So I was just thinking about a lot of stuff. It's been a difficult couple of years. Almost no design or art from me in that time. I did manage to learn how to write better. Now the tide is turning, and design and art are being reactivated in my life.
So why are they important? Meaning, what are they? Always kind of mysterious to me, design and art have been on a pedestal in my mind. Why did I set them apart from myself like that?
This morning everything seems simple. I can ask myself those questions, and answer them too. Like so...
Art is a more intentional way to live. It is conscious of itself, it's a somewhat more-than-average kind of daily consciousness. Too much self-consciousness can be pretty hard to take. But with art, that extra consciousness is made bearable because the artist brings grace to it with their care and skill in what they do.
And design is a practical application of art, with a great deal of deliberate exercise of consciousness, care and skill.
Design and art are about becoming spiritually and emotionally aware, about expressing new awarenesses with grace, so they can be shared with others.
Design and art are forms of love, of communion. They are the practice of intentional mindfulness. They are a prayer, a prayer made with mind, heart, hands and will to make something with a tangible difference.
They have a sacred nature.
Now I understand the mystery and the pedestal.
Now I understand why artists are often silent.
As I learned first-hand during the past two years, writing is also art.
Under my fingertips are keys on a PC. The Internet is a medium and my keyboard is my paintbrush. I usually write on my PC. But once I wrote a poem by hand, and the result was kind of extraordinary.
If you write primarily on your computer, try writing a story or poem with something soft (a 4B or 6B pencil, soft chalk, or branch charcoal) on a piece of soft paper. See what the drag of the friction of the soft analog tool-to-medium interface does to the hand, arm, mind and eye connection that is part of your writing.
I'm sure many people reading this post here already do much of their writing by hand. But lots of people don't anymore. If you don't, do give it a try. Artist to artist, I predict the results will surprise you.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Design Multiverse
Applied design is a vertical thing for most of us. But...
- Our awareness of design spans everything we see and interact with.
- And everything we see and interact with is part of how we design. Meaning: the multiplicity of inputs we receive informs our internal design modalities constantly. For example,
- The edge of a character on a highway billboard can give us the solution for an ad layout dilemma.
- The narrative structure of a new film can give us a viable new mental sketch for a software application's architecture.
- The color and texture of a shadow below a fold of fabric on the back of a jacket at 7 PM on a September day can give us a key for a new color scheme that solves a difficult decorating problem.
- The feel of our feet against the uneven stones of a street curb can give us a sense of how to rebalance a chair's design.
- The sight of kids playing a ball game can give us a different understanding of competition and cooperation that we can use to refocus a marketing campaign.
- The brightness of sun glinting on a wet blade of grass can tell us how to shape the edges of a new line of gold jewelry.
- And...
...ah, your eyes are rolling back in your head and you're reaching for your pointing device...
Let me try again:
everything
we see and touch
affects our minds
in ways
we can't predict
the things
we experience
and come to know
wriggle into
what we are
what we do
what we make
and though we think
we're in control
and walking down
our own particular
streets of design
we're really
flying in clouds
and bouncing off
a thousand trampolines
welcome to
Design Multiverse
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Paprika: Balancing Analog and CGI Art in Anime
Satoshi Kon, the director of the 2006 film Paprika, seems to have a unique sense of how to balance classic analog (hand-drawn) animation and CGI (computer-generated imagery) in his Anime films.
When I saw Paprika in a theater, I was struck at the clear difference in style between the CG background, and the hand-drawn characters. Yet I was also impressed with how harmonious the two styles were with each other -- how well they worked, together, to make the film whole.
Kon's animators use Anime's typical partially-flattened, hard-outlined, angular style of hand-drawing for figures. This makes the characters somewhat abstract. This is one critical aspect of Kon's style. It may seem paradoxical, but some abstraction in illustration makes the viewer more likely to enter into the story emotionally -- how? By inviting the viewer do a little work with his or her imagination. This creates a dynamic of emotional engagement.
