‘Coffee at Gio Vintage’ - Daily Sketch

Lunch time today was spent having a cappuccino and biscotto. Luckily Gio Vintage (a great little vintage shop in Caloundra) had tables in the courtyard covered with paper and a supply of crayons. So after missing a few days of sketching as a result of travelling to the beautiful tropical North Queensland, I got to work on a quick 5 minute sketch. This was the result.

I highly recommend their coffee and biscotti I’m thinking it’s the best I’ve had so far in this part of town.

I decided a month ago that I should commit to a daily sketch or at least one every second day. This, I’m told, would be a great exercise in improving and developing drawing and observation skills - a good healthy regime for anybody in visual arts or design. I’m hoping some future sketches will lead to inspiration for developing characters or a specific body of work like Kevin Cornell’s Bearskinrug.

So to start, here is a recent quick sketch of…my foot.

This is another quick sketch from my journal that I found it a few days ago. Although this is an anthropomorphic rabbit, the traits and attitude of the character was probably influenced by a few people I went to school with - it’s amazing to think it was 17 years ago! Thought It might be fun to do a digital paint version. Will be up next week.

Knowmore: House of Commons‘ was on show from the Saturday 21st of February 2009 to Sunday 24 May 2009 at the State Library of Queensland. It received positive feedback from the large amount of traffic that visited it while it was in the Infozone.

Keith Armstrong also drew a good crowd for his artists talk on the development of our work, which was held on Friday 6 March at the State Library. Keith will be talking again at the IDEAS Festival 2009 in the artscience@theinterface 2009 symposium.

Symbol of stillness - Stuart Lawson

The ‘Knowmore: House of Commons‘ interactive installation officially wrapped up production last week 30 January 2009.

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all involved for a great experience - Keith Armstrong, Chris Barker, Darren Pack and Luke Lickfold. The project was also supported by The Australia
Council, Arts Queensland, QUT Creative Industries and e2evisuals.

The first showing of the installation will be held at the State Library of Queensland from Sat 21 Feb 09 – Sun 24 May 09, on Level 1 in the Infozone. Entry is Free.

If you would like more information about the project and please feel free to contact me.

Symbol of stillness - Stuart Lawson

The image above - Symbol of stillness - is a still from a small concept animation of one of the items a participant might have seen emerging from the depths of the table as they spun its surface and traversed its perimeter. I say ‘might have seen’, because it doesn’t really fit in with the existing imagery in that part of the work. With a bit of tweaking and finessing, this abstract image (along with some other concepts not yet posted), may appear in the final act/section of the work - which is ultimately better suited to host this type of visual treatment.

Where we are so far…

There are 5 areas around the table in which interaction can take place. The floor pads that react to movement and the specially engineered spinning table-top have been up and running for the past few months - which has allowed us to test and experiment with the imagery, sound and interaction progressively as we experience the work in a way that a participant might.

At the moment we are busy:

• Finalising the initial imagery for each section of the table (dependent on user testing). Only two sections remain and are likely to be done in the next week.
• Tweaking and debugging the audio environment - which is sounding fabulous!
• Integrating and debugging interaction layers in 3D engine.
• Building a shroud to surround the installation, allowing less light and sound interference from surroundings.
• Constructing a transport cradle for the table.

Testing phase approaching.

Stage 1 of the Knowmore project is creeping closer to the user testing phase. We have a showing in Brisbane in February 2009, which isn’t too far away, so everyone in the team is prioritising items to complete on their to-do list.

Once we can have the prototype ready with most of the media in place, we can grab a few people and have them experience the work.

Imagine if the installation was to present itself in ways that didn’t engage your attention and interest. You would move on to something else, right? I know I would! Then we (the artists) can pretty much expect participants to have little or no comprehension of the concepts dwelling within the work, and any feasibility or validity of the message attempting to be communicated is undone. No amount of introductory or explanatory rhetoric can save a bad piece of art. People won’t want to see it and curators won’t want to show it. Physical components, hardware, software, artist fees and research - as well as reputations - are too costly to afford a failure. Hence, feedback and often exhaustive testing for interactive installation art of this caliber is essential.

Testing here we come….

Cactus Larry - Digital painting. Copyright Stuart Lawson

Introducing Cactus Larry. He’s a character in a short animation I thought up back in 2002. I’ve embarked on bringing that animation to life - starting with this digitally painted character design I did two days ago…

Click here to see Larry.

Click here to see a close-up version.

Larry started life as a sketch - seen here - and was used as a reference for the final painting. I opted for a painterly treatment - a natural media visual approach - showing the brush strokes and texture. This style of rendering isn’t the intended overall look for the animation, however it might be quite visually appealing. If anything, it might be worthwhile trying simulate this style in the final animation to avoid the typical 3D rendered look that many animations tend to have.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff study

Another natural media exercise. This one involves examining other artists techniques and using them to apply different rendering possibilities that you can apply to your own work. Lessons learnt here, and with any art exercise, crossover into the digital domain; especially the principles of colour, general composition and overall aesthetic appearance. I really recommend giving it a try, especially if you are a designer who has never tried anything other than digital media.

The image above is an acrylic study of expressionist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s painting.

It was rendered using a dry brush technique applied with swift strokes, and a palette knife to give it a more textured look (see the tree in the top left corner as an example).

Studio Shot - 2006 Annual report cover

Back in 2006 I created a small Photoshop image to showcase document designs as if they were taken in a studio. I’m giving the template away for FREE!

It was first used to create a mock-up studio shot of an annual report cover design I did. Initially I didn’t want to send just a A4 cover mock-up, but felt it needed to be put it into some sort of context. Taking that idea a little further, I decided to make it a more glamorous context; as if it was a product shot photographed in a studio. (click here or pic above to see larger version).

But what if there was a change to the cover design? I didn’t want to have to go to all that trouble only to have to redo it all over again. So I decided it would need to be able to be updatedable and reusable. That’s where Photoshop’s ‘Smart Objects’ came in quite handy.

As most Photoshop users will know, using ‘Smart Objects’ allows you to leave any changes like colour adjustments or transformations you make to the object in tact while still being able to edit the original. This template created with ‘Smart Objects’ allows you to do just that.

Here it is for you to use freely, but credit would be appreciated ;).

‘Studio Shot’ Photoshop CS3 file - studioshot.zip (.zip 316kb)

Instructions
To edit the cover image

• Double click the layer named ‘Cover’ (Smart Object) in the layers panel. a new window should open with the cover design for you to edit.
• Once you have made changes to the ‘Cover’ Smart Object, close that file and save changes.
• You should see the cover and reflection update automatically in the final comp.

If you have any suggestions or requests please feel free to comment. - Stu

Knowmore - stage 1. Image of table being tested in production meeting

What is Knowmore?

Knowmore is an interactive installation (or immersive kinetic artwork) - it is best described by Keith Armstrong as:

“… a tabletop interactive work where the evolution of the images projected upon its top surface and spatial soundscape depends upon both how participants spin the table and how they move around it. Imagery projected onto a round table, can be interacted with by standing in various areas around the table and spinning its surface at varying speeds or direction.”

The artists involved are:

• Keith Armstrong (Artistic Director)
• Chris Barker (Co-director/3D Designer)
• Darren Pack (3D Engine Programming)
• Stuart Lawson (Visual Design)

The ideas present in Knowmore look at the impact of our actions upon a multitude of ecological systems. The work is a subtle metaphor that can be applied to our individual lives and to humanity as a whole.

Knowmore’s universal themes of causality and ecology are axiomatic to some cultures, but it suggests many of us living modern life styles have lost this understanding, become disconnected. This may be due to various reasons, but two of these are apparent in the work ( in stage 1… so far ):

1. Control
   A condition of humanity is our need for ownership and control. We are blinded by the implications of our actions in the establishment of control structures to gain the things we want; and sometimes if we do see the implications, we often don’t care anyway. However, for those who care: how do you counteract the existing controlling forces and what measure of force do you counter it with without creating an imbalance or additional complications?

2. Knowledge
   A condition of our humanity is curiosity and a hunger for knowledge.  To better understand things in our world and how they work, we categorise them into structures or constructs . We develop taxonomies and classifications for almost everything in our world. However, not every aspect of the things we try to classify is apparent at first. Sometimes we fail to recognise the similarities between separate entities/classifications.  This can lead to ambiguity of an entity’s purpose in relation to the whole in which it exists.  Thus, in seeking to know more about something we sometimes end up knowing less.

Project updates to follow.