The Screaming Edge of Change: Designing the Future in 5D
From ADG Art Direction Wiki
By Peter Plantec, author
Contents |
Artistry and Evolution
Artistry is not the part of Art Direction that you learn in school. It’s the glowing core bound within your DNA. It cannot be taught. Artistry combined with learned skills and tools of expression is what yields art. But you know all that. As Art Directors and Production Designers, Concept Artists and Matte Painters, we are the ones who gaze at thin air and imagine what could be. We use our skill to make our vision real. It may be beautiful or interesting or compelling or ugly as the job demands. It can be realistic or fantastic but it is always original.
Production Designer Rick Carter helped me get my brain wrapped around what’s really happening in our world: “While we are busy explaining and solving, let’s not forget to experience and express deeply. The question for Production Designers is: how do we help inspire and guide this phantasmagoric process of moviemaking in order to create the most compelling stories of our times?”
I think Rick hits it on the head. Regardless of what the job is, the paradigm is the same:
- [Story Concept --> your emotionally charged, creative visualization --> your intrinsic artistry --> use of tools (from charcoal to Photoshop to 3ds Max) to externalize your vision --> sharing that vision with the rest of the team]
It is essential that this process forms a feedback loop where, upon sharing your vision with the director and writers, the story concept is amplified and clarified or perhaps modified, as the process of refinement begins. Your inspiring art influences both the director’s vision and the writer’s story. It stands to reason that this artistic revelation must come early in the pipeline for any narrative medium, so that it enhances and inspires the entire production process.
Some of our tools haven’t changed in more than ten thousand years. That stick of charcoal you use for sketching is identical to the burned tip of a branch that outlined that first primitive herd animal on a flat stone at the dawn of history. But things are changing—fast. Scientist and futurist, Ray Kurzweil, tells us that the rate of change in technological complexity is accelerating: “My models show that we are doubling the paradigm-shift rate for technology innovation every decade.” He goes on to explain: “To express this another way, we won’t experience one hundred years of technological advancement in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress, when measured by today’s rate, or progress one thousand times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century.”
What Ray suggests has implications for the entire production pipeline for everything from film to fully immersive narrative experiences. We are into the knee of the curve and things are already speeding up so much we can see it happening. Wikipedia, updated every second, is replacing the Encyclopaedia Britannica, updated every year.
Yahoo! news updated every minute is replacing newspapers updated daily. Blogs are a whole new source of information. The way we work is already evolving big time, and that can be good or bad depending on how prepared we are, and how much we can influence that change.
Looking Ahead
Taking the dinosaur by the horns, the art contingent of the entertainment world must become a driving force for leadership in how production methods evolve. Many of us are not technically oriented, but technology is coming to us whether we want it or not. Technology is a flexible thing but, if it’s built by engineers without proper guidance, few of us will be comfortable with it. I recall the first 3D tool I ever worked with. It was called POV (Persistence of Vision) and it had no user interface. In order to create a pretty 3D image, you actually had to learn a programming language and write a long program, run it in POV and hope for the best. Some of you will remember the many images of mirrored balls floating above checkerboard floors. We do not want this to happen ever again.
We need the engineers to build our tools but they need us to lead the way. This too must lead to a feedback loop of sorts. With new tools comes new responsibility. Rick Carter said it best: “It is often noted that the cutting edge of the digital revolution in the arts now allows us to create anything we can imagine. These innovations cut two ways. We must also imagine everything that we can now create.” Each new tool opens vast new areas of our creativity and that is a good thing … as long as we can use those tools comfortably.
As a former game company Art Director and president of Virtual Personalities, Inc., I discovered that one can bend technology design to the needs of Art Direction. I hired a young fellow who was both an artist and a programmer. I made him CTO.
Sure, these people are rare, but more and more are surfacing as technology stirs the waters of pure art. I’m also a psychologist, and personality is a great interest of mine. The person who can walk in both the world of art and the world of technology comfortably has what is often referred to as a dual mind style or cognitive style. They actually flip back and forth between the two, by switching how they process the world.
