Sculpting Verdi in passes

Here's a digital sculpture I did especially for the book. It's a copy of a small sculpture of the composer Verdi I bought last week in Florence. It replaces an excellent example from the great Andrew Loomis, because I couldn't figure out how to get the rights, and decided it was faster and easier to just make my own example. Artistically it's not as good, but for the purpose of explaining, I think it will do.

Another interesting thing you should know is that this is my first attempt at serious digital sculpting (my only other attempt was a silly cartoon hedgehog I did a few weeks ago), and that the only other sculpture I ever did was this one. Why am I telling you this? Because I think it demonstrates the power of understanding the creative process. You can drop yourself into any artistic medium, and start getting reasonable results almost instantly.

The work took about 5 hours and 9 major passes to complete - that roughly half an hour for each pass. Half an hour is a good time-frame: it gives you just enough time to complete 3-4 major improvements, but not quite enough time to start getting carried away with it.

I started with "something to change" - a simple and VERY rough approximation of the figure. Because I knew in advance this was going to serve as an example for working in passes, before every pass I took care to write down exactly what I was going to improve. Below is a numbered documentation of the process, that corresponds to the numbers in the image. It's a rare chance to get an authentic view on how artwork evolves through careful and controlled scrutiny.

*Please remember that this list is NOT a plan of action made before starting to work; no one can know in advance how a work is going to evolve, and what would need to be fixed or improved in each pass.

BLOCKING
pass 1: head shape, shoulders shape, chest shape
pass 2: place facial features, place clothing
pass 3: define hairline, define facial proportions, define collar

FLESHING
Pass 4: [profile pass] eyebrow shape profile, hollow cheek, bottom nose connection, chin+upper lip profile
pass 5: [front pass] eyes & pupils, define hair, wider nose, narrower temples, fix around hollow cheek
pass 6:: break symmetry, create expression

DETAILING
pass 7:: basic hair/beard texture, define clothing
pass 8:: detail up hair/beard texture, fix nose
pass 9:: detail eyebrows area, thicken top hair, fix tie

The Random Tip: Don’t finish today what you can leave for tomorrow

You're at the studio, working on your whateveritis. It's getting late and you're getting tired, but the work is almost done and you'd like to clear it already, so you can start fresh on Monday. You're going to stay an extra hour and finish up.

I have a better idea: go home NOW. Yes it feels weird, even wrong, to quit just before the "natural rest point"; but it's actually good for you, and for your work, to leave some loose ends. It helps to preserve some of the energy and flow of the work, so that when you come back to the studio, you get to slide right back into it. I find that it also helps dealing with procrastination.



This idea works especially well when working in stages. Suppose, for example, I'm
blocking in my ideas for a new blog post, and I don't have time to complete it in one go. I could intentionally leave the blocking stage unfinished, with some mistakes or vague areas left unresolved; then, when I get back to it, I would quickly fix these obvious things, and by the time I proceed to the fleshing out stage I'll already be completely connected and in the groove.

A word of caution: this is a cool trick to try if you're going to return to the work soon (within a few days at the most). If, however, you know you're going to be away from your work for such a long time that you might forget what you were planning to do, then in this case I would definitely recommend to do the responsible thing and neatly tie everything down before turning off the light.

"The Random Tip" posts are practical creative process ideas that come to mind every now and then. Usually these tips are NOT from the book. All random tips

The many names of the rough vision sketch

Every deliberate artwork starts with a vision - and a sketch that captures it. I call it the "Proof of Concept", or POC for short(*). Different mediums have different names for the POC:

In writing of all sorts, the POC is called outline.
In film-making, the POC is called videoboard animatic.
In sculpting and architecture, the POC is called maquette.
In song-writing, the POC is called demo recording.
In game design, the POC is called mock-up level.
In web design, the POC is called wireframe.

All these names tell the same story, give the same advice, and represent the same tool: a quick sketch that captures our vision and enables us to test it, discuss it, judge it, and refer to it throughout our work.

(*) Help me get this right!

Is "Proof of Concept" really the best name for this tool? I'm not sure. I'm looking for a name that's catchy and easy to use, that isn't too identified with a specific medium, and that reflects what the vision sketch is - a quick yet clear version of the finished work. I've been thinking about several options, which one do you think works best? Also, feel free to suggest your own.

• The Proof of Concept
  
• The premake (this one is a good candidate, I think).
  
• The vision sketch
• The model
• The guide

Waiting for your input . . . .

Anatomy of Art

Vision and Execution is an extreme simplification of the creative process. Let us now go a little deeper, and name some of the key principles of the process. "The Art of Art" dedicates a chapter for each of these key principles; you can think of this post as a "skeletal view" of the entire book.

Consider context. The first thing to do when approaching deliberate art is to consider what we want to achieve, and why. This is especially true when our current work is part of a bigger project, e.g. a musical soundtrack or a single panel in a comic strip. Understanding the context of our work is critical for a successful result.



