s dead on arrival because it’s leftovers.
And in a sense, as bad of a situation this is it is still good. Every few years
there needs to be a shakeup with something new when things get tired and trite
as they usually do after a while.
Stories have gotten old as well. We’ve seen these
characters before.
A Computer Graphics Reality
7-11-01: I took my class on a “field trip” to
the movie theater to witness Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Upon
awing at this movie for its convincing photo-realistic life of digital humans
for two hours, my imagination couldn’t tell the difference between real life
and digital mesh. We are now at a stage in our life where life can no longer be
believed. It used to be that photographs couldn’t be believed because of
Photoshop manipulation. Now life itself cannot be believed. Now that movies can
be simulated with real human-like characters, life itself will eventually have
digital meshes within itself - similar to what holograms are, except completely
merging with the real environment itself. We can make it whatever we want to
make of it. We can sculpt in the computer and translate it in reality whatever
scale, color, or form we want. ...The next step will be programming emotion and
feeling with digital creations so that when someone puts their hand in digital
flame, one will feel its programmed heat.
Computer Freedom
9-14-00: One of the perks of my job field is
that I continuously feel a sense of pleasure out of the possibilities of
experimenting with the new tools of creating art on a computer. The thought
that I can paint with light to create
something meaningful, emotional, and personal astonishes me. The computer has
freed me in how fast and efficiently I want to express my ideas to an artistic
medium.