Computer Arts (December 2003)

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QTFGTQPNKPG GOCKNWU [email protected] www.webfusion.co.uk

THE WORLD’S BEST–SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

PHOTOSHOP WITH STYLE Witness 10 years of illustration trends and create a super-stylish image in Photoshop

MASTER MX 2004

Complete package: expert tutorials for Flash and Dreamweaver, plus trials on the CD

9 EXPERT TUTORIALS

Photoshop, FreeHand, After Effects & more

PRO 3D SECRETS Enhance your 2D artwork with 3D

NEW REVIEWS! 3ds max 6, Apple G5, 15-inch PowerBooks No CD? Please see your newsagent

Printed in the UK

Outside the UK and Éire £6 C$ 19.95

DECEMBER 2003

£6

1 2 9 771360 537024

The Power Line.

The new PowerBook G4 family –

Ultimate portability meets flawless G4 performance. Introducing the new PowerBook G4 family

Peace of mind

Nothing outshines a PowerBook except a new PowerBook. And these new PowerBooks are ultra-thin and ultra-light — and bulging with cutting-edge features and functionalities.

In addition to the quality and value that’s part of the package when you buy at John Lewis, a free two-year guarantee is included too.1

The new PowerBook line gives you supercomputing power in a choice of three ultra-fast portables; small, medium or epic. Whether you prefer the super-seductive 12-inch model, the coveted 15-inch powerhouse, or the stunning 17-inch beauty, every new PowerBook G4 is loaded with advanced capabilities. Like turbocharged PowerPC G4 processors, DVD-burning SuperDrive, the fastest speeds in wireless networking, and cutting-edge graphics.

Knowledgeable service

John Lewis – All under one roof John Lewis department stores stock the complete range of Apple products including the iBook, iMac, iPod, PowerBook, eMac and Power Mac G5 series. You’ll also find a huge choice of software, monitors, compatible printers, scanners and other accessories.

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See in store for details.

Customers return to John Lewis time and again because they know the sales assistants are fully trained by Apple. This means that you, the customer, can rest assured that you will get the best product to suit your needs.

Buying made easy Buying Apple equipment from John Lewis is one thing. But the story doesn’t end there. Not only will your Apple be delivered free but installation professionals can help you set up your computer for a small charge. All in all, John Lewis offers a service that is designed to make buying and using your Apple easier than ever.

Want to know more? Visit your nearest John Lewis.

The All new 15" PowerBook G4. 1GHz or 1.25 GHz G4 Processor 256 or 512MB RAM • 60 or 80GB HD Combo or SuperDrive • AirPort Extreme Ready

INTRO Q WE LOOK BACK AT THE LAST NINE UPGRADES TO PHOTOSHOP AND THE STYLES THAT ACCOMPANIED THEM

ILLUSTRATORS We take our illustrations seriously here on Computer Arts, and have some great illustrations from both the USA and Britain this month. We’re always on the lookout for new talent – if you’re interested in contributing, please contact [email protected] PHANTOM:RESEARCH FOUNDATION The cross-Atlantic design outfit behind our main tutorial this month has created a beautiful image using photography, vectors and textures (page 22). WWW.PHANTOMRESEARCHFOUNDATION.COM TADO Tado’s Mike Doney and Katie Tang are two of the busiest young designers in the industry. Here they illustrate our new two-part Flash MX 2004 series (page 44). WWW.TADO.CO.UK SCOTT HANSEN This Californian designer, photographer and musician has provided the stunning opening illustration to our digital camera Group Test (page 102). WWW.ISO50.COM JASON ARBER Web designer by day and Photoshop guru by night, Jason Arber has contributed many illustrations and tutorials for CA. Create his ‘Photoshop-grunge’ image (page 58). WWW.PIXELSURGEON.COM TWELVE:TEN Brighton’s twelve:ten has worked with the BBC, MTV and Paul Smith, amongst others. This issue, they turn their talents to illustrating our Dreamweaver tutorial (page 74). WWW.TWELVETEN.COM

uality stock imagery is one of the most requested items for our coverdisc, so this month we’re pleased to team up with Digital Vision to provide over £2400-worth of resources (that’s $3900 and 3400 euro). The collection includes photographs, movie clips and a typeface, all themed around fashion – our chosen focus for this issue. Why fashion? It seemed the best way to illustrate the fast-changing styles and trends in digital art, the subject of our main tutorial this month. To celebrate the release of the Adobe Creative Suite, its new focus on integration and stunning new box art, we look back at the last nine major upgrades to Photoshop and the styles that accompanied them. We top this off by calling in new design duo, Phantom:researchfoundation, to demonstrate the creation of one of its immensely contemporary illustrations – featuring a mix of photography, textures and vectors. Turn to page 22 to see the results. It’s no secret that Computer Arts looks forward to every new release of Flash and Dreamweaver, so it’s great to be able to

COVER ILLUSTRATOR STUART HOLMES The aim of this issue’s cover commission was to convey a sense of contemporary style via a Photoshop illustration. We saw freelance designer Stuart Holmes’ portfolio, and its fresh, funky style was instantly suited to our main tutorial. Most of Holmes’ work involves vector-based figures created from sketches and photography. He is represented by the Illustration agency, and his previous clients include Orange, FHM and Ford.

bring you our first tutorials on MX 2004, focusing on new features and ways to save you time. We’ve also included the demos of both of these massive Web apps, plus Fireworks MX 2004, on the CD. And if you’re reading Computer Arts on a train or plane, there’s plenty to keep you entertained. Read our massive profile of Swiss design outfit Büro Destruct, whose clients include Sony, Red Bull and Die Gestalten Verlag. Plus, we interview leading studios on how 3D design can really enhance 2D work, and test-drive all the latest Apple kit we could get our hands on – the G5, 15-inch PowerBook, Shake and DVD Studio Pro. And did I mention the review of 3ds max 6? Turn over the page for a full list of contents. I hope to catch you at one of the Adobe four-city tours, as listed on page 20, and don’t forget that Computer Arts, Pixelsurgeon and Identikal will be on the stage at MacExpo, London in November. Turn to page 65 for more – we’ll see you there. VICKI ATKINSON Editor, THE WORLD’S BEST-SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

EDITORIAL THE CA TEAM VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] RODDY LLEWELLYN ART EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] MATT GALLIMORE CD EDITOR [email protected]

CONTACT Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW PHONE 01225 442 244 EMAIL [email protected] SUBS 0870 444 8455

WWW.ILLUSTRATIONWEB.COM

Computer Arts_December 2003

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CONTENTS

ISSUE 90 FULL LIST OF CONTENTS

NEWS

12 Apple powers up 14 Epson Stylus Pro 4000 16 Levi’s goes digital 19 Guest font showcase

TUTORIALS

22 Photoshop with style 44 Flash MX 2004 58 Visual Nirvana in Photoshop 74 Dreamweaver MX 2004

FEATURES

36 Bü ro Destruct 54 Turning 30: the AOI 65 Russell Preston Brown 70 The third dimension 80 John McFaul

SUBSCRIBE TODAYT

AND SAVE 40 PER CEN GET IT IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!

SHORTCUTS 35 Photoshop 43 FreeHand 53 Dreamweaver 66 After Effects 69 Cinema 4D

REVIEWS

83 Full listing 84 DVD Studio Pro 2 86 3ds max 6 96 G4 PowerBook and G5 1.8GHz

REGULARS

08 Your letters 28 Win one of two copies of the excellent Canon 3D S.O.M 50 Save 40 per cent on the price you pay in the shops when you subscribe 68 Special US subscription offer! 108 Back issues 116 Exposure 122 Retrospective

NEVER MISS ANOTHER ISSUE –TURN TO PAGE 50

Illustration by i love dust (www.ilovedust.com) Have your work featured here – email [email protected]

ON THE COVER 58 PHOTOSHOP WITH STYLE

Witness ten years of Photoshop creativity and create a fantastic stylised image with our expert illustration tutorial

44 FLASH MX 2004

We check out the brand new features of Flash MX 2004 Standard, including Behaviours, Timeline Effects and more!