Form Ideas. Where do ideas come from? With deliberate art, we usually don't have the luxury of waiting around for divine inspiration to come. Instead, we take action: we search for and collect good ideas, then use them as raw material to sculpt our original, custom-made concept.




Sketch your vision. we use our original ideas to form a mental experience of the finished work, as detailed and captivating as we can make it. Then we capture it in a quick sketch, called the "Proof of Concept".




Get familiar with your material. Achieving loose, rich results is only possible when we're theoretically and intimately familiar with our materials. With a limited investment in research and practice, we can turn a potentially stressful and stiff experience into a flowing, enjoyable creative process.



Work in passes. The execution stage starts with a very rough full-sized version of the vision. Then, we start developing it in passes. Each pass advances the entire work just a simple step toward the vision, until the result is close enough.




Chunk it. Advancing in "pure" passes throughout the entire work, is not always possible . Sometimes we need to chunk our work to manageable pieces, each of which may be a complete deliberate artwork in itself, requiring all the key principles above. Massive artistic projects may be made of thousands of deliberate artworks chunks.


Sketch! Being able to summarize a complex idea in a rough yet clear sketch, is the one basic skill required for all the key principles listed above. I call it "the creative atom", because all artwork is literally made of successive sketching - even (and especially) the most furnished and polished work. As we become better in sketching, our artwork becomes exponentially better.

The Random Tip: go wild!

Next time you're working on something, try this: allow yourself to go too far - make it so extreme, so over-the-top, that it's absolutely and definitely WRONG. Then, slowly, tone it down until you find the sweet spot where it's not wrong anymore.

This is a great tool for breaking patterns and pushing our own envelope. It works really well for working in passes: you make an "extreme pass" and then a "tone down" pass. It also works well when searching for ideas, allowing you to go beyond your comfort zone and get interesting.

It's a great tool for directors and supervisors, too. Very often when I direct people, I find it hard to get them to really make a change. I'll ask, "can you make this area dark?" and they'll darken it so carefully, that the result is almost imperceptible. So I ask them to make it completely dark, too dark, make it wrong, make it BLACK! And then we tone it down together until it's just right.

"The Random Tip" posts are practical creative process ideas that come to mind every now and then. Usually these tips are NOT from the book. All random tips

Vision and Execution

And now, finally, for something "meaty": our very first practical tip. I'm still amazed at how many creative people fail to recognize this very simple pattern, and how often they fail to use it even when they DO notice it. It seems so obviously true, that I'm shocked at how long it took me to recognize it myself. I guess sometimes it's just too easy to miss the forest for the trees.

[From "The Art of Art": The art of the Process > Vision and Execution]

To put it very simply indeed, every work of [deliberate] art goes through two main stages: vision and execution. In the vision stage we collect information, raise different options, and finally sum it all up with a quick sketch of the finished work as we imagine it. Only after we had decided what the finished work is going to be like, we start executing the work itself. We could say that every [deliberate] creative work actually gets done twice: once when we form and sketch our vision, and again when we realize it.

The important thing about working with a vision is that it provides a clear framework for our efforts: we work until the result is close enough to our vision, and then we can stop. This frame of mind is fundamentally different from the open-ended "walk in the park" approach of casual art, in which we have no idea where we we're going and we only stop working when we're fed up or have ran out of time.

Deliberate work gets done twice: once when we form and sketch our vision, and again when we realize it.

Deliberate writing: sketch and execution.

Films are also made twice. Animatic vs. the finished result.

Sculpting is also done twice. Quick sketch vs. final work.

Computer games, AKA game level or maps, are also made twice: first the fully playable vision sketch, then the final level.

Casual vs Deliberate art

There are two forms of creative effort: casual art and deliberate art. These are two completely different ballgames, requiring very different approaches.

Think of casual art as a walk in the park: we feel like going outside, the weather is fine, we have time - so we put on shoes, and off we go. Such a stroll is typically between a few minutes and a couple of hours long, and just like casual art, involves no specific requirements and no big expectations.

Deliberate art is more like a trip abroad. For most of us, such a trip involves a significant investment, great expectations, specific requirements (e.g. visiting a particular site), and many practical problems to solve. This is a different situation - we no longer put on shoes and take off. Instead we collect information, plan ahead, and make certain decisions in advance. We also demand of ourselves a certain level of self-discipline during the trip itself. I think most of us will agree, that going on a trip abroad in the same way we go walking in the park, would pretty much set us up for a disappointing trip.

The same goes for creative work. Approaching our deliberate art too casually, would almost certainly get us disappointing results. As we shall soon see, this very mistake is responsible for many (if not all) of the most familiar and frustrating problems artists regularly struggle with.

Stay tuned - in the next "the art of art" posts, we're going to learn an approach to deliberate art, that will help you improve the quality of your work AND enjoy your creative "trips" more than ever!