As I understand from Kon's commentaries on the Paprika DVD, it's his thought that even the best animation is inherently false, and we, the audience, will always recognize that. This is another important point in Kon's style. Because he recognizes that and pays attention to it in his work, his films have a particular honesty that's visually poetic. They feel good to see. He magnifies the falseness deliberately, by consistently using hand-drawing methods for characters, and using CGI in such a way that its imitative reality is always confined or muted. By making analog art the star of his style, and confining CG effects to a supporting role, Kon controls the tension between hand-drawn animation and apparent reality. The tension between the two is never high enough to disrupt the experience of seeing his films.
Below are a few frames from Paprika, and then a few more from one of the Paprika DVD's Special Features section, illustrating the animation side of Kon's directorial approach (which is that of an animation artist combined with a classic film director).
Click on any frame to see a larger copy. Some frames have notations about why they communicate well, or how they fit into Kon's Anime style.
The reflections on the glasses could have been hand-drawn, too -- but inanimate features like reflections on glass are more easily controlled using CG effects, rather than analog animation.
The frame shows Kon's close observation of body language -- you can tell what the character's mood is, by her posture and the look on her face -- and his use of lighting to create visual and story drama.
The next three frames are from one of the films' dream parade sequences. This one is set on a bridge near a big city. Any character or piece of parade equipment that is in the foreground and moves has been hand-drawn. All background features are done with CGI and CG effects. Notice that while features like the bridge, forest, water and sky look pretty realistic, their realism isn't over-done, and they've been slightly blurred to keep the focus on the moving figures in the parade.
Kon's chief CG animator says that in most scenes where confetti is used, usually about 100,000 pieces are generated. But for Paprika, they generated about 650,000 pieces of confetti. The effect is amazing to watch, and yet it's beautifully handled -- it never overwhelms any of the dream parade scenes.
The frames are shown in sequence, and illustrate Kon's fluid, intelligent cuts. First, Kon shows the parade approaching at mid-range, shot from below eye-level. Then he pulls way back, up, and moves outside the bridge structure, to establish setting, create scale, and make a visually-dynamic composition. This distant, outside POV enhances the feeling the audience has, of being outside the parade's dream. Finally, he re-enters the bridge framework, and pans around and zooms in on one character, to associate a quality of fantastic menace with that character, and bring the audience back in touch with the chaos of the dream parade. The rest of the scene is mostly shot tight within the parade itself, with only a few angles showing water or the city in the distance. This creates a sense of claustrophobia, and enhances the menace and confusion for the audience.
Notice how the sky looks darker in the third frame -- this is what really happens when you reduce the amount of blue sky visible. You can try it with your hands -- some day, when the sky is very clear and blue, look at it in full. Then frame it with your hands so you can see only a small portion of it. The blue will appear to be darker when it's framed.
The next three frames illustrate how Kon's hand-drawn characters work against CGI backgrounds. The advantage of using CGI in this kind of setting is clear. There are multiple seats in the theater, they have the same texture, and the setting's perspective will change depending on the camera's POV. CGI is the perfect way to do repetitive, math-heavy work like this.
But notice how Kon controls CGI's potential for too much realism -- the background is low on detail and pattern, and receding areas are slightly out of focus.
In the third frame, when another dream parade enters the theater, your eye doesn't get stuck on the rows of pretty red seats. Instead, your attention and imagination are caught by the figures of the lead and parade characters. Their analog sharpness and flatness are responsible for this, as is their inclusion of more detail than the backgrounds.
The frame below is masterful in its handling of lighting transparencies. It creates an illusion of a woman reflected on a dark pane of glass, through which you can see someone in a hospital bed.
Both hand-drawing and CGI are used here. Can you tell where one ends and the other begins? I can't -- although I can guess, based on what I'd do if I were the director, the scene's effects are so well-integrated that it's nothing more than a guess, for me.
Below is a small analog figure against an immense and detailed CGI background. Yet, as usual, Kon's direction reduces the realism of the CG background to a level where it doesn't compete with, but rather supports, the hand-drawn character.
He does this by slightly blurring much of the CG detail, and angling the horizon line so the audience can't get too involved in picking out individual features like houses, roads, etc.
