Learning

The Uncanny Valley

Most people have heard of "The Uncanny Valley" by now.  I've heard people refer to it in two contexts in the animation industry: characters that are almost lifelike but are just enough off to be creepy, and stylized/cartoon characters who have an off-putting amount of realistic detail.  I want to talk a little about the second one because I've run into it more often recently when artists have asked me for critiques.

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule for this type of uncanny valley.  When I watched The Adventures of Tintin, at first I was really bothered by the cartoon characters with realistic eyes and hands.  But by the end of the film I was engaged enough in the story that I didn't notice so much anymore.  I suspect that a lot of our reaction to the uncanny valley is a bias that can be broken down with repeated exposure.
These guys' eyes still freak me out
However, until the kids who prefer a Robert Zemeckis zombie-fest become the norm, artists who want to add realism into the animation industry are going to have to be sensitive to the issue.  Most audiences like detail and realism, so there's nothing wrong with trying to push things that way.  But how far can you go before you start alienating people?
Safely abstracted
???
Uncanny Valley
For a character with cartoon proportions, the complexity of the forms and surface details are both factors.

In my experience, the most important form details for navigating the the uncanny valley seem to be the eyes and the nose. Make the eyelids too defined, and the character will fall apart.  Visible skeletal structure on the hands and feet are a good target for abstraction as well.  Realistic forms on the ears and lips might be distracting, but don't seem to "break" the character in the same way as the other features.



Does this mean you can never define the forms around the nose?  Not necessarily.  A good rule of thumb is to ask, "Do I want people to stare at this feature?" Because people's eyes will be drawn to any unusually detailed part of a stylized character.  If the part they are staring at informs them about the character, then that can be a good thing. But if the nostrils aren't particularly important, then your design might be better off without them or at least without some of the structures surrounding them.

Even if you keep the forms simple, the texture on those forms can make a character disturbing.  Skin pores, tissue striations, and loose hairs can be particularly offensive (in this case intended for humor):
http://pixeloo.blogspot.com/2008/03/super-real-mario-world.html  Finding a more abstract version of these textures can still give you high detail without sacrificing appeal:

Of course, some of you might look at my three examples above and think that the third version is just fine, while others might feel that the middle version is already descending into the uncanny valley. What is okay depends on your audience and what you're trying to say with the style (grotesque is sometimes good).

Influence map

I've seen these around before but never tried it because I didn't realize how useful and interesting an exercise it would be.
I agonized over who to leave out, and I still wonder if I should have included artists such as Dave McClellan, Joe Olson, Erwin Madrid, Marcelo Vignali, Paul Lasaine, and Paul Felix.  Those artists deserve credit in my development but I just ran out of space.

I just have to add that Alan Tew basically taught me how to draw and I owe him more than I have room on this sheet for.  Whether he takes that as a compliment will depend on how he feels about my drawing ability now. :)

The most interesting part of doing this was realizing how many good artists I'm NOT influenced by.  There are mobs of artists who I've thought for a long time are amazing, yet they have not in any way changed the way that I work or think.  This is a really strange thing that I don't understand.

And yeah, I know Bengus isn't an artist but a group of artists.  More than one of them influenced me, so I'm including them as a group.

The 80/20 Rule

I've often heard artists, designers, management, etc. use "the 80/20 rule" to explain their choices.

"You want 80% to be rest areas and 20% areas of detail"
"80% of this geometry should be interactive and 20% non-interactive"
"As long as we get it 80% right, the extra 20% doesn't matter"

The problem is, none of these things have anything to do with the 80/20 rule.  So let's get it right, because this is an important one if you want be a faster artist.
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of a system will be affected by 20% of the variables in it.  So that 20% matters a lot.  80/20 doesn't mean that everything divides neatly into that ratio, or that that 80% should be one thing and 20% should be another.  Instead, it's a principle of resource allocation.
The 80/20 rule applies when 80% of one thing is affected by 20% of another thing.
So as an artist, what is that 20% of your process that takes 80% of your time or resources?  There are multiple answers to this question.  Here are some ways it applies to me:
How often do you get a painting to the point where it's looking good and you start feeling like you're just about done, only then you spend way more time finishing the painting up than you did getting it to that point?  For me, this is true nearly every time.  If you paint in detail or care about your brush strokes, this is just a fact of life.
But to make use of the 80/20 rule, you need to do more than identify the problematic 20%. It may be useful for setting proper expectations, but you won't get any faster to know that.

