Or Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Watching Movies

Kim and I are back in the states for a few weeks, and so I need to get out to see some movies in the theater while I can. Because we have limited time, I have to choose carefully (So far, I've decided that we must see No Country for Old Men, I Am Legend, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Sweeney Todd and The Golden Compass - so much to do in so little time!).

I mention this because in looking through movie reviews, I came across this really interesting quote in The Village Voice in reference to Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend:

...[Francis] Lawrence—like Peter Jackson and James Cameron—is among the few filmmakers with full access to the digital paintbox who seems to understand how those tools work best: to magnify the human dimension of a movie instead of extinguish it.

I have a love/hate relationship with digital art. Well, that might be overstating it a bit. I love digital art, but I hate the sterile interface of it all. I love being able to render a 3D animation, or a rotoscoped video, but I long for touch of something to mold, and being covered by paint at the end of a long day.

Maybe it will be different for Generation 2.0 (That just came to me, I was hoping to coin that as a term, but a quick Google search proves that I'm not that clever). However, for me, the sterile interface of the computer makes finding the heart in digital all the more difficult. That being said, I do find it easier on the Mac- must have something to do with the aesthetics of the machine itself.

Anyway, the quote from that review should serve as a reminder. Digital art can be clever, and digital art can be sleek and fancy. But digital art with heart? Now, that's a real challenge.