84 APPLE REVIEWS

Tried and tested: DVD Studio Pro 2, the world exclusive on Shake 3, the G5 1.8GHz, and the brand new 15-inch PowerBook

58

70 THE THIRD DIMENSION

We take an in-depth look into how artists and illustrators all over the world are incorporating 3D visuals into their 2D work

74 DREAMWEAVER MX 2004

44

84

In our first ever Dreamweaver MX 2004 tutorial, we guide you through the process of setting up a Website using the app’s brand new tools

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS 36 BÜRO DESTRUCT

The Swiss design agency on work, inspiration, and designing on a Commodore Amiga

58 VISUAL NIRVANA

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58

Top illustrator Jason Arber sets fire to his photos and creates a stunning illustration

102 DIGITAL CAMERA GROUP TEST

Five of the best mid-range digital cameras on test - including the new Canon EOS 300D

54 TURNING 30

102

54

We celebrate the Association of Illustrators 30th anniversary with a look back at how it all started

FULL LIST OF CD CONTENTS

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PC & MAC ESSENTIAL RESOURCES

CREATIVE RESOURCES £2410-worth of images, fonts and movies for private or commercial use, courtesy of Digital Vision

M

onth after month, Computer Arts brings you a fine selection of full software, great demos and vital resources. This issue, we’ve teamed up with Digital Vision to bring you £2410-worth of images, fonts and movie files. In addition, you’ll find demos of Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks MX 2004, plus 250 superb textures

CD90 CONTENTS DIGITAL VISION (PC + MAC) EXCLUSIVE RESOURCES: We bring you a plethora of images, fonts and movie files – worth £2410! – from our friends at Digital Vision. You can use all of these resources in your personal or commercial projects. See panel to the right

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ne of the creative world’s most prestigious stock companies has provided six hi-res images, two QuickTime movie clips and a typeface for this month’s Computer Arts disc. You are free to use these resources in illustrations, graphic designs and Websites for both personal and commercial use. Digital Vision hosts a massive catalogue of photography, illustration, motion graphics and fonts. Readers will recognise the company’s work from its Infinity illustration series and lifestyle photography catalogues, Vie and verve. Its vast site is fully searchable and

STUDIO MX 2004 (PC + MAC) NEW DEMOS: Your chance to try out Studio MX 2004 in its entirety. Take the latest versions of Flash (including Flash MX 2004 Professional), Dreamweaver and Fireworks for a test-drive. This month, we bring you our first MX 2004 tutorials. Learn about Flash MX 2004 on page 44 and Dreamweaver MX 2004 on page 74

BODYPAINT 3D R2 (PC + MAC) NEW DEMO: Take your 3D texturing to a new level with Maxon’s fantastic BodyPaint 3D R2. Get to grips with new UV tools and improved workflow features with this 30-day trial version. Check out the review on page 88

TEXTURING TOOLKIT This month’s Photoshop Toolkit brings you over 250 textures to use with our BodyPaint 3D R2 demo, or your own applications. Demo versions of Flaming Pear’s excellent Super Blade Pro and Tesselation are also included

TUTORIAL FILES You’ll find all the source files you need to complete this month’s tutorials here. This issue: Dreamweaver MX 2004 (page 74), Photoshop (page 58), plus the files you need to follow our one-page After Effects Shortcut (page 66). See your CD inlay card for the full details

BOOK CHAPTERS Check out two of the latest design books, with our PDF chapters of Flash 3D Cheats Most Wanted and Flash MX 2004 Games Most Wanted from Friends of Ed (www.friendsofed.com)

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On our cover CD this month, you’ll find six hi-res images, two QuickTime movies and a typeface provided by Digital Vision, one of the world’s leading providers of royalty-free images, music and typography.

images are available to buy on CD-ROM or as an instant download. On your disc, you’ll find images in JPEG format, a Robusto font for both Mac and PC, plus two short clips of busy street scenes. The files are located in the Digital Vision folder in the root of your CD. Please read the licence agreement before you use them. INFO www.digitalvisiononline.co.uk, www.digitalvision.com

On the CD

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ESSENTIAL RESOURCES

TEXTURING TOOLKIT Make your 2D textures stand out from the crowd with our texturing toolkit

C

reating textures for use in 2D illustrations or mapping to 3D models can be a time-consuming affair. You can waste valuable time hunting around with a camera for the perfect texture image, and mapping textures to 3D models manually demands a certain expertise many simply don’t have. That’s why this month we’ve decided to bring you a dedicated texturing toolkit – incorporating our monthly Photoshop Toolkit. First up, we have 200 textures from Amazing 3D (www.amazing3d.com), which include such materials as rusted metal, corrugated iron, rocks, and other industrial materials. Then there’s a nifty selection of textures from our friends at Tiled Textures (www.tiledtextures.com), plus demo versions of Maxon’s fantastic BodyPaint 3D R2 and Flaming Pear’s Super Blade Pro and Tesselation.

Use these textures with our BodyPaint demo.

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PC & MAC 30-DAY DEMOS

MACROMEDIA STUDIO MX 2004

Be one of the first to try out Macromedia’s awesome new Web-building package

W

hen Macromedia recently released Studio MX 2004, it brought a huge range of improvements and new features to each of its main Web design and authoring apps – Flash MX, Fireworks MX and Dreamweaver MX. Flash MX 2004 comes in two versions – Standard and Professional. The Standard version includes all the tools you need to create dynamic, interactive Web applications, and adds, among other things, Timeline Effects and Behaviours to the mix. The Professional version supports highquality video and more. Install the 30-day demo, then turn to page 44 to take advantage of our expert tutorial. Dreamweaver and Fireworks have also received huge updates, with new CSS tools in the Web-authoring app and some nifty image-editing features in its dedicated Web graphics sibling. After installing the trial versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks MX 2004 from the CD, turn to page 74 for our exclusive tutorial and see the new features in action. INFO www.macromedia.com/uk

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LETTERS SHOW ME THE MONEY I’ve been in the graphics industry for quite a while now, and because of the current lack of jobs going, I’ve decided to go it alone. Currently, I’m in the process of setting up my own company, but I’ve noticed that, although there’s plenty of help offered in the actual design process, there’s never been any details on pricing jobs. It seems to be a taboo subject; there’s never any info on how much a job costs. I accept that companies don’t want a lot of details thrown around, but could you please help or print an article on this subject? Alan Stevenson

even if it’s just to know what they say: “How much do you charge?” Would you? Just for me, a dedicated reader? Chris Hamilton

SHOW ME THE MONEY – PART II I love your profiles, and have done so since the beginning of time (well, 1996), but there’s one question which you never ask, but I’d love you to,

HAVE YOU GOT A POINT TO MAKE ABOUT THE MAGAZINE, A CREATIVE PRODUCT, A SHOW OR THE INDUSTRY AT LARGE? EMAIL YOUR THOUGHTS TO THE TEAM AT [email protected], OR JOIN US ONLINE AT FORUM.COMPUTERARTS.CO.UK

This isn’t as easy to answer as you might hope. The staple answer is: W “ ell, it depends on the project/client/timescale, etc.”Try catching the creative directors down the pub instead and sound them out. However, if you really need to know what people charge as a guideline for your own business, try working out your overheads, living costs and how long you’d need to do some standard projects. You can also make extra money by striking a deal with a local printers or providing Web hosting for your clients. Only last month, we featured a guide to Regional Development Agencies who are helping new creative business; they’ll certainly be able to give you the facts.

TA VERY MUCH government agencies are Last month, we looked at how freelancers across the UK. helping to finance agencies and

I’m a relatively new user of 3D programs, and have been experimenting with demo versions for some

★ LETTER OF THE MONTH FLASH RESPONSE “Another version of Director is in development. Director is selling better than ever. It might seem the world is Flash crazy, but for fixed media projects and ultimate performance, Director MX is king.” Jon Harris, Macromedia Technical Sales Manager (Computer Arts, October 2003)

Yes, we should all stop comparing Flash and Director. Most developers and designers know Director can leave Flash behind on certain tasks (although it is catching up fast), especially with jobs that require faster processing speeds. But Macromedia should stop using this as an excuse not to deliver more power to Flash;

Some designers now realise that they cannot live on Flash alone – Blocmedia created this mini-site for Diesel (www.diesel.com/dailycatch) using Flash MX and Director MX.