I love the shot below for its great lighting. Click on it to see a bigger copy, and check the honest, but not too, realistic texture of the glass on the lighted booth in the background.
The frame below is one in a sequence that's the reason I got the Paprika DVD. What's special about it, for me, is the use of CGI in the foreground, for the metallic streamers.
I was absolutely shocked in the theater when I realized how well-balanced the subdued, organic CGI background, the hand-drawn character, and the metallic CG streamers were with each other. It shouldn't have worked, but it did. I wanted to see if the effect held up if I watched it several times. I'm happy to report it does.
It's this sequence that has had me thinking for months about Kon's work, and why I'm writing this article.
And here is Satoshi Kon, in an early Paprika story conference.
Kon is well-known for doing his own, very detailed storyboards.
He works on a light-table, with a frames template laid over his work. He draws more than he thinks the camera will need to capture. This way, if they later decide the camera needs to pan, what the camera will see (outside the original frame) is already roughed-in.
The Paprika storyboards took eighteen months to do -- this was six months beyond Kon's estimate. He started on them before the script was finished, so he would have no knowledge of the ending of the film, and his approach to creating the visuals would be freer. (Although Kon's Paprika is based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name, it's a somewhat free adaptation of the book.)
Some storyboard frames and actual matching frames from the film:
When I saw Paprika in a theater, I was struck at the clear difference in style between the CG background, and the hand-drawn characters. Yet I was also impressed with how harmonious the two styles were with each other -- how well they worked, together, to make the film whole.
Kon's animators use Anime's typical partially-flattened, hard-outlined, angular style of hand-drawing for figures. This makes the characters somewhat abstract. This is one critical aspect of Kon's style. It may seem paradoxical, but some abstraction in illustration makes the viewer more likely to enter into the story emotionally -- how? By inviting the viewer do a little work with his or her imagination. This creates a dynamic of emotional engagement.
As I understand from Kon's commentaries on the Paprika DVD, it's his thought that even the best animation is inherently false, and we, the audience, will always recognize that. This is another important point in Kon's style. Because he recognizes that and pays attention to it in his work, his films have a particular honesty that's visually poetic. They feel good to see. He magnifies the falseness deliberately, by consistently using hand-drawing methods for characters, and using CGI in such a way that its imitative reality is always confined or muted. By making analog art the star of his style, and confining CG effects to a supporting role, Kon controls the tension between hand-drawn animation and apparent reality. The tension between the two is never high enough to disrupt the experience of seeing his films.
Below are a few frames from Paprika, and then a few more from one of the Paprika DVD's Special Features section, illustrating the animation side of Kon's directorial approach (which is that of an animation artist combined with a classic film director).
Click on any frame to see a larger copy. Some frames have notations about why they communicate well, or how they fit into Kon's Anime style.
* * *
The frame below shows the female lead in Paprika, hand-drawn, with CG effects for her glasses and the background.The reflections on the glasses could have been hand-drawn, too -- but inanimate features like reflections on glass are more easily controlled using CG effects, rather than analog animation.
The frame shows Kon's close observation of body language -- you can tell what the character's mood is, by her posture and the look on her face -- and his use of lighting to create visual and story drama.
* * *
The next three frames are from one of the films' dream parade sequences. This one is set on a bridge near a big city. Any character or piece of parade equipment that is in the foreground and moves has been hand-drawn. All background features are done with CGI and CG effects. Notice that while features like the bridge, forest, water and sky look pretty realistic, their realism isn't over-done, and they've been slightly blurred to keep the focus on the moving figures in the parade.
Kon's chief CG animator says that in most scenes where confetti is used, usually about 100,000 pieces are generated. But for Paprika, they generated about 650,000 pieces of confetti. The effect is amazing to watch, and yet it's beautifully handled -- it never overwhelms any of the dream parade scenes.
