Final Post about project!

My group chose to do a presentation on Pixar Short Films. Pixar is a company that revolutionized the feature film industry. We wanted to show the development of these animations, how and why they came about and what their sole purpose is. I personally have always loved watching the short Pixar films before any Disney movie and was always so curious as to the history behind them so this project was particularly exciting for me.

We will start by talking about some of the main people involved in the production of Pixar. There were so many different people involved in this process, but the people we chose to talk about stood out in our research. People such as Dick Shoup, Alvy Ray Smith, Alex Schure and Ed Catmull were all significant on the road to Pixar's success. John Lasseter is one of the most important people involved in that he created the 1st 3D short film "The Adventures of Wally and Andre B". Steve Jobs eventually bought the company out for $10 million and was the one who created the name"Pixar". The "Luxo" brand was created shortly after Pixar was bought and named. "Luxo" is the name for the lamp that you see jumping around in the beginning of every Pixar film.

It took a long time for Pixar to become profitable but this company was impressed with how quickly Disney decided to work with them. Pixar continuously signed agreements with Disney to create films for them and eventually became wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Pixar is responsible for the creation of amazing animated films such as A Bug's Life, Cars, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc., Toy Story and so much more. Pixar also went on to developing 18 short films which are shown before movies as entertainment for audiences between previews.

We also want to touch upon the process behind making a Pixar films and what exactly goes into the making of an animation. Lasseter talks about how people commonly make the mistake of thinking that everything they do is done on the computer, but what I didn't know was that they do hundreds of drawings and sculptures to develop their characters before hand. He explains how the computer just helps to create their worlds and anything they didn't see as possible before hand. He explains "the computer is where we finish our stories".

Pixar short films have a specific aesthetic that we felt was important to discuss. All of these films have an underlying message behind them, much like any stories we were told growing up. What's so unique about these animations is that they are telling stories without any words. They simply use sounds, colors, special effects and music to illustrate these stories. Their ability to tell a story in such an artistic way is extremely interesting to me and gives me high hopes in the further development of this kind of computer art.

Response to The Future of Computer Art

After reading this essay by Herbert W Franke, I came to the conclusion that he was defending computer art. I liked the statement he made when he said "the computer might equally well have been invented as an instrument of art". I liked it because I am a New Media Design major so I have to look at the computer as an instrument of art. Herbert explains how computer art is in its early stages of development and how it can't possibly mature yet because it simply hasn't been around long enough. He talks about how computer-generated images of objects and landscapes have drawn attention over the years. The realistic aspect of a digital image is something that is interesting to the new age of viewers. I thought it was interesting how he anticipates that high-resolution screens will eventually lead to better images and that improved computer performance will permit real-time animations of photorealistic images.

This essay was written during a time when people were used to seeing images from paintings or poor quality images, so for him to say this was very wise of him. The computer has allowed photography to advance drastically, and in this part of the essay he almost contradicts what I thought he was defending. An element of digital art that is becoming more and more popular that he mentions is Photoshop images. The different effects and tools used on this software are making images less realistic. The addition of color and highlight to ordinary images has created a completely different style we now consider digital art. He touches upon the fact that the computer will take care of perspective, which I never thought about before. I agree that the computer can manipulate a photo completely, but that is no different than adding more paint to a painting to me. This is just a much more advanced way of doing it, in that you can create almost anything, from anything. The possibilities are endless on the computer. It is harder for me to appreciate the development from classical art to new and upcoming digital art because I have grown up becoming more and more familiar with the computer and the wonders it can do.

Cool Video Art

This video was produced by a guy name Yoshi and it's content is a much more modern version of the psychedelic pieces we've watched in class. This one sort of sets you in a trans and trips you out. The saturated colors are really intense making this video art crazy to watch unravel.

Interesting Stuff for My Blog

I was browsing the web when I found this debate between some opinionated people about digital art vs. traditional art. I thought this was interesting and relevant to the essay we just read not to long ago. The debate over which form of art is superior seems to be a reoccurring question with artists. I think both sides have good points but in the end I think digital art is overpowering traditional art in this day and age of technology. I believe that it's becoming cheaper and faster to produce art on the computer and the opportunities to expand are becoming far greater than the opportunities given to you with just some paint and a canvas. I do believe that this digital art is easily duplicable and this will therefore lead to a loss of originality much like the essay talked about, but I think it's becoming inevitable.

While browsing I also found this cool piece of video art. I thought it was interesting to compare what we watched in our last class with this piece. It got me thinking about traditional vs. digital again. Even though the video we watched was a digital piece because it was being filmed as a performance piece, it almost seemed traditional to me because it had no special effects and it wasn't as technologically advanced as videos are today. This piece is completely animated/created on the computer with no footage whatsoever making it feel much more like digital art than the other. I feel as though they both incorporated similar feelings of repetition but I enjoyed this one much more than the other only because it held my attention more with the introduction of new things throughout the entire piece.

Response to Walter's Essay

In Walter's essay titled "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", he examines and discusses a lot of interesting points about the effects of advancements in technology. He talks a lot about the shift in perception of film, photography and more in the 20th century. Walter explains how he believes the "aura" or merely the originality and authenticity of the work that is created through mechanical reproduction has been lost. He also talks about how this loss may one day make art political in that images will be reproducible.

I thought it was interesting how he said that the cameraman intervenes with what you see in a film but in a painting you see it for all that it is. He explains how a viewer can ponder and contemplate the meaning and feeling of the peice when looking at a painting. However, in a movie you can't grasp a scene for too long before its gone. The constant and sudden change within a film leave you to be distracted from the previous scene and leaves little to the imagination. He thinks this "loss of aura" dulls our perception and instead of recognizing the artwork for what it is, we are distracted and directs your eye towards a specific spot.

Analog vs. Digital

Here is a picture of a cat painting that represents an example of an analog piece. It is essentially the same as this digital piece in its content, but different in approach. It has the same purpose as the painting and a very similar message, it's just created digitally and interactive in it's unraveling. I think the similarities outweigh the differences between these two pieces. However, I think the digital representation of this cat is much more interesting in that you have to create the picture yourself and it's composed of hundreds of tiny dots of color into one big picture.

My Post from Rhizome- "Because You Asked"

"Because You Asked" (although pretty creepy) is the piece I found most interesting on Rhizome. It's an artist's digital self-portrait. It's created using Flash and is very interactive. The artist uses sound, text and audio to develop his self portrait with the help of the viewer. The portrait can only be completed with the help of the viewer clicking on the buttons and interacting with the art. I like that this piece is making a comment on the developing technologies in new media and the opportunities these programs like Flash offer. It's an interesting concept that the user becomes the painter in this piece and the fact that he gives you the option to erase him when you're done also raises some questions and makes me think further into the message he's trying to convey here.

Digital Art

When I was stumbling I found this cool website that allows you to create your own digital art. It's free spirited in that you can't completely control the lines you make. The way the tools are used vary depending on when you click, where you click and for how long, making the strokes different every time they're drawn out. I also found this website which I thought had some really intricate graphics that look like they could almost be made using the first website's tools. Having the strokes make up an image like that is aesthetically pleasing to me. The textures created using these lines are something that would be really hard to master using paint or some other sort of medium, but is completely attainable to someone with a computer. I think the computer allows opportunities to create things that a person might not be able to create physically with just their hands.