[OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice
Professor Roger B. Dannenberg • Fall 2019 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice
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Roman Bratschi specializes in creating organic 3D graphics. I was drawn to his style due to the juxtaposition between the shiny computer-graphic quality and the natural forms present in his work. Through working both with form as well lighting and texture, Bratschi is able to achieve an impressive, surrealistic quality with his work.
I am really interested in 3-D computer animation used in film making. “Despicable Me,” distributed by Universal Pictures, was animated by a French animation studio-Mac Guff. Characters in the movie has smooth motions and lively facial expressions. What I admire the most is that the producers give every minion its own personality and characteristics. Minions not only have various body feature, such as height, eyes, and hair, but also have different expressions. The process from the first sketch of the minions to story-boarding, layouts, animation, and final production is complex and appealing.
Alexey Kashpersky is a visual artist originally from Poltava, Ukraine. He has created a series of work for fantasies world and medical use. He has a youtube channel dedicated to all the 3D generated art and microbiology videos.
This cancer cell microenvironment video is particularly interesting to me. He presented the cells in such a delicate fantasy way that has unrealistic lightings and colors. We always depict that cancer is evil. However, through his 3D video visualization, it becomes a whole another world.
On the other hand, I wish the videos produced can be more educational instead of being purely aesthetic pleasing.
Even though I find the visuals of this work to be less lyrical than the concept, I find this work incredibly beautiful. Especially that it could only ever be created with a computer. In this work titled Blackberry Winter by Christian Mio Loclair this year, space activated by the body is explored. He fed images of different poses of the body relating to space to a neural network, which then created these simulations of human movement . I found it very interesting how what it means to dance is to explore the spacial potential around oneself. I admire that something without a body can give a visualization of what it is to have a body.
The creators sensibilities are present in the final form by the relationship between chaos and organization within this piece. The chaos of generated body movements and a, at times, fragmented body is pared with an orderly. background and color scheme. The color scheme itself also reveals the theme of chaos and order, as the color was chosen by the neural network (chaos) after analyzing the color schemes of different artist works (order).
I am unsure about the way this was created because I don’t know too much about how one might program an AI to generate an image. I do get the sense though that it requires a lot of Data to “train” a neural network. And I would imagine there must exist a programming language that can represent three-dimensional data/space which helps to encode the motion.
Artist by the name of Chaotic Atmospheres created a series of images for an exhibition that was held in Venice on December 2014. This series focused on how cities and its occupants influence their surroundings, portrayed by fluid-like patterns. I really admire how this artist takes different locations and give each of these cities more individuality in a way that shows how they impact what is around them. The lined patterns also give not only the geographical aspect of maps, but also visualizes these impacts.By using World Machine, a tool to help create 3D terrain, the artist used city maps and procedural terrains to produce this flow of erosion. The artist then used photoshop afterwards to continue working and to identify each city.The artist was very successful in providing visuals of historical significance by using the lines from the erosion flow to show cities’ influences. The images are not merely geographical maps, but tell a story through the colors and bodies of lines that also give movement to each city.
Red Shoes is a Korean animation movie that was released in July 25, 2019. This movie is so far titled as the most quality animation ever made in Korea, and the reason behind this is from the movie’s character designer, Sangjin Kim. Sangjin Kim worked in Disney the past few years and was once responsible for designing characters in the world’s most representative animation, Frozen. For this reason, we can clearly see Kim’s artistic sensibilities in the movie, in other words, we can see how similar the characters of Red Shoes and Frozen look alike. Not only that, but there were people in the production crew who worked for DreamWorks as well, making people proudly announce the animation to be made by the most skilled, influential people in Korean animation history. As a Korean and as a design major student, I admire this work so much because of its quality 3d computer graphic techniques applied to the movie. In the actual movie, audiences are able to see many detailed computer graphics applied. Also, the characters of the movie themselves are designed exquisitely that the 3d computer graphics in the movie are nearly flawless. According to Sangjin Kim, his dream was to collaborate with Korean animators as a Korean himself. He wanted to create a major work in Korean animation industry and show people that Korea can also create quality 3d animations as well. I can really see how much time and work he has spent to create this animation just by watching the movie from the beginning to the end, which makes me admire this work even more.
Universal Everything is a digital art and design collection based in Sheffield, England founded by creative director Matt Pyke. Most of their projects incorporate combine technology and humanities in hopes to also utilize the viewers’ sensations and participation. They gather a group of video artists, experience designers and future thinkers to bring a variety of artwork that allows the observers to witness immersive installations, exotic architecture and huge launch events.
I chose to talk about these two pieces created by UniversalEverything because they both pertained to the idea of immersive installations which is something that I have always been interested in trying. Not only are the visuals absolutely spectacular but the calculations and the concept put into the work is astounding.
The first piece is called “Future You” and its this video installation that computes the viewer’s movements into something so beautifully mapped and structured. The fluidity of this digital movement was what drew me towards this project as I know that for smooth movement in a digital piece like this requires an insane amount of calculations and observation to conclude with a smooth representation.
The second piece called “Inside the Sound” was a piece where the designers explored the idea of the audiovisual “synaesthetic experience”. This child-like experience becomes elevated when the designers utilized this visual to create a virtual reality; this offers so many inspiration to artists working towards a digital field of vision and audio in their future. The colors and the design were exquisitely drawn and I will absolutely have this piece in mind as I think of digital and computational works.
I admire the integration of interaction and aesthetics and both projects really displayed both ideas seamlessly.
Human skin complexion and overall face animation has always been difficult to emulate through a computer. The amount of wrinkles and pores, along with the elastic, organic properties of skin make it nearly impossible to capture and record these movements. Because of this, many computer-generated people in games and movies tend to look really close to human, but no quite, resulting in a sensation called the uncanny valley. New researchers at USC have developed new techniques to more accurately replicate skin movement on artificial skin. With this relatively new and seemingly unexplored possibility of recreating anything through a computer now, future media may become much more deceiving and immersive than before.
digital rendering of wrinkling
Building hopes is an augmented reality generative art experience that allows users to visualize their hopes for certain topics powered by Google Trends data. This project was created by Giorgia Lupi and her team at Accurat for Google in 2018. Based on personal hopes by selected by the user, the algorithm develops a 3D hope sculpture. The user selects different Google Trend data topics and is asked how important they feel about the topic. Digital rocks are auto-generated and vary in size and color depending on the user’s desired intensity on the topic. The artistic license by Lupi is reflected in bold rock colors and a simple white interface. What I admire about this project by Lupi is how it’s inspired by traditional balancing rock art. Through the use of generative 3d art, her team is able to humanize data trends rooted in tradition.
I really like the way computer graphics were used here in this magazine. The vibrant and playful colors are not just limited to the image, but also extend beyond to the area where text is placed. This enhances the “3-dimensional” concept by the way the graphic elements are placed beyond the edge of the main image.
The artist probably used 3D graphics software to create the models of the image before adding the details and vibrant colors. Typically, there is also a rendering algorithm that makes the image look 3-dimensional.
The artist(s) have a unique style throughout their work, which is also reflected in this work. Their style is playful, colorful, and bold with a consistent smooth 3d texture throughout the images.