The frames are shown in sequence, and illustrate Kon's fluid, intelligent cuts. First, Kon shows the parade approaching at mid-range, shot from below eye-level. Then he pulls way back, up, and moves outside the bridge structure, to establish setting, create scale, and make a visually-dynamic composition. This distant, outside POV enhances the feeling the audience has, of being outside the parade's dream. Finally, he re-enters the bridge framework, and pans around and zooms in on one character, to associate a quality of fantastic menace with that character, and bring the audience back in touch with the chaos of the dream parade. The rest of the scene is mostly shot tight within the parade itself, with only a few angles showing water or the city in the distance. This creates a sense of claustrophobia, and enhances the menace and confusion for the audience.
Notice how the sky looks darker in the third frame -- this is what really happens when you reduce the amount of blue sky visible. You can try it with your hands -- some day, when the sky is very clear and blue, look at it in full. Then frame it with your hands so you can see only a small portion of it. The blue will appear to be darker when it's framed.
* * *
The next three frames illustrate how Kon's hand-drawn characters work against CGI backgrounds. The advantage of using CGI in this kind of setting is clear. There are multiple seats in the theater, they have the same texture, and the setting's perspective will change depending on the camera's POV. CGI is the perfect way to do repetitive, math-heavy work like this.
But notice how Kon controls CGI's potential for too much realism -- the background is low on detail and pattern, and receding areas are slightly out of focus.
In the third frame, when another dream parade enters the theater, your eye doesn't get stuck on the rows of pretty red seats. Instead, your attention and imagination are caught by the figures of the lead and parade characters. Their analog sharpness and flatness are responsible for this, as is their inclusion of more detail than the backgrounds.
* * *
The frame below is masterful in its handling of lighting transparencies. It creates an illusion of a woman reflected on a dark pane of glass, through which you can see someone in a hospital bed.
Both hand-drawing and CGI are used here. Can you tell where one ends and the other begins? I can't -- although I can guess, based on what I'd do if I were the director, the scene's effects are so well-integrated that it's nothing more than a guess, for me.
* * *
Below is a small analog figure against an immense and detailed CGI background. Yet, as usual, Kon's direction reduces the realism of the CG background to a level where it doesn't compete with, but rather supports, the hand-drawn character.
He does this by slightly blurring much of the CG detail, and angling the horizon line so the audience can't get too involved in picking out individual features like houses, roads, etc.
* * *
I love the shot below for its great lighting. Click on it to see a bigger copy, and check the honest, but not too, realistic texture of the glass on the lighted booth in the background.
* * *
The frame below is one in a sequence that's the reason I got the Paprika DVD. What's special about it, for me, is the use of CGI in the foreground, for the metallic streamers.
I was absolutely shocked in the theater when I realized how well-balanced the subdued, organic CGI background, the hand-drawn character, and the metallic CG streamers were with each other. It shouldn't have worked, but it did. I wanted to see if the effect held up if I watched it several times. I'm happy to report it does.
It's this sequence that has had me thinking for months about Kon's work, and why I'm writing this article.
* * *
And here is Satoshi Kon, in an early Paprika story conference.
* * *
Kon is well-known for doing his own, very detailed storyboards.
* * *
He works on a light-table, with a frames template laid over his work. He draws more than he thinks the camera will need to capture. This way, if they later decide the camera needs to pan, what the camera will see (outside the original frame) is already roughed-in.
The Paprika storyboards took eighteen months to do -- this was six months beyond Kon's estimate. He started on them before the script was finished, so he would have no knowledge of the ending of the film, and his approach to creating the visuals would be freer. (Although Kon's Paprika is based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name, it's a somewhat free adaptation of the book.)
* * *
Some storyboard frames and actual matching frames from the film:
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Flattening Out Western Painting
Below are some European paintings, chosen at random from the Met's collection, shown in three versions each:
Looking at the third version of each painting, I see some interesting stuff going on.
I wonder what you see, and what your thoughts are about it.
The paintings are listed chronologically. You can click on any image to see a bigger version of it.
