artwork
Latest
DICE Awards organizer's new festival will honor video game art
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is launching a video game art festival with help from iam8bit.
NVIDIA AI turns crude doodles into photorealistic landscapes
Imagine if you had the power to turn your old-school Microsoft Paint doodles into actual art. Well, NVIDIA's latest AI-driven software can do just that. The GauGAN image creator, named after the French post-Impressionist painter, uses generative adversarial networks to transform even the crudest of sketches into a photorealistic landscape. NVIDIA describes the tech behind it, a deep learning AI trained on a million images, as a "smart paintbrush."
Samsung updates its stylish Frame TVs with more features and artwork
Samsung's classy Frame TVs have returned, enhanced for 2018 with more art and four magnetic bezel cover options to ensure the expansive 4K Frames fit into the decor of even more homes. The new TVs come with an updated, improved artwork UI, making it easier to browse art collections by color scheme or art medium, if, for example you were only looking for photography to jazz up your lounge. (Samsung has added 30 iconic pieces of photography from The New York Times, in that regard.) Frame 2018 owners can also save a personalized art collection that the TV will shuffle through when on standby. There's no 43-inch model this time, so you'll have to decide between the 55- and 65-inch options.
Samsung's 43-inch Frame TV is like a fancy art piece for your wall
When Samsung announced The Frame TV earlier this year, it quickly became a product of interest for people with minimalist taste. That's because it's essentially designed to double as an art piece, and its aesthetics can easily blend in with any paintings you may have on your wall. It launched in June in both 55- and 65-inch size, but at IFA 2017, Samsung unveiled a new 43-inch model. This may be a good option for those of you who maybe liked the looks of the TV but would prefer it in a smaller size.
San Francisco's MOMA texts modern art to suit your mood
Museum's like NYC's Met and the Smithsonian are becoming more egalitarian by releasing high-res images from their collections, letting you curate your own virtual tours. However, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has taken another approach, letting you receive artwork via text messages. With its new "Send Me SFMOMA" project, all you need to do is send a text with the words "Send Me" followed by a mood, color or something specific you want to see.
Use 375,000 images from the Met however you want, for free
If you want to use images of paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, like Woman with a Parrot by Gustave Courbet (above), you no longer have to worry about rights. All of the Met's approximately 375,000 public-domain artwork images are now available for free, unrestricted use. The new "Open Access" policy, based on Creative Commons Zero (CC0), means bloggers, schools and businesses alike can use them without even the need for attribution.
Amazon launches a Handmade rival to Etsy
If you've been looking for for a hand-sculpted Gothic dragon weathervane, you now have a new way to find it: Amazon's Handmade online store. As rumored earlier, the new venture has arrived in response to the success of Etsy, the artisan-goods company that just went public with a massive $3.5 billion valuation. The store is divided into seven categories, including jewelry, home decor, artwork and furniture. That'll give you a chance to find some one-of-a-kind paintings, along with items like leather magnetic cuffs, walnut rocking chairs and a beer growler holder.
The Big Picture: Laser art show puts you inside a virtual flood
What do lasers have to do with an 1651 oil painting? Quite a lot, as it turns out: a new project called Water Light celebrates a Dutch museum's acquisition of The Breach of St. Anthony's Dike by making you feel like you're inside the painting. Using the latest LED technology, creator Studio Roosegaarde says the spectacle gives viewers "the experience and perception... of a virtual flood." While that sounds unpleasant, the images from the exhibition are stunning, with the light seeming to curve like water around Amsterdam's Museum Square. If you're lucky enough to be there, you can catch the show tonight after 10 pm, or lose yourself in the video below.
Susan Kare selling replicas of the Mac team's "pirate flag"
If the interior components of the original Macintosh were the heart of the device, then many of the graphic elements designed by Susan Kare were its soul. Kare designed fonts for the Mac, created many of the icons that graced the Mac for many years, and is even responsible for the Command Key symbol that's still on Apple keyboards. She also painted a skull and crossbones on a black "pirate flag" that flew over the Mac team's original office that embodied a Steve Jobs slogan -- "It's better to be a pirate than join the navy." Kare is now selling custom replicas of the pirate flag, perfect for that someone special on your holiday shopping list. The original flag is part of the Macintosh legend. The team moved into its own office building on the Cupertino campus, and programmer Steve Capps sewed together a black flag, asking Kare to paint a skull and crossbones on it. The left eye of the skull? The rainbow Apple logo of the time, of course. The replica flags won't be cheap: Kare's asking US$1,900 for one that is 3 feet by 5 feet in size, or $2,500 for a 4 by 6 foot version. But they're bona fide custom artworks, each hand painted and signed by Kare. Oh, and by the way... if you happen to feel like buying your favorite TUAW blogger this flag for Christmas, I sure wouldn't turn it down.
