Stan Vanderbeek: Master of Machine Stan Vanderbeek considered himself to be a “technological fruit picker” as he worked with various types of media throughout his career. He would pick up new techniques as often as he dropped ones that were no longer beneficial to him and his works. When computers became commercially available in 1955, Vanderbeek’s curiosity piqued at the potential as an art form since he was a “technically oriented film-artist.” The year 1964 signaled his initial experiments with the new medium and he has since produced many works that have contributed to the field of motion graphics. Vanderbeek’s uncouth techniques and ideas led him to be an uncommon, yet substantial contributor to the development of digital media as an art form. Throughout his career, Vanderbeek would consistently work with other artists in what can only be called joint experiments. The artists he worked with were skilled in various fields such as film, performance and engineering, which allowed a wide variety of ingenious technological products to result from their collaborations. This atypical technological approach made Vanderbeek an irresistible partner for media artists in the 1960s. It was his hope through this method that, “his community of artists [would] join together- both in his backyard and around the world,” thus creating a united front in a world destined for computer art. Through this method, Vanderbeek created some of his strongest artworks that would be the foundation for many visual art practices. The Poemfield films, by Vanderbeek and his collaborative partner Ken Knowlton, are some of the most influential pieces contributed to the history of motion graphics. There are eight in total, made using a completely new compu... ... middle of paper ... ...k anticipated the importance of computer art in relation to television. He came up with the idea of a TV-studio being the model for an, “audio-visual research center,”6 taking into consideration the immense impact on social values that it had. Vanderbeek saw the progressions art and technology were taking, and believed that, “the image revolution that movies represented has now been overhauled by the television evolutions and is approaching the next visual stage – to computer graphics to computer controls of environment.”2 Vanderbeek forewarned that art schools would be filled with students eager to learn the process of computer art, students that would be the, “the new technician-artist-citizen[s]”2 of the new age. It would be this generation of students who would develop art fields such as graphic design, animation, game design and motion graphics.
The intermix of a great literary work into a modern production is not a new concept, but the use of digital enhancement to carry a theme was unheard of prior to the making of this film. Both Director of Photography Roger Deakens, and Business Development Director Sarah Priestnall from Kodak, helped to explain that the digital process used is the modification of the film at the pixel level, in which the film is digitized frame by frame and each frame is color matched to allow for manipulation. The mastering process was done in the film developing...
My goal for this paper is to give a practical critique and defense of what I have learned in my time as a Studio Art Major. During my time here I have learned that Pensacola Christian college’s definition of art “art is the organized visual expression of ideas or feelings” and the four parts of Biblosophy: cannon, communication, client, and creativity. Along with Biblosophy I have studied Dr. Frances Schaeffer 's criteria for art, seeing how the technical, and the major and minor messages in artwork. All of these principles are great but they do need to be refined.
In this essay, I will deal mainly with the work that Svankmajer created as an animator. To put it in context, however, I will first give a rough overview of his background and the work for which he is best known.
Tim Jenison, the man behind the documentary film entitled Tim’s Vermeer set out to replicate a painting in the style of the beloved artist Johannes Vermeer. In order to do this, Jenison replicated a system of lenses that he believed Vermeer had used hundreds of years before him for the sake of duplicating the correct light variations around the objects of his muse. The course of the documentary showcases Jenison as he first constructs this hypothesis of Vermeer mastering light, moves on to Jenison's development of his lense device, and finally to Jenison using his device to paint a work of art in hope that it will be comparably close enough to the work of Vermeer that his hypothesis can be proven. Whether or not Jenison succeeded can be debated and was one of the topics that the panel of professors including Professors Baugh, Gorchoff, Myers, Willhardt, and Wright discussed at the convocation.
Before speaking in full detail of the personal fondness that was acquired and progressed thought the series and the graphic details of it, it is important to address the technology that has made the motion picture possible. Computer Generated Imagery is defined as the “application of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, films, television programs, commercials, and simulators”. In simpler terms computer generated imagery is used in different works of art to create another world through the click of a mouse. Computer generated Imagery is commonly referred to as CGI when using three dimensional computer graphics to create special effects in films and television. Anyone from a professio...
Art is something strange and even meaningless in my family tradition. I am from a family of the medical discourse community. Most of my family members have medical degrees. Therefore, they hoped that I could follow the family tradition. However, I chose to follow my dream. According to the book, East Eats West, by Andrew Lam, he mentioned ““America will tell you to look out for number one, to think for yourself […] follow your dream … take care of yourself first … you cannot make anyone else happy if you don’t love yourself” (45). I have to make myself happy before helping and satisfying other people. Therefore, I chose to continue my education in the Digital Media Art (DMA) field because I love technology and art. I believe that I will do well in this profession. Art is created for many reasons, and art can be beautiful, frightening, or provocation (Barrio). In order to explain the discourse community of Digital Media Art, I will use the interview that I had with Ms. A, a professional artist in Graphic Design, and some other research articles. I will include the background and experience, career path, and writing and communication skills of an artist. Also, I will conclude into my writing what surprised me during the interview and what I need to do to make my goal real in the
With his down-the-rabbit-hole approach to design and obsessive attention to detail, Wes Anderson, writer, director and auteur, is best known for his highly stylized movies. His extremely visual, nostalgic worlds give meaning to the stories in his films, contrary to popular critical beliefs that he values style over substance. Through an analysis of his work, I plan to show that design can instead, give substance to style.
