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