cold pursuit

[egypturnash]

I'm still not sure if I like Expression or not. I've gone through making an entire image with it; this is a good way to find out all the little quirks and annoyances. There are a bunch of things that it does that it doesn't seem to do all the way - for instance, you can apply a texture to an object, but it's all or nothing; you can't take an aggressive texture and apply it at 20% for a subtle depth.

At any rate, here's the painting. It suffers a little from the 'oooh, what does this button do?' effect that one's first few pieces with a new tool always do, but I think it's definitely in my own idiom.


"Cold Pursuit"

bandwidth: deviantart
[addendum: dA page link; they seem to block LJ embedding nowadays.]

There're some problems with it, but it's not bad for my first attempts with an unfamiliar tool. A lot of the shapes are made with b-splines instead of the Bezier curves that AI's pen tool creates, just because I can. Also because Expression's pen tool is not graced with the beautiful subtleties of AI's pen tool - you can't go back and tweak a point in a line you're in the middle of creating.

The original rough is here.

I put it up on Illustratorworld, but did not mention the fact that it's not done in AI. They've officially gone AI-only for new files, but I will choose to claim that I forgot it was starting this month.

My main problem with Expression is that it eats up huge chunks of memory. This means that switching between it and other programs can cause very noticeable delays in the system, as everything gets swapped in and out. I may have to experiment with things like lower resolution rough scans. But on the other hand, I just realized that its 'effect lines' are probably perfect for all the drifts of rain that will appear in almost every exterior shot in Drowning City... Hopefully I'll manage to do another experimental piece before the trial period expires.

Comments

Ooooooooh

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

Lookit that! Now I want a copy. Good job on this picture ^_^

Re: Ooooooooh

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Of the program, or the picture? *grin*

Yes :^)

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

i like the "gallery" section on the program's site.. those zebras are cute!
and the lounging feline.. and the gorilla.. and so on..

hmmm $160 is not chump change, though :^P

and i haven't even opened the box with my digital tablet, yet.
i should do that before trying this out.. i may not even like using it!

thanks for the link and the lovely work..

Re: Yes :^)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's nothing compared to a full-price copy of Photoshop! And certainly something to sneeze at compared to Illustrator.

You have a tablet and you're not using it? You, dear sir, are a masochist! Even when I'm just pulling points out in AI, the tablet is a lot more fluid and usable than the mouse.

*splays ears sheepishly*

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

i have to find it first.. it's somewhere.. in the apartment.. under everything.

Re: *splays ears sheepishly*

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I'm betting you won't like the tablet. :"D

-mikey

Re: *splays ears sheepishly*

[mandrill.livejournal.com]

I own TWO Wacom tablets and never use them. I never could get the hang of drawing with the tablet and looking at the screen. Part of the problem is the tablet surface seems too slick for me and the pen never goes where I want it to go. I also enjoy pushing real life media such as pastel and paint around too much. And besides, I need tangible art objects (like pantings and drawings) to sell to clients. ;=)

I do love the textures in Peggy's drawing though. Very dynamic and interesting composition. Great muted colors too. Is Expression an Illustrator Plug-in or something?

Re: *splays ears sheepishly*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's a different program entirely. It's got much the same relationship to AI that Painter does to Photoshop - they both make images with the same underlying techniques, but one focuses on mimicking the effects of real media. Or of unreal media, if you take the features made with real media effects in mind and start playing around with the knobs.

[mutleyjames.livejournal.com]

Wow, Peg.
It floats my boat for a couple of reasons - one being that there is an obvious difference to your art because of the program - whilst still being intrinsically your art, two because it's rough and clean which I absolutely j'adore.
Yay.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

*nod* I think my experimentation with Painter and with Expression have proved without a doubt that I haven't the faintest damned interest in using 'natural media' programs to make complex, detailed paintings - instead, I want to use them to give my work an appearance of having been thrown together energetically, to contrast the inhuman precision of my AI stuff.

Said appearance being largely an illusion, of course - I mean, not only were there a lot of cases where I'd lay down a stroke, undo, and try again until it worked, like any digital artist, but I was even able to take a stroke that had the right shape but the wrong variance of weights, and edit the weight curve to make it taper precisely the way I wanted. Woo.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

There's some really interesting textural elements going on here, perhaps the very reasons you spoke of for trying the program in the first place. There's definitely a more organic feeling than in flat AI which to my eye is a good thing. Keep us posted on the experiments.

Oh, I suppose that a full copy is prohibitively expensive?

-T'

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the possibility of adding texture to my stuff without having to sully my art with the touch of pixels is what appeals to me about Expression.

Surprisingly enough, a full copy is only $150!

[tabriscoonz.livejournal.com]

I really like it(your picture), and I'm wicked curious to play with the program... not that I don't have my plate full trying to make AI work for me.

How Huge are Huge chunks? My computer is almost 5 yrs old and just a few days ago it started up with it's binary arthritis. Getting a bit shakey when trying to run more than 2 programs at the same time. Based on past comments from you and my friend Jym, if it dies I might switch over to a Mac... just a mac with a tower so I still have something to blame when it doesn't work right.... Blaming a monitor just seems silly.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, system reporting tools said it was eating up 21% of available memory or so. I'm not sure how much it was using in terms of raw memory, but it was clearly using a lot - switching between Expression, the muck client, the web browser, the instant messenger and the mp3 player would very often invoke several seconds of staring at the spinning cursor. I have 320 megs of physical memory, and Expression was pretty clearly occupying all of it when it was in the foreground.

It's nowhere near as heavy as trying to do the same stuff in Painter at 300dpi would be, but it still eats up a lot more resources than AI.

A lot of concepts from AI transfer over. Essentially, Expression is AI with much more powerful art brushes.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I love those squigglies in the upper left. Looks like you're having fun. My problem with the 'real media' brushes is making them look like they fit in, but you seem to have no problem with that. Neat.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The squigglies are just a group of 'effect lines'. I put the 'squiggles' brush on them and made them taper, then played around with the random clustering control.

I didn't have to draw a single one of them.

My essential approach to this was 'fill in shapes the usual way, then shade with painterly strokes instead of gradients'. Well, except for the deliberately nonsensical shadow she's casting on the ground.

[ghostangel.livejournal.com]

Wow! Thats more coherent than what I've come up with so far. I can't seem to make it look painterly at all. :X So I've stuck with some of the less brush-like brushes to make things. Still not gotten the hang of colouring things in, especially since the things I draw aren't closed shapes...

[draca-serpens.livejournal.com]

Holy crumbcake! Look at the size of that forearm!