In this blog post Bogdan Sasu talks to us about his latest collaboration with Ian Spriggs, a new book called ‘A Portrait of a Digital Age’, as well as what perfection can mean for an artist always striving for that next level, and how Corona Renderer can ease the pain of worrying about technical parameters, freeing you to be more creative!
Adding value through creativity in the 3d world
Since the dawn of time we as artists have this urge to perfect our art and to see what is missing, even when the ones close to us tell us that it looks good.
We know in our mind that if we did that different, or if we just changed the result a little bit like so, it might have been even better, and so we carry on with the next project, making it an always-ongoing search for improvement.
The thing is, just like all other artists, I was trying to perfect my art, I was trying to push it further and to obtain that holy grail called “photorealistic”. From pen and paper, to brushes and watercolour, we have nowadays something more advanced; we have the chance to paint with “reality”.
As a 3d artist I’ve often felt the responsibility to create something as believable as possible, to the point that responsibility turned into frustration.
At that point, some 8 or even 10 years ago, knowing the technical aspects and the exact settings meant you had a great advantage; seeking the best settings was like a full-scale gold rush and the forums were full of people talking and debating about this parameter and that setting.
For all of us on the more artistic side during this period, I’m sure it was a nightmare, working and creating something that would reach a stage where what to do next became a blur is no easy feeling. Some people started doing small plugins to automate the understanding of the technical settings, some started making and giving trusted settings for draft renders, final renders and so on.
But the breakthrough came once all the headache of understanding the technical part was entirely canceled, and this was possible due to Corona Renderer. As an artist, to find out that I can hit render and the software will do everything automatically was a revolution in itself; all the constraints were not there any more.
Since version 1 of Corona, creativity was set free and we were finally able to work without uncertainty about our final result. Nowadays making a good render has much more to do with art than it has to do with the technical aspects of light that is bounced in the scene and similar parameters. We finally have the chance to be artists.
Now that you have the context, you can picture how the idea of GTAPR started taking shape in 2015. Back then, seeing all of the great renders was not easy for a newbie like me.
Due to the mindset of the times when I started, around 2006-2009, I was convinced that those great renders have a precise recipe and if I could reach that my renders would suddenly become ‘wow’! The idea evolved, I understood that there are others like me, and sharing this “recipe” with everyone will create even more amazing artists, the name “Great talks about…” started to take shape.
Flash forward from 2019 to 2021, GTAPR grew and today it consists of 2 volumes, 18 amazing artists (Johannes Lindqvist, Lucia Frascerra, Manó Karlinger, Eduard Caliman, Jakub Čech, Mohit Sanchaniya, Michela Tonelli, Raphael Rau, Dušan Vukčević, Julian Sadokha, Vittorio Bonapace, Elena V Miller, Fabio Ciliberti, Ander Alencar, Marcin Lusnia, Nuno Silva, Saeed Amiri, Alex Hogrefe), 5 industry leaders (Jeff Mottle, Ciro Sannino, Jason Bergeron, Nigel Hunt, Dušan Vukčević) all of whom shared their experience to create additional materials as an introduction for these books.
More than this, through GTAPR I as an artist and we as company came to understand the need of great books in the 3d industry, and so ‘The Juice Bar’ was founded with the aim of giving a voice to artists who push the limits further. In The portrait of the digital age, written by Ian Spriggs, is our statement that digital portraiture reached a maturity that can no longer be ignored, and we will carry on our mission with books written by Amir Cherni, Lluis Cuenca, Elena V Miller just to name a few.
The GTAPR universe will also be expanded. The “…about photo realism” part was where the fire started, but now we plan on creating “Great talks about…” many other subjects, and for this we will count on each one of you to engage and give your input.
All in all, our desire is to celebrate the beauty of art and digital art. We want to make sure that the new generation of artists are aware of what has come before so that they can lay the future with certainty; our vision is to create “snapshots” in a medium that is mostly digital.
Like Corona made things simple back in the days – simple by breaking down the complexity that is – through The Juice Bar we intend to streamline the voice of valuable artists, to ease the path of new ones, and to immerse others!
For a limited time, A Portrait of a Digital Age will be on pre-sale for a reduced price – head on over to the website to grab yourself a copy!
Links
Website: https://www.thejuicebar.eu/product/a-portrait-of-the-digital-age/