Here’s how it worked for me. To have the technology guys build exactly what I wanted, I sat down with my CTO and all of my Photoshop® printouts of what I was looking for. I drew a few charts on how things had to work, and conveyed, as well as I could, the feel of the characters I wanted to create. He then coordinated with my artists, animators and programmers and the process went well because he could flip that mental switch that most of us don’t have.
This simple collaborative effort worked. I designed the same way I always had, but the pipeline beyond me got very technical. I didn’t care because I didn’t have to deal with it. I got constant feedback that I could understand, and the intelligent animated virtual humans that came out of it were not only state-of-the-art but engaging and exactly what I wanted … only a little better because every one along the pipeline had suggestions on how they could be improved. I was able to pick and choose and incorporate the best to fit my vision.
So much of what entertainment is about is subjective and artistic. The personalities of virtual humans are pure art. What made Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean a success had little to do with the amazing technology behind him. It was the artistry with which that technology was applied that made Davy such an engaging character. When virtual acting is left more to technology, you get something like The Polar Express, to my mind a beautiful picture filled with creepy virtual actors.
Gore Verbinski insisted that the technology behind Davy Jones must entirely serve the art that is Davy Jones. It is important that we make that stand. Art must, from now on, drive the technology used to create and display it.
Disney Leads the Way
As Disney was shifting from traditional media to digital, they realized that many of their finest artists were going to have a difficult time learning an entirely new way of working. Seeing these artists as valued assets, they decided to make the transition as smooth and painless as possible. Arthur Shek heads a division at Disney that is all about making the technology serve the artists. Many older Disney animators with enormous skill and vision had no interest in learning all the new-fangled digital tools. So Arthur and his crew set out to design artist interfaces that would hide all the complexity behind the digital tools. They worked very hard to make all that technology transparent. In some cases they even built specialized tools for individual artists, just so the artists could work in their own traditional ways without having to adapt to technology. That is the way it should be. An artist should not have to adapt to technology; the technology should adapt to the artist … in most cases.
I will admit that some of the interfaces, like Photoshop®, have been refined by engineers listening to artist users and are more efficient than I would have come up with. Thank god for my Wacom tablet; it gives me a little tactile feedback. I think the thing I missed most when switching from natural media to digital was the feel of brush on paper, or even my chisels and Dremel tool on wood or stone. Although Z brush doesn’t give me the same feedback, I’ve adapted because it’s exciting to sculpt in 3D with such precision using the new tools. I love creating my textures in Photoshop now and applying them to the surface of my digital sculptures. I never thought I’d adapt, but I did, and I love it.
The 5D Conference coming up in October is all about artists having their say in how things evolve, particularly in the new realm of immersive narrative media. I know that’s a buzz word you may not be familiar with, so let me explain.
Immersive Narrative Media Design
It would help if we could all agree on what we’re talking about, so let me propose the following: Immersive narrative design takes place when a team of specialists work together within an immersive virtual workspace, to create an immersive narrative experience. Clearly this implies a twofold process.
First, the team mission is to create coherent worlds with full and believable back stories for every element and character. Each world must also have its own logical and internally consistent set of rules. That is, everything in the immersive story environment has a reason for being, a virtual history and behaves according to the laws of the virtual world.
Second, in order to create these worlds the builder has to build a nonlinear immersive collaborative workspace that allows for unprecedented levels of team cooperation and communication. To create such experiences requires vast human resources of both artistic/creative and engineering/scientific orientation. These groups often speak different languages and visualize differently. The system must allow for easy cross-genre communication, central file maintenance and collaborative virtual work rooms.
Alex McDowell articulately summarized it as follows: “Immersive design is the new multidisciplinary art and science of image-making that’s obliterating the boundaries, both traditional and artificial, between film design, interactive gaming, environmental design, architecture, and the fine arts.
