Two Killer Tips for Mastering Any Software

RTFM. Please.

At different stages in the career I've been paid for working in Houdini, Nuke, 3DSMax, XSI, Fusion, Maya, Shake, Blender and After Effects among the other applications. I've been using Lightwave, 3D-Coat, Combustion, Rayz and so many other things. Not even mentioning programs like Photoshop, Corel Draw or Inkscape here. Of course I'm not the master in most of them, but I think I'm OK with learning new software, and here are the two tricks I know.

As obvious as they are, it is quite amazing how often even quite experienced artists manage to ignore them.

First one: RTFM. Read That Freaking The Following Manual. Seriously. You get your new toy, you play around, things go less or more easy, you either abandon or start thinking you already know it inside out... Well, if you're planning on using that toy in future – start reading the documentation asap, and try doing it top to bottom.

Every piece of software comes with a manual. Some are good, some are less, but all of them contain much wider perspective on the tools that you would get elsewhere (or at least from a lone journey). They also often describe the intended use of not always obvious features and address the particular working techniques – personally I've learned a good deal of software-independent tricks and methods from manuals alone.

It takes less time than it seems to go through the whole book. And although you probably won't memorize or even completely understand all of it in the first reading, the further you would get – the better idea of what your toy is capable of you will have – the less time you'll spend figuring out the answer when confronting new tasks during the real production.

Because you don't abandon the documentation after the first reading – you just start using it as a reference from now on, since from now on you have a good idea where to find what. And (might sound a bit shocking) there is a search function to it! Again, strictly personally, but the first thing I do whenever get stuck with a software – press F1 and type the issue into the search field. Google helps as well of course.

The second tip is as groundbreaking as the first one: use hotkeys. Same way as putting hands at 10 and 2 for driving; while holding a mouse or a stylus in one hand, it is a good practice to keep another one on the keyboard when operating the graphics software. It is just plain faster. Times faster. And it is quite addictive after you start, so it only takes to overcome a little laziness once. Unless you're already doing so (and you probably are, but just in case) – look up the keyboard shortcuts for the 5-10 functions you use most often (they are usually listed in the menus, when hovering the tool button and/or in the manual (see above)) – and start accessing those functions with a keyboard rather than a mouse. Give it an hour, and if your life quality will not improve – do not listen to me anymore.

Thank you. Hope it helps.

Might return to the typography article next time, but that would mean a longer pause as well – will see...

Animusic - Part 2

After sharing few introductory words in Part 1 at www.rock-is-dead.info - here are the wireframes we all love so much.



It was incredible ten years ago, it is incredible now. Procedural animation - the concept that keeps fascinating my bent mind, and the concept that wouldn't be possible in any previous era. The idea that instead of telling a computer what to draw, you rather teach it how to draw things changes the whole landscape to me.

The Animusic project was started by two artists Wayne Lytle and Dave Crognale. Their proprietary software uses MIDI input to drive the animation in a commercial programs like 3DSMax or XSI, producing the result of often mind-bending complexity. They get into more details at their website. I would also recommend watching behind the scenes stuff at their YouTube channel.

Enjoy.

Understanding Images

Form-color correspondence
according to Bauhaus

I once heard they study Totoro at the aesthetics classes in Japanese schools. Aesthetics classes… Wouldn’t this freaking world be better if we had some?

At least we can be learning things on our own. And one thing I stumbled upon only few months ago, but which I believe must be obligatory for anyone dealing with images in one way or another is Language of Design course by Charlotte Jirousek of Cornell University. Abstract, objective, well-rounded, on the topic so vital and so overlooked.

Wish I knew of it years back - would’ve saved certain amount of time. But even now I find it an incredibly useful read. And the practice of authors/universities keeping such courses in public access admirable at least.

Enjoy.

Something abstract and procedural next time.

Typography Basics for Artists. Part 1 - Broad Classification

Major type styles.

Typography is a separate world in its own. It lives according to the myriad of rules - aesthetic, conventional, optical and technical. Few professions include understanding of this world in a job description, and they mostly contain a word “designer” in the name - like graphic designers or (suddenly) typeface designers. Among the artists however it is not uncommon to be way less familiar with the principles involved in creating, manipulating and judging fonts. Still it’s a valuable knowledge for anyone dealing with images, which I’d like to address here. By no means I claim myself as an expert in the field - I’m rather trying to draw some directions for further research, which from my own experience might take some time to establish. As in most of the cases, a great place to start is Wikipedia’s articles on Typography and Typeface. The trick is to keep digging further exploring the related links.

The word “Font” refers to a particular combination of a typeface’s size, weight and style. Thus Arial 12 and Arial 16 should be considered different fonts. What they share is a typeface (font family). Basically, “typeface” is a more proper term to refer to a font family like Helvetica or Courier.

Be prepared that terminology and classification differ from source to source. Although not too drastically usually. Reading multiple sources is helpful since you can familiarize yourself not only with different terms and conventions, but different opinions as well. A cover picture for this post, which I borrowed from Wikipedia, shows some of the major typeface styles.

Two biggest classes the typefaces can be divided into are text types and display types. Text types are those suitable for huge bodies of text, like in books or newspapers. It is said a typeface designer is lucky to create a single text typeface (both new and good) through the whole career. This also means that if you’re looking for free text types - your best chances are with those coming with OS or other software you are licensed to use, rather than with free online collections. Criteria for a successful text type are pretty much opposite to the goals which art, design and often even display types are seeking to achieve. Instead of expressivity and drawing attention to itself, it seeks loosing all attention possible, becoming invisible since its main goal is to assist reading - the text is the hero and the typeface must step back. What is required however are a perfect balance and rhythm (in kerning, contrast, ascending and descending elements). Achieving this balance and uniformity while preserving aesthetical qualities without distinct features takes tons of skill, taste and patience to iterate, test and adjust the design over and over again till it's ideally polished. It's not an easy job which deserves respect, and is another reason those typefaces cost money.

Quite often, although not necessarily, text type would possess serifs due to their ability to accentuate horizontal lines of text helping the eye not to slip.

Illustrators and other visual artists usually deal with way smaller amounts of text, which often requires organizing, prioretizing and accenting. This is where the display types are used. They generally require less work to design (less does not equal little) and are probably the majority. Display types are intended to be used in large sizes, like from 30pt («pt» stands for point here, a typographical unit of size measurement.) They come in all possible shapes and sizes, ranging from reserved to wildly screaming and blurring edge between a letterform and a decorative element. This is a beautiful, fantastic, dizzying world, which makes it important for a designer to not loose the focus.

I'm going to address this issue as well as more details on fonts' classification in the next parts:

2 – Matching the typeface
3 – Display typesetting basics
4 – Historical context factor
5 – Resources and miscellaneous

Following my life's organizational principle abbreviated M.E.S.S. (too lazy to invent the decryption), these parts will be appearing on the blog in the announced order, but through uncertain time intervals, interleaved with other stuff.

Again, my goal here is to announce a topic for research rather than to write a compendium, so at this stage you're probably better off reading more competent sources anyway.

Couple of old works revived

While the article announced last week continues cooking itself, as an intermission here goes a couple of images which I found in the attic of a hard drive and tried to shake some dust off this week.

Masquerade

Grande Pellicano