Saint Andrew, 1320's, Simone Martini
Portrait of a Young Man, 1530's, Bronzino
The Harvesters, 156o's, Bruegel the Elder
The Musicians, 1590's, Caravaggio
The Fortune Teller, 1630's, de La Tour
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1650's, Rembrandt
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, 1660's, Vermeer
Wheat Fields, 1670's, van Ruisdael
Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, 1830's, Turner
The Desperate Man, 1840's, Courbet
The Meeting, 1850's, Courbet
Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman, 1860's, Courbet
Madame X, 1880's, Sargent
Mountain Stream, 1910's, Sargent
The original images can be found at the Metropolitan Museum web site, here:
- the original
- a copy that's had Photoshop's Dark Strokes filter applied (to intensify high- and low-lights and remove detail)
- a copy that's had Photoshop's Cutout filter applied over the Dark Strokes copy (to flatten out the composition and remove all traces of modeling).
Looking at the third version of each painting, I see some interesting stuff going on.
I wonder what you see, and what your thoughts are about it.
The paintings are listed chronologically. You can click on any image to see a bigger version of it.
Saint Andrew, 1320's, Simone Martini
Portrait of a Young Man, 1530's, Bronzino
The Harvesters, 156o's, Bruegel the Elder
The Musicians, 1590's, Caravaggio
The Fortune Teller, 1630's, de La Tour
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1650's, Rembrandt
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, 1660's, Vermeer
Wheat Fields, 1670's, van Ruisdael
Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, 1830's, Turner
The Desperate Man, 1840's, Courbet
The Meeting, 1850's, Courbet
Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman, 1860's, Courbet
Madame X, 1880's, Sargent
Mountain Stream, 1910's, Sargent
The original images can be found at the Metropolitan Museum web site, here:
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Stylization & flattening = depth & engagement?
My visits to two Asian art exhibitions this past weekend were vibrant experiences. I'll be writing about them soon.
In today's NY Times, there are a few images representing work done for or by the Walt Disney Studios fifty years ago, that were found in a janitor's closet in Japan, and are now being returned to the US.
The story is here: Animated Repatriation: Disney Art Returns (at NYTimes.com)
The slideshow is here: Disney Slideshow (at NYTimes.com)
I found three of the images in the slideshow resonant, for their use of design techniques similar to those viewed in the two Asian art exhibitions. The images are these...
Two concept paintings for “Sleeping Beauty” by the American artist and illustrator Eyvind Earle (1916-2000):
A cel and background set-up from “Sleeping Beauty.”
What impresses me about these images is their conscious use of:
They involve a good deal of visual abstraction. Because the resulting images are incomplete and distorted (from a realistic point of view), they cause the viewer to project more of their own mind's conceptions about depth, perspective and location into each image. This dynamic of pulling the viewer into the picture flavors the viewer's experience with a personal quality, and makes an emotional connection between art and viewer.
These stylized images are visual hooks for us viewer "fishies". The design techniques they incorporate show me very clearly how it is we become so engrossed by comics, graphic novels and animated short cartoons and films, even when we grow up.
Any thoughts?
In today's NY Times, there are a few images representing work done for or by the Walt Disney Studios fifty years ago, that were found in a janitor's closet in Japan, and are now being returned to the US.
The story is here: Animated Repatriation: Disney Art Returns (at NYTimes.com)
The slideshow is here: Disney Slideshow (at NYTimes.com)
I found three of the images in the slideshow resonant, for their use of design techniques similar to those viewed in the two Asian art exhibitions. The images are these...
Two concept paintings for “Sleeping Beauty” by the American artist and illustrator Eyvind Earle (1916-2000):
A cel and background set-up from “Sleeping Beauty.”
What impresses me about these images is their conscious use of:
- perspective flattening
- stylization of edges and forms
They involve a good deal of visual abstraction. Because the resulting images are incomplete and distorted (from a realistic point of view), they cause the viewer to project more of their own mind's conceptions about depth, perspective and location into each image. This dynamic of pulling the viewer into the picture flavors the viewer's experience with a personal quality, and makes an emotional connection between art and viewer.
These stylized images are visual hooks for us viewer "fishies". The design techniques they incorporate show me very clearly how it is we become so engrossed by comics, graphic novels and animated short cartoons and films, even when we grow up.
Any thoughts?
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