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just because Director can do it doesn’t mean Flash should be less powerful. If the size of the Flash Player is pulling back progress, why not deliver a bigger and faster Flash Player for CD-ROM and kiosk distribution, with enhancements to improve graphic performance, leaving miniaturisation for the mobile market? With increased video support in Flash, one assumed the user would have the bandwidth to download and view any video included on a site, which logically means they have the bandwidth to download a larger Flash Player plug-in. In an increasingly broadband world, maybe I’m not the only one who’s fed up with plug-in size comparisons used to prevent enhancements in Flash, and for it forever to be Director’s weaker sister. As broadband take-up increases, perhaps size won’t matter as much – and Macromedia will have to come up with other reasons why Director should always be top of the class… Chris Daubney Graphic Designer & Interactive Developer Here’s the official word from Jon Harris at Macromedia: T “he Flash

Player, with 97.7 per cent penetration across Web-enabled devices, is the most successful plug-in ever in the history of the Internet, and has achieved this success by being a small, quick and easy download. If we produced different Flash Players for different devices with differing performance characteristics, we’d run the risk of fracturing and confusing the market. I“f anything, the size constraints have forced the Flash team to concentrate ever harder on the player – the Flash Player 7 is twice as fast at drawing pixels than the Flash Player 6, and 20 to 50 times faster at processing data. Video performance is also outstanding. But the key difference is that, while Flash is all about ubiquity, getting the same experience across many devices and platforms, Director is about bespoke solutions – projects when you need to work outside the box – using the highest quality video and 3D objects, keeping control of external devices and ensuring ultimate interactivity! “Flash was designed specifically for the Web and Director specifically for CD/DVD. Similar, yet different. The same? Never.”

time now. I bought your magazine last month and, to my surprise, there was Cinema 4D CE – wow, a decent 3D package for no money! Then I saw the upgrade to CE+ offer in the magazine and I had to invest. Out of all the computer art and 3D magazines I’ve read, yours must be the best. Had it not been for you, I wouldn’t have a package to start off with. I can now learn how to animate, model and render – basically, discover everything I need to know – and at an amazing price. I think a subscription might be in order! Just a big thank you to those who make these deals possible, and for giving an absolute beginner a massive head-start in the world of 3D. Giles Papworth Thanks, Giles. There’ll be a final nod to Cinema 4D CE+ in next issue of Computer Arts, just to help you a little further along the road. Make sure you read our feature on page 70, too – where people who’ve made the leap from 2D to 3D provide some useful tips.

SWEDISH STYLE Nice article about the Design Chapel. Excellent work. What is it with Scandinavians these days? Try having a look at Stefan Lindblad’s site: www.canvas.nu. His stuff’s not all digital, but I think it’ll suit you guys from Bath, especially as he enjoys rugby. Paul

NEXT MONTH COMPUTER ARTS 91 THE PERFECT IMAGE

As digital photography comes of age, the scanner is becoming a vital part of the designer’s creative toolkit. Experts reveal how to create perfect images and textures, and how to retouch in Photoshop before outputting your best-quality work to print

Thanks for that. We like links. Send us more. ■

COSGROVE HALL IN PROFILE

WRITE IN AND WIN!

The animation studio that gave us Duckula and brought Danger Mouse to life is now developing an animated Dr Who series for the BBC. We talk to the company about its award-winning portfolio

Letter of the month wins a Contech Photoshop Logickeyboard, worth £75 Each issue, the writer of our star letter receives a Photoshop logickeyboard from Contech. Worth £75, the keyboard features colour-coded keys that enable you to edit in Photoshop like a pro. The keyboard helps you to work efficiently in Adobe’s app, providing handy tool references and keyboard shortcuts – you’ll never forget a key command again. Contech also offers

upgrade keycap sets to transform your Mac Pro keyboard into a fully fledged Photoshop tool. The company currently offers keyboards for Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Avid XPress DV, Pinnacle Edition and more. Mac and PC boards are available – you choose. For more info, go to www.contech.co.uk, [email protected], or call 01438 315 757.

THE FLASH PROFESSIONALS

In the second part of our all-new Flash series, we examine how the powerful tools in Flash MX 2004 Professional fit into the pro designer’s workflow

AFTER EFFECTS 6

We get hold of the latest demo of After Effects 6, and show you how to create stunning text and lighting effects in your motion graphics

LAPTOP GROUP TEST

With so many laptops on the market, which one should you buy? Leading manufacturers go head to head as we test 17-inch contenders from Apple, ACI and Toshiba

REVIEWED SOON Adobe Creative Suite Studio MX 2004 combustion 3 Adobe Video Collection

New tablets from Wacom Avid XPress DV Pro Apple Soundtrack EditStudio 4

DAZ|Studio SketchUp 3 Vue D’Esprit 4 Pro Apple wireless keyboard and mouse

Dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac New digital cameras from Sony Canon & HP scanners

ON SALE 27 NOVEMBER All contents correct at time of going to press

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NEWS

SEND ALL NEWS, COMMENTS AND LINKS TO MARK PENFOLD AT [email protected]

EPSON STYLUS Epson unveils its high-end Pro 4000 p14 Highlights at the Paris MacExpo: A wireless mouse and keyboard combo, plus an enhanced range of PowerBook G4s – the basic 15-inch model (left) now sports a 1GHz processor and 256MB RAM.

INTEL CHAIRS Intel’s new Wi-Fi street furniture revealed p16

APPLE POWERS UP SHOW Apple rolls out new PowerBooks and

bigs up Bluetooth, while Computer Arts lines up the latest names for MacExpo London 2003 FONTS Design gurus team

up for charity typeface p17

OPINION AOI’s Matt Johnson

on embracing the digital p17

WEEKLY UPDATES

www.computerarts.co.uk

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pple boss Steve Jobs took to the stage at MacExpo, Paris, to present eager Apple fans with new Mac kit – and didn’t disappoint… At the September event, Jobs presented the world with, as many had predicted, a new range of PowerBooks. With pundits unsure whether the new laptops would be built around a G5 chip, rumours were rife of liquid cooling, new enclosures and even fuel cells to improve battery life… In the event, however, no such laptop was revealed. Instead, we saw the launch of a revamped 15-inch PowerBook G4 – an unsurprising move, given that the last revision to the

Titanium model came in November 2002 – and new 12-inch and 17-inch models, sporting faster CPUs and superior graphics.

NEW CONFIGURATIONS The 15-inch model (see our review on page 96) now comes in two bigger and decidedly more impressive configurations: a standard 1GHz model with 40GB hard drive, 256MB DDR RAM and Radeon Mobility 9600, and a 1.25GHz G4 model with an extra 256MB RAM, Airport Extreme built-in, 80GB hard drive and backlit keyboard. Both PowerBooks come with Bluetooth built-in, and cost £1599 and £1999

respectively. The new 12-inch model (starting at £1299) gains a mini-DVI Out port, along with a 1GHz CPU and, according to early reports, an i“mproved”cooling system. The 17-inch PowerBook, meanwhile, boasts the same Radeon card, 80GB hard drive and functionality as its higher-end 15-inch sibling, but gets a speed-bump to 1.33GHz. In terms of processor punch, these chips are the highest spec Apple can incorporate into its PowerBooks –

News

SOFTWARE The latest releases, updates and software news

COMBUSTION CORRECTION Please note that Discreet’s latest upgrade, combustion 3, costs £852. www.discreet.com

CREATURE COMFORTS IN 3D ANIMATION Aardman Animation introduces its first CG animated creature

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ardman has just finished work on an animated series based on Nick Park’s Oscar-winning short, Creature Comforts. In something of a departure, the new series features its first computer-generated cast member, Brian, the talking plankton. Brian joins a range of new characters, including Dennis the dung beetle and Gladys the cow, all developed with the stop-motion techniques usually associated with Nick Park’s work. Stefan Marjoram, who created and animated the character in Maya, has plenty of experience developing single-cell creatures: I“spent five years animating plankton for BBC

natural history documentaries. This is the first one I’ve done called Brian, though.”But making the character convincing wasn’t easy: B “ ecause he’s see-through, you could see his teeth when his mouth was closed.” After two months creating the translucent creature’s two-and-a-half minutes of animation, Marjoram set to work refining Brian’s environment: T “hese were treated in After Effects to give a stylised microscope look,” explains Marjoram. And in a deliberate bid to differentiate its traditional plasticine work from its CG, it now seems that Aardman is returning to its roots. A “ ardman’s style has definitely got

smoother,”says Marjoram, And e “specially with Chicken Run.… it was felt that the slightly rougher work had more charm. There’ll be a bit of a move back to the f‘ingerprinty’ look with future films.” INFO www.aardman.co.uk

Aardman enters the digital age with Creature Comforts’ first CG plankton.