Where the 80/20 rule becomes useful in this case is by applying it in another related area.  If I were to uniformly apply detail across this painting once I finished the block-in, it would have taken me three times as long.  So instead, once I got to hour 3 or 4, I tried to identify the 20% of the painting that would likely demand 80% of a viewer's attention.  Then I focused a disproportionate amount of time and effort developing those areas. The remaining 80% of the painting then fell naturally together in support of the high-attention areas.  This is the magic of the 80/20 rule: tackle the correct 20%, and the other 80% often falls into place.

What are some ways that the 80/20 rule could be used to speed up your process?

Watercolor brushes

A comment in the previous post on brushes made me think I should examine the "Real Watercolor" brushes more closely, but with the proper expectations (ie. unexpected results are okay).  So I did, and I didn't try anything too crazy with them, but I like them better in that context.  Making multiple watercolor layers at once is nice.  The watercolor eraser is awful, though.  This was done for the Avalanche blog:
I still like the digital watercolors better though.  This was a drawing session a week or two ago.

Brush Review 2: Painter 10, Painter 12, Photoshop CS5

I used to paint mostly with custom brushes, but my old custom brushes aren't very practical for demonstrations since they confuse new students.  So when I bought Painter 12, I branched out into the stock brushes some more.  Here are some of the ones I liked: some new to Painter 12, some that have been around for a while, and one or two from Photoshop.
First of all, the "Real 2b Pencil" from Painter 12.  This is the only thing I use for drawing now, except occasionally the markers.  Why?  Because it feels exactly how you would want a digital pencil to feel.  The only problem with it is the fat Wacom pen's inability to lay completely on its side like a real pencil would.  But once you get used to it you'll never go back.  And it's a "cover" pencil so you can draw with any color.

Painter 12 finally got markers right.  I like quite a few of the new markers, but my favorite is the "Variable Chisel Tip," only I changed the Opacity control to pen pressure.  
The new markers basically treat a single stroke all as wet ink, and don't layer on new color until you start a new stroke.  If you've used art markers before you'll immediately feel how much better these are than Painter's old markers.


The next brush has been around in Painter for a while, but they've improved it just slightly for 12: the "Grainy Water" Blender.  Something about the way it blends feels really intuitive, and best of all, if you're blending line art, you can see the original lines underneath just like you do when blending natural dry media.   Lately I've been using this brush instead of an eraser when drawing, because the unique way it blends gives you a very natural feel.
The "Grainy Water Blender" makes two brushes I would have avoided before suddenly become pretty nice:  The "Real Soft Chalk" and "Real Hard Pastel."  The former is ideal for mixing and adding depth to your colors, the latter gives you a nice opaque color with some texture when blended.

One inherent problem with digital painting is that it will never feel as tactile and "right" as natural media.  However, digital media DOES provide extra controls and options that you may not have with, say, something like watercolor or oil paint.  So why did the Painter guys make their new Watercolor and Oil brushes even MORE painful and unpredictable than their real-life counterparts?  I don't know, but I'm going to recommend you use some of their older brushes instead.
The watercolors Painter 10 (or 9?) introduced are mostly just useful for adding texture to your image.  I really like the "Diffuse Bristle" for that very purpose.  If you absolutely must use the new watercolors for actual painting, the "Wet Wash Flat" isn't horrible.  But if you want something that does what I described above, in mixing some of the benefits/feel of natural media with the power and flexibility of digital, use the Digital Watercolors.  In my last post on brushes I think I liked the "Simple Water" best.  Well, the "New Simple Water" is even better.  Digital water color is best for adding color to an existing drawing, like this:
Original drawing
Fine details added using Real Soft Chalk and Grainy Water Blender
My favorite part: low pressure pushes the colors around and pulls some of the color out, much like the behavior you'd get when switching between a wet brush dipped in color and a damp brush.  If you want to have more than one layer of digital watercolor at a time, create a new layer and turn off "Pick Up Underlying Color" in the layers menu.  If you want to dry the digital watercolor (merge colors with the canvas) for any layer, the option is in the Layers menu.

The new Oil brushes are garbage, for the same reasons I cited above: less intuitive than the real thing, and nothing new added by making it digital.  Maybe a little less expensive and fewer health risks, but Corel could definitely do better than this.  The biggest problem is that none of the Oil controls can be attached to pressure, pen tilt, or any other Wacom settings.