Imagine drawing thousands of movie scenes at the pace of 24 frames per second. One may forget that many beloved animated movies were once drawn by hand. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and Dumbo were a few of the first films released by Disney. Now with the availability and increasing use of technology, the so-called impossible scenes can be achieved with the rise of CGI, Computer Generated Images. Disney and Pixar created a stunning impact in the film industry by transitioning into the digital world and incorporating computers in their animated musical films at the end of
American cinema has marveled audiences for over a century and during that timeframe there have been several advancements worthwhile of mentioning. The creation, introduction, and development of the camera is clearly one of the advancements which set the stage for films, beginning with the basic image to those utilizing multiple images in order to create movement. Then came the addition of sound into films which added another element for viewers to enjoy and finally the use of light to enhance the movement being displayed. For the most part, these techniques were rudimentary in nature until 1941 when the film Citizen Kane was released and forever changed the film industry. The remainder of this paper will analyze how Citizen Kane challenged traditional filmmaking techniques to revolutionize and benchmark the film industry for all production studios.
Born in 1951 in Illinois, Tippett has had a lifelong fascination with the art of animation. During his childhood he was fascinated by films such as King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts. He was fascinated by the surreal images in these movies and wanted to know how they were achieved. He went to his local library to research the subject and discovered the principles of stop motion. One of his favourite childhood hobbies was to make stop motion films with his father’s old movie camera. Tippett had been a lifelong devotee of stop motion as practiced by masters like Willis O’Brien in King Kong (1933) and Ray Harryhausen in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Stop motion was, and still is an intricate, painstaking art in which animators pose and photograph miniature figures frame by frame. He wasn’t alone. “Just about every top animator or effects man today has favorite Harryhausen figurines, such as the part-rhino, part-centaur Cyclops, the serpent woman, and the two-headed Roc bird from Sinbad; or, from Jason, the harpies that are a cross between gargoyles and pterodactyls, and the seven-headed Hydra and its spawn” (ILM). In traditional stop motion (still practiced by Henry Selick in marvels like The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach), the camera records a series of subtly different poses rather than actual shifting, so the resulting flow of images is inherently surreal -- ultra-sharp and jerky.
As time and people are continually changing, so is knowledge and information; and in the film industry there are inevitable technological advances necessary to keep the attraction of the public. It is through graphic effects, sounds and visual recordings that all individuals see how we have evolved to present day digital technology; and it is because of the efforts and ideas of the first and latest great innovators of the twentieth century that we have advanced in film and computers.
Many aspects of Hollywood have seen dramatic improvement . For instance, when comparing the special effects in movies such as “Jaws” (1975) to more recent movies such as “Avatar” (2009) there is a remarkable improvement in computer generated imagery. Unfortunately, a certain aspect of the movie industry has not seen nearly as much improvement.
Virtual and digital technologies are rampant in American culture and thoroughly utilized in entertainment mediums like television, movies, magazines, and video games. Our capitalist economy creates a fertile environment for these mediums to prosper by feeding off the public's hunger for entertainment. Because these industries are in such high demand and accrue billion dollar revenues, new technologies are often conceived in and funded by these trades: "For, in essence, all socially relevant new image media, from classical antiquity to the revolution of digital images, have advanced to serve the interests of maintaining power and control or maximizing profits" (Grau 339). That being the case, new technologies "hardly ever…advanced solely for artistic purposes" (Grau 339). Because "power" and "profits" are the central means of motivation in our culture; art, in the classical sense, is often an afterthought. In an age where entertainment and art intertwine, however, distinctions between the two based upon their creation are impossible. With advances in technology and, in turn, art, our ideas and traditions of comparison should also develop to justly analyze new media: "Although art history and the history of the media have always stood in an interdependent relationship and art has commented on, taken up, or even promoted each new media development, the view of art history as media history…is still underdeveloped" (Grau 4). In order to embrace virtual art as a valid outlet of artistic expression, its relationship to media and unique position in the history of art must first be acknowledged.
Digital art has a fifty-year history of innovation and experimentation with new technology. The Pioneers of digital art were not artists but people who were exploring new visions through computers and the writing of computer programs. According to the Digital Art Museum, which is a joint venture between London Guildhall University and two independent art galleries, digital art can currently be classified according to three phases Phase I of digital art was from 1956-1986. The Paintbox Era, the second phase, lasted from 1986-1996. Art software became readily available and attracted more artists to the new media. Especially useful was the paint program and devices such as the scanner and film recorder. Phase III, 1996-2006, is called the Multimedia Era because of the increase in technology and Internet access allowing the digital media artist interactivity with many art forms. The widespread availability of computers and software has allowed the digital artist to create distinctive works of art. Digital art is able to combine and transform more traditional types of art such as painting, sculpture, photography, animation and filmmaking. Digital technology allows the artist to create and manipulate color, images, and texture, instantly. Images can be made to appear, disappear and even combine or morph.
Early 1940s and 50s, john Whitney start the experiment of computer graphics, but early 60s when digital computer graphics come to promising stage. So as the animation didn’t just happen, but with the contribution of many people to see that they build in to the digital age of technology with the 3d animation (computer animation) by using moving image that consist of sketch of scene drawn on a paper that help them in developing techniques using technology for creating the animations, which is developed to what it is today.