AoTDA chapter 3

Wands dedicates the third chapter of his book to the medium of computer assisted sculpture. I found it curious, since most of the time that I have spent working on digital art has been invested on using these same sorts of tools (CGI, raytracing, 3d models and animation) but I have almost never thought of it as a series of tools for creating real life sculptures. Instead, for much of the time that I have spent working in Blender 3d, Wings 3d,  and POV Ray, I have been focused on the possibilities of Special effects in film making and creating virtual environments.

Bruce Wands mentions three sorts of artists who use digital tools to aid them in their sculptures. First there are artists like Bruce Beasley who use the digital space in order to plan out their conventional sculptures. Basically, they might use a virtual environment as a sketch book to work through ideas before engaging with the traditional mediums.

After that there are sculptors like Dan Collins use CNC milling machines to render computer models into a physical form. In his work "twister" he used a "full body laser scanner" to scan his image into a computer while he was spinning on a turn table. The result is that the data set was corrupted into this twisted image:

The third group of digital sculptors that Bruce Wands describes uses a the computer to create digital sculptures that are meant to stay in the virtual.

When I was a kid, I used to make all of these paper models of space ships. Mostly I was making my own custom versions of the Star Ship Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I developed my models as a sort of free-hand version of these 3d Paper model kits that you could find at Borders Books. A quick look online shows that there are many kits available now, though I hardly recognize them. I might be looking at the same kits for the Enterprise D and not even know it, it was so long ago. What's important is that building these models freehand gave me a strong grasp of the concepts behind vertices and shapes in 3d space.

I have thought many times over the years about returning to my artistic roots, giving up this life of crime to go make art to fill a gallery with. Forgetting all that stability 9-5 stuff and just sticking to abstract sculpture. Well, its a fun thought. Thanks Bruce for taking me on another digital art adventure.

Maybe Vector Graphics just has a steep curve

As slow as my start with Adobe illustrator was, I can really see how you can master the thing. The horizon is so close. It's just a different set of concepts, a different tool kit. Going from Raster to Vector is like moving from building mud huts to learning how to use power tools to build McMansions, once you've got the hang of it and you start to use the tools correctly, suddenly the whole project just explodes in scope and possibilities.

Like with so many artistic mediums I would suggest that success relies heavily on planning and tool comprehension. I always like to bring up the "ceramics example". When ever you make something from clay, you start by "setting the masses". That means that you have to start by giving your self enough clay to work with in each part that you are planning to carve. That same principal goes for Metalurgy and carpentry. That concept translates pretty well to CGI, as I will explain later, you should always start by creating the basic shapes that make up a 3d model. Once you have your "blobby" figure, you can manipulate individual vertices or NURBS to get to your final product. Finally, knowing your tools really informs what you can do to the primitive forms that you are working on.

In vector graphics you have the freedom to draw out or form something free hand, but again your final project will always be improved by planning using primitive forms.

Besides this silly artistic principal, the biggest thing that I found was that the more work that I put into a vector graphic, the worse that it got. Seriously, it's like every "improvement" just slowly works towards forming what ever good thing that you had further and further into a turd. I made ten logos, and the best ones were the simplest.

Take this logo for example. I have this goal to make a logo and custom font for use in a Zine that I'm working on. I spent hours and hours on this silly thing. Frankly, it's horrible. Way too involved, gross, boring, confusing. I'll need to re-approach it with the plain simplicity of some of my other attempts like these:

That last logo took just about ten minutes. I tried to "improve it, I spent a couple of hours trying to find a better more involved process, but every time it just got worse. It was like I could hear the art critic telling me "please stop helping". In the end I chose that logo, the "ARC", as my final submission for class. There was a close second in this one:

I formed the first word completely free-hand. The second word is an adjusted version of the "MOLOT" font from font squirrel. I wanted motion, and I was trying to reference electrical diagrams as well as eighties hair metal. I think that I can do better, but the core of the logo is definitely there. Maybe if I can figure out how to turn the "Electro" in to a paint brush stroke, and I switch out the Molot font for  something a little more.... Tron. Anyway, the Arc logo was complete. Simple. This project really taught me a lot about what is possible in the realm of vector graphics.