“The possibilities of digital technology are so infinite they’ve become old news. The future is in the eye of immersive designers; visionaries who adapted aviation programs to create modern sculptural architecture; animators who saw in biomechanical engineering the possibility of motion capture; the designers of NASA mission simulations who crossed fields into virtual reality gaming. Today’s designer is the master of an endless range of new immersive design technologies.”
The Future Is Now
All of this is not so far in the future. Some of us, like Rick Carter and Alex McDowell, are already employing immersive collaborative work environments to both enhance and smooth the flow of Production Design and follow-up, right through post-production. It starts with very early pre-visualization on the fly. It’s kind of a try before you buy concept where the Production Designer works with technology and concept artists to produce visual material that will inspire the director and influence the writers. It promotes an interweaving of skills and talents that result in rapid early progress as the story and its visual elements evolve together, each influencing the other.
This may sound like it involves complex new methodologies and highly technical stuff. Well, for some people it could, but it’s not necessary. The best technology should be invisible. If we can have our say on how the technology evolves, the new systems will adapt to traditional methods—our comfortable ways of working—enhancing them in exciting ways we may not have thought of.
But Rick has a word of caution: “Because of the ever-increasing pace of all the new technological discoveries in cinema, cutting to the heart of the matter—to the fundamental essence of the imagery—is more essential than ever.” We must not let the new tools become a set of gimmicks that we overuse just because we can. We don’t want another wave of visual effects movies without stories, just because we can make them pretty. We must use the tools in pursuit of our art and not let those tools use us.
What the Heck Is 5D and Why Should I Go?
I asked some people involved with 5D what the name stands for and I got several answers. Some said 2D+3D=5D. Others said it represents the five key media: Film, Television, Interactive Media, Animation and Architecture. The best I think was: 5D is about working in five dimensions to tell stories—the traditional three, and the added dimensions of time and synergy. 5D is about art and story working together in a synergistic flow of creativity. That fifth dimension is the key to the entire immersive process. People working effectively together, using new media tools to create narrative experiences we have yet to imagine. The 5D Conference is about the future.
Having Our Say
The 5D Conference is being created for you ... for us. Its organizers are gathering some of the best, most forward-thinking minds in the business to present a comprehensive and lucid view of how Production Design is already changing and to speculate on where it is going. The timing of 5D is critical because the future is here, but not yet cast in stone. There is a battle raging about who and what will drive the technology we’ll all be using. 5D is concerned with making sure we, as artists, will have a strong influence over future technology as it evolves. It’s critical that, at this juncture in history, art must take the lead.
Technology, designed in the service of art, can be like getting a brand-new set of brushes to play with. Photoshop is an interesting example. Designed by engineers, the interface was definitely non-intuitive when it first came out, but it has evolved with input from thousands of artists who use it. Now, I for one can’t live without it. It has allowed me to create images I never would have imagined ten years ago. Learning that interface was painful, but it makes learning other graphic software easier. My point is there is a meeting place between technology and art that is very exciting. Photoshop allows me to be a better artist. It gives me tools to more nearly achieve my inner visions.
5D is about making sure that learning the new technologies won’t have those steep learning curves.
5D is about defining the needs of Production Designers and other artistic elements of production. It’s about achieving a comfort level in the new work environments. It’s about the flow of art and ideas and how they can influence each other. It’s about new, immersive narrative experiences and how they will be defined and designed. It’s really about finding a place of comfort and productivity in this world of change that is rushing upon us.
A Conference Like None Other
The 5D Conference is being presented by the University Art Museum (UAM) at California State University, Long Beach, and by the Art Directors Guild. It is designed as an interactive, immersive experience, and you will be able to work synergistically with your colleagues, to express your opinions and get answers. It’s about understanding the cutting edge and deciding where you can stand on it. It’s also about getting a glimpse of some new tools and immersive experiences already under development both here and abroad. Trust me, you won’t want to stay home and miss the most important conference of your career. Put October 4 and 5 on your calendar and don’t schedule anything else for that time. I’ll see you there.