I thought I'd throw in an addendum for Painter users who are curious about Photoshop CS5, or for Photoshop users who want the same results as Painter.  I'm sorry to say that for the most part, Photoshop does everything differently than Painter does.  It is possible to make a Painter brush feel exactly like Photoshop,  but getting Photoshop to mimic most Painter brushes is just impossible.  Photoshop does a few things well, like the way it handles Dual Brush effects and texture.  But its brushes don't scale well, making edges hard to manage, and its Mixer Brush Tool doesn't live up to hype.  In fact, CS5's Mixer Brush reminds me a lot of Painter's Oils, and you know how I feel about those.  You'll get much better behavior from modifying your smudge tool (which isn't as good as the Grainy Water Blender in Painter, but it's way better than the Mixer Brush settings for blending).

The Art of the Heist

Some people misunderstood the intent of my last post.  It was certainly condescending toward the "thieving" artist. But it was not in a sanctimonious-dean-accusing-a-student-of-plagiarism way, but in an experienced-thief-shaking-his-head-at-the-burglar-caught-by-leaving-tracks-in-the-snow kind of way.

Because let's face it: all artists are thieves, if you count being influenced by images or ideas that you didn't create as stealing*.  So it's not "good artists borrow and great artists steal"; it's good artists clumsily pick-pocket, and great artists pull off the heist of the century.  Great artists steal in ways that are either untraceable or in ways that are so masterful that nobody cares where it all came from.

So while I'm not one of the all-time great plunderers, for the sake of other bungling burglars out there I'd like to share the ways I've learned that you can steal and still "get away with it."

The Lookie Loo
Otherwise known as "using reference," this is the most fundamental grab-and-run operation.  It consists of drawing or painting something that already exists, usually while the artist is looking directly at that thing.  Sometimes the artist will set up a scene and then pilfer it verbatim, but other times he or she will pinch from smaller photos or art that describe the individual elements needed for the larger piece.

The Memory Game
Similar to the Lookie Loo, but in this case the artist steals imagery or ideas from things he or she has seen or been inspired by in the past.  The beauty of this ploy is that the artist may perform the theft without even realizing it is happening.  In order to avoid a surprise outcome with the Memory Game, artists may intentionally throw in a Combination Caper or layer in a Romance Scam to throw people off the scent.


The Combination Caper
Here the artist lifts multiple ideas from different sources and fuses them together. The success of this caper relies on constructing an image from things the audience is already familiar with, so that they will subconsciously register each contribution as it influences their reaction to the piece.


The Parrot Ruse
Otherwise known as "quoting," in the Parrot Ruse the artist repeats a recognizable portion of another artists' work in order to establish context for his own message.  By calling upon the viewers' familiarity with the work being quoted, the artist suckers them into thinking that his wholesale rip-off is acceptable because "it's ironic."  The non-art equivalent to this would be stealing a Lambourghini in broad daylight while singing.  Not only would people allow it: they would applaud afterward, assuming the theft was a clever part of a flash-mob.


The Romance Scam
Sure, the artist's character design isn't that original.  But when everyone is looking at the way she's handled the lighting, or the emotional expression of the piece, most people don't even think about the design.  The Romance scam works by misdirection---the artist hides her fraud in one area with fancy execution in another.



I'm pretty sure I didn't paint all these textures from scratch
Salting the Line
This is one case in which an artist can get away with taking other art or photos directly, if it is done carefully.  By layering in textures, patterns, or other effects from another source, the artist can quickly add polish and something interesting to his piece.  This type of cheat only works when nobody recognizes the source being used, or if some combination of the sources creates an effect that masks the individuality of the plundered pieces.

The Chop Shop
Think of it as a collage of crime.  This one is commonly used by digital matte painters, who need to create a sense of realism, but do not have the time or inclination to paint in every leaf on every tree.  In order to pull off a Chop Shop successfully, the artist has to know something about composition and how to get things to fit together.  The artist's primary goal in a Chop Shop job is assembling his ill-gotten goods in an appealing way.
 
 
Scams that Don't Work (Anymore)

The Pablo Pipoppycock
Don't have any original ideas?  Just vandalize one of your lifted ideas with some crazy effect and call it "modern."  This lowbrow version of the Romance Scam appeals to people's fear of being considered less intelligent than others.  Just be aware that, even if your lengthy essay explaining the piece impresses your art school buddies, you can't expect to win any points in accomplished art crook circles.  It's a small-time scam and we've all tried it at least once, but the real satisfaction is found in bigger heists.
 
The Snake Oil Swindle
Selling a product made by someone else as your own?  We all know that direct copies and studies have value to you personally, but don't try to profit from them unless your big dreams as an artist include being blackballed by at least a corner of the industry.
 
