Technically Art

Quicker, faster, better, smarter. People are always looking for ways to be more efficient in how they work. For artists, technology can help them produce their pieces at a faster rate and in a more cost efficient way than hand sculpting.

My digital art piece "Ghost Town"

As an artist, I primarily focus on digital art and animation, but my first experiences were dabbling with lead, acrylic, and clay sculptures. I spent many art camps and project weekends experimenting with different mediums, and I know from firsthand experience how much simpler and effective electronic art can be. For instance, at the start of this summer, I accidentally busted my laptop’s screen and half the lights went out. I had to send it off to be repaired. During that time away from my laptop, I decided to go back to traditional art to form my art ideas. A long two months later, when receiving the Holy Grail back from maintenance, I wasted no time jumping back into my art programs. In less than a week I had completed twice as many projects as I had in the previous eight weeks, where I’d only finished a few paintings and a couple of sculptures.

As you can imagine, sculptors are always fighting the world. For example, gravity can be restrictive, as sculptures need specific supports to keep their shape and form. Artists have to physically figure out, sometimes by costly trial and error, whether a piece needs internal metal wiring or natural-looking support pillars on the outside. Furthermore, artists have to have a space to work within to create their pieces and to store their supplies; space that may cost money to rent and maintain. As well, purchasing equipment and tools can cost a pretty penny.

Other factors that affect an artist’s work are the costs of acquiring the sculpture material and the unique elements of working with it. For instance, clay can come cheap, but overall is quite heavy, and you need a lot of it. It’s also a mess to work with, as you have to make sure it’s not too dry or wet to mold. Then, if you desire to fire the sculpt in a kiln, it not only has to fit, but have no air pockets either, which would cause the art piece to explode into little shards.

Wood and metal have their own considerations too. Wood is much more lightweight as are specific types of metal, like aluminum, and both have no chance of exploding because there’s no need for a kiln. But on the downside, prices can skyrocket if you work with finer materials such as mahogany or gold, and if you work on bigger projects, you might need power tools to help create the basic forms before adding detail. All of these factors can hinder an artist when time and money are hard to come by.

The solution to all of these problems is fairly simple--sculpt in a different world. Of course I don’t mean travel to Mars. Instead, artists should work in a digital world where they can be more effective and efficient, as there are few restrictions as to what you can create! As Nicholas Carr, author of the New York Timesbestseller: The Shallows, had said, “Old technologies are being supplanted by new ones.” Artists like you can take advantage of these new electronic developments, like using modeling software, many of which offer free trials to allow you time to experience the program. These new programs can make life a lot simpler for sculptors and artists because they can manipulate materials electronically, pulling and stretching, coloring and texturing, and basically allowing you to experiment with your piece with just the touch of a button.

ZShere hand

One of the top modeling and texturing software programs on the market is Mudbox. (Though, it is proven ZBrush is a close rival; heated debates tend to rise between modelers and even resulted in Justin Marshall writing ZBrush or Mudbox: Sculpting Showdown). Modeling is not posing for a picture, but is the act of molding ZSpheres within a 3D space. ZSpheres are multiple spheres that form a basic structure of your model before you sculpt. Texturing is simply applying the texture and color to the model, making it look more realistic. Like sculpting in reality, you can manipulate the object by pushing and pulling on the model, much like you would with clay. The benefit is how much easier and quicker it is to form what you wish, even down to the most miniscule detail in texturing. As you might have guessed, you cannot use actual sculpting tools on the screen of your computer, but instead, you use your mouse to stamp on a variety of textures. The process is pretty simple, as there are a multitude of brush stamps that you can easily change, and you can manipulate just about everything including size, displacement, and more. And the icing on the cake is if you mess up, undoes are just a click away.

Animating your sculpture

Now, if you like making 3D art, but are not great with push and pull sculpting, then Maya might be a better match. In this software program, artists have more than one way to form their sculpture; they can use Curves, NURBS, and Polygons. Instead of molding the sculpture, like you would in the physical world, you would modify your creation by moving, rotating, and scaling faces, edges, and vertexes to get the model you want. When ready to texture your model, you would apply it through Hypershade, which is like using paint swatches, except you can apply a bump map and the colored picture you wish to wrap around the model. Furthermore, if you wanted to rig your model, form a scene, light it, and even animate your sculpture, you could render out your own mini-movie if you wished. Maya is the most important 3D software program because it is the lingua franca of the animation world; meaning just about all the animation companies, including the big boys like Blue Sky, Dreamworks, Pixar, and Disney Animation Studios, use it.

Unlike the expensive programs like Mudbox and Maya, Blender is a free 3D software program that does not cost a dime to download. Out of all the free 3D programs, Blender is the best with its N-Gon support (meaning it can work with faces other than quadrilaterals), complete customization of texture materials, photo realistic rendering, and much more that the features page on Blender’s site talks about. Of course, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of a high-performance program, but, if you’re looking to save money, it’s the way to go.

Let’s just say, for a moment, that art and sculpting is not your cup of tea. Maybe you’re even geekier than geometry fanatics. In that case you can try your hand at programming your art. Most programs allow for code to be typed in a command box, and depending on the command, your art is affected. Essentially, art can be made of a mere few lines of computer language. As noted by Clive Thompson in his book Smarter Than You Think, there is a program called “Logo,” which teaches children the art of programming with a “turtle [that] draws a line wherever it goes… using Logo to write programs that would draw all manner of things, like houses or cats.”

Maya User Interface

Probably the most difficult part of transitioning to electronic art is getting to know your new workspace. At first the user interface can seem a bit daunting: a blank workspace surrounded by countless buttons that do an infinite amount of things. In his book, Why Are Human-computer Interfaces Difficult to Design and Implement?, Brad Myers states, “Time is valuable… and [people] want to spend their time accomplishing their goals, not learning how to operate a computer-based system… they expect to be able to sit down and use software with little or no frustration.” Then add in the fact that nearly every key on the keyboard is a shortcut to your tools. But having said this, you also realize that every time you play with the buttons, you learn what each does and how you might be able to use it in your next digital art project. Also, you can find online tutorials and cheat sheets that explain what key does what. So, effectively, you will be able to do what had taken hours upon hours of work literally the time it takes to click a button.

A downside to sculpting with technology is that it lacks the feel of getting down and dirty with clay and wood shavings, or even getting a few burns metalworking. However, a digital world allows you to create experiment and toss it if it’s not right, so you quickly realize that your efficiency and ability to cost effectively try new things multiples. Furthermore, it’s cleaner and safer, as you don’t need sharp objects to get the job done.

Traditional artists might also be wondering how in the world technology could ever replace physical materials. After all, the other exists only in a digital world, so how could that ever work? Welcome to more even more advanced technology productions--augmented reality programs and 3D laser printing. If you simply wanted to project your masterpiece onto a wall or into the air, there are plenty of augmented reality programs that you can plug your art into and have it be seen through a video camera. Or, if you wanted an actual sculpture, we have 3D printing or laser-carving that can sculpt your idea out of your preferred material, including plastics, wood, and metal. Either way, your digital art can be transferred to our world.

The advancement of art into the twenty-first century is exciting and ever-changing. While traditional art, including physical sculpting, will never go away, there are some wonderful advancements that can enhance the art process to make it more cost and time efficient. From defying the laws of gravity by providing new ways to experiment with objects, to cutting costs in space and materials, to cutting time by trying new ideas and scrapping the ones that don’t work, to working with the latest advancements to enhance your artistic talents, technology can help you be quicker, faster, better, and smarter with future sculpting.