Posts
10.31.2009
Sketch2Photo is a powerful new tool that will make all artists redundant in the near future. With a simple sketch and guiding text, this powerful program scours the web for images that match your design.
The program creates a composition based on forms it identifies in photos to create a photo-collage based on your own arrangement.
Sketch2Photo: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.
Obviously, as technologies such as this one are perfected the human artist will just be an amusing relic of the past, and the job of the art educator will be in creating programs that automatically develop interesting artwork.21st Century Skills? Let's talk about 22nd Century Skills....
Assuming this idea is expanded and improved, is Sketch2Photo something that you'd use in your classroom to help students plan a composition?
10.29.2009
10.27.2009
I found this interesting article over at Gizmodo entitled Norman Rockwell: The Original King of Photoshop. I'm not sure I agree with the premise; that because he created his paintings out of composites of various photos that he was a sort of 'pre-photoshop photoshopper'. Using various models together as studies for a final image (photographic or not) is an age old technique. However, seeing the photographs that Rockwell used along side the finished project would be great for students.
10.22.2009
10.21.2009
10.18.2009
Six revisions suggests 10 Unusual Places to Get Design Inspiration.
10.14.2009
I haven't really had a chance to sit down and write about my art-overload this summer, and every time I try, I just become overwhelmed. So, I'm breaking it down into smaller scattered posts. In July I attended the IB Art workshop in Berlin, and used that as a jumping off point to see a little bit of southern France and then head over to the Venice Biennial. I'm putting a little video together of my favorite Biennial exhibits, but in the meantime, this was one of my favorite things to see this summer:
Perhaps they need to spread some of their scenery and history to other parts of the world, I mean, in all fairness....
10.13.2009
Have you been filling that empty hole in your soul with freeware that mimics technology of days gone by? As much as I love my little desktop camera, nothing quite replaces the cheap clunky plastic box with the satisfying snap and churning gears.
10.10.2009
I usually find more fun in finding the shocking omissions or ridiculous inclusions of 'top 10' type lists, but I have to say- Time Out's 50 Greatest Animated Films is pretty spot on. No, its not perfect. Maybe because they're all features, they ignore gems like Oskar Fischinger's Early Abstractions, or Don Hertzfeld's Rejected, but also missing is Jan Svankmajer's feature Alice.
One thing I just don't see enough of, are examples of non-representational 3D digital art. This piece by Makoto Yakubi reminds me a lot of the work of one of my favorite animators, Oskar Fischinger. This is the sort of thing I'd imagine he'd be making were he alive today.
This video, White Box, also by Yakubi, shows a beautiful mix of live action and animation, and describes 'thinking outside the box' without using those all too common words:
10.09.2009
I'm not ready to call it "geek week" at the revolution... but I'm getting close...
Because the art vocabulary in English lacks some words to describe key concepts, I have had to invent several terms such as clustering and shapewelding to describe compositional principles that artists often think about but lack the vocabulary to talk about. You’ll find those terms defined in the glossary in the back of the book.
This looks like something I want on my bookshelves... one at home and one at school.
10.08.2009
Well, I mean aside from Rotoball.
Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.
Fans recreate the entire film in 15 second clips (hey.... wait a minute... that sounds familiar... ) in whatever manner or style they can imagine. Unfortunately, all the clips are currently taken... but no worries, the clips resurface if they don't get finished in 30 days. We'll just have to be patient and wait for our 15 seconds of fame to become available*
*How many times can I write posts about Andy Warhol and Star Wars together?
10.07.2009
This week is the mid-autumn festival (or moon festival) here in China, and Kim and I borrowed our friends apartment so that we could pretend that we live downtown. That gave us a bit of a chance to do a little more exploring. One thing we found was the Shanghai Sculpture Space- which is a great sculpture and arts ground.
10.02.2009
I have to admit it, I'm kind of in love with Graphic Nothing's (Gary Clarke's) Movie posters for Minimalists. They remind me of those flimsy classic paperbacks you used to see in bookstores for a dollar (do they still sell those? I'm really out of touch with real world bookstores now).
The vague rules were a circle, lowercase text & one or two images (not from the film) that relate to something in the film (which will not probably make sense unless you've seen the film!)
Sounds like a great challenge, and you could easily swap out those rules for other similar limitations.