The Flemish Prisoner
This is when the artist decides that, since nothing is original anyway, he or she will just paint the same boring things as everyone else and not ever even attempt to have an original thought.  Mastering a technique, but not developing the ideas beyond stage one, is just a waste of potential.

*Disclaimer: I'm not condoning actual art theft, of the literal or figurative variety.  In fact, I don't believe artists are thieves any more than I believe that artists are accountants.  I DO believe in relaxing a little and appreciating the fact that all artists are standing on the shoulders of giants.  Please don't begrudge another artist if they are standing on your shoulders; because you've enjoyed the same courtesy from other artists around the world and throughout history.

Gestalt

Gestalt psychology is an important concept for artists, and it's one way that the struggle of order and chaos is part of good design.  The Gestalt effect is also built into everyone, so you can expect audiences to respond exactly the same, regardless of age, gender, or culture.

Gestalt psychology is about how we sort the complicated mass of information our eyes (and other senses) constantly feed our brain.  Look closely at the above image for a minute.  Stare at one point, or move your eyes around.  Notice how everything swims a bit, like your brain is having a hard time retaining the shape and spacing of the circles?

Now look at this image in the same way.  Any better?


How about this image?  Notice that most of the swimming is gone.

Your brain makes sense of things by forming relationships between the objects in your field of vision.  When these relationships are all equal (in the first image, even the blank spaces are similar in size to the circles), your brain has to constantly work in an attempt to organize the field.  In the third image, your brain easily categorizes the shapes by proximity, value, and size.  Clustering the circles into groups and the colors into gradients makes this sorting even easier.

Strangely, in Gestalt psychology, too much order feels chaotic and organic disorder feels more controlled! This idea can be incredibly useful in painting.  An artist with a good understanding of Gestalt effects can visually engage an audience without overstimulating them, helping them be open to the ideas his or her art is trying to express.  I'll talk about some specific Gestalt principles in later posts, so stay tuned!

Order and Chaos

One of the objectives of good design is to create something aesthetically appealing.  Aesthetic appeal does not necessarily mean beauty in the traditional sense---so appeal could be awkward, or even "ugly," if it strikes the right chord and your audience likes the result.  That said, there is an element of beauty to every great design, even when "ugly" is the purpose.
Purpose, premise, and story are intuitive (but not necessarily automatic) parts of the appeal equation, because most people can sense when a story is interesting, or when a premise is new, or when a personality resonates with them.  But what about all these seemingly arbitrary rules about the visual relationships of lines, shapes, and colors?  Are these universal rules or something that is a product of our art culture?
My answer (and this is a working hypothesis so feel free to chime in) is that while the current trends in visual design aren't universal, the thing driving those trends is.  The universally appealing law underlying the use of design principles is the age-old conflict between order and chaos.

Order versus chaos is a fundamental struggle of the universe.  Creation struggles against entropy, explosive stars struggle against gravity, life struggles against plague and famine.  Convection, which life on earth depends on, is the byproduct of systems seeking stasis, but the result is incredibly chaotic.

Original file here
Order and chaos are also a fundamental human struggle.  We seek stasis in our lives, but then we're not happy for long once we achieve it.  This is one of the major forces driving industry, war, and politics---people, societies, and countries endlessly striving against each other either in the attempt to reach a sense of security or to sate their dissatisfaction with the security that they enjoy.

I believe this is what makes great designs appeal to something deep inside us.  When something is too ordered it becomes boring, but when it's too chaotic it's overwhelming.  This struggle is such an integral part of life that when a design balances this struggle in a way that parallels what we experience in nature, it can resonate with us in the same way that a great story can.

The idea of order vs. chaos has a huge variety and depth of application in design and painting, so that's what I'm going to talk about in the next series of posts.

A Retraction of Sorts

I said that premise should be the first thing you address, but someone's great comment made me think I should revise the part about it being first.  Purpose and premise, while extremely useful in the search for good design, don't need to define your process.  Especially if you have a method that already works for you.  For some people the exploration and discovery process is something that comes naturally.  Great ideas can come from many sources and sometimes in surprising ways.

That said, at some point along the road, you should be able to answer these questions or you'll have a hard time pushing your paintings or designs to the next level.  Go ahead and look at premise first if you don't know where else to start, but if you have a feel for where you want to start, do that first and then try to address premise and purpose retroactively.

