The Digital Art Period

The Digital Art period, we're in it. Starting with the Renaissance, my graphic design history class has been taking a look at all the movements in art, including typography, and we are coming to the end of the line, the Digital Art era. I actually have to write a presentation on the digital style of designers today, so this blog is sort of a warm up for that.

I really just want to showcase some pieces for this blog that are examples of some of the best digital art I could find on a website that I frequent, and hope to upload some of my work to one day, CG Hub. Ever since I decided I wanted to follow a career in art, I knew that I would have move away from the pencil and paper that I have always used in the past, and move on to a graphics tablet with my lines now being produced in a program, like Adobe Photoshop. These artists show exactly what can be done on a computer nowadays.

Sure, it may look like some of the art I'm show you is painted, but I assure you, it was all done on a computer, and that's beauty of it all. What can be created on a computer today is vastly superior to what could be done on a canvas, and without the mess.

If anyone would want to have the talent to create work such as the pieces in this blog, I advise you chain yourself to your desk and use Photoshop for the next several years.







Almost everything I've shown in this blog has been two dimensional work, but there is another thing artists today can do on a computer that could be considered art, and that's 3D animation. I have included one piece in this blog that has been done in 3D. It's Poison Ivy from Batman and you don't typically see 3D models that look so good, unless you're into this sort of thing.

This semester I have come to really appreciate 3D art so much that I have been seriously considering changing my major to the Digital Media program. When I look at work like this, on the left, it inspires me to learn to make something similar. 

I leave you with some art from the Killzone franchise, a video game that I wish I used to play a while ago. I'm going to refrain from going into how video games can be construed as art nowadays and will save that for a later blog this semester.

FIN

Another Banksy Blog

This isn't the first one, and it won't be the last Banksy blog either. When looking for images of the artist's work, I stumbled upon tons or blog posts dedicated to the graffiti artist, political activist, painter, and film director from Bristol, England. Banksy even has a Wikipedia entry and his work can be found all over the world.

The messages he gets across with his stencils and spray paint are interesting to say the least, there is a range from beautiful to political with a touch of humorous at the same time. There is also a lot of work out there from Banksy. One could say he is prolific, and it goes beyond that as well, his style is copied and emulated all over.

Every time I look at Banksy's artwork, I tell myself I could do that, or I would like to try to do that, but then I chicken out. I think I will have to just be content with just appreciating his art, thinking about it and using his work as an influence. 

8 bit Fonts

When I was a kid (I'm old now) this typeface became very familiar to me. It was so popular with people in my age group, because we all played video games and this font was used in practically every game ever published between a certain time range, somewhere from about the late 80s into the early 90s. The console systems back then were 8-bit, meaning they all ran on 8-bit microprocessors, and their limited memory, combined with low computing ability, produced the above typeface we all became so familiar with. I remember some of the early computers used type like this as well, back when the monitor colors used to be black and green only. I told you I'm old. I'm very fond of this type and every time I see it, I become nostalgic. I can recall a time when I used to break down the letters on a piece of paper and figured out how little squares and rectangles could make up any given letter or number. As time went on and the systems became more advanced, these letters became obsolete, as more rounded letters were generated by our computers.

Take a look at some of the video game industry's most popular franchises' titles. I think it's really rad how the industry has maintained creating cutting edge typefaces for titles. Do you have a favorite font among these video game titles? If you do, how come you like a certain title over another? If you can answer that question, you may have gained some insight into your own personal aesthetics.













Some of the titles on the right are the same as in the 
image above, but I chose to use the image on the right, 
because the images were similar and that creates a 
sort of unity into the design of this particular blog post.
See, you just gained some insight into some of my
own personal aesthetics.





I'm going to leave you with one more typeface that I thought was interesting and reminded me of video game type as well. There is one thing about the font that bothers me, and that is that it's sort of hard to read, and the number one rule in typography is readability. You have to be able to easily read something for it to become an effective type that will be used by other people. You can get away with barely legible type if using a font as display type, or a headline sometimes, but you wouldn't be able to print a book with some new, hip font that every is drooling over at the time, but can barely be read. That's why I use Helvetica nowadays when typing out this blog. I think it's really easy to read, and I'm tired of serifs.

FIN