From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!pauline Newsgroups: net.graphics Title: Re: art and c.g. Article-I.D.: cornell.3990 Posted: Mon Feb 14 13:36:47 1983 Received: Fri Feb 18 07:24:47 1983 Here's a quote from the Aug/Sep 1982 issue of "Business Screen", a magazine dealing with the more artsy side of c.g., about the cover of that issue: "Our cover is an attempt to not only attract the consumer by an intriguing piece of fine arts but to trick them into thinking that it was generated by a computer when in fact it was generated by a combination of traditional special effects." spoken by Mario Kamberg, Vice President and Creative Director for North Hollywood based special effects co., Silver Cloud Productions Later on, the article reads, "But there has been an ironic turnaround in the use of computer generated animation.... Today computers can generate a variety of textures and elements but those same elements can still be executed via old fashioned motion control and even bottom lit cel flopping." So one possible answer as to why many quality artists may not be thrilled about c.g. is that its not producing anything that is *really* new. We're teaching a new dog a lot of old tricks. I'm certainly not denying that c.g. has been a wonderful time saver in a lot of areas, but has anyone ever seen a piece of computer generated art that couldn't be done by a patient human being (or several) with more traditional art techniques? An old dog is always more comfortable to be around. But even if there are marvellous user friendly packages, its also a lot of trouble and expense getting access to a c.g. facility. We may be at the stage where we have to "teach" the computer all the old tricks so that we can better understand what its capable of. Is it time to move on? Seems to me, if you want to attract more and/or better artists to the field, you have to make it worth their while. Emphasize something that the computer can do and that nothing else can. changing my sign-off to, pyt Just an aside: Computer graphics is the computer science field I enjoy most, but for me, nothing beats being able to grab my watercolors and pencils and go outside on a warm and sunny day.