Heads up: news about name and blog

"The Art of Art" no longer the English title

The Hebrew title of the book is (and always had been) "The Mechanics of Inspiration", and as it turns out, all native English speakers I spoke to agreed that this makes a better name than "The Art of Art". It's a bit sad for me to let go of "The Art of Art", but there are some really good reasons to do so.

Focusing on a Hebrew blog

I admit I might have started this blog a bit too soon. Many of my Hebrew readers find it hard to read a lot of English text, and the English version of the book is probably only going to be ready in about a year from now. It makes sense then to create and concentrate my efforts in a Hebrew blog, and continue with the English blog in a few months, a short while before the English version comes out.

I'm in the process of making decisions and sorting it all out. I'm definitely going to have to change the blog, change the facebook fan page, and get everybody to join the new blog/page.... Very inconvenient, but I guess I better do it sooner than later, right?

More news soon!

The 1st edition is almost here!

The limited first edition of 200 books is going to be delivered sometime next week. Sorry about the cliche, but this is not the end of the journey, this is the beginning. I'm very excited about getting as many people to read it; I think it can really make a difference for artist.

Good luck!

Here there be process: Sonatina for Brass Quintet

I've been looking for something like this for years: the complete process of composing a piece of music. If you're not a musician, try skimming through the text and mainly listening to the different mp3 samples. This is a good demonstration of chunking and working in passes.

Click on the picture to get to David Wilken's "The Composition Process: Sonatina for Brass Quintetto".

Working in passes: a blog post

It might have occurred to some of you, that I must have used my "Art of Art" methods to write the book about my "Art of Art" methods - as indeed I have. It was a strange thing, using a tool to describe itself. It was like making a huge drawing of the pencil I'm drawing with. The funniest thing was when I found myself making process mistakes while writing advice about how to avoid those very same mistakes! It happened several times and actually now that I think of it, it wasn't so funny at all. Made me feel profoundly stupid.

Anyway, here's the execution process of one of my creative process blog posts. The original post is here. Do compare the three passes with the three rows in the Verdi sculpting post (picture also appears below), and you can begin to see what I mean when I say that the creative process is common to all forms or art. And this is not just because it's my special way of doing it: you will find that method preached in any good book on any subject.

I recommend that you read the four versions (or at least skim them though). You can do this by using the full screen feature of the slideshow, and then using the arrows at the bottom right corner to go through the pages at your own pace.
Note: If for some reason you can't see the embedded work, try this link.

James N. Frey writes about talent and hard work

I just finished reading a book called How to Write a Damn Good Mystery , By James N. Frey. It's a damn good How-to book. It's very practical, and has just the right mixture of content tips and creative process tips.

It's always a little funny (and also a little frustrating) to read my own "Art of Art" advice in a book about a field I'm not very familiar with. I keep thinking, "when would people finally realize it's always the same advice?".

Here's a quote from the book:

A published friend of mine was recently invited to be on a panel at a writers conference. One of the other writers on the panel was a famous mainstream-mystery writer who was getting $600,000 advances and hit the New York Times best­seller list every time out. My friend, who gets $30,000 advances, was in awe. They hit it off and went to lunch, and soon the conversation drifted onto the subject of rewriting. My friend is always struggling through what she thinks are endless rewrites, sometimes four or five complete drafts with major plot revisions. The famous writer said he was impressed. He often has to go through fifteen or twenty, and then he goes through what he calls a polish, trying to punch up the prose, find better lines of dialogue, and so on, thirty or forty more times.

My friend just about fell off her chair. She had always thought of this guy as a major talent, and somebody so talented, why ...it ought to be easy. His writing was so smooth, his stories so seamless...

You, too, can have that smooth, polished feel to your work. Keep rewriting and polishing. You rewrite until it's right. If it comes out right on the second draft, or the tenth draft, fine. But if it still is not right, then rewrite some more. Being willing to go back again and again and rework your material is the hallmark of a professional mystery writer.

Obviously he's talking about what we call working in passes; but more interestingly, he's trying to teach us that hard work, not talent, is responsible for successful artwork. Here's a parallel paragraph from "The Art of Art":

[From "The Art of Art": The art of the Process >Process Awareness]

For most people - including quite a few artists - great art is a kind of magic: the talented artist (gifted by genes, the gods, or luck) experiences a supernatural moment of inspiration, and his pen (or CGI software, or word processor) starts pouring out pure gold. Believing that this is what the work of a "real" artist should look like, no wonder a mere mortal artist would feel frustrated that he alone, talentless and uninspired as he is, must work hard to achieve results. Such an artist would do well to remember the following quote from Michelangelo (also known as "the divine"): "if people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all."

The Creative Atom: introduction to quick-sketching

If someone asked you to write a description of the room you're sitting in right now so that a reader would be able to imagine it quite accurately, you would probably be able to do it without too much difficulty. It's a simple matter of writing a detailed report of the room and everything in it, using all five senses. It may take some time, but wouldn't require much brain effort.

