Digital Painting... It's Art, Dang It!!!

Coming up to my last year at Brock, I've been hunting around for "practical" courses to add on to my more academic pursuits at university, in the hopes of landing a position within the next few years with a game-design company.
One of the skills I was hoping to develop was that of my artistic abilities.
I have a background in traditional art (starting from early childhood involving the side of a bookcase and an unattended tube of lipstick), and I've been trying hard to get better at it on my own time for many years - taking as many art-related courses as possible while in school in the hopes of gaining further instruction on how to improve.
At university, however, I made the mistake of assuming I would be able to continue that pursuit as thoroughly as I would have liked...
Granted, my program allows for a certain amount of freedom in being heavily cross-listed (which lets me sneak into things like Visual Arts courses), but it seems that the majority is focused on the programing aspect of video game design over the artistic and conceptual aspects... And for free time-practice?
No.
Just no.

So, I reasoned, when I had gone as far as I wished with university, I would go on to pursue artistic and conceptually-based college courses to compliment my theory and academic education.
Sound like a fairly good plan, yes?
There has, however, been a... hiccup.
One skill that is absolutely vial for those who want to pursue conceptual design for video games is that of Digital Painting. If one researches concept art online, a large proportion of the finished projects used in the development of models and levels are completed (if not entirely composed) with virtual tools, ie. they're digital paintings. Logically, I thought, I should pursue instruction in that venue through a college in good standing and develop my skills to a more competitive level... I have, as of yet, been unsuccessful in finding an institution that supports this medium for more than a short period in a larger class.

Why, I wonder, is that?
Digital painting (in the right hands) produces industry grade results... it's quick and nowhere near as messy or costly as the majority of traditional mediums... and takes roughly the same amount of time to complete (barring oils, which take forever to dry).
I seems to me, that this absence of professional/academic instruction may be the result of several factors.

The most irritating of them is the bias I see in the comments of many traditional artists concerning the digital medium. In pursuing a digitally-based career, it has been more and more evident to me that the vast majority of the population doesn't really understand that computers - despite their appearance of having a mind of their own, or the ability to perform almost magical functions with the press of a single button... are machines that run off of programs... and as a first-year programing professor once told the bleary-eyed throng assembled in his 8am class:
"Computers are like any other tool. They're stupid. They only do what you tell them to."
So through that logic, digital painting is quite difficult, because the program won't do anything remotely useful unless told explicitly by the user - much the same may be said of a paint brush or pencil.
The skill and knowledge of the one wielding the tool is what determines (most) of the works value
Digital Painting is, by no means simple or easy... in some ways, the tools used (i.e. the computers and tablets required to create the work) are more complicated and difficult to learn - and so, Digital Painting is easily something worthy of serious instruction.

Thankfully, I'm not alone in this particular thought process, and over the last 6 years or so, I've noticed a trend of people endeavoring to share their experience, knowledge and techniques with the general public. In posting videos, website content, selling books and many other modes of instruction, I found that there were resources available, where those that had gone before me and had made progress and discovered ways to achieve proficiency with the medium of Digital Painting all on their own after years and years.

So, while the internet community sees and understands the value of Digital Painting as a means of competing in the ever-fierce arena of the art world, even if academic institutions, (for the most part) haven't yet.

Below  is a list of links to sites that people have constructed and spent time developing to share their knowledge:
here
tutorial

Minecraft... Creepers go Boom!

 

My new discovery for "pick up and drop" games seems to be the rapidly expanding game of ...

MINECRAFT

This game in and of itself is fascinating, especially to an IASC major, because it breaks a number of "popular game conventions" and formulates gameplay primarily around exploration and creation, rather than "kill the orc, get the treasure", gameplay we see more commonly.

Yes, Minecraft is my new addiction as of late and it seems that I'm not the only one...

The game itself is a sandbox in its purest form - a world designed and based entirely on the ludic attitude of the player - they must make their own story.
The story (or premise in this case) of Minecraft is as simple a thing as one can imagine:

"One day you were dropped in the middle of nowhere. Go."

At least that's what a new player with no prior knowledge will deduce from their surroundings.

              Apart from being a great deal of fun, Minecraft is a world in which the player is able to literally reshape the terrain as they see fit, manipulating the area to form homes for themselves to provide protection from hostile creatures that spawn in the environment, make farms to collect resources more efficiently, forges and work tables to make tools, food, objects to use in construction, etc.


The world is infinite (topographically, though one is limited to a certain height above ground, and depth below.
Game much more than consumption and entertainment - it literally acts as a vehicle for dialogue between player, developer, and game environment with which a story is formed through exploration, consumption and maintaining of resources available (through farming and planting trees, etc.).
 Break anything. Build anything. Collect anything except for Bedrock, Clouds, and the Sun... The versatility of play in this visually-simple game is tremendous, and  accommodates all kinds of play, emulating a progression from "hunter gatherer" behavior to that of farming, and even industry if the player chooses to do so.