More on Premise

I threw "premise" into the last post almost like an afterthought, but I should have talked about it first.  Premise is usually where you start.  There are a variety of definitions for premise.  In logic, premise is a foundational part of an argument; it's the presumed truth that the conclusion is based on.  In story, premise is the core concept the story is based on, and can usually be summed up with a "What if?" question.  For example, the movie Inception is based on the premise, "What if you could 'con' someone through their dreams?"  Some arguments for premise say it must include the central conflict of the story, which would make it impossible to state the premise of Inception in a single sentence.

 
My use of premise assumes that, like a story or a logical argument, every component of a property has a foundational idea that it's based on.  I believe that, like in a story premise, these premises should be designed to make each component interesting within the context of the whole.  I apply this idea to every character in the story, to every area in the environment, to every story scene, to every action the game character can perform, and so forth.  I don't always do this consciously, but I'm never satisfied until each of these can be described with a short blurb that makes that component compelling to work on.  The Incredibles is filled with characters who are based on interesting and interconnected premises:
  • A retired superhero longs for glory days
  • Superhero's superspouse wants to settle down
  • OCD boss of superhero can't accept breaks with protocol
  • Stalker-fanboy becomes supervillain
All of these premises are enough, as incomplete as they are, to inspire further story choices and drive design decisions.  I often have students pitch premises like "hero hiding a dark secret," "charismatic but evil bad guy," or "gorgeous girl who is insecure."  These are technically not bad premises, but they have been used so much that it will take lots of work to make them interesting.  So part of creating a good premise might be finding an original aspect to infuse the idea with.
 
So let's say you're assigned to do concept art for a goblin.  Without a deliberate search for premise, most artists (myself included) default to the most generic solutions: ugly face, green skin, fur boots, spare armor, feisty personality, etc.  I'm not saying generic goblins are bad, because in some cases the stereotype is the right choice.  But I'm trying to train myself to go generic as a last resort, because usually a more interesting premise that can drive the design is just around the corner.
 
No matter how ornate the armor is, he's still nothing new
This is where another aspect of good vs. bad premise comes in.
 
Honestly, I'm not sure if there is such thing as an inherently bad premise, with the exception of 2 rules:
1. Originality and interest are good
2. Unless those things mess up the story or alienate the audience*

So an unimportant character with a premise that requires screentime to explain is a bad thing.  Also bad: a main character that has an interesting premise but that is incompatible with the premise of the story.  And of course, if you're making a property for popular teenage girls, they will not be impressed with your mossy hobbit-hole tree world, no matter how rich with history the magical runes are.  The only (*)exception to the don't-alienate-your-audience rule is when a story beat requires something that the audience would be uncomfortable with.

What's My Purpose?

This is the first question I ask myself when starting a painting or drawing.  You can't make intelligent decisions on a painting until you've decided what you're trying to accomplish, and have some idea of how you're going to accomplish it.  That may sound simple, but there are several facets to this idea and you should be able to answer most of the questions below BEFORE you start drawing/painting:

Audience:  Who am I making this for?  Am I trying to make something that my audience feels more comfortable with, or something that feels more innovative and new?
Some audiences are inherently hard to please and have to be
won over.  Like hipsters, unless you're Wes Anderson.

Format:  How will the audience experience this image/character/environment/etc.?  Does the format affect the scope of what I can communicate?
Fringe's mad scientist is a great character that probably wouldn't work in a video game.
Or in a stand-alone illustration.  Internet images have a unique format problem also:
everybody sees them at a different size!

Purpose: What needs does this painting/character/environment need to fill?  Are there special or arbitrary parameters from the publisher/art director/marketing/writers/technicians/etc. that need to be included?
The house in UP had to function as an interior and exterior
environment, hold a storehouse of props, work as a vehicle,
and be something audiences came to care about as a symbol
for Carl's deceased wife.

Story (technically an extension of purpose): What role does this character/environment/etc. play in the property?  What emotional chord do I want to strike with the viewer?  Are there additional story/moodsetting things I could layer into the piece without distracting from the primary purpose/story?
Jack Sparrow's costume design is great---an iconic "first read," with lots of
suggested history in the details, yet all of it supports his personality
and the core idea of his character.  

Premise:  Which of the many ways of expressing the above purpose and story will feel most fresh and interesting to my audience?  Is there a way of integrating the publisher's/art director's/etc.'s parameters in a way that "feels right" or gives things an unexpected twist?

