ICARUS 2.0

This piece is for my second GLA assigment of the semester, the topic is “Technoscapes”. The assay that accompanies it addresses the risks and opportunities of virtual reality, modern neuroscience and the research for immortality. 

I really liked the idea and the title - I find it very evocative. I convinced my brother to pose for the figures, which gave me some fantastic photographic reference to work with.

Still, I am not so convinced about the result. I think I overdid the color once again. And I struggled once more with a stupid technical problem: how do mixed-media artists transfer their intermediate steps in traditional media into the computer to continue working in digital? Do they all have rotary scanners? Do they have fully equipped photographic studios? Do they only work in format A3? I am at a loss. The photos I get are definitely not good enough. This time I had it scanned professionally but the quality of the scan was miserable and I had to tweak the curves in Photoshop for one hour before starting.

In summary, I did the figures and the background in pastel in A1 format (to have sufficient width for the spread of the arms). Then scanned it in, fought with the levels and saturation, then added the background (a picture of the connectome) in overlay mode. I fought with the levels a bit more, adjusted brightness here and there, desaturated part of the background. I then added the mesh on the winged figure (overlay with some outer glow) and a little bit of glow around the head. Well, that’s it. Sometimes it is just not a “Uau”.

Update: This illustration was actually selected for the Fall Show at the AAU/Society of Illustrators...so it is probably not as bad as I think!

DIGITAL FEATURES

I am not proud of this week's results...actually I think they are plain awful. But, as Ira Glass said, this is a normal part of learning and I will not hide it. The brief called for doing a digital painting tutorial of my choice. I chose to do human features according to the wonderful tutorials published by 3D total in their great "Digital Painting Techniques" books. The tutorials I picked are from Anne Pagoda and Nykolai Aleksander, two great digital artists (particularly the latter). Why do I want to do such things? Together with self-imposed assignments I have a number of self-imposed goals. One of them reads something like:

"Thou shall master all media"

It is not that I expect to be able to really master all media but I do want to feel halfway comfortable in all of them. My style (whatever that may be) should be dominated by content not by media. And digital painting is a medium, nothing more, nothing less - and a very powerful one on top. There are actually people out there doing work so awesome with the computer that you feel like you will need three lifes to ever get even close to their level. Check this summary:

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/30-deviant-digital-artists-painters-illustrators-worth-to-watch/

So here they are: eyes, mouths, ears and noses - not really like they were intended in the tutorials, I am afraid. I am used to draw with the tablet in Photoshop and that is ok...but painting is another matter altogether. It seems I am nowhere close to understand how the brushes work, there are way too many options to adjust: it feels like you have to change settings every two seconds to get where you want. Towards the end I had the feeling it is almost like learning to use the airbrush (which I have never learnt to use properly, tough I can do decent work) - it is just a matter of coordinating flow, pressure and sweep. Probably not a lot more complex than learning to drive a car or ride a bike....so here is my first fall from that bike. I think there will be many more before I will manage to handle this.

THE PORTABLE MAN

I struggled a lot with this piece and it was incredibly frustrating. It was intended as a first experiment in digital photo-collage, but after three hours of work I realized I would never get where I wanted with the photos I had. While I was thinking when and where to schedule another photo session, I said to myself: I want to be an illustrator, not a photographer - so draw the stupid thing. Up to the initial sketch all went fine, then I had the brilliant idea to experiment with vectors...Ok, I realize it is not impossible to learn how to deal with them, but after the first attempts I estimated this would take the best part of my next five to ten studio slots. I know this is important and I will have to learn it at some point, but maybe that is not what I want to do right now. So I re-rasterized everything and went on from that.

It did not turn out as planned, although I do not dislike it...and I still like the concept, so maybe I will do another version one day. 

The big blank area is intended for lettering - I want to use this as an imaginary book cover for an imaginary book which somebody should bother to write entitled: "Managing Men: A Guide for Women".

The Portable Man - Digital