Personally, I, like many others, enjoy the construction aspect the most, devoting a great deal of time to the collection and assembly of materials into defense, and then far more time just building things to ammuse myself (images shown below were built by other Minecrafters!).

Minecraft is so versatile in fact, that a Minecraft Wiki was developed by users to sort out what can and cannot be done within the game (without modding it), introductory information and advice to new-comers, and many, many pages of information on details concerning nearly every aspect of the game as it is, and speculations/plans to prepare for what it may be as the game continues to update regularly.






A community of gamers has formed around this strange little game, and continues to grow at a tremendous rate.






I find this trend very, very encouraging.

Too often do I see game upon game released with the same "story", the same premise, and the same basic gameplay as its innumerable predecessors and Minecraft is a refreshing break from that monotony.

Long-live the Indie Developer!

Art Show!!!

Yesterday was a first for me:
I actually presented my artwork in a public show...

It was a strange and fairly positive experience for me, having only ever shown my work in school to instructors and classmates.

It was also fascinating watching/participating in a student art-show as an artist and not a viewer.
Before the first people arrived, I strolled around like I had in past classes, looking at everyone's work, comparing it against what I thought could do and what I had done, talking to my classmates about their work and my own, and so on.

But then the first visitors came, and the crowds began to grow, and I felt myself getting nervous.
Would they like what I and m partners had made?
Was it original enough to be interesting but not so different that the meaning would be lost?

In all honesty, I was expecting a less-enthusiastic reception for the public than what we received. Multimedia was a strong factor in our show and  in my experience at least, that sort of thing is rarely well received by the public where student work was concerned.
Things seem to have changed, however...
My group's piece which was one of several combined media of sculpture, projection and architectural models was well received. Perhaps society has become so used to multi-media extending through rapidly evolving technology into every facet of our lives that heavily "multi-media-centered" works are more palatable  - less alien and controversial than it might have been 10 or 20 years ago. It seemed to me that a number of the people attending weren't people that would customarily come out to a formal gallery - curiosity seemed to draw them in. So we found ourselves surrounded by "art-people" and "non-art-people"... and it didn't matter.
The ones that came in off the street out of curiosity mingled with the "academic" art people almost seamlessly... some paused to consider particular works for a while, others moved on with barely a glance. There seemed to be no difference between the reception of either crowd.
This experience has served to reaffirm my opinion that the days of the elitist art- crowd are fading - thanks to the web, art and appreciation of it is possible outside of traditional venues of "higher education" - one can educate themselves as much or as little as they like. The boundary between educated and not is rapidly shrinking, and it truly makes me happy to think that within a short time, people will begin to look at art in a more natural, less structured way, and likely, enjoy it all the more.

arena for social change

Okay, this one should be short and fairly sweet...

In the early days, it was generally argued that video games were nothing more than a means of entertainment and one could generally be hard-pressed to argue it to the contrary.
Now, as games continue to evolve and mature as a medium, we see aspects of social commentary beginning to seep into them. One that we find is that of sexual orientation and human rights.
BioWare is one of the leading companies in the field that strive to break conventions, not only in the history of  video games, but social mainstream media.


BioWare's latest title, Dragon Age II features a variety of playable races, genders and a large variety of NPCs that are available to include in the player's team. A few of these characters are options for romance-paths of the main story, and that includes same-sex relationships.

Rather surprisingly, this caused problems in some areas of the gaming community who felt that their gaming experience was being thrown off by the inclusion of a possible (but not mandatory) homosexual relationship between their player character and an NPC.

There was an article (found here), about one such person, calling himself "Straight Male Gamer", postedon the BioWare blog for the game complaining about this issue... and royaly making a fool of himself in the process.

The lead writer for Dragon Age 2, David Gaider posted a personal response to the less than intelligent rant put forward by Straight Male Gamer on the forum in response, calmly and intelligently not only the choice of including the possibility of same-sex romances for the player, but the need to cater to all  of the gaming community, regardless of gender, sex or sexual preference.

I cheered, I'll admit, when I read about it, and despite the fact that I'm not a fan of the Dragon Age series ( I find I dislike the turn-based combat... it's too slow), I readily applaud both BioWare's ability to defend their medium as an artform capable of real-world commentary, and their willingness to do so in within the scope of a major AAA title.

This gives me hope that video games are able to support the kind of life-changing capability I hope to achieve through them myself as a would-be developer. It's too much to hope that I could change the world with a game, but perhaps, if the game development community continues to produce titles that incorporate and explore as many assets of humanity, society and culture as they can, perhaps that can help in making the world a little better, one save game at a time...