Visitors at the Paris MacExpo relish the new merchandise.

Motorola, manufacturers of the G4, have already been subject to much flaming within the Mac community because of the relatively low speeds of its chips compared to models released almost a year ago.

NO SHOW FOR PANTHER Unfortunately, OS X t“en dot three” failed to ship in time for the show, but since then of course, Panther has been released and is available for £99. Steve Jobs demonstrated some of the

operating system’s innovative features, such as Expos and an all-new brushed metal iTunes-like interface. However, Apple did show off its wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (£59 each). Sadly, the company can’t offer it as a build-to-order option because you need a wired keyboard to go through the OS X set-up process... A workaround is inevitable. The next MacExpo will take place at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London on 20-22 November. Computer

Arts will be at the show in force, and as media sponsors we’ll be copresenting Adobe’s keynote sessions with Photoshop guru Russell Preston Brown (see page 64 for our exclusive interview). We’ll also be hosting the M ‘ aster Illustration on your Mac’ seminars. Top names such as Pixelsurgeon and Identikal will join us on stage to showcase their work and inspire with their design knowledge and techniques. INFO www.mac-expo.co.uk, www.apple.co.uk

VUE 4 PROFESSIONAL e-on software has announced the arrival of Vue 4 Professional, the latest and most impressive iteration of its 3D environment generating package. Vue 4 Professional is designed to integrate with all major packages including Maya, 3ds max and Softimage. The pro package costs around £450. www.e-onsoftware.com EXTENSIS CREATIVE BUNDLE Until the end of the year, Extensis is offering a bundle of its award-winning creative tools at a very special price. You can now pick up the Extensis Photo Imaging Suite – comprising the excellent Mask Pro 3, SmartScale (which can scale images by anything up to 1600 per cent), Intellihance Pro 4.1, PhotoFrame 2.5 and Portfolio 6 – for just £350. www.extensis.co.uk ATMOSPHERE PLAYER FOR ADOBE ACROBAT Adobe’s Atmosphere Player is a free download which makes it possible to view and interact in real-time with Atmosphere environments embedded in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. The player even sports a built-in physics engine to simulate gravity and friction. www.adobe.com ULEAD PHOTOIMPACT XL This enhanced version of PhotoImpact, Ulead’s flagship image-editing software, offers an extended set of learning materials, striking new filters and effects, and a broad range of photo-correction tools. For £70 boxed, XL also includes a wide range of Web tools, including a GIF animator and thousands of royalty-free images. www.ulead.com NEW REALTEXTURE CDS Continuing its photorealistic textures series, realtexture has just added two new CDs to its growing portfolio. Backgrounds 3 covers industrial plants, corners full of garbage, ruins, construction sites or dead landscapes, while Solar System provides 68 textures for the nine planets, Sun and the Moon. Depending on the celestial body, resolutions of up to 10800x5400 pixels are included. www.realtexture.com

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HARDWARE Stay abreast of the latest art-enhancing technology DELL PRINTERS Dell has rolled out its own-brand range of printing solutions in Europe. The seven-strong range starts with the consumer-level Personal Inkjet J740, priced at £60, and extends to the £727 monochrome Laser Printer M5200n. Dell has also instituted a free cartridge recycling system. www.dell.co.uk OLYMPUS C-5060 Olympus has announced the November arrival of the high-end C-5060 WIDE ZOOM digital camera. The C-5060 WZ has a 27mm-110mm equivalent wide-angle zoom lens with high-quality optics and 5-megapixel resolution. Cost? Just £600. www.olympus.com SONY VAIO UPDATES Sony’s new GRT model laptops boast an advanced 3D graphics chip, Onyx Black LCD screen technology and an internal DVD±RW drive. P4 2.80 GHz chips, 512MB of DDR SDRAM and either a 60GB or 80GB hard drive round out the package. Polygons are shifted courtesy of the NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5600 3D graphics chip on all four new models. www.eu.sony.com CANOPUS VIDEO CONVERTER Aimed at the high-end video market, the ADVC1000 video converter features RS-422 deck control via FireWire, locked audio during transfer and audio/video sync. The ADVC1000 also uses Canopus’s proven DV codec technology, and introduces genlock support for superior image stability. It costs around £1520. www.canopus.com NEW IOMEGA CDRW DVD Iomega’s new CD-RW 48x 24x 48x/DVD-ROM external combo drive is now available in Europe. The company says its new drive combines the usability of CD with fast DVD read speeds of 16x. Iomega claims the retail price of £110 actually gives you two drives for the price of one. www.iomega.com ATI BOARDS ATI has launched the fastest graphics boards in its Radeon line-up. The 9800 XT chip runs at 412MHz, with 256MB of memory clocked to 730MHz. Both the 9800 and lower-spec 9600 benefit from DirectX 9 implementation. ATI also has a tie-in distribution deal with Valve software’s Half-Life 2 game. www.ati.com

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EPSON STYLUS PRO 4000 HARDWARE The latest release in professional proofing technology

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pson’s latest A2 colour proofing machine includes an eight-ink printing system. With the Stylus PRO 4000, the company claims both an improved colour gamut and superior levels of cost efficiency over its previous A2 models. By using large, independent ink cartridges, Epson has made the 4000 significantly more efficient, claiming that it can now be left overnight for high-quality print runs without the need to change inks. Aimed at professional designers wanting to avoid the costs of outsourcing proofing requirements, Epson has also announced a model packaged with a PostScript RIP – the 4000-PS. The 4000’s big brother, this model is the one that’s likely to attract the most interest from pro designers and photographers. The combination of Epson’s own UltraChrome inks and MicroPiezo droplet control means that its

2880x1440dpi proofs will equal high-street quality. With a roll feed width up to 43cm, this is a versatile machine – ideal for contract proofing or as part of a larger

production process where colour accuracy is critical. A range of models, catering for differing requirements, is available, and prices start at £1757. INFO www.epson.co.uk

MORE MONITOR FOR YOUR MONEY HARDWARE LaCie delivers an affordable 20-inch LCD with the photon20vision

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aCie has released a low-cost version of its highly sought after 20.1-inch TFT. The new version weighs in at £868 and dispenses with the clamp stand and hood, shaving some £300 off the price of the original. The acclaimed photon20vision provides a native resolution of 1600x1200dpi, good brightness and high colour accuracy. These qualities make it ideal for use with applications for graphic design and digital video work. Since it’s aimed squarely at the graphics professional, LaCie has very sensibly kept one eye on the

appearance of its flagship display. Losing the clamp stand and hood may worry some buyers, but the photon20vision has certainly kept its looks. The swivel technology that comes with the display means it can be used in either portrait or landscape mode, enabling designers to see A4 documents at 1:1 scale. LaCie also supplies an optional colour calibration module for those working in colour critical applications. The unit is available now from all good computer retailers. INFO www.lacie.com/uk

The hottest sites and services on the Web…

DESIGNER SEATS

HONKSHOO www.honkshoo.com “Stupid name, great work” is the caption for Honkshoo’s designs, showcased via a noisy and richly graphic Website. Clients include Vladivar Vodka, Primal Scream and LEGO. Click on the first figure to see a fantastic selection of work, from bright logos to illustrative CD covers.

EVENT Wi-Fi park bench unveiled at 100% Design show

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lectronics giant Intel has teamed up with young designers to develop the first Wi-Fi street furniture. With clear resin casings and durable seats made from old network cables, the

chairs will enable people on the move to connect to the Internet wirelessly, via laptops and other devices. The furniture was created by the Design Laboratory, part of Central St Martins College of Art and Design, and funded by Intel to promote its Centrino mobile technology. The first public appearance of the hotspot chairs was at Earls Court last month during the 100% Design exhibition. “Designers and planners need to consider new ways to plan urban space to reflect changing human needs,” said Janice Blackburn, art and design curator and supporter of the project. “Innovative technology is always more appealing and relevant to everyday users when it looks good, and makes life more comfortable.”

