My 1st Coloring Book

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Current event post

While it may not be the most interesting or stunning news in the world of art right now, I'm extremely satisfied with the release of Adobe's CS6 package. Over the past few months Adobe and popular art media outlets have been publishing all the great stuff that has been coming along with the debut of CS6 and its beta, namely the major changes to Photoshop, and users are in for a surprise with some of the great new things coming their way. Having already downloaded the standalone Photoshop version, I can say I'm quite happy with what new things I've encountered so far.

For one, almost everything runs much smoother than the previous version. Large format works process much more quickly with tools such as smudge, filters, content awareness, and blur effects as long as the hardware you're using can keep up with Adobe. The CS5 version was severely bottle necking the user's CPU, especially on Windows machines, but the improved algorithms have been showing off quite nicely, even in 1920x1080 resolution and higher. I was curious on how much better these changes might be so I opened up the same file in the CS5 version as well as CS6 and applied a complicated pointilize filter over a 3x3 foot image. CS6 blew away CS5 by almost 5 seconds. I tried it again at 5x5 foot and it was almost 10 seconds faster during that application.

Something users will recognize right off the bat is that the interface for CS6 is slightly different. A couple of the tools on the left side of the UI have different looking icons, and the default windows and options on the right hand side from CS5 are nonexistent until you activate and customize them in CS6. However, the windows blend together very smoothly and get minimized nicely. Another noticeable tweak is that your background colors are now a muted gray color instead of the standard white of every other version. The feedback is much lighter on your eyes, and makes your own work pop out much more clearly. Personally, I think it gives the whole UI a nice, updated and refreshing look.

The last thing I'd like to mention about CS6 is the huge improvement to the content awareness tool. Taking unwanted portions out of pictures or elongating sections has never been easier. In July when I made my "8 Bit Blast" piece I literally recreated half of my right chest with the content awareness tool and it looked just fine after I smoothed and blurred everything out. Some of the demos I've watched in recent weeks have been absolutely stunning, even on complicated images like forests and seascapes. The tool is now basically foolproof and can be used for tasks of all ranges as long as you remember to try it out.

There's plenty of other fun and exciting new things for CS6 including lots of 3D imaging techniques and video editing applications, but the things that I mentioned previously are the ones that I've had the most fun with as of yet.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Asa 9/10

Framework for a female android I started today

Friday, September 7, 2012

9/7

I got some free time work done with the tablet after renting it out and using it at home for a bit. I learned a couple important techniques from following some tutorials that are making things easier and more realistic. Just trying to draw out real life objects around my room proved to be pretty fun, and I got better with each sketch I did.

I'm probably going to start this second attempt for a piece over with a picture of a real face to reference from, I really just used a skull and some mis match people parts when drawing this one out so its not as proportional as it should be. I'm sure my housemate John will be more than willing to pose. But I've got free time this weekend so I'll be working again soon

Friday, August 31, 2012

Animatron update 1

I redrew my first piece with a bit more detail and started coloring. Since it is my first real stab at digital painting I am constantly going back and forth between blending modes and brush values trying to decide on what to do. I have been looking online for some help and tutorials and what I've found has helped quite a bit so far. I think I will need to get some real definition down before I can start making some stylistic changes that I'd like to implement, but I think I'm on the right track. I'm beginning to notice that, like regular drawing, this is a very time consuming process, but it seems to be going alright so far. As long as I keep creating new layers instead of erasing it seems to create a more natural transition of color.

Monday, August 27, 2012

the animatron

Very quick sketches of what I've been thinking about doing for this semester.

In keeping with my theme of drawing machines and their inner workings I wanted to introduce some looser drawing to my approach. The pen tool feels very stiff and can only produce so many results even after working it over with filters and whatever else techniques. The direction I want to take with this semester is a bit more surreal and fantastic and the bleak and crisp format of last semester won't accomplish this goal as well.

I would like to do most of the base work through drawing by hand and scanning it into photoshop, only to do some more creative digital painting instead of fill in the space coloring book style of last semester. This is something I've always wanted to try but never really had a reason to up until now. I have done digital painting in free work but have never used a physical stylus and tablet before.

Taking inspiration from the works of Matei Apostolescu, complicated and cluttered yet extravagant, I would like to focus on a possible short story of a man and machine and what becomes of them. It would be a setting of a future where man is on the edge of dying out and technology is prevailing. A new race of robotics is emerging where man and machine become one, animatrons/androids/cyborgs or whatnot. In keeping with the theme of last semester, I'd like to show the intricacies of how these robots and new animatrons may function by giving detailed, yet gritty and unrefiened representations of a their surreal nature.