The fine art of computer animation

Daniel Brown: On Growth and Form

I have posted before on D' Arcy Thompson's 'On Growth and Form'.  But perhaps his real legacy is that he has provided a platform for digital artists to explore the possibilities of form implied by mathematical formulae. 

Daniel Brown is known for his inventive and playful interactive animations. His series 'On Growth and Form' (2000–ongoing) uses mathematical formulas to generate various possibilities for the creation of blossoms that are inventions relying on mathematical ideas, rather than being abstractions from natural forms. These digital blossoms extend an idea of beauty into virtual reality. Brown is paralysed from the upper chest down and uses adaptive technologies to continue working, now in lines of code rather than with his hands. This animation uses real-time 3D (OpenGL / DirectX) flowers engine. If you go to Dundee you can see a D'Arcy Thompson museum and Brown's work is also shown there. 

Geometry was usually an artist's entry into the world of mathematics, Uccello and Piero Della Francesca, being the early Renaissance artists normally referred to as being fascinated by geometric as much as by observed form and of course Leonardo had plenty to say on the subject. 

Uccello: Perspective Study of Mazzocchio

Leonardo: Study of Mazzocchio

So as a student where would you begin? There are several entry level 3D programs, especially now that 3D printing is becoming more available. A good starting point is to see what's recommended as being the best option. This link won't work for long but there will always be some company wanting to get you started so just search for what's out there. 

The problem comes when you want to move on and enter the world of animation. If you look at a CGI film you quickly realise how many different people have been involved. The ‘animation pipeline’, whereby concept, designs, storyboard, layouts, music, poses, and outline etc. have all been looked at as to how they fit together, is vital. Think of a factory, with various steps, often employing different people along the way, all having to be integrated if you are to make a product. Remember just one piece of software, such as Maya, has a huge learning curve and this is why so much animation is done in teams. 

Again there are lots of 3D animation software recommendations out there as well as recommendations for stop motion software.  

3dsMax

If you look at the screen for 3dsMax, its pretty obvious that 3D computer programmes still use the basic wire frame structures as drawn all those years ago by Leonardo and Uccello. 

An earlier post did mention other starting points and covered a brief history of this area of drawing, but as the technology moves on so quickly that earlier post looks totally antiquated now. As an introduction, here are a few artists that I think are worth looking at, but do remember I am rather like a dinosaur when it comes to exploring this area of drawing and as you discover exciting people or approaches, it would be useful to get some feedback on what is happening out there. 

Escape Pod: Jonathan Monaghan Video 20 min loop 

I saw Jonathan Monaghan's 'Disco Beast'  a couple of years ago and realised that he is very astute at playing with our boundaries as we travel between fantasy worlds and reality. My granddaughters are into unicorns, so he was obviously on the button there. 

Still from 'Disco Beast'

The use of contemporary myths, like the commodification of the unicorn, allows him to deal with the absurd situations that are encountered when something that originates in ancient Greek natural history writing, becomes central to recent fantasy film making and finds itself as a brand that can be on anything from on line gaming to soap. A unicorn is also about purity and desire, and in some ways the early disco experience was about those things too, old ideas re-emerge within new technologies.   

Katie Torn

'Breath Deep' by Katie Torn is a video that is well worth looking at because of the way it combines so many of the tropes of our present over cooked world. Katie Torn's work reminds me of Rachael Maclean's, colour soaked animations are embedded into integrated video footage, as virtual environments are built from the detritus of consumer culture.  

Natural Plastic: Faiyaz Jafri

Faiyaz Jafri's 'Natural plastic' creates an environment in which nature and culture are fused into one. Plastic has obtained the ability to grow just like natural life and as it does it mimics the shapes and forms of the natural world. Whether it is people or vegetation, all have been overcome by digital processing, the boundaries between organic and inorganic dissolve and categories previously seen as distinct, such an animate and inanimate life now collapse into each other. The implications of AI are such that artificial intelligence is probably going to become recognised as a life form in the very near future. 

It is interesting to compare Jafri's 'Natural plastic' with Daniel Brown's 'On Growth and Form', Jafri's work is still in many ways tied to traditional ideas of artist's narrative visualisation skills, even though it uses a lot of contemporary 3D animation software, while Brown's is more reliant on his computer coding skills, he is seeking to build an implication of a formal idea rather than make a narrative point. These differences though will I'm sure soon disappear. Coding will become more available to everyday users, probably as a mix and match selection procedure, whereby you will plug together bits of coding to get done what you want. Which is to a large extent what is already happening but without the ease of use. 

David McLeod

David McLeod, is in many ways a much more traditional user of 3D animation software. He uses it to explore permutations of form, his carefully orchestrated animations demonstrating how one form can become another, or how what looks like one surface can gradually become something that belongs to something else. His work sitting somewhere conceptually between the work of Brown and Jafri.

I'm always happy to see artists in the flesh, they can hide behind their video animation projections and Archangel Constantini as well as dealing with computer animations, moves between computer hacking, performance and soundscape generation. He flits between the world of computers and an analogue presence very fluidly. For me he helps humanise the sometimes 'geekish' association we can have with computer generated artwork, his awkward presence sometimes appearing funny and at other times tragic.

Archangel Constantini

Archangel Constantini first came to our attention in the late 90s with his Karaoke style songs that accompanied animated gifs of what he called ìBarbasî (Ken) dancing. 'Barba' was a socio-critical project, dealing with identity issues, but it was also very funny and the computer generated aspects were just as important as the Karaoke. Probably most well known for his 'Atari Noise' work, he has more recently been getting involved with Magnetoplankton, another artificial construct, a speculate future that as always with Constantini, was already flawed with humanity. 

See also:

Artificial intelligence 

3D printing
Computer generated art and coding
Drawing and virtual reality
Maths and beauty
Cecile B Evans
Drawing as data visualisation
The world is drawing itself

Computer animation

Artificial intelligence 

Data visualisation

Virtual space and metaphor