Speed painting

Speed Painting

Whenever I saw a painting or a portrait, I used to think of a very well-known artist standing in front of a canvas with a paintbrush in hand with a wide assortment of colors and paintbrushes of various sizes, and I think that is how people in our post-modern society think when they see a painting. One thing people never think about is the process that the artist took to make his work of art. Some artist may go to great lengths just to see their dreams realized on canvas and others take a completely different approach. Some artists use completely unorthodox methods to create their art.

One way they do this is by using technology to mimic the aesthetics of old paintings.

 "Halo" speed painting

"Killzone 2" speed painting

This interests me because this artwork was created using only the paint brush tool in Adobe Photoshop and the fact this it was purely conceptual- the artist did not use a picture as a guideline of how everything should look. What amazes me is that it was created using only the paintbrush tool and the fact that traditional painting techniques were perfectly executed using technology- this was something that was thought to be impossible to do. This also demonstrates the powers of Adobe Photoshop and ultimately bridged the gap between traditional artwork and modern day technology.

Gamers Against Bobby Kotick

“Gamers against Bobby Kotick”

About a year ago the whole gaming and internet community was set ablaze when they first heard of the drama between publisher Activision, and popular game developer Infinity Ward. The drama unfolds as a large number of Infinity Ward’s (IW) employees has filed a class-action lawsuit against the publisher for unpaid bonuses. The suit alleges that Activision breached their contract when the royalties were not paid for the huge success of Modern Warfare 2. Activision has paid part of the royalties but still owes IW with additional fees for punitive damage.

In fact, the online and gaming community is so distraught, that they formed a group on the popular social networking site Facebook. The group “Gamers against Bobby Kotick” was initially created for gamers to voice their opinion about Activision and the lawsuit itself. The group was set up because of some of the comments Kotick was quoted saying in multiple interviews. The main purpose of the group is to get the message across to Activision and many other companies that the gaming community is a very vocal one.

The gaming community is a very vocal community and its voice needs to be heard. The days of gamers mindlessly buying videogames are over, but it seems that Kotick is completely oblivious to this fact. The main reason why gamers are against his views is that Robert Kotick believes that gaming is a business and not a form of art and entertainment. Gamers feel that Kotick is bein completely unfair to them because gamers support companies like Activision and they expect to companies like Activision to support them back. Instead of support they receive quotes like this stated from Kotick himself  “when I first became CEO of Activison, my aim was to take all the fun out of making games” . After the huge success that was Modern Warfare 2, he was quoted saying “'if it were up to me I'd raise prices even higher”. With comments like these, how do you expect the gaming community to support you?

Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer, a German film score producer and composer, has composed music for over 100 films including movies like The Lion King, Inception, Sherlock Holmes, Megamind, and Rango. He is well known for integrating orchestral scores with electronic sounds and synthesizers He is head of the Film music division at Dreamworks studios and works with other composers through the company he founded, Remote Control Productions. Hans Zimmer has received various awards including: An Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Grammy Award for his musical score in The Lion King, he aslo received another Grammy Award for the musical score in the movie The Dark Knight, and another Golden Globe Award for the musical score in the movie The Galdiator. He is also known for composing the official soundtrack of the popular video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Composed by Hans Zimmer:

Pirates Of The Caribbean

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 OST "Endgame"

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 OST "The Enemy of my Enemy" 

The reason why his work interests me is because he is the first film music composer to integrate synthetic sound effects with orchestral music to create amazing musical scores that further develop the mood/tone of the movie and will better establish the mood the audience should be feeling. He also spends time researching and learning about the different genres of music depending on the setting, mood ant tone of the movie. For instance, while writing the music for the movie The last Samurai Zimmer travelled to Japan to do more research because he felt that he did not understand the genre enough to write a musical score. He was shocked when he was asked how he knew so much about Japanese music. It is clear that Hans Zimmer is willing to learn about different genres of music so he could write an effective musical score for the movie. Hans Zimmer is now considered as one of the greatest composers of film music.

Visual Effects Society

Visual Effects Society

Every year there are a number of different award shows commemorating the musical and cinematic achievements of the year. These are mainly award shows like The Grammys, The Oscars and The Juno Awards. However these award shows do not praise the art, instead they praise the most successful piece and completely forget about the artwork. The problem is that they fail to consider the design aspects and the underlying message the artist is trying to convey. Essentially, award shows are usually a popularity contest; the most popular and most successful artwork wins.
There are a few award shows that don’t follow this trend.

Visual Effects Society

The Visual Effects Society (VES) enriches and educates its members and members of the entertainment community through various domestic and international screening events and award shows. The VES represents the visual effects practitioners and aritists.

　Objectives
The VES strives to advance and promote the art and science of visual effects and to foster and strive for excellence and knowledge in all matters pertaining to visual effects, and for the purpose of bringing together those leaders and innovators in the field who have demonstrated a high standard of artistic and technical ability.

Visual Effects Society Awards Show 2011

　

Art in video games

Art In video games

There are different forms of art in videogames ranging from audio and musical compositions to video
and cinematography. There is another type of artwork from videogames: user created content. User created content can range from video clips, to machinima narratives and of course, user created screenshots. Community made screenshots can be a work of art and can be quite stunning if done properly.

I took these three screenshots in Halo: Reach using the in game theater mode to capture the stunning vistas and majestic skyboxes and sandboxes hidden in the campaign. I wanted to replicate the look of a painting but using a different tool to do so. My favorite picture is the third picture which I named “Forward unto Dawn” because this picture took the longest time to perfect. Getting a black and white effect without using any lighting effects was extremely difficult.

 Art in video games is not restricted to the music and visuals put in the game. Using the tools at my disposal in the game, I was able to create these three pictures that are similar to landscape
paintings. As long as you have the right tools and skills, anything can be made into art.