Intel’s new Wi-Fi designer street furniture.

INFO www.intel.com/performance

THE TATE www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys The Tate continues to develop its online resources with a new addition called Archive Journeys. The Flash presentations provide an in-depth look at the history of the worldleading gallery, from its humble collection of 245 pictures in 1897 to the 59,000 exhibits it holds today. CREATIVE BRIEF www.creativebrief.com Interactive design outfit Fifth Dimension was behind this site’s make-over for creativebrief, a global match-making service that hooks up client firms with the world’s most appropriate design or marketing talent – from agencies to freelancers. Subscription is £140 per year. WORKING TITLE FILMS www.workingtitlefilms.com The studio behind such titles as O Brother Where Art Thou? and About A Boy has a well-designed site that showcases its work brilliantly. Opening with a preview of Lady Penelope’s car from the forthcoming Thunderbirds movie, the site displays Working Title’s portfolio, new and old. ART DEPARTMENT www.art-dept.com This New York-based outfit provides a range of services – photography, fashion and prop styling, even hair and make-up – but it’s the illustration we’re interested in. It plays host to over 20 international artists, with an inspiring range of styles, techniques and delicious eye candy. ILLDESIGNERS www.illdesigners.com No, they’re not sick – these MA graduates from the Design at Central St Martins College of Art have come up with a multidisciplinary design studio incorporating art direction, graphic design, typography and illustration. The outfit is currently gearing up to move out to NYC.

WANT YOUR NEW SITE FEATURED? Send the link to [email protected] with the subject header ‘Websites’.

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LEARNING CURVE

DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, 3D, WEB DESIGN AND VIDEO – KEEP YOUR SKILLS UP TO SCRATCH SYMBIOSIS Leamington Spa Authorised for Adobe, Macromedia and Media 100 training courses, Symbiosis limits class sizes to six students. Bespoke courses are also on the menu. Advanced Photoshop 5 December, £411 Adobe InDesign 18-19 December, £699 www.symbiosis.com BRUMMELL ASSOCIATES Basingstoke From its studio located outside Basingstoke, Brummell Associates runs a host of Web and multimedia courses that can be tailored to individual needs. Fast Track Dreamweaver MX 10-12 December, £881 Flash MX Fast Track 8-9 December, £588 www.brummell-associates.co.uk LEARNING IT Glasgow A leading training provider, Learning IT is Macromedia certified and offers multimedia courses alongside a rack of business and systems IT courses.

Fast Track to Flash MX 4 December, £550 Fast Track to Fireworks MX 2 December, £550 www.learningit.com HOXTON BIBLIOTECH London Also involved in community projects, Hoxton Bibliotech has courses covering multimedia, video editing and graphic design packages. Groups are limited to five students. Web Design For Beginners 18-27 November, £881 Final Cut Pro 3 24 November - 6 December, £1058 www.biblio-tech.net MEDIA TRAINING London Media Training has courses on just about every piece of creative software available. Groups are limited to five students, and private or company courses are also available. Final Cut Pro Advanced 2-3 December, £793 Macromedia FreeHand Fundamentals 4-5 December, £476 www.mediatraining.ltd.uk

News

BUILDING LETTERS

PROJECT Charity font collection by leading international

typographers helps Africa in the fight against AIDS

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eading graphic designers and a UKbased font foundry have joined forces to help in the fight against AIDS in Africa. The Building Letters project aims to fund the construction of two orphanages for HIV positive children in Africa through the sale of a font collection put together by Union Fonts. The font pack includes over 20 fonts, with contributions from Neville Brody, Erik Spiekermann, Max Kisman, Büro Destruct (see page 36) and more. Accompanying the disc will be posters designed exclusively by David Carson and Joshua Davis. The Building letters collection will be on sale during November and December. It’s hoped that it will raise £6000 for the two orphanages, based

in Uganda and Kenya. Volunteers from Madadventurer (www.madadventurer.com), a UK-based company, will undertake the work. The cost of the pack is £20 (approx $34) and is available from the Building Letters Website from 1 November 2003. INFO www.buildingletters.org, www.unionfonts.com

(Above) The Building Letters Website aims to raise £6000 by Christmas – with the help of striking contributions like Chrimboat (left), by accomplished South American illustrator Jorge Alderete.

LEVI’S GOES DIGITAL

ADVERTISING Another heavy dose of Lateral thinking

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evi Europe has begun a major new digital marketing campaign to revive its cornerstone 501 jeans brand – the biggest since 1999. With the intention of “Highlighting Levi’s iconic look and the brand’s democratic appeal,” the campaign uses images by top photographer Nick Knight and the design skills of Lateral, Levi’s longstanding digital partner. The site will focus on fostering a new relationship with the next generation of the

501-wearing public, and is central to the success of the overall campaign. Levi’s dedication to online branding is expressed via constant updates to its sites and the launch of its Digital Arts competition earlier this year. Back in the saddle after a two-year break from the world-famous denim giant, Lateral delivered the new European home site earlier this year and continues to ‘blur boundaries’ with this campaign. INFO www.lateral.net, www.eu.levi.com

DIGITAL VS DIGITAL SUBJECT Professional illustrator Matt Johnson has something to say to the digital doomsayers blaming the current climate on the computer

I graduated from college in 1994, almost ten years ago, at a time when photocopiers had taken over from the airbrush as being held responsible for the demise of drawing. Using an argument that was as boring and irrelevant then as it is now, computers are currently being found guilty of the same charge, along with their casting down of the industry from the dizzy heights of a Golden Age (1) to the Worst Slump Ever (2). There now seems to be a battle on, a bit like in Terminator; it’s between digital illustrators on one side and the few plucky humans on the other, who’ve been left to fight against this tide of evil machines by producing sensitive, beautiful, real pictures using pencils, paint brushes, gouache and the like. Obviously, the prevalence of digital media – including the almost ubiquitous Photoshop – has had a tremendous influence on contemporary illustration. Many illustrators have put digital programs to uses unforeseen even by their creators. Photoshop alone can become a virtual library of photographic and print techniques at one’s fingertips. You can use it to slightly alter a painted work, or create an entirely new piece from scratch. The computer is a powerful tool, and, like all tools, anything created with it depends entirely on the technical skill and creative ingenuity of the user. Michael Angelo didn’t blame his chisel when he knocked the arms off the Venus Di Milo (3). Bad drawing is bad drawing, whether digital or not. Many of the criticisms levelled at digital illustration are nothing to do with the medium. People have been trading in bad illustration for decades. There are more illustrators working for more publications (4) than ever before. Some will be good; some will be not so good. Whether an illustrator uses a computer or not does not make an ounce of qualitative difference to their output – surely it’s how they use it that counts. Nowadays, all illustration work is put through at least some digital process before its application through printed media, so we’re all part of one happy digital family anyway. If you can draw, design and create, using a computer will enhance and inform your work. If you can’t, it won’t. FOOTNOTES 1. A mythical time, approximately ten years before you began your career. 2. Now. 3. This is a joke. 4. Owned, paradoxically, by fewer corporations.

The all-new Levi’s 501 campaign at www.eu.levi.com aims to draw in a new generation of jean lovers.

INFO Freelance illustrator and lecturer Matt Johnson (www.matthewjohnson.me.uk) also works part-time as Membership and Publications secretary at the AOI, now in its 30th year (for more information on this hallowed institution, see page 54). You can meet Matt at the AOI forum – Illustration In The Digital Age, 26 November, at The Royal College of Art (www.theaoi.com).