War of theWorlds vs. Invasion of the Body Snatchers vs. Mass Media...

We all know the story of how  Orson Welles and others preformed a radio play of War of the Worlds - Orson Welles Broadcast in 1938, and (perhaps) inadvertently caused panic, confusion and a certain amount of chaos across a fairly large area because many people believed that the broadcast was not, in fact, theatrical, but live news coverage of an actual event. My brother told me that the same thing had occured years later in Ecuador, 1949, where a Spanish-speaking radio station mimicked Welles' performance and cooperated with a local newspaper that had published stories weeks before about UFO sitings in the area. The public believed, the public panicked, and when they realized the nature of the deception, they rioted and attacked those in the radio station and newspaper that had participated in the hoax.

My brother brought this up in a conversation we were having a few nights ago, and then he asked me...
"What if Invasion of the Body Snatchers was read by Orson Welles over the radio in 1938 instead of War of the Worlds?"
The answer we both came up with:
"People would be shooting people instead of water towers..."

Bummer.

But seriously, what does that tell us about the impact that media has on people's perceptions of reality? They believed it because it was on the radio... then people believed it because they saw it in a movie... then because they saw it on TV... and now they believe it because they saw it on the Internet.
I find that the willingness of many people to accept what they're shown through popular media as "Truth" is vaguely alarming. On the whole, this blind faith is fairly harmless when taken in the context of entertainment - a well-staged joke or false event to make long hours in front of a computer pass by a little more smoothly... but sometimes these things can mutate into something misunderstood as "Truth" and can actually cause harm.
Gamers often catch the brunt of things like this, wherein videos meant to be entertaining jokes like Angry German Kid, WoW Freakout - Password Change, Greatest Freakout Ever,  Greatest Freakout Ever 2 , etc. which are meant to be no more than amusing little videos based on gamer-sterotypes, are taken as genuine, serious recordings that "prove" the dangers of video game addiction. Video games, like radio, film and TV before them are often blamed for the ills of society - parents aren't failing to raise their children, it's the fault of those evil video games (that we bought them...).
Now, this isn't to say that all society's problems are caused by neglectful parents, nor are they caused by video games (or media of any form), but there is a trend that functions on a massive scale which suggests that while the general populace are not "mindlessly passive consumers", they can be convinced of an artifact's validity so long as it's presented in a format that supports it.
Films like Wag the Dog make commentary of that kind - in illustrating how easy it might be (or has been, looking at global history over the last ten years or so) for a clever few in power to generate an entire war without ever firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The public believes because they were shown events through the correct channels, or enough channels, prompting them to believe in and support a war that didn't exist.
That film, and others like it, suggest that the public can be made to believe because they, (or someone else) saw it happen... or at least they thought they did.

The power of the media is tremendous, and I think it might do all of us well to take more care in trying to diversify our sources of information to avoid that kind of thing in the future...

What's With the Remakes ?!?!?!

I'm not a film major, but I do love movies...

I've always loved stories - whatever form they took, and I spent much of my very young childhood watching movies with my parents. And having been born in the early 80's, I have a particular fondness for movies from that time period.

It is likely because of this that I view the increasing flood of remakes and long-delayed sequels to these films surging out of  Hollywood to be both vaguely disturbing and depressing at the same time.

Not that I have any particular hatred for furthering a good concept, or the re-telling/imagining of a story - I liked the 2009 Star Trek.
I really did.
Why?
Because it was in the spirit of the thing - it was not "my" Classic Star Trek - not the Captain Kirk I had watched since I could sit up on my own, but it was Star Trek in spirit, and that made it fun, and a generally good film of it's kind. Not profound, but fun, and in the spirit of a "space-cowboy" adventure with a "band together and save the world" flare thrown in for good measure.

It was alright (with me, at least), because it wasn't the Star Trek I'd grown up with - nor did it pretend to be - it was even stated, rather implicitly that what we as the audience (and the characters within the film) that they were existing in an alternate universe from the one that I had grown up with.
It was something new, it was something unique in and of itself, based on a "mythology" I had known from very early childhood, and then reconstructed to make something new and enjoyable for the 2009 audience.

But then there was Tron Legacy... which was, on the surface, something like the original, with some of the original tone... but it wasn't in the spirit of the thing.

The original Tron was a film about he speed at which information travels, corporate cut-throat politics, cyber-spirituality, a fear of the technology itself and a number of other cultural, philosophical, and technological questions that were nothing short of revolutionary in its time. These ideas could only be brushed on very lightly, however, because of the time in which the film was made.

(Painting of TRON by HenryTownsend on Deviant Art)
 
In 1982, very few people had a personal computer, let alone any real understanding of the way in which this new and exciting technology worked. Video games were still struggling to return to the home market after their messy (abet temporary) death in the mid 70's, but were seeing an increase in popularity in the form of the arcade with preteen to teenage audiences. So a film that was centered around concepts and knowledge that the average person couldn't relate to would have to rely on spectacle to remain engaging to the audience as it delivered - or at least suggested at - its underlying themes. Thusly, we see Tron also as a hallmark of "cutting edge" digital and animated special effects as well as a fore-runner in fields of thought concerning the (relatively) new field of computer technology that few had attempted to explore at the time.

Because the public was far from "technologically literate" where computers and video games were concerned, the ability of the film to really "converse" with the audience about its deeper subjects was understandably hindered, forcing us to wait until the rest of society to "catch up" to the proficiency required to really understand...


So, 28 years later, fans of the original, and those of us with an interest in video games as an art-form and viable cultural text were excited (though wary) when word came to us over the net that a new Tron was about to be released, one that seemed to have the potential and opportunity to explore those deeper subjects of cyber spirituality, the Internet as it has grown to be, and so much more.
It could, if properly executed, put Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix to shame...

But they failed - hard.

Instead of a profound, intellectual-action-packed experience was reduced to the sub-standard tripe I've increasingly taken to associating with Disney in general.

Although a number of really interesting issues ranging from computer-human "Digital DNA" structures, impartiality and freedom of information over the Internet, racial purging, questions about religion, cyber-spiritualism, etc. - they were never viewed in depth - in fact, most were only barely brushed against and would have been missed entirely by those that weren't already looking for it.

What the rest of the audience was left with was a garden-variety hyper-sexualized, male-dominated approach to technology, the Internet and "gamer-culture" that utterly failed to take advantage of those issues/subjects mentioned above.

The ideas behind cyber-spirituality, the scope and reach of the web and its impact on freedom of speech are all ideas that need to be explored, but time and time again, it seems that Hollywood and increasingly so, Disney - have displayed an almost pathological adversity to including thought-provoking content in "sci-fi" environments.

Mission Impossible, The Matrix and Inception (amongst others) have showed us that intelligent story and intense action sequences are an effective combination - not at all lacking in profit for the box offices.
So then why this pathological aversion to forwarding this trend, rather than rely only on spectacle as the primary device of modern film?

I'm sure there's a financially-viable reason for it... I refuse to believe that the majority of the populace has been reduced to mere mindless consumers of media... or that Hollywood is so utterly desperate fro writing talent that it can't find more people to write really good stories...

Perhaps we're waiting on some kind of Renaissance in Hollywood... one in which a combination of thought-provoking content will be equally as important in a film as massive explosions and strategically-placed low-angle camera shots...

I hope...

Evolution at the Speed of Thought?

Recently in many of my classes, the question of "action over contemplation" has arisen and I'd like to take this opportunity to comment on it...

There seems to be a pervading idea that my generation (those born between 1980-1990 ish) are those that privileged action over contemplation - a generation that leaps before it thinks, or even looks.
I can say that this is no more true now than it was for previous generations - the reason, I believe that it appears that we are so focused on speed that we miss a great deal of what we should be paying attention to.

I would argue that it's quite the opposite.

For those of us who survive in and compete in the virtual arena of the Internet - learning to sort through the continuous barrage of information we're assaulted with is critical to our ability to function within that environment as proficiently as we do. One "skill set" that is absolutely necessary is an ability to not only comprehend, but absorb, process and execute according to what we gather - the only difference between how we and our predecessors deal with that information and how quickly we are "trained" to interact with it is simply a question of speed and efficiency. If that efficiency were compromised by the speed, we would accomplish far less, learn more slowly and be generally inferior to our parents and those that came before them.

That isn't the case, however, and our generation has continued forward into what many call the next step of human evolution - one that involves a state of mind and an advancement of the human ability to think and comprehend the abstract in a way not possible before without the aid of hallucinogenic drugs.

The ideas of "cyber-spirituality" are becoming more and more pronounced - a separation from the idea that everything we feel and see is real is slowly being proven wrong. The idea of reality as being something "insubstantial" - something that exits on multiple levels as versatile and ever-changing as our own states of consciousness...
Even the question, "What is real?" is something discussed avidly beyond the realm of the traditional philosopher.

Everywhere, we find representations of the "cyber-prophet" - those mystical few who have the knowledge to transverse the enigmatic realm of the Internet - and I have to wonder why.

Is the Internet that frightening to older generations that they dare not even investigate it? Take classes to learn how to use their computers and educate themselves on the positive and negative aspects of this "parallel" realm that so greatly influences their every-day lives?

If that's so, then their fear is born of the ignorance they accuse my generation of... an interesting problem if ever there was one...
A generation gives birth to something the majority don't understand... and then refuse to engage with it, while ostracizing the following generation for the same reasons...