Mac 101: How to add custom artwork to your iTunes songs and movies
A significant chunk of my iTunes library is comprised of CD rips and a few independent recordings from musician friends. As a result, a fair number of tracks lack the excellent artwork that graces iTunes. If you are in a similar situation, you can quickly add artwork to individual tracks or even several tracks with just a few clicks. This trick also works with video, too. Individual Tracks To add artwork to an individual clip, simply select the track in iTunes and use Command-i to open the inspector (or File > Get Info), which will show all the details of the track. You can change other details from this interface, but we are most interested in the "Artwork" tab as shown above. Select the Artwork tab and use the "Add" button to insert your custom artwork. You also can drag the artwork from Finder into the artwork area. Multiple Tracks You also can add artwork to several tracks at once by selecting a handful of tracks and then clicking on File > Get Info or Command-i to open the inspector. Click "yes" if you are warned about editing multiple files and then select "Info" to view the contents of the information pane. You then can drag the image to the Artwork area to assign new art to all those tracks at once. Other Details iTunes 11 supports adding JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and Photoshop files as artwork. The app will resize the images to proper size so you don't have to worry about sizing down the artwork before you add it to iTunes. You also can have iTunes do the artwork importing for you if the track is from a known album by a known artist. Just control-click the songs without artwork and choose "Get Album Artwork" from the pop-up menu. This automatic method pulls the art from a central database and is less reliable than the manual import described above as the song matching is not always accurate.
Remixing Renaissance art with help from a 3D scanner
Some of the world's oldest art is getting a bit of a facelift. Brooklyn artist Barry X Ball has developed a way to recreate Renaissance-era sculptures using 3D scanning. Rather than printing duplicates, Ball takes the statues "to the next level," by adding on to them. In some cases that means finishing details in the way he thinks the original artist intended, and in others he's looking to make something completely new. For instance, in one of his sculptures he replaced the roughed out head of Jesus in a famous Michelangelo sculpture with the original artist's head, a tribute to him since he died a few days after carving it.
Google's digital art prize winner is a poem you control with your body
Google asked artists to prove that code could be beautiful with its DevArt competition, and hundreds delivered on that promise. However, there can only be one winner: The Metamorphosis of Mr. Kalia, a visual poem from Cyril Diagne and Béatrice Lartigue. The project lets you use your body movement to control Mr. Kalia as he undergoes strange, symbolic transformations throughout his life. Metamorphosis is using little more than a standard Kinect sensor to track your motion and send it to a Chrome browser, so it's easy to both play with and set up -- it even works over a basic internet connection.
Longtime Square Enix artist Akihiko Yoshida joins Unsung Story team
Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians, the tactical RPG from Level-5 and Square Enix veteran Yasumi Matsuno, will feature the character artwork of Akihiko Yoshida. The news comes from an update on the project's Kickstarter page, which revealed an excerpt of the game's story as well. Yoshida departed Square Enix in December after an 18-year stint during which he provided art and character designs for games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story alongside Matsuno, as well as Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy XII and Bravely Default. Unsung Story is seeking $600,000 on Kickstarter by February 14 in order to continue development. With 16 days left to hit its goal, more than 10,000 people have pitched in $438,947 to the project, which has multiple $1 million-plus stretch goals to reach platforms like Vita, PS4 and 3DS.
The Daily Grind: How influential is pre-launch art?
Slowly but surely Bungie is roping me onto its Destiny bandwagon. It didn't take much, to be frank, since I rarely meet a sci-fi shooter I don't enjoy at least a little bit. And hey, I'm one of those infernal dudebros who loves the heck out of the Halo franchise, too! Anyway, Destiny. It's got some really sick art. Plus it seems like Bungie has taken the time to create a proper world and properly age it, if yesterday's art-focused video is any indication. That leads me to this morning's Daily Grind question. Does concept art affect your excitement for a title one way or the other? Put another way, how influential is a game's pre-launch art? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Heroes of the Storm shows off its first key artwork pre-BlizzCon
It's not even time for Blizzard's convention, but a revelation has already surfaced for those rabidly following the upcoming Heroes of the Storm. The first key artwork of the game has been released via Twitter, so anyone who was worried that the game would not feature a variety of characters from Blizzard's popular franchises can now rest easier. And if you're not a fan of Blizzard, you can start speculating whether this game will settle the eternal battle between Scary Black Armor Guy and Futuristic Space Marine With A Lady On His Shoulder. Those of you who are fans will recognize several staples from various games, including Illidan, Sylvanas, and the Lich King from World of Warcraft alongside Tychus Findlay and Lady Never-Actually-Appearing-In-Her-Own-Game (better known as Nova) from StarCraft II. it remains to be seen whether we'll hear more about the game when BlizzCon kicks off, but under the circumstances, it seems likely.