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THE PIPELINE 2003 EVENT Techimage invites you to London

on 20 November for a jam-packed day of presentations from key industry figures, training opportunities and a jobs fair

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echimage, UK reseller for high-end software such as Houdini and RenderMan, is holding a high-profile event for animators and digital artists, called The Pipeline 2003. To be held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London on Thursday 20 November, and taking the production process “From Creation to Rendering” as its theme, the event boasts keynote speaker sessions, technical product presentations, information on training courses, a job fair and exhibits from leading software vendors. Keynote presentations will be delivered by representatives from US animation and effects powerhouses Pixar Animation Studios and Digital Domain, while technical presentations on RenderMan, Houdini, 3D Equaliser and alienbrain will offer insight into how artists and technicians can better use the applications in a production

environment. The event will also feature training information and representatives from Bournemouth’s world-famous NCCA job fair, where companies such as Framestore CFC and Vanguard Animation, among many others, will be on the lookout for new recruits. “The UK is now a major centre for the production of high quality CG,” enthuses Seamus Morley, Techimage’s Director. “This growing success is increasing demand for more highly skilled CG animators and artists. Bringing together speakers from the world’s top CG houses, plus application experts from the leading software developers, will enthuse those in the business, inspire those who already have some experience to take their skills to the next level – and entertain the rest of us.” ■ INFO www.techimage.co.uk/pipeline

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Two one-hour talks by Pixar and Digital Domain guarantee big crowds at this year’s event PIXAR 12pm/3pm A member of the Finding Nemo production team from Pixar Animation Studios will provide fascinating insight into the production pipeline used at Pixar, covering some of the challenges in lighting and colouring that contributed to the believable look of water in over 1400 shots on Pixar’s latest blockbuster. Pixar is world-famous for Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and a host of award-winning animated shorts.

DIGITAL DOMAIN 2pm/4pm Darin Grant, Manager, Technical Directors and Software at Digital Domain, will discuss Side Effects’ Houdini and its role in the Digital Domain production process. Digital Domain is synonymous with groundbreaking visual effects for such films as Titanic, The Grinch, Apollo 13, XXX and many more: Darin Grant and his team have been responsible for keeping DD at the technological cutting edge.

A CALENDAR OF ESSENTIAL RELEASES, EVENTS (AND WISHFUL THINKING) FOR DIGITAL CREATIVES

NOVEMBER

The Matrix Revolutions The last of the Wachowski brother’s three films hits UK theatres on 5 November Creative Suite Adobe rolls its top app out by the lorry-load Computer Arts 91 On sale 27 November New iBooks Will Apple’s latest sport new enclosure and faster processors? Brief Encounters Short film festival, Bristol Watershed, 12-16 November, www.brief-encounters.org.uk

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DECEMBER The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King The final instalment of Peter Jackson’s CG-filled Tolkien adaptation hits cinemas on 17 December. Computer Arts 92 On sale 16 December Final Cut Pro 4.5 Apple’s NLE now optimised for the G5 Halo 2 Xbox sequel arrives on 20 December – in time for X(box)mas Computer Arts Projects 53 On sale 9 December

JANUARY 2004

Apple Announces mid-range imageediting application and office suite? Computer Arts 93 On sale 22 January ATI and NVIDIA Both ship new pro workstation graphics cards Nikon or Olympus? Which company will follow Canon’s EOS 300D lead with its own affordable SLR digital camera? Photoshop Elements 3 Adobe reveals latest Elements iteration, with tools borrowed from Photoshop CS

FEBRUARY 2004

The Haunted Mansion Disney’s Eddie Murphy flick should hit UK cinemas on 13 February combustion 3 Discreet finally ships its premier app for the Mac FreeHand MX 2005 Will Macromedia update its much-loved illustrating tool? Computer Arts 94 On sale 19 February CorelDRAW Corel ships a new version incorporating Kai’s Vector Tools

Font Showcase

ABCDEFG HIJKLMN OPQRSTU VWXYZ abcdefgh ijklmnop qrstuvw xyz12345 67890! GUEST FONT SHOWCASE Rian Hughes, the designer of this month’s guest font, gives us an insight into his life as a designer, typographer, illustrator, and collector of Thunderbirds memorabilia

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ian Hughes studied at the LCP in London before working for an advertising agency, i-D magazine, and a series of record sleeve design companies. Under the name Device, he now provides design and illustration for ad campaigns, record sleeves, book jackets, graphic novels and television. For Belgium’s Magic Strip, he co-wrote and drew a graphic novel entitled The Science Service, which was published in five languages. This was soon followed by Dare –

an “iconoclastic revamp of the 50s comic hero Dan Dare.” Since setting up his studio, Hughes has worked extensively for the British and American comic industries as both designer, typographer and illustrator. Away from comics, recent work includes title sequences for TV music channel The Box, poster designs for Tokyo fashion company Jun Co.’s Yellow Boots chain, an animated on-board safety film for Virgin Airlines, Eurostar's poster campaign, a collection of Hawaiian shirts, a range

for Swatch, and a BDA International Gold Award and Creative Use of Print Award–winning brochure for MTV Europe’s Music Awards. His advertising typography earned a Campaign Press Awards Silver in 1996 and a Merit Award from the New York Art Director's Club in 2000. In addition to designing typefaces for FontShop’s FontFont range, fonts for clients such as Mac User, 2000AD, Newquay Steam and PC Format magazine are released via his own label (www.devicefonts.co.uk or email [email protected]). He has

contributed to numerous international exhibitions, lectured widely in the UK and internationally, and had a one-man show of his work held at London’s Smiths Gallery. A retrospective book collection, Art, Commercial, was published in 2002. Hughes also has a large collection of Thunderbirds memorabilia, a fridge full of vodka, and a stack of easy listening albums which he plays very quietly. INFO: The font popgod is available in one weight at £40 at the following font foundries: www.devicefonts.co.uk, www.veer.com, www.t26.com

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ADOBE FOUR-CITY TOUR Edinburgh and Dublin mark the final phase of Creative Suite’s UK tour

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o celebrate the launch of the Adobe Creative Suite in the UK, Adobe has embarked on an ambitious four-city tour. Having already wowed Manchester on 23 October, the event is now set to visit London, Edinburgh and Dublin, providing you with a vital opportunity to experience the new Adobe Creative Suite first-hand, and get to grips with these exciting new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive. There’s also a chance to check out Acrobat 6 Professional and Adobe’s new file management and tracking software, Version Cue. Included in the Creative Suite is a brand new version of the de facto standard image-editing tool, Photoshop. Photoshop CS features some fantastic-looking tools that will benefit the digital artist, photographer and illustrator. These include a new Layer Comps feature – enabling you to create many iterations of an illustration and so on in one Photoshop document. Match Colour looks to be another top feature, enabling you to maintain consistent colour and lighting across many different shots. Improvements to the File Browser make it more of an all-round asset management tool, while a new Filter Gallery makes it possible to add many filters at once, and experiment with different stacking orders. Also new to the Creative Suite is Illustrator CS. This features a raft of 3D tools, giving you the ability to rotate, revolve and extrude your 2D objects. In addition, you can

20 Computer Arts_December 2003

map symbols to faces for creating textures, as well as export graphics to Excel, Powerpoint or Word. The third new application is InDesign CS. The latest incarnation of Adobe’s print design and layout application features such new tools as a Separation Preview – enabling you to preview CMYK and spot plates at the design stage. Then there’s GoLive CS and Acrobat 6 Professional. The former adds many integration features to the Web authoring app, enabling you to easily repurpose content from InDesign and work with native Photoshop and Illustrator files. Acrobat 6 Professional gives you all the tools you need to create and edit PDF files. The new tool that links everything together is Version Cue. This versioning and file management software enables workgroups to easily keep track of file iterations – making sure one designer doesn’t override another’s hard work. With three cities left on the itinerary, remember that this is your last chance to experience the Creative Suite before you buy, getting a guided tour of all Adobe’s new products and how they integrate with one another from Adobe’s experts. Events run from 9am-4pm daily, and include light lunch and refreshments. To register, simply visit www.adobe.co.uk/bethefirst and click on the relevant date. INFO www.adobe.co.uk/bethefirst

VENUE: MANCHESTER, THE IMAX CINEMA DATE: 23 OCTOBER 2003 VENUE: LONDON, THE BREWERY DATE: 29 OCTOBER 2003 VENUE: EDINBURGH, EICC DATE: 4 NOVEMBER 2003 VENUE: DUBLIN, THE BURLINGTON HOTEL DATE: 11 NOVEMBER 2003

Register early to ensure you get a place at the remaining Creative Suite tour venues.

ILLUSTRATION BY PHANTOM:RESEARCHFOUNDATION

www.phantomresearchfoundation.com

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Tutorial

Witness Photoshop through the ages – and create this ultra-stylish image using Adobe’s leading image-editor The eighth full version of Photoshop is almost upon us, and it’s at this point that we get nostalgic, skimming back through old issues, looking at the tools introduced with each new iteration, and how image styles have evolved. Photoshop 3 may well have brought us layers for the first time, but Photoshop CS has taken this even further with Layer comps – the ability to save different versions of images within the same document. We’ll look forward to featuring a try-out of this one very soon. To celebrate this new adventure in digital art (we’ll crack open the champagne for any excuse), we’ve brought you a double-whammy tutorial this issue – an overview of Photoshop and the art it’s helped create, plus a tutorial featuring a very contemporary design. We’ve asked founding members of the Phantom:researchfoundation, Stephen Johnston and Michael Spoljaric, to show us how they create one of their stylish but rough, layered images, using photographs and textures with a little Photoshop magic. This style of illustration has evolved from more traditional cut-and-paste collage techniques, and is dependent on hyperrealistic surreal imagery that encourages the viewer to look a little closer. Note, however, that the methods showcased in this tutorial can be applied to a wide range of work. Johnston and Spoljaric work out of London and New York. Their recently published a coffee table tome is called Demanifest. Turn over the page to find out how they created this beautiful spread while experiencing the evolution of Photoshop style. INFO Artwork and tutorial undertaken in Photoshop 7 by Steven Johnston, one half of the design duo known as Phantom:researchfoundation. Find out more at www.phantomresearchfoundation.com. A collection of the studio’s work is available, entitled Demanifest (ISBN 3931126943, £26) – see www.die-gestalten.de.

^

PART 1 CREATING THE BACKGROUND The secret to a good composition is an attractive but understated background – just like this

INSIGHT COLLABORATE

When you get the chance, collaborate with someone or a group of people on a project or image. It’s really hard working in a vacuum, so it’s always refreshing to pass on a piece for another to work on – someone else will nearly always do something that you’d never think of.

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Duplicate Layer 1 of the background photograph, use a vertical flip on this layer and, using Photoshop’s Transform tool, scale down the photograph to reveal the sea and hills on the lefthand side. Match up the two layers by lining up the sun flare. Put a mask on the first photograph layer and blend them together with the Airbrush.

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The first thing to do is find the right sort of background image. This beautiful beach scene is a photograph taken by the duo on a 35 mm camera. “We use digital photography a lot, but we find 35mm film has a different depth and colour,” says Steve Johnston, co-founder of Phantom:researchfoundation. The finished background will be a composite of two copies of this photograph.

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Now that the background is almost complete, the photographs need to be blended together more effectively. You can do this quickly and simply by merging the two photograph layers and applying a three per cent Gaussian Noise to the whole layer.

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Blend in the two photograph layers by creating a layer mask on the second layer, set the Airbrush to black with a radius of 500 pixels, then blend in the top layer so that it smoothly blends in with the first. “I wanted to make the image look sunnier, so I created a layer with a yellow linear blend and set the opacity to 90 per cent,” says Steve Johnston. This gives the illustration a more sun-bleached appearance and warms it up a little.

Drop the photograph into your image document in Photoshop, rotate it 90 degrees counter-clockwise and scale it up so that all you can see is the sun flare and the sky (this is Layer 1 of the background). This particular composition is to be used at 300dpi, 490mm wide by 290mm high. “This is the point when the whole layout comes together,” says Johnston. “Experiment with compositions and don’t be afraid to scale the image up loads – sometimes this can look really nice.”

^

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INSIGHT GOLDEN OLDIES

Look to the past as well as the present for inspiration that will transform your work. It’s good to know where things have originated. Study old printing techniques, photographic tricks and typography. Antique stores and fairs are great for finding little gems of inspiration.

PHOTOSHOP THROUGH THE AGES In February 1990, Photoshop 1.0 hit the shelves. Now in 2003, version numbers have been discarded and CS has arrived. We look at 10 versions and the illustration styles that came with them

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The bottom half of the layout is going to be even brighter, so duplicate the yellow gradient layer and set the opacity on this gradient to 60 per cent. This makes the yellow even more intense and gives the image much-needed warmth. When you’re happy that the background will enhance and support the foreground, move onto Part 2.

1990 VERSION 1, 2, 3 HELLO LAYERS Photoshop 1.0 and 2.0 shipped virtually back-to-back in 1990, and were marketed as tools for both creating and editing images. 1993’s v2.5 then introduced Dodge and Burn tools, masking features and support for JPEG and BMP files. It was a full year before v3.0 arrived. Its layers technology ushered in a new era of design…

Tutorial

PART 2 FOREGROUND ELEMENTS Discover how to create more interesting figures and renders for use in your Photoshop projects

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Once the face is looking smooth, it’s a good idea to select areas like the lips and lift the colour. To enhance the lips, create a new layer above the face and trace around the lips with the Path tool. Make the path into a selection (Make Selection in the Path palette) and you can use a 20-pixel Airbrush to spray a bright red into the selection. Adjust the opacity of the layer, depending on how bright you prefer the lips to be – about 10 to 15 per cent is good.

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Drop the retouched face image into the topright of the background composition, then position it until you’re satisfied. “The face needs something to sit on,” explains Johnston, “so I simply masked out an area of the background roughly again with the trusty Lasso tool.”

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Now it’s time to start adding more elements for what Johnston calls ‘up front’. “This is a digital picture of a model friend who I managed to con into posing for me,” says Johnston. “The digital shot is pretty bad, so we need to clean it up.”

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The swirls that feature throughout the illustration were originally used on the Demanifest book cover. “They’re just roughly cut-out sections of a dodgy photocopy scan,” says Johnston. You can draw your own, or scan some elements in.

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The idea now is to give the face a painted feel. “It’s looking good so far, but now I’ll duplicate the face layer and add a canvas texture to it from the Filter>Texture menu,” says Johnston. You might find the texture a little heavy, so give the layer a mask and airbrush out some of the texture by spraying onto the mask, revealing the unfiltered image underneath.

Use the Clone Stamp and the Airbrush to retouch the face. Set the Clone Stamp to a large radius at first (about 100 pixels), and clone the large flat areas of shade to get rid of the digital quality of the shot. When you start working on delicate areas such as the nose, use a smaller stamp radius; if this looks bad, then select colours from the face with the Colour Picker and use a 20 or 30-pixel radius Airbrush to finish off the detail. “This is really detailed work, and you’ll probably have to use the History palette a lot to undo when you mess up!” adds Johnston.

^

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INSIGHT HEALING PROPERTIES

Instead of using the Clone Stamp tool, expedite matters by using the Healing Brush and a hardedged brush (Photoshop 7 only). This enables you to remove blemishes without affecting the underlying tone of an image. Better still, combine the two tools to achieve the effect you’re after.

1996 VERSION 4 ACTION STATIONS

1997 VERSION 5 MAKING HISTORY

Who could live without actions? Pre-Photoshop 4, everyone had to. The 1996 release also brought adjustment layers and watermarking. A Computer Arts review (issue 5) gave it four and a half out of five: “Adjustment layers are smart: standard adjustments can be attached to their own layer, leaving the original image untouched.”

With this fifth iteration came the app’s saving grace – the History palette, a way of flipping through different stages of the design process. Also new: the Magnetic Lasso tool and colour management tools, which had the aim of cutting out expensive third-party apps. Problems with these features were ironed out in v5.0.2 later in the year.

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^ ^

INSIGHT SAY CHEESE

Take photographs of everything you can. “I try and carry a little digital camera everywhere with me,” says Steven Johnston. “You never know what sights you will see. Even if you don’t use a photograph straight away, there will be some point in the future when it will be perfect for a certain image or project.”

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Drag the swirl selection onto the composition and open the Hue/Saturation dialog box, then increase the Lightness to +7 and the Saturation to +10. Move the Hue slider until you find a good shade of brown that sits well in the composition. Now it’s just a matter of duplicating the swirl, then scaling and rotating it to make an interesting organic structure. “The structure needs to complement the image, rather than make it look fussy,” says Johnston.

