The presentation of DOG OF ZONE that I prepared for SIGGRAPH 2020 Art Gallery is available online. It’s a 14 minutes long video that shows the interactive projection itself, explains how it works, talks about the background behind the idea and covers the process that I designed for crafting all the visual content. If you are interested in what DOG OF ZONE is exactly and want to know how it works or how it was created - this is a video for you.
Dog of Zone - 9 years, PhD and Siggraph 2020 /
The edited recording of The Dog of Zone (2019) interactive projection.
On March 7th, 2019 I finally defended my thesis and received PhD degree in Fine Arts from Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland. It was almost 9 years long journey since I passed the initial doctoral studies exams in mid 2010.
DOG OF ZONE is a practice based PhD. The practical part is the interactive projection, the dissertation is titled “DOG OF ZONE. Gesture in digital interactive environment”. The project is mainly about finding a means of digital expression that draws from abstract expressionism (in particular from Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell) and to do it using both traditional medium (drawing) as well modern digital ones (computer animation and programming). I’m attracted to traditional mediums and workflows as well as modern means of expression (such as programming) so this project was an attempt to fuse all of the above in one, coherent form.
When I was starting the project I just wanted to broaden my horizons and explore personal interests concerning art, animation and programming. I didn’t think much beyond that. I worked a lot in the animation industry at the time and I felt I got myself into a narrow corner. I did not want to stay there, it was simply not enough. I started developing initial DOGS OF ZONE graphics between commercial projects. This was towards end of 2009. Around the same time I was encouraged to pitch DOG OF ZONE as PhD thesis by my former professors from Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. I went with it since I thought that having this project as formal one, with requirements and deadlines would help me in pursuing it to the end.
It certainly worked that way… I was close or on the edge of dropping it many, many times. I remember especially one moment in January 2017. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was bound by doctoral requirements I would have definitely dropped it then. Today I’m obviously glad that I fought through it. The whole experience turned out to be pivotal one and helped me in understanding myself and my interests in art, animation and computer graphics much better.
Now, the circle is complete. Today is the starting date for Siggraph 2020 - the most important conference about computer graphics that’s been there every year since the dawn of this field and DOG OF ZONE is part of its Art Gallery program. I couldn’t be more proud.
As you might have guessed, Siggraph is an online event this year. Unfortunately, it’s hard to present DOG OF ZONE online since it cannot be shown fully unless you experience it directly within the exhibition space. It doesn’t help that it’s troublesome to record proper video of the running projection too. The animation can be fast paced and quite stroboscopic with lots of sudden changes in brightness and that is challenging for cameras. I still hope I will be able to exhibit this work in real space but I’ve also started working on a “conversion” in VR which, I have to say, turns out to be quite close approximation of the real experience.
My Siggraph presentation will give a little bit of background and then show some behind the scenes of DOG OF ZONE but at some point I would also like to translate parts of the dissertation into English and publish it online. Siggraph presentation itself will go public once the event is over so look out for it in a few weeks.
Universal One II /
Universal One II
ink, acrylics on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2020
Second painting under the “Universal One” title so I guess it makes it series now!
The first painting sort of “happened” meaning I did not know what the end result would be. In fact, there were probably at least 2 other paintings underneath before it turned into the piece that it is now. With second painting I wanted to replicate the process from the first one so I could turn it into a workflow that can be used in future work.
The thing was I didn’t really remember how I came about the initial acrylic layers, especially that first layers were tightly coupled with previous work that was underneath first Universal One. Second painting started from clean canvas and I did not go through turmoils of changing ideas or composition - which is rather rare in my work. As a result of this the initial acrylics layers were too detailed, they already included a fair amount of shading. I also began inking with acrylic ink (Liquitex) and it quickly turned out that it was not going to work well. As I suspected, acrylics ink is too fluid and its black level isn’t anywhere near shellac based ink. So that was it for staying within acrylic media, I decided to keep using shellac ink and the painting had to be in mixed media technique again.
In the end, although I’m very happy with the result, I have a feeling that I “over engineered” second Universal One a bit and will most likely try more loose approach the next time.
Universal One /
Universal One, 2019
acrylics, ink on canvas, 120x100 cm
This year has been pretty much all programming for me so I had to do at least a little bit of traditional work in the end! The painting above is an experiment on a theme that I’ve been trying to approach for quite a while now - human head. I think I found the way or at least a starting point with this painting. If you are computer graphics nerd then I think it’s pretty easy to work out where the visual concept is coming from.
The painting is using mixed media technique, acrylics and ink on canvas. So maybe it’s more drawing then a painting. Whites are painted using Platinium White. This makes for a very nice contrast between matte, grey background and the head which has rather shiny surface with deep blacks. This quality is sadly lost on a photo. I think the painting looks better live, although I’m a bit afraid some very subtle differences in blacks will get lost after puting varnish coat on top.
The decision to use ink was rather spontaneous but I certainly like this technique and would like to develop it further. It allows me to mix the best of painting techniques - broad, quick strokes with the best of drawing ones - very fine and precise lines and details.
Now back to programming…
Auto Character System 3 Preview /
This is something I have been waiting for a long, long time. Auto Character System 3 is a software development project that I have been planning for years and working on for more then 2 by now. It’s a new version of Auto Character Setup, my character rigging and animation toolset for MODO - a digital content creation application from Foundry.
I don’t know why but I always found it very hard to animate something in digital environment without having my own tools for that purpose, however small they would be. I used to develop Auto Character Setup for Newtek Lightwave, back in early 2000’s (there were 4 releases between 2000 and 2002 if I recall correctly). The development was triggered by the issues I had with using Lightwave for animating characters for my REF short film.
Likewise, when I started working on animation for my PhD thesis in 2011 I started developing tools for MODO, the application I chose for all the CG work in the project. As a result of this I released first version of Auto Character Setup for MODO in 2013, followed by second version in 2015.
Now I’m well into the development cycle of the 3rd version, far enough that I’m finally confident I can share a little bit of information about the project publicly. It’s a 3rd version but it’s an entirely new software really, it is being written from scratch. I’m putting all my experience into this work, both as a programmer and as an artist. I hope it will show.
You can watch preview of the product on a new website dedicated to ACS3:
https://www.autocharactersystem.com
There will be more content added to Development Blog section in coming weeks and months so if character animation is your thing - check back the website from time to time!
Mutog asset provided by Snapshot Games, rigged with Auto Character System 3.