But now, how about if you had to do it in 5 minutes, and use up to 50 words? (remember that the goal is still to convey the room as precisely as possible to the reader!)

Doubtlessly, this is a much more challenging task. The full report is simply an extensive account of the room, whereas the limited version requires creative interpretation, an ability to recognize quickly what's essential and what can be discarded, and good language skills to allow for an efficient choice of words.

Of course, minimalism can be exercised not only with words, but also with color, clay, musical notes or movie frames; and obviously not only rooms may be described concisely, but also people, feelings, situations, and even abstract ideas. The ability to compress extensive and complex information into a brief, simplified description, is at the very heart of what we call quick-sketching (or just "sketching", for simplicity).

In "The Art of Art" I present and explain the possibly surprising idea, that sketching is THE main skill of accomplished artists; that it is in fact impossible to create a fresh, well-crafted, finely detailed work without being good at it; and that the slightest improvement at the skill of sketching is going to be duplicated exponentially throughout the work, producing noticeable improvement. I think of the quick sketch as the atom of artistic skill.

A quick-sketch drawing exercise. within a few seconds and with very few lines, I summarized what I thought were the most important things that define the pose, exaggerated them for clarity and vitality, and omitted everything else. Notice, however, that the original drawing from Disney's "Jungle Book" is also a form of quick sketch - an exaggerated summary of the important traits of a puma, omitting a lot of less important information.

More about Verdi and passes

Continuing with the Verdi work, a couple more notes about the process:

Divide and conquer. One of the strongest advantages of working in passes, is that it allows you to reduce complexity by focusing different passes on different aspects of the work (this idea is explained in more detail in "The Art of Passes" chapter of the book). In the Verdi example, pass 4 was a "profile pass": I constrained myself to only scrutinizing the profile of the sculpture. Similarly, Pass 5 was a "front pass".

Point of no return. Often the work presents a strategic challenge in the form of a "point of no return", which dictates that we deviate from the "pure" passes approach. In the Verdi example, the way the Sculptris software works created such a challenge: you can work on the sculpture in symmetry mode (everything you do on one side is mirrored simultaneously on the other side), but once you break the symmetry, you can't go back to that mode without losing details. Ideally I would have liked to refine the eyes a bit later in the process, while the general shape of the hair would have been defined much earlier; but because the shape of the hair is asymmetrical, that would have meant doing a lot of work on the eyes twice, probably with a lot of symmetry and proportions problems. This called for a methodological change. Here is the way to deal with a "point of not return":

1. Recognize it as soon as possible.
2. Define the specific aspects of the work that need to be perfected before you cross the "point of no return". In the Verdi case it was the facial features, and most importantly the eyes, that I wanted to get right.
3. Work in passes towards that milestone, then work in passes towards the final vision (or the next milestone, if there's another "point of no return" along the way).

In the Verdi example, 5 passes (more than half the work) were symmetrical; pass 6 was an "asymmetry pass", in which I finally got to shape the hair, insert subtle asymmetry in all facial features (real faces are never actually symmetrical), and create a subtle expression.

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!

Casual Art

[From "The Art of Art": The Art of the Process > Casual Art ]

Anyone who has ever created anything, knows that art seems to comes out best when it just "happens". We talk on the phone, there's a pen nearby, and suddenly there's a cute doodle on a colorful note. We do some guitar improvisation before going to work, and to our surprise we find ourselves humming a potential hit. We make up a silly good night story for our kid, and when he falls asleep, we discover we just wrote a charming children book. And we realize that the only reason it worked, is that we never really tried. When we need to succeed, when we really put in the effort, when we think and struggle and fix and improve - the result is, more often than not, mediocre. As usual, life is playing tricks on us: it seems that the only way to succeed, is to not try.

We may dismiss the matter as the artistic version of Murphy's Law, but there are actually some pretty good reasons for casual art to be working well:

Anything goes. The main goal of casual art is mostly not the end result, but the very act of producing it. There is no specific demand; we let our work flow freely to where it wants to go. If we started doodling a mouse and ended up with a rather successful drawing of an elephant, we get to enjoy the elephant. There is no point in spoiling the drawing by trying to force it into something else: no one cares that the elephant began as a mouse.

No requirement for quality. Casual art is incidental and inexpensive, and generally not designed for a specific audience. Since there is no pretension, there is also no fear of failure, and we are free to dare, to experiment, to create.

Short time. Casual art is done in a short space of time - typically somewhere between a few seconds and a a couple of hours) - and continuously. Our mood doesn't change, new ideas and external criticism don't get us confused, and it's relatively easy to stay focused and produce coherent work.

Failures are forgotten. The truth is that even with all these advantages working for us, most of our casual art isn't very good. But because we did not have high expectations or specific requirements, we can throw them away without regret or self-flagellation and forget them immediately. Every once in a while though, such casual work produces a surprisingly good result, which we keep and remember forever as an astonishing success story.

Small wonder, then, that our causal art so often surprises us for the better: the work is light and enjoyable, focused, fearless, free of fixes and patching-up, and most importantly - with casual art, our losses are forgotten but our gains are counted. For once, the game is rigged in our favor!