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Drag and copy some of the swirl and fabric elements around the composition. Be careful not to fill the whole illustration with swirls or it will overcrowd the image. “It’s a good idea with elements like swirls to think of them as growing from one point; imagine how they might organically spread across the layout,” suggests Johnston.

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Next it’s time to add the fabric elements. Try cutting out a section of fabric from the model’s top and copying it onto another layer. “Use a nice shape to add to quiet areas,” adds Johnston, “and repeat around the face to add some interest.”

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“I decided to put in more slightly different detail, in the form little blue vector flowers,” explains Johnston. “Clip art can be pretty useful sometimes, but it’s usually really cheesy. Used correctly, though, it can really enhance an image. I get lots of clip art from old repro camera books or from program CDs. Macromedia FreeHand comes with a good selection on its discs.”

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At this stage in the creative process, it’s wise to sit back and survey your work. Suggests Johnston: “This is a good time to have some fun with the image, so cut bits out of layers and duplicate them, scale sections up – just see what happens.”

^

INSIGHT IMPERFECTION

Try not to labour over an illustration too much; sometimes it’s nice to create something more instant. Photoshop is great, but it’s so easy to amend or undo any mistakes, and sometimes the accidents are the best part of a composition. Try to create something really quickly and don’t be too precious about it.

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“The addition of these fabric elements is also a good way to cover up any dodgy blending of the sun flare,” he continues. “Merge the layers of fabric and drag a copy over the flare – this also links the two halves of the composition.”

1998 VERSION 5.5 WEB-READY This upgrade deserves a special mention because it saw the introduction of Web tools – ImageReady 2 was bundled as an extension to meet the growing demand for Webbased imagery in 1998. v5.5 gave Adobe a massive boost following difficult economic conditions. Some businesses rely on this feature-packed version even today.

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2000 VERSION 6 VECTOR EXPLOSION Adobe didn’t forget anyone with the release of Photoshop 6 – graphic designers, Web pros, photographers and illustrators were all duly remembered with text features, vector shapes, Layer styles and ImageReady 3. We reviewed version 6 in the Winter 2000 issue, claiming it was worth upgrading for the text and vector features alone.

Tutorial

PART 3 THE FINISHING TOUCHES Now to add those small touches that can make all the difference

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“I used to live with a girl who had an amazing collection of old Japanese prints,” says Steve Johnston. “This little bird was on one of the prints and I thought it was a really cute shape, so I scanned it in and keep it for times such as these. Again, here I’ve just cut the bird shape out of a photocopy texture.” and set the Hue to -26 and the Lightness to +17.

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To give these little black birds some structure on the composition, create some vector hairlines in FreeHand or Illustrator. Import a flattened version of the Photoshop image into the vector app and then draw the lines over the image to get them in the right place. Now it’s just a case of copying and pasting the lines into the Photoshop file.

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Time to add some final detail of the animal variety. “We use lots of hand-drawn or found art in our images to give them a human touch,” explains Johnston. “Here, we’ve roughly cut out a scan of a rabbit drawing using the Lasso tool – don’t worry about making it a neat selection.”

FINAL STEP

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hile adding the final little details, remember to regularly step back and not push the design too far – keep it simple and stop working if necessary. This creative process is dependent on what you feel

about the image – what needs tweaking, what looks good and what should be left well alone. These techniques are flexible, and can be applied to any illustration or other project you could be faced with.

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Next, drag the cut-out rabbit onto the nearly completed image. “This gives it that Watership Down feel! Again, try not to deliberate too much over positioning; the best method is simply to place things where it feels right.”

2002 VERSION 7 HEALING TIMES

2003 VERSION CS NOT JUST A NUMBER

The first native OS X version of Photoshop arrived in spring 2002, leaving the Mac designer to shut up shop on OS 9. New features included the superb Healing tool, new Brushes palette, PDF export and the surprise addition of a spellchecker. Best feature? According to Computer Arts 68, it was the File Browser.

The Adobe team certainly listened to user wishlists when putting together this upgrade, so much so that the drop of version number has hardly been noticed. Great new features include Layer Comps (now you can save different versions of an image within the same doc), Photomerge, Flash export and Filter gallery.

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WOR £199TH 0

WIN CANON 3D S.O.M Your chance to win one of two copies of Canon’s fantastic 3D modelling software, worth £1990

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his month, we’ve teamed up with Canon to offer two lucky readers the chance to walk away with 3D S.O.M (3D Software Object Modeller) for absolutely nothing. When we reviewed this tool in issue 86 of Computer Arts, we gave it an extremely reputable four out of five stars, claiming the application “will give results faster than any other similar package.” The tool’s main premise is to enable you to quickly and efficiently transform 2D photographs into 3D models, and such features as automatic camera calibration, automatic masking, automatic mesh creation and automatic texture capture ensure even those not used to 3D apps will find it a breeze to use. Canon 3D S.O.M has all the tools you’ll need to export your models to the popular packages – 3DS, VRML and Shockwave 3D export options are here, making the tool great for not only 3D artists and animators, but Web and multimedia designers, too. To be in with a chance of winning this awesome piece of software, simply answer the question that follows and either send us a postcard to the usual address, or enter online at www.computerarts.co.uk/ competition. Here you’ll find the chance to win all sorts of other creative software and hardware, too. INFO www.cre.canon.co.uk/3dsom

28 Computer Arts_December 2003

QUESTION WHAT DOES THE S.O.M STAND FOR IN CANON 3D S.O.M? TO ENTER Try the easy way, via our Website at www.computerarts.co.uk/competition. Click on the Canon Competition and enter via the link at the bottom of the page. Answer the question, fill in the rest of the form, then click Submit Entry. If you don’t have Web access, you can still enter by sending us your answer on a postcard to: Canon Competition, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW. Please include your address and a telephone number, so we can contact you if you win.

RULES Closing date is 4 December 2003. Employees of Canon, Future Publishing and their agents and families are not permitted to enter. Multiple entries are not accepted. The editor’s decision is final and there are no cash alternatives. No other correspondence will be entered into. If you are entering by post and do not wish any of the companies involved in this competition to contact you with further offers, please indicate this on your entry. We will not pass details on to third parties.

Illustrator by day...

www.corel.com/angel © 2003 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved.

HELL

APHRO DISIACS

©2003 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, GoLive, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop,“Tools for the New Work” and Version Cue are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

It combines full, new CS versions of Photoshop,® Illustrator,® InDesign,® and GoLive® with Version Cue,™ an innovative tool to help you manage and keep track of your files. Plus, it’s got Acrobat ® Professional. So now you can think, play and tinker around all you want, without holding yourself back. www.adobe.co.uk/therapy

THERAPY

Don’t miss the Adobe Creative Suite Tour Book now visit www.adobe.co.uk/cstour Manchester IMAX Cinema 23rd October London The Brewery 29th October Edinburgh EICC 4th November Dublin Burlington Hotel 11th November

Tools for the New Work™

Introducing the Adobe ® Creative Suite.

®

It’s a creative support group.

Adobe Creative Suite

It ’s more than creative software.

SHORTCUTS

www.studio-output.com

PHOTOSHOP Here we look at an alternative to Levels. There’s a neat trick for undertaking Levels-like adjustment to images using only layers, and it produces results that would be impossible to achieve with Photoshop’s Levels dialog

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ay you have a black and white photograph that needs brightening up. Using Levels doesn’t give you the results you need; the image needs a lot of brightening, and Levels squashes the contrast or clips the highlights and burns them out. Well, there is an alternative… Open your image and double-click the background to make it a layer. Add a new layer below the image and fill with white. Open the image layer’s Layer Options to access the Advanced Blending section. To brighten up the image, drag the This Layer white point slider while holding the Option key (this will split it). Drag the left half of the white slider as far to the left as you need to brighten the image. Miraculously, the image freshens up, but without banding, without noise, without losing contrast, and the highlights don’t blow out. There is a downside: you lose colour. Compensate for this by adding a Hue/ Saturation adjustment layer to return said colour to its former self. It’s also not a miracle cure for all images, and tends to work best when you move the split slider past the halfway point. If you want to darken an over-exposed image, you can repeat the procedure but swap the white background layer for a black one. Then, in the Image’s Blending Options, Option-drag the black This Layer slider to the right