Digital
Art Tools & Techniques: A Practical Course
The personal desktop computer
offers a powerful new tool for the visual creator, and in recent years
more and more artists have been turning to this exciting new medium.
Courses in computer graphics are now plentiful at universities and
colleges. Established artists in other media are discovering in the
computer a vital new means of expressing their visions, and are adding it
to their toolkit. Some newer artists are making a direct progression from
drawing to digital techniques. All are finding that the electronic media
are permitting artistic creations that might be difficult if not
impossible using traditional paints.
The rapid proliferation of digital
techniques and image-manipulating softwares has meant that, to the
newcomer and professional alike, the practice of digital art can seem like
negotiating an especially complicated maze. What has been lacking is a
guide to this maze, one that starts from first principles and works up in
a logical manner to explaining the greater complexities, offering tips and
advice that even the highly experienced professional may not have
encountered before.
Thanks to Digital Art Tools &
Techniques: A Practical Course, that lack is now a thing of the past.
Written by acclaimed digital artist Audre Vysniauskas (audre), it begins
by examining the fundamentals—often ignored at their peril by professional
practitioners—of digital image creation, such as what a byte is, the
advantages and disadvantages of different file formats and the preparation
of images for the various desired end-purposes, and graduates in easy
stages to choices of softwares, three-dimensional modeling and a plethora
of money- and time-saving tricks. In a final section, step-by-step
presentations demonstrate how all the techniques of earlier chapters can
be put together to create dazzling final results.
With its wealth of information and its
profusion of illustrations and examples, Digital Art Tools &
Techniques: A Practical Course will be invaluable—and
inspirational!—to professional digital artist and beginner alike.
This unique and timely book will show
you how you can go from this:
to this:
…all without breaking a sweat or
investing a fortune in your digital art tools!
Life is a Bowl of Fractals In the
70's fractals were a mathematical and visual oddity. Grouped together with
the aging psychedelic-genre, mainstream and sophisticated art connoisseurs
alike quickly dismissed the gaudy-colored patterns as inconsequential and
really not all that attractive, anyway. Since then, fractals have
emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile tools in not only visual
art, but in the modeling and understanding of natural and chaotic systems
in all fields of discipline. Our understanding of the fractal has
matured, and with it our appreciation and application of them—fractals
have become both an indispensable tool and art form of their own. Fractals
are everywhere around us. Sea shells are fractals. Trees, plants, clouds,
and even complex terrain can be realistically represented using fractals.
Fractals are used to simulate the real world and do an amazing job
creating complex, life-like structures that we would be hard pressed to
manually draw or build.
Not only a scrumptious coffee table
book, Life is a Bowl of Fractals showcases and explains
fractals; as an art form of their own, as a tool for the creation of more
complex and engaging art, and as a tool to accurately model complex
systems. Most volumes dealing with fractals tend toward math-geek-speak,
turning people away from the creative and exciting aspects of fractals.
Life is a Bowl of Fractals starts at the beginning to explain the
concepts with easy-to-understand examples and follows up with
breathtaking visuals and applications of
fractals in use as art and as tools used
in the creation of more complex systems and images.
Filled with amazing
artwork, illustrations, definitions,
experiments and links to internet sites for further exploration,
this indispensable volume is sure to benefit not only the artist
interested in expanding their toolset
with powerful new techniques, but the generally curious wishing to
understand more about the world around them
as well.
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Everything you see in this picture is
a fractal: The structures (rock-hewn temples) are fractals which
have been rendered into 3D coordinates. The water ripples are
generated using a fractal-based formula. The overcast sky with its
‘plasma’ cloud formation is fractal-based. Even the rock texture has
fractal components which give it the natural-looking coloration and
texture! |
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| The
foundations of this image are fractals as well. The main
theme, in fact, is a 2 dimensional fractal which has been applied in
various ways to create not only he backdrop and ornamentation for
this image, but clothing and headdress for this character as well. |
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