Let me reiterate what I said earlier but add something:  If you can't answer all of the above questions, DON'T START PAINTING UNTIL YOU CAN.  In fact, if you can't answer them in a way that makes you feel inspired about your illustration or whatever you're working on, I'd recommend that you either do some brainstorming or start over with a drawing that inspires some of these things!

Why Design?

Design is, in a way, a derivative of something that makes humans unique---tools. Wheels, ovens, pens, iPhones; these are all things that allow us to shape the world around us and change the type of experience we have in it. Design is about making more effective tools---things that better serve the purpose for which they were made, and in a way that is most aesthetically pleasing to the user. I love design for this reason---it's purpose-driven and its results are measurable (satisfying my scientifically-oriented brain).

Because of this, instead of talking about the broader subject of what defines art, I'm going to assume that everyone buys into my philosophy that a piece of art is only "good" when it's successful in the goals it set out to accomplish. These goals could include expressing ideas, evoking emotion, and creating appeal or beauty. However, I'm also not going to talk about where good ideas come from, or about what qualifies as beautiful. Those might be interesting discussions for another time. What I want to talk about is the raw elements that effective art is constructed from.

Design is one of three major areas of study in art. These three areas are Structure, Technique, and Design. Very few artists have a mastery in all these areas, because there's a lifetime of learning in each one. Interestingly though, all three areas are closely related and rely on each other. Your character design of a horse won't be appealing if you don't base it on a real horse's structure. Design guides the use of brush techniques when painting. Some techniques for constructing the figure can speed up the process and produce more pleasing results. My Schoolism class is focused on structural learning (rendering surfaces accurately), but it ends up touching a little on design and technique because those things are inescapably tied to structure. Because of this, while I'm going to be talking a lot about design in the upcoming posts, keep structure and technique in mind because many of the principles will apply in both of those areas as well.

Next Post: What does Painting have to do with Design?

Design and Painting

Since most of my artwork these days is stuff I can't post, I'm thinking of doing a series of posts instead where I condense down the workshop I did at LAAFA on Painting and Design.  Will any of you out there read it if I do?

Lights and Shadow

I added a new post on The Art Center blog.  What I left out there was how to apply light sources to get the effects you want.  This is just an overview, but I'll probably go more into depth on it if I ever write that blasted book.

Diffuse light sources are the most common and useful lights in painting. They make great fill lights, rim lights, and key lights, they always make subjects look appealing.  They tend to soften features and are good for creating a pensive emotional response when used as key lights.  Light reflected from "lambert surfaces" always fits into this category.


I didn't have time to paint examples and the great masters are better at it, so instead here's Edmund Blair Leighton above, using a bright overcast sky to support the gentleness of the scene.  William Bouguereau's painting below that uses the common "north light" from a window to soften the girl's features and emphasize her beauty.

Direct or spot lights have a strong visual impact and are useful for creating drama or tension.  You can mix the effects of direct light sources with the effect of diffuse light sources by using light sources that are somewhere in between.  Here's a great example from Paul Delaroche of the drama created by a direct light source.  Below that, Edmund Blair Leighton shows how a diffuse light can have some of the dramatic effect of a direct light, in this case by using a large window but positioning it some distance behind the subject.
Remember that spot lights are really just direct sources with something "off camera" casting a shadow, so the light beam has a specific shape to it.  This shape doesn't always have a hard edge, a great example being sunlight blocked by soft-edged clouds (see Albert Bierstadt example below, on the rocks).  So you can also mix the softening effects and gradients you'd get from a diffuse source with the hard shadows of a direct source.



Finally, nearby light sources are the most dramatic of all, but they can also be distracting if too strong or used too often, because of the visual tension they create.  I also forgot to explain another thing about them on the other site, so I'll post it here instead.

theartcenter.blogspot.com

The other day I was upset when I found a blog that stated that my art was a blend of 3d renders and painting.  I felt like Ned Nederlander when he was accused of using camera tricks to make his fast draw appear faster.  I guess I've occasionally used 3d to cheat my way out of having to work out the perspective on a spaceship, so does that make the accusing blogger correct?

Speaking of using 3d to cheat, I've been invited to contribute to a new sister blog to Randall Sly's excellent Character Design blog (link in my sidebar), The Art Center.
Here's a preview from my first post there (the aforementioned cheating used to render the spheres.  I'm not going to waste an hour or two breaking a sphere down into planes):
And don't worry, I'll continue my art thinking/learning posts here---I'll probably focus on digital painting stuff there and spew all my other thoughts here.  Or maybe I'll post the same in both places.  I guess we'll see how it works out.