Creating Art on the Computer

One of the major loves of my life has always been art. My second grade teacher on my report card put a note to my parents to “take a look at her art work!” For much of my life my favorite mediums were pen and ink and acrylic paints. My art styles went from the intricate etchings of the dahlia to the geometric abstracts of “The City in A Minor.” Life, however, has a way of interfering in the joys you experience. In my case the family curse of arthritis hit early in life. Finally I was forced to admit that it wasn’t going to be possible for me to hold the ink pens or brushes for the hours that it took to get the work to where I wanted it to be.

In the throes of a failing marriage my ex suggested I try the art on the computer. I was reluctant at this point because the programs were still in the primitive state. After five years of put downs my confidence ways at it lowest ebb but I was still curious to see if I could try this new medium. My first excursions were with the space theme of my beloved astronomy. I was in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time and my friend Colleen suggested I bring some examples of my art work to the Baycon science fiction convention. She forced me to go over to the head of the Artist’s Colony, professional artist and cartoonist, Dann Lopez. I was scared to death to have this professional look at my art but his first words gave me back my confidence. He told me “I want you in my next Artist’s Colony.” From that point on he became my mentor and being able to actually sell my art work gave me the thrill of a life time. Dann told the Artist Guest of Honor at his convention a couple of years later, Frank Lurz, that he wanted him to look at my art. Frank was really tired and told me to hurry and get the art. I ran to my room and snatched up my art portfolio and got back as quickly as I could. I don’t think I remembered to breath as I watched his face as he flipped through my work. I could see the fatigue leaving his face and he finally looked up and gave me a smile. He told me, “Your work is deceptively simple but as I look at it I can see the layers of depth in it. It is fantastic.” I was practically in tears when I told Dann who gave me big hug. He knew that one of my favorite artists would like my work.

I started out using Bryce 2.0, Painter 5.5, and Poser 3.0. Poser had my human and animal figures, Bryce was the workhorse that did all the backgrounds, and Painter was my special effects and touch up medium. I was able to get 3D mesh models of buildings and other decorations on line. I am currently still using the Painter 5.5 because the newer versions are out of my price range and a couple of the old special effects are missing from the newer model. My Bryce is up to the 6.1 and Poser is at 6.0. I find that I am not using Poser much at all since I discovered DAZ for the people and animals. DAZ also has the luxury of constantly updating and their main characters are free. I can now do children of all ages. There is a wealth of costumes and hair styles to go with the figures. The animals are getting more and more realistic and I can pose them in so many ways. Turbo Squid and 3Dvia are my main source for other models now. Some of them are free and some you pay for.

My first stop is usually DAZ if there are going to be people or animals in the picture. In the above updated picture the model is DAZ’s Victoria. I’ll pull Vicki into the grid. I’ll then put on one of the hair styles I want for her. In poses and materials I’ll choose the hair color or one of the variations in styles for the hair. I’ll then decide what she is going to wear and let me tell you this little lady is a clothes horse. I am constantly finding new styles and patterns for her clothes as my checkbook shows in the purchases to DAZ. I finally ended up just subscribing to DAZ for a monthly fee so that I could take advantage of the low prices for Premium members. The clothes pieces go on separately and like the hair I will go to the textures and materials and decide which color and patterns I want for her. One of the quirks of DAZ is that everything from hair to clothes has to be “linked” to the model in order for them to fit. Once the hair and clothes are on I will go to the poses and decide how the model will look. There are some set poses that I use as a starting point. You can go to the sidebar and adjust every part of the body to refine the poses. I also found that with the dresses you have to adjust them to fit to the poses. DAZ for some reason doesn’t think it is necessary for all the clothes to match the poses. I then save the finished work as a DAZ scene in case I want to rework the model later on. I then export the object as an OBJ model so that I can pull it into Bryce. The animal models are worked the same way. I have to admit that the Chinese Dragon is my current favorite and they have some great color schemes and poses for him.

The next place I go is Bryce. Bryce has really improved since that first version I used. I think the biggest improvement has been the different sky textures and the trees. The original trees were primitive at best. Now you can pick the style of tree, the leaves, the scale of the leaves, the number of leaves, the trunk and branch sizes, where the branches start and end and the number of segments you have for the branches. You can create a tree that looks very real. They also have Boolean objects that you can put together and create new shapes and buildings. The cool feature of this is that you can make one piece positive and the other negative and when you group them together the negative object will carve into the positive object. You also have terrains to create your land masses. These objects can be edited to smooth, rough up, carve, erode, etc. You can literally create the kind of land you want and apply different textures to it. You have a water plane and cloud plane available to use also. The skies are still the main problem in Bryce. The sun can be turned so that it can shine from up, down, left or right but it still can’t be moved from the back of the picture position. It is still stuck in the back. Fortunately you have the movable light sources that can be used to fill in the foreground features so that you can see the details. But the sky does have some fun aspects. You can change the color of the sun and clouds. You can alter the way the clouds look. You can add as many or few stars as you want. You can add the moon in the night time sky.

In the above two pictures you can see the changes that were made in both DAZ and Bryce. The one thing I love about computer art is that as things improve I can go back and change my pictures to take advantage of the changes. The lady has changed from the Poser model to the DAZ model. I had so many new hair styles and clothes to choose from on DAZ. I also had new models for cats and horses so I decided to incorporate them into my new picture. I discovered some tutorials on line from a British Bryce artist, Peter Sharpe, who showed me how to do the lakes and rivers. He also has tutorial of planets and rings, waterfalls, waves, craters, galactic backgrounds, etc. Peter, like many artists in the computer field, freely shares what he has learned and in the process has taught a lot of artists. I am very grateful to these artists for their willingness to teach.

On the original lake I had just used the oval and placed it on the ground with a water texture. In the new picture I used the technique of making the ground positive and doing a lattice that intersects the ground. You use the same texture on both but the lattice is made negative. The water plane is below the ground level but the negative lattice creates the “hole” that lets the water show through as a lake. By adjusting the size and shape of the lattice you can create a lake or a river.

The trick on the planet is the attribute box. I pull the planet way out so that it actually goes behind the cloud plane on the sky texture. That way the planet is behind the rainbow texture. I have used in other pictures the cloud plane that goes in front of a planet. The atmospheric textures can add some wonderful effects when I am doing pictures based on another planet or in my space pictures. The atmospherics can also be added to terrains that I put in the water to make waves.

One of the other techniques that Bryce has is making planes or objects either surface or volumetric. These show up most readily on my space pictures with the planets. The surface texture just goes outside of the object. Volumetric goes through the whole object and can be made fuzzy for gas planets. It will also make the water or clouds thicker or thinner depending on the tweaks you do to the levels.

A trick I use frequently is matching the x, y, z points together to get objects where I need them to be. For example in the above picture I needed light on Vickie’s face and I started the light source the same place she was and moved it until the light hit her face properly. I also used the attribute box to put the cat and Vickie on the boardwalk. I’ve used it to put objects in the models hand or flames in the dragon’s mouth.

It seems like daily that there are new products and models out there for the graphic artist. It has been a blessing for me that computer art work has come into existence at the time that arthritis took away my ability to do the type of art work that I had been doing since early childhood. I think my life would be very sad now if I didn’t have my art. Art has always been my solace in times of trouble. It is a joy for me to be able to create. For me art is made to be shared and I love the feedback from people who have looked at my art and loved it. I owe a great deal to my mentor Dann Lopez for taking someone who had lost her confidence and giving it back and allowing me to grow as an artist and a person. Thanks Dann. You can find my art on my website at http://artbymichelewilson.com/art.htm