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New Gallery HD series teaches you to paint like the masters
Tired of spending way too much loot on art classes? If so, it's time to make good use of Gallery HD (part of the VOOM HD collection), as it's gearing up to air an all new series that aims to teach aspiring painters "how to emulate the style of the world's greatest artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir and many others." The Forger's Masterclass series is scheduled to include ten half-hour episodes starting on March 3rd, and will be hosted by John Myatt, whose "stunning forgeries of Matisse, Chagall and Klee notoriously fooled the art world in the 1990s." If you're already anxious to grab your brush, make sure you're tuned into channel 9472 (DISH Network) or 714 (Cablevision) at 8:30PM just under a week from now. Oh, and lay down some plastic first -- things could get messy.
GDC08: Hands-on Inchworm
Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software behind A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly wanted to draw and animate on his DS. So he wrote his own application, Inchworm. He says, "[It was] sort of a passion project, something we really want to see on the DS." In between his GDC meetings to find a publisher, I sketched through the latest build of the tool.Even though Inchworm is closer to Painter than Mario Paint, it's still fun for dabbling. Artists use the stylus to scribble out stills or cels. Top-tier tools that I'd expect in Photoshop even filter down to this level, including layers, opacity settings, alpha channels, selections, and onion-skin animations. Sabiston also intends to add smear brushes to blend paints and sound effects for animations.
The surreal Nintendo artwork of Jimi Benedict
We love unique, video game inspired artwork just as much as the next guy -- our weary-spined copy of "i am 8-bit" can vouch for that. However, we also love our preserved, cherished memories of our NES era heroes. These two feelings conflict when looking at Jimi Benedict's surreal video game art -- our inner Andy Warhol loves Benedict's incredibly unique and lovingly detailed portraits, but the traditionalist in us prefers not to think of Link as a gap-toothed, Sloth-faced dwarf.You can see both full portraits after the jump, but to see the rest of Benedict's art (including what appears to be a mock-up title screen to the lesser known NES game Obama: Take the Power Back), you'll have to go to his website -- a swirling vortex of complete madness and totally rad drawings.[Via DSF]
Graffiti artist creates real-time, 3D paintings
Regular graffiti not doing it for you? Looking for something a little more up-to-date than spraycans and brick walls? Perhaps you should direct your attention to the artist known as DAIM and his recent project creating real-time graffiti in 3D. By utilizing a multi-camera scheme, DAIM is able to smear virtual paint across an empty gallery space using special handheld markers which are tracked by proprietary (we assume) software, calling the project "Tagged in Motion." A picture says a thousand words, and in this case, a video says about a million -- so hit the clip after the break and see the work in action.Update: The software in use is not proprietary, rather it's the ARToolKit (or Augmented Reality Toolkit), which is an open source project. Thanks for the info Kenijo![Via Fresh Creation]
Game art collecting can be wacky
We aren't sure how we missed collecting the original stickers, when we were hardcore Garbage Pail Kids devotees, but we completely skipped Topps' 1991 refresh of their Wacky Packages trading card series, featuring parodies of various products' box designs.Patrick Pigott's oiled-up design for a "Slippery Murry-O Bros. 3" also skipped the series, having been commissioned for Wacky Packages, but never used. It was finally rediscovered for the 2007 "Lost Wackys Series 2" fan release of unused Wacky Packages art. And now this vaguely upsetting, potentially offensive image can be displayed full-size in your home, a piece of (trading card) history. The original painting is being auctioned on eBay, with a current bid of $102.50. [Via GameSniped]
Incandescent portraiture in Second Life
Here's one more item to add to the list of Christmas gifts for your favorite Second Life resident. Incandenza Thorne is owner of Incandescent Artworks, a service that will provide a real-world painted portrait of an SL avatar, rendered by an anonymous artist friend of Incandenza's. From the in-world site:'When you purchase a painting from Incandescent Artworks, you receive a real oil painting on canvas delivered to you for display in your home or office. You also receive a digital picture of the painting for display in your virtual home or office, as well as digital pictures of the painting at key "in progress" stages. 'We offer different size canvases to meet different budgets: 28-inches by 22-inches, US$500. 14-inches by 11-inches, US$350.'These prices do not include delivery. Customers will pay actual freight costs to their destination. If you have more questions, please IM "Incandenza Thorne" or send an email to incandenza.thorne@yahoo.com.'While you may balk at these prices, keep in mind that these portraits are one-of-a-kind, custom pieces that represent significant effort on the behalf of the artist. A sample image from the studio is shown above (Note: the inset picture was my addition; the actual portrait will not have an inset image). I wonder if he'll do werewolves?[Thanks, Incandenza!]
