Digital Cross Hatching

I have finally gotten around to creating some custom cross hatching brushes for GIMP. I am quite happy with how they have turned out. The process is quite simple. Using a technical pen I covered a sheet of paper with various types of cross hatching and scribbles. Then the paper was scanned as a grayscale image. Editing the image started by using select by colour to convert the paper to transparent. To create a new brush select an area of cross hatch copy it; paste as a new image; move the selection area to select the next section of hatching; copy and paste as a new layer; repeat as needed. Save the brush with the .gih extension, a dialogue will show up allowing you to set the brush spacing and how each image repeats.

Materials for my scene.

I have added more details to the scene. The objects now have basic materials added to them. Of course they will require more tweaking as time goes by. The next stage is going to be UV unwrapping the objects so that texture images can be applied. UV unwrapping is the process of applying the 3d coordinates of an object on to a 2d plane. This allows an image which only has 2 dimensions to be wrapped around a 3d object. Other details need to be added to flesh out the image and create a realistic looking scene.

New 3d image.

I have started a new scene in Blender. Here is a rough draft I started. I plan to create a workspace based on my previous post about an ideal creative space. My is to create a photo realistic image with the textured details such as a can of "Creative Juices" sitting on the desk and a framed copy of an Artistic License.

This scene will also allow me to practice my texturing and provide a test scene to use for playing/experimenting with lighting and rendering.

Blender Boids Demo.

I have been experimenting(playing) with Blender's boid particles. Boids are particles that have a low level intelligence or rule following behavior. The best known example is the armies in Lord of the Rings movie were boids. A soldier model could be given a rule such as charge the castle or a flock of birds could fly through a scene. It is a powerful feature but is not well documented or used. So of course I had the urge to explore it. No keyframes were used to create animations, they are completely boid particle effects.

Some of the uses that I want to explore are creating realistic looking traffic that reacts to the environment, creating realistic pedestrians, and using RGB textures to control boid movement.

I am back. I have been enjoying the last of the summer and also learning to use the Blender 3d modelling software. There are so many good video tutorials on Blender that learing the software is relatively easy. I have managed to get up to level of confidence where I can produce a reasonable model and render it. Now the challenge of practice, practice and practice begins. So the focus of this blog may shift in that direction.

This is a render of a 3d model of a wall fountain that I created. At first glance it is photo-realistic, but it still could use some improvements. I am pleased with the result however.

One of the nice things about open-source software is the level of support available in various forumns. Model files are freely shared and improved on. The level of ingenuity and creativity displayed in the way Blender is used is truly impressive.

Robots and more.

I have been neglecting my digital art lately due to the purchase of an 89 Bronco that has turned into yet another project (in a good way). Anyway in order to get back in the swing of things here is my latest entry to the Worth 1000 photoshop contest. The site is a great way to force yourself to create an image within 48 hours for a specific theme. It also provides good feedback to new users and can push you out of your comfort zone into new techniques that you normally wouldn't try. Also the inspiration provided by seeing just how others interpret the same idea is invaluable.

Oh what a tangled web.

To create this semi-realistic spider web I used Inkscape. First I created a background layer consisting of a radial gradient from green to black and a few blurred green elipses to create the effect of some out of focus greenery. The next layer was the main spiderweb. I started by using the Bezier draw tool to spell out the text. This was made twice as thick as the rest for emphasis. Then the rest of the web was drawn. All the paths had Add Nodes and Jitter Nodes applied. The raindrops were created by following this screencast at screencasters.heathenx.org. The raindrops were added only to the text portion of the web. Finally the web opacity was reduced to 50 percent.

Be Alert.

Here I am fooling around with warning signs. I created a custom pattern of hexagons for the sign to create the reflective coating effect seen on modern road signs. I just created the pattern as black with no fill, a slight blur and 25% opacity. The other detail I added is a sign number in small text at the bottom of the sign. This detail is also often seen on modern road signs.