Controversial Ads

The Calvin Klein 2010 ad campaign

Sometimes ads can be quite controversial because of the content they display, the demographic or target audience it appeals to, or they might break the rules of Canadian Advertising Foundation (CAF). Most of the controversial ads have to deal with the gender portrayal guidelines. There are a lot of ads that either come close to or completely fail to comply with the gender portrayal guidelines.

Calvin Klein ads in particular.

The problem with these ads is that it seems to completely disregard the gender portrayal guidelines.
There is one ad in particular that I want to focus on.

Gender portrayal guidelines the ad breaks

• Authority: Ads must strive to provide an equal representation of women and men in roles of authority for the models in the ad, but this is not the case. It is clear that in no way or form power and authority is equal between the men and the woman in the ad. The woman is clearly outnumbered and is forced in a sexually submissive pose. One of the men in the ad is pulling on her hair to induce discomfort while another male is trying to “rape” her.
• Gender role stereotyping: Social and sexual interactions must portray woman and men as equals and must not reinforce stereotypes. However it seems that this rule is completely ignored because in the ad, males are the dominant characters because the outnumber the one female three to one and the female is clearly shown as submissive because she is not able to resist the encounter with the three males.
• Irrelevant associations: There is no clear connection between the ad; the actions in the ad and the product being marketed which is Calvin Klein jeans. The ad is sexually exploiting the woman’s sexuality by having her in a sexually submissive pose and the fact that despite her bra, she is completely naked.
• Sexual Harassment and Violence: Ads should avoid representing women as prey or objects of desire. This ad fails to comply with this rule. The cage in the background suggests that the woman is trapped and is being preyed upon by these three males. Violence is portrayed in this ad when the male on the right is exerting dominance over the women by pulling on her hair until she feels discomfort. The male in the middle exerts her dominance on the woman using brute force to get her to submit to his uncontrolled desires.

This ad was not banned from being displayed despite the amount of rules it breaks with the gender portrayal guidelines. Ads like this should be banned in Canada because of the target audience it appeals to (teenagers and young adults). Ads like these set a bad example for the target audience because it reinforces gender stereotypes and male dominance.

Advertisement

The Art in Advertisement

The modern day perception of art is misconstrued. People think that art is only found in museums and art galleries. What they do not realize is that different forms of art exist all around them in the form of Advertisements.

The average person is bombarded with over a thousand different advertisements per day which range from television commercials, to posters and billboards, to musical ads and jingles on the radio and even pop up ads on the Internet. So unless you isolate yourself from the world and the media, then you are constantly assaulted with advertisements. The purpose of the ad is to sell a service or a
product- and there is nothing wrong with that.

The problem is that nowadays people think that the ad only has one purpose, which is to sell something. We do not consider ads as a form of art because the purpose of the ad is to sell a service or product to people while the purpose of art is to provoke thought on the artist’s underlying message. When someone sees an ad, they consider buying the product in the ad, but they do not think about why the artist chose the symbols in the ad or why the artist chose the color scheme.

Another reason why people think ads are not art is because unlike art, an ad cannot change the world. People do not line up in a museum to see a poster. You would never expect to walk into an art gallery and see the movie poster of an upcoming movie. An ad cannot have the same impact on the world as the Mona Lisa did. This is why people think less of ads.

However, there was one very famous and well known ad that did have an impact on the
world. It was an ad by Robert Indiana.

And may parodies...

If an ad like Robert Indiana’s “Love” can inspire many parodies and can impact society in such an uplifting way, then why can’t a thirty second television commercial get the same recognition as a famous short film?

Halo: Reach live action commercial: "Deliver Hope" (from you tube)

And also why can’t a poster get the same recognition as painting in an art gallery?

Feb 23 2011- The Halo: Reach Soundtrack

Audio in Videogames

When it comes to artwork in videogames, most people think of the stunning visuals and the graphical content it has to offer and they tend to overlook the other major artwork: the audio. With the sophistication of modern games and computer generated visuals, no one seems to stop and think about the audio and to truly listen to it. But when you truly listen to it, you can discover another side of the game that you never knew.

The problem with society is that we are trapped in the mentality of thinking that art only pertains to visuals like performance and illustrations and has nothing to do with music and audio.

 Nowadays, composers are trying to prove to the rest of society that music is a form of artwork and that it should be respected and treated the same way a painting should be treated in a museum. One of the ways in which they are doing this is through videogames. An excellent example of this is the Halo: Reach Soundtrack written, composed and produced by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori.(released digitally on September 14, 2010)

Sample Music (from Youtube)

"Lone Wolf" Part 1-Lone Wolf Part one"

Lone Wolf" Part 2-Lone Wolf Part two"

Lone Wolf" Part 3-Lone Wolf Part three"

Overture"-Overture

"Tip of the Sphere"-Tip of the Sphere"

A Spartan will rise"-A Spartan will rise"

Uphill both ways remix"-Uphill both ways Remix

The reason why the Halo: Reach Soundtrack interested me is because I love music-especially instrumentals- and I also like to play video games. The Halo: Reach Soundtrack had the most well composed music out of all the video game soundtracks I have heard. My favorite 3 instrumentals are; “Tip of the Sphere”, “Overture” and “Lone Wolf part 2”. I feel that the Halo: Reach Soundtrack is an excellent example of composers trying to prove to society that music is truly another art form because this music appeals to a vast community of not just gamers, but also to people that share the same love of music as I do. Video Games Live is an actual concert where different musical compositions from video games are performed live on stage by an orchestra- like a concert. So far, this is the first real recognition of music from video games as an artwork that is to be enjoyed by its respected fans.

Hopefully in the future, musical compositions will get the same recognition as visual artworks do.