Find painting zen on the DS
Mercury Games is planning to release a series of Ertain's non-competitive DS games in the West as "Zen Games." The first game scheduled is something that recently popped up at the Renchi sale, in its Japanese incarnation as Kokoro wo Yasumeru Otona no Nurie DS. It'll be called Paint by DS here, and its user interface appears to have undergone a cosmetic makeover. Since it obviously has the same pictures, we assume that the minigames and puzzles are still there as well.We were pretty interested in the Japanese version (as some of you seemed to be), so we're pleased to have the chance to check this out whenever it comes out in the US. It'll be out in Europe on the 24th of August.[Via Game|Life]
ArtRage 2: natural media painting on the cheap
ArtRage 2 is a cool, inexpensive "natural media" painting program from Ambient Design. It's cross-platform, and it shows to some degree in its single window interface. The tool palettes, for example, aren't free floating windows, but rather part of the main window as you see above. Nonetheless, it has an incredible number of features for the price, offering different canvas types, painting tools, etc. For instance, you can move the "paint" around with a palette knife, and the texture of canvas affects how the pigment is laid down. All in all, it looks like a great value (and Macworld agrees) for those of us who don't need the power of something like Corel Painter X.ArtRage 2 comes in two versions: a freeware version with fewer features, and the full version for only $20. It is available for download for both Mac and PC.[Via Macworld]
Damn that's fast! More Halo 3 speed painting
Just hours after the initial airing of the Halo 3 "Starry Night" commercial, a deviant artist (from deviantART, natch) by the name of Rahll whipped up a super speedy painting that we featured right here on X3F. Hot on the heels of the Halo 3 beta announcement, Rahll has done it again, this time giving us the piece you see above, entitled "Volatile". It features the Chief displaying the business end of a needler to the nearest Brute (who doesn't look to happy about the whole situation). Sharp eyed fanboys will also pick up a Warthog and Scarab in the background. Of course, we would be remiss in our duties if we didn't remind Rahll that the Needler won't be dual-wieldable in Halo 3. Still, we'll grant some artistic license for work this nice.Nice job, Rahll. Might we suggest something for your next work? Perhaps something with the X3F logo emblazoned upon it? Maybe something cool like ... a flaming 360 controller or something. That would be sweet.Update: It has come to our attention that this isn't necessarily a speed painting, but really more of a regular painting. Still, it's much better than we could have done in the same amount of time, so it's fast to us.
Sonic fingerprinting could safeguard masterpieces, detect fakes
We know, we're suckers for cheesy art, but we give props where props are due for the well designed, masterfully engineered pieces as well. While we doubt the Digital Stag is atop any thief's list of things to swipe, there's a decent chance the Italian funeral urn Cratere dei Niobidi is. This urn spurned (ahem) a restorer and a geophysicist to envision sonic tomography as a means to protecting authentic works of art and giving museums and art buyers alike a way to spot fakes. The system works by attaching a network of sensors in and around the artifact, and when tapped with a rubber hammer, computer software can record the sonic fingerprint that will only match up with the original. Additionally, the waves could inform restorers if a segment of a structure is weaker than the eye can tell, giving them extra time to build reinforcements on ancient buildings, walls, etc. The chance of such a system ever being used outside of highly trafficked museums, however, is slim, primarily due to the $19,000 to $26,000 price range that the system falls in, not to mention the "trained staff" (read: loyal and innocent) required to run it.
Okami: before and after cel-shading
Notably the only upcoming PS2 game to feature magical wolves, aggressive painting and beautiful cel-shaded surroundings, Okami has come a long way since its original inception. Dubbed Ohkami, the early version presents quite a different experience to the one currently preparing to hit US shores. A comparison clip over at GameVideos (embedded in the second part of the post) puts the more realistic art style of the old version in stark contrast to the cel-shaded update. It seems that the PS2 was simply not deemed powerful enough to render Clover Studios' original vision and so the shift was made to a different and more feasible art style. It's interesting that the decision marks one of the few occasions where technical limitations actually (and arguably) lead to a more visually striking game. If you had a choice in the matter, would you rather have the realistic (erm, as far as magical wolves go) Okami or the cel-shaded one? Comments from the "Zelda more like Celda" crowd are welcomed, of course. [Thanks Demian!]
Bob Ross game contest
Announced on the first day of E3 week, we feel absolutely ashamed that we neglected to bring this wonderful bit of news to you. Turns out 6 lucky winners will have the chance to showcase their art in the upcoming Bob Ross video game. Guidelines, for the moment, are: Only landscape paintings completed using the Bob Ross Wet-on-Wet Technique ® will be accepted. Submission must be the entrant's own original work (using the instructions from Bob's books and DVDs is encouraged) Entrants will be required to assign all copyrights for their submitted work to Bob Ross Interactive LLC, AGFRAG Entertainment Group and Bob Ross Incorporated. Entrants will be required to authorize use of their name, brief biographical information and images for publicity and publication to Bob Ross Interactive LLC, AGFRAG Entertainment Group and Bob Ross Incorporated. A more comprehensive set of guidelines is due to be posted in June.[Thanks AssemblyLineHuman!]
Joy of Painting to be unleashed on the happy little DS
With all the excitement surrounding the announcement of an official Bob Ross Joy of Painting videogame for the Revolution, I completely overlooked the fact that the game is also slated to hit that handheld system with the canvas touch screen and the paintbrush stylus! Call it a "happy accident", if you will.No, seriously. Bob Ross will presumably be teaching you how to paint devastatingly gorgeous masterpieces on your DS. Developed by the AGFRAG Entertainment Group, the game has every chance of doing for art what Elektroplankton did for music. It'll be weird, that's for sure, but who could possibly resist the charms of an inescapably cheery man with a head of hair that even dwarfs the mountains he so optimistically paints? Now all we need is that Kirby / Bob Ross crossover platformer and we're set to unleash our inner artistes.[Thanks Joey M!]