Tamriel Infinium: The Elder Scrolls Online's community focus
When interviewing developers for Massively over the last three years, I've taken many opportunities to chat up multiple community managers. And when I was running my own community, I read article after article about how to gauge the health of a community. Although I don't remember who said it or where I might have read it, I learned that one of the best ways to measure a healthy community is the amount of artwork that players make about your particular theme, or in the case of The Elder Scrolls Online, the game. Of course, all game creators like to see players having fun and being inspired by what they are doing. The Elder Scrolls brings with it an existing community inspired by games like Skyrim and Morrowind. The community has already fallen in love with ESO and has drawn inspiration from everything that ZeniMax has released about the game so far. One of these inspired individuals is Lisa Green, known as Aloucia on TESO-RP.com. She told me a bit about herself and the inspiration behind her painting that was featured in the latest Tamriel Chronicle.
Dragon's Crown pre-orders get this art book
Folks who pre-order Vanillaware and Atlus' forthcoming 2D hack-and-slash game, Dragon's Crown, will also receive a 64-page limited edition art book for their troubles. The paperback tome includes character and environmental artwork by Dragon's Crown designer/artist/Vanillaware president George Kamitani, in addition to pieces by other Japanese video game artists, such as Capcom alumnus Kinu Nishimura and Akira Yasuda. Atlus has also revealed the game's North American box art, which does a good job of obfuscating the art design's more controversial aspects. Dragon's Crown will drop for PlayStation 3 and Vita August 6, at $49.99 and $39.99 respectively.%Gallery-187956%
Mothership releases Prepo 2, helps devs create app icons and retina artwork
One of the challenges facing developers isn't always writing clean code. A small development team also has to contend with images and icons, which are often the first things a user sees when he stumbles upon your app and takes it on its maiden run. One app that promises to make artwork and icon preparation easy is Prepo from Mothership. Now in version 2.0, Prepo allows you to put the finishing touches on your iconography and Retina artwork before you submit your app for review. Once you import your image files, Prepo will size the icons for an iPad, iPhone or a universal app. On the artwork side of things, Prepo takes your @2x artwork and reduces it to @1x. It also resizes it and renames it if necessary. One new feature in Prepo 2 is a LivePreview feature that lets you test out your icons and artwork in realtime on an iOS device. To use LivePreview, you have to purchase the US$4.99 Prepo Plus upgrade and download the iOS version of Prepo on your iPhone or iPad. As long as your Mac and iOS device are on the same WiFi network, you'll be able to view your image assets on your iOS device and make changes on the fly. Prepo 2 is available now from the Mac App Store for free and you can use it as a standalone editor for your artwork and icons. The companion iOS version is also free, but you have to purchase the Prepo+ upgrade to get the OS X and iOS apps to work together.
Press Paws charity art show to break hearts, empty wallets, save pooches
On February 9, gaming/puppy enthusiasts Amelia Cantlay, Sakura Minamida, Amber Drsata and Laurie Ma, along with their team of volunteers, will attempt to save as many of man's best friends as possible through Press Paws, a gaming-themed charity art show for the benefit of What's Up Dog! LA.The event is scheduled to take place at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California, and will feature pieces from more than 50 artists, all of which focus on animals in gaming. Art sale and silent auction proceeds go to What's Up Dog! LA, which is why the event's organizers have launched an Indiegogo fundraiser to help cover the cost of printing posters, flyers, providing snacks at the event, etc. Their goal is a meager $3,000, and donations can be made here for those so inclined.
Twitter-based MMORPG accused of stealing artwork
Tweeria is a web-based role-playing game that advertises itself as the "laziest MMORPG ever." It uses Twitter to passively power and level up a virtual character set in a fantasy-based world, and has now been accused of stealing art from the World of Warcraft collectible card game.Mike Sacco, a columnist for WoW Insider who also happens to work at WoW CCG owner Cryptozoic Entertainment, points out that artwork uploaded by the Tweeria staff for the title is ripped right off from the cards.Tweeria's creator, a Russian company called Twee Game, claims it's a "mostly experimental" project, and the game has since added a "copyright notice" at the bottom of its pages to try and attribute the artwork to its creators. For now, the game is still up and running, despite user feedback saying that it's unclear just how it all works anyway.
