Liking this alot. suspect 3D printing but no time to confirm. Jonty Hurwitz. Check it out.

We used inexact adders to process images and found that relative errors up to 0.54 percent were almost indiscernible, and relative errors as high as 7.5 percent still produced discernible images.

Christian Enz

One of the advantages of NPR techniques is that it is efficient. Instead of following the arms-race of ever-increasing numbers ray-tracing (times x bounces) it works with approximations. It also swallows errors within the look determined by the artist. So when I read about this very efficient but imperfect computer chip developed at Rice University (link above to the gizmag review), I couldn’t help but exclaim: “Wow! An NPR chip!” For the first time, I find myself longing not just for NPR software, but an NPR computer to boot.

If you try to pick coordinates in some perceptual space for each of the objects in the experiment then you get tangled up in just the same way that you do with the Penrose staircase: you cannot say whether one object is in front of or behind another one. The solution is to give up trying to assign coordinates to each of the objects.

Interesting interview with Andrew Glennerster about his work on the way we perceive the world as we move about.

ArtDecade uses an impressionistic brushstroke effect on this video to great effect, apparently using the procreate iPad app. If I understood correctly, they also used this for the storyboarding workflow.

Der Spiegel reports on the Massopondylus nesting site with the above illustration by Julius Csotonyi (click to embiggen). Cool that they include an artist credit, and cool to see a master delve into 3D – if he is indeed. The image sure looks like it, but I have no insider knowledge. I’m judging by the cover, so to speak. If anyone knows more about his technique, let us know in the comments!

On his site, the image is described as a “digital painting / photographic composite“. I’ll go out on a limb and -aside from some painted touch-ups (the egg membranes and such) – call this a 3D illustration with photographic elements used as textures, background elements – the solidity of the volumes, consistency of the details and the lighting all encourage me in making this assumption. Assuming this is the case (despite my father’s warning that to assume makes an ass out of you and me), it allows us an intriguing comparison of toolsets in the hand of a talented artist – as we did with Angie Rodrigues.

On to the analysis…

Read more »

I haven’t written much about NPR and the aesthetics of artifacts for a while now, but developments here at brainpets GbR are about to change all that… so prepare to see more about non-photorealistic graphics again. In case you’re particularly impatient and have a mac, head over to YouGlitch and corrupt your videos. It’s all the rage.

Sergio Albiac takes live action videos, meta-tags them with emotions, stacks them behind a portrait and melds them together with painted brushstroke masks. The result is a wonderfully impressionist-like portrait that feels eerily fitting to our times…

Creative Applications has a great write-up, check it out.

Today’s post is only indirectly relevant to non-photorealism… but this piece by Elliot Burns is a poignant illustration of how the imperfections of manual repetitions can take on their own meaning. The above image represents the first 5 lines of Rupert Brooke’s poem The Soldier written over itself 350 times, once for each British soldier killed in Afghanistan (as of 28/01/2011) – the original literal meaning is buried beneath an appealing visual texture. One is a catastrophe, one thousand is a statistic…

I’m not sure what I think about using such a patriotic, empire-adorning poem, but it certainly doesn’t reduce the work’s power.

Very interesting paper on the efficiency of analyzing hemodynamics (blood flow). 2D schematic layouts and appropriate color palettes improve diagnostic performance over 3D models and rainbow color maps.

We interrupt our scheduled programming to bring you these images from… your brain.

I’m not sure if this has much to do with any of the topics I write about, I could imagine it has some overlap with the perception studies relevant to non-photorealistic computer graphics. Who cares. It’s mind-boggling. And offers shadowish echoes of other research… ie. the brain record of a black women looks caucasian, which would be in keeping with research on empathy and identification – assuming the viewer was caucasian. Fantastic, scary stuff.

If you’ve inherently suspected that there’s a structural difference between a soccer match, a space odyssey and your favorite porno but never been able to put your finger on it, cinemetrics is for you. It beautifully lays out a film like a flower of pencil shavings, colored according to the film’s palette and oscillated according to amounts of screen movement. Stunning… and informative. Compare genres, director’s oeuvres or remakes… its a beautiful step back from the cinematic experience.

from creative applications network

Drawing represents a species of translation that is different from what emerges in photography. Given the new research on how the brain processes visual input and given that drawing is a mental process, no further justification need be made for the utility of drawing in lifting out relevance from within the chaos of actual visual experience.

Jonathon Kingdon

An exhibition about Gregor Mendel finds a place for modern art. Commendable! Makes me want to go see it first hand! Which I can’t… but hey, at least there’s a mini-online guide. Most people find both inaccessible, and I feel that both have lots to offer the other. Just me?

How can science become something tangible? By approaching it as a game… watch the above video. Then read the paper and keep an eye on the Lottolab. Below Lotto’s Ted Talk…

I suspect that my now turning towards something as aggressively organic and analog as tattooing is in some way, a rebellion against the cold, souless techno-hypnotic mind freeze of the computer game. I’ve paid my dues playing with computers and you know what? I’d much rather interact with a flesh and blood creature with a soul. Something that talks to me and twitches when I poke it. Something that bleeds. And when I look deeply into a living organism, I see a miracle so complex and miraculous, it makes the greatest super computer look like a pair of rusty pliers. So there….

Joe, you rock. Read the rest here.

What a difference temporal qualities make. (I’ll take the original.) A very cool experiment!

I love this kind of exploration. JMS explores reverse perspective. Also check out the silhouette illusion test.

“Painted Russian Orthodox Icons sometimes featured what is called Byzantine-perspective in the buildings and backgrounds – as a way of describing God looking out at the world, through the painting. It’s a beautiful concept; a God’s perspective.”

Thanks Keith!