Deliberate Art

This is all well and good, but what happens when we do actually want to create something deliberately? What if we make a living Composing music for films? What if we have a specific idea for a painting? What if we're writing a thick novel that can't be finished within a few hours? Obviously, not all successful art works happen quickly and unexpectedly. There must be a way to achieve good results even with a planned, long-term and demanding art.

The way to achieve good results with deliberate art, is really what "The Art of Art" is all about.

Casual Art from my other blog, animgug. original post text: "One of my Danish class absent-minded doodling papers. I'm not sure my Danish is getting any better, but I'm having a lot of fun with the pencil!". I like the deer, it feels so freshly different from my usual style. Take a look at all the forgotten mediocre art around...

Deliberate art from animgug. Original post text: "Been trying to get it right for a while now. Wonder if it works now."

Cover design option

I like this option, it really goes well with the premise of the book - the creative process as the unknown, shadow world of art. Here's a better way of saying it:

[From "The Art of Art": The art of the Process >Process Awareness]

For most people - including quite a few artists - great art is a kind of magic: the talented artist (gifted by genes, the gods, or luck) experiences a supernatural moment of inspiration, and his pen (or CGI software, or word processor) starts pouring out pure gold. Believing that this is what the work of a "real" artist should look like, no wonder a mere mortal artist would feel frustrated that he alone, talentless and uninspired as he is, must work hard to achieve results. Such an artist would do well to remember the following quote from Michelangelo (also known as "the divine"): "if people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all."

Freshness

[From "The Art of Art": About the Book >what is good art?]

Freshness

To me, freshness is almost the "raison d'etre" of art. The whole idea of art is to create, even in the smallest way, an experience that did not exist in the universe before.

There are those who hear the word "fresh" and think of breaking boundaries, shuttering conventions, revolution, something completely different and strange and alien. This is how we get questionable artistic endeavors such as pictures hanging upside down, sculptures made of peacock droppings, or artists like the one I saw on a TV show, whose idea of originality is to tie himself on a rope from the ceiling, cover himself with paint, and then "draw" by repeatedly hurling his body onto the canvas.Well, that's not what I mean by "original". Such desperate gimmicks can only come, I think, from minds that are desperately out of real creative ideas.

The kind of originality I'm referring to is much more subtle and sophisticated. It contains something personal: each of us is an original personality, with a unique life story in the history of mankind. To connect our art to this inherent personal uniqueness, is an important part of true originality.

Another side of real freshness can be described as "unexpected": something a little surprising, off the beaten path, that injects some randomness into an otherwise familiar subject. This can come in the form of an interesting style, a unique detail the juices up the work, or perhaps a unique combination of ingredients.

In the first class of my character design course, I always ask my students to design a pirate. Most of their initial designs contain a wooden leg and an eye patch, props we would all expect a pirate to have. Then I ask them to make a new sketch, and this time add something unusual. What I usually get are pirates wearing some bizarre props such as a flower in the hair or women underwear. These are still not truely fresh ideas. They are the kind of smarty-pants originality of the type I mentioned above. But take a look at the pirate Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean", and you see what a truly original pirate character can be: Johnny Depp took the myth of the pirate, combined it with a drunken rock star, gave him a unique way of walking, , a particular way of speaking - and created an instant classic. Jack Sparrow is definitely a pirate, but not in the way you would expect it - and that's true freshness.

Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow became an instant Classic.

The Art of Art!

Six years ago, I asked myself a question. This is the question:

Can art be thought of as a standalone skill?

Meaning: can we learn how to be artists, regardless of the actual medium or scale we're dealing with?

It didn't take me six years to get to the answer, which, as you can well imagine, is "YES". It did take me six years to write a book, in which I do my best to lay down an organized set of practical guidelines to art - any art; "the art of art", if you will. Perhaps I should write "The Art of Art", as this is my working title.

Here's a partial list of artistic fields, to which The Art of Art can easily be related:
Architecture, Sculpting, Animation, Interior Design, Web Design, Set Design, Game Design, Fashion Design, Any type of writing, Any type of composing, writing and drawing comics, and of course many more.

The book hasn't been published yet, but significant parts of it (and perhaps all of it) are going to be on this blog, as well as random thoughts on the subject, and many links to interesting examples I collected over the years.

To me, The Art of Art is already a success. The answers I came up with improved my own work beyond recognition, and it helped my students and my colleagues as well, whether they know it or not. Moreover, as an animation director, I recently had the good fortune to arrange the workflow of an entire animation studio according to the "Art of Art" guidelines. The project was a huge success in every aspect, including the very important aspect of pure fun. This was exactly the kind of hard proof I was waiting for. It gave me the confidence that the ideas in The Art of Art really make a difference.

I hope you'll find the idea, the blog, and perhaps the future-book (in that order) a source of inspiration in your own artistic work - whatever it may be. And don't be a stranger! Please (pretty please?) comment or Email your thoughts, question, suggestions, examples, or any other kind of feedback.