RE: For the artists: RIP

[Christian Darkin <christian@darkin.demon.co.uk>]

Hi
I'd have to say (as a digital artist) that there's a few big advantages
to working digitally.  

I'd bet that nobody's ever produced a piece of artwork of any note
without thinking they'd like to have done something a little differently
if they'd had the chance, and digital work is infinitely editable.  

It's absolutely perfect for science illustration because however well
you've done your research, you can't discount doing a correction.  This
doesn't mean you're a prisoner of the committee approach (it can
certainly ruin your work if you make every adjustment that anybody ever
suggests).  However, it does mean that if you need to stretch the jaw by
a couple of inches, or change the position of the knee, or the thickness
of the fur then you can do it - and the improvement will show up in
every image you produce from any angle and in any future work.

This saves time, and saved time can be spent on better backgrounds, more
research and stronger images.  

Of course, time is always the problem and you frequently have to submit
work that you'd ideally spend a lot more effort on.  The criticism of 3d
art has a lot to do with the fact that it's allowed publications with
very limited time and budget to get decent results which they wouldn't
get with traditional art.  However, these results then get compared with
WWD simply because they're 3d - even though one took 6 months and cost 6
million and the other had a budget of a couple of hundred dollars and
had to be completed the day after it was commissioned.

You wouldn't write off oils as a medium because you didn't like the
style or working practice of one particular artist would you?


Christian Darkin
www.darkin.demon.co.uk/prehist