The rest of the sign follows the common techniques for creating a realistic looking sign. Tutorials for this are all over the web. The text of course is the common alert pun, because of course the world needs more Lerts.

Rotoscope.

I have been trying a rotoscope test over the last few days. For those who don't know rotoscoping is tracing frames from a film to create an animation. I downloaded an avi from the Internet Archive Prelinger Archive. It is a good source of movies that can be used without copyright issues. After I got a source movie I exported a clip as jpg images. The process I used was to take each jpg and open it as a layer, create a new layer with 45% opacity, then traced the main lines of the image. It is a slow process but the result was interesting. The next step is to test other open source programs to find the easiest and quickest workflow for rotoscope animation.

Back to Basics.

Today I spent some time getting back to basics. I spent an hour outside in the garden pencil sketching. It was an enjoyable change of pace from digital art.

Fruit Crate Label.

This image was created in 2 steps. The first step was using Inkscape to create the label following the style of some labels that I own. The main letters were broken into individual paths and a radial gradient was applied to each letter individually. The label was exported as a png image.

The second step was to open a wood texture in Gimp. The label png was imported as a layer and some weathering and a drop shadow were added. Text was added to the wood to create the effect of a stamp on the crate.

Vector Art Noveau.

This was drawn in Inkscape using the spiro function instead of the bezier function. The spiro functions make smoother curves simpler to draw. The flourishes in this drawing were created by adding interesting curves together and mirroring the results to produce the four corners.
The colours used help produce the retro feeling of the image. A white hilight was added to the gold portions of the image. These hilights were created by making a copy, changing the fill to white and the stroke off, adding a dynamic offset to reduce the width, and adding a blur. I still need more practice to consistantly produce this style, but it is a fun style to play in.

Ideal Workspace.

I have been thinking about all the posts on various blogs about ideal workspaces. So I present my take on what needs to be in the ideal creative workspace. The first thing that should be prominently displayed is your Artistic Licence. The full list of items needed for a fully functioning space are: Creative Juices, Liquid Courage, a pair of rose colored glasses, Elbow Grease, brass tacks, Gumption, bootstraps, a thinking cap, circular file, Pearls of Wisdom, Nuggets of Truth, Seeds of an Idea, Reality cheques, and a full deck. Any space that is stocked with these items will be guaranteed to be a good workspace.

Hungry Skull.

This is a quick drawing that I did using Inkscape. I was playing with the idea of replacing one of the bones in a pirate flag with a half chewed chicken leg. I think it turned out kind of fun. I didn't use any transparency or gradients. I am still not sure if the final image is a warning sign for trans-fats and fried foods or a bad logo for a fried chicken restaurant.

Serendipity.

This is the view from my front porch this morning. If you keep your eyes open opportunity can appear anytime. The combination of the vintage truck parked in front of the local service station without any distracting elements worked out nicely. This image can also be a starting point for further digital art. It just goes to show the value of viewing the world with composition and cropping in mind.

A Realistic Contact Sheet.

Here is a method for creating a realistic looking contact sheet using Inkscape (available here). For those of you who don't fondly remember contact sheets from earlier days wasted in the darkroom, they were a method of previewing your images. I haven't seen any realistic contact sheets made digitally so here goes.


Any comments on the format of the tutorial are welcomed. I hope it is simple to follow.

Why Tilt Shift Sucks?

The title of this blog came to me as a way of summing up my feelings about the current state of digital art. The tilt shift effect currently used in photo shop was kind of neat the first fifty times, but now is getting kind of tired. As somebody with a foot in both camps of photographers and modelers I feel the effect does a disservice to everyone. One of the great things about model photos is the double take when you realize that the photo is of a model scene and not real life. This gives you something to strive for as a modeler. As a photographer and artist seeing a digital image that is amazing is enough without being able to list all the photo shop plug-ins that were used to create it.

Creativity is not about following the crowd. Adding techniques as part of a range of knowledge is good. Expanding the current range of techniques available is even better. Hopefully I will be able to document some of my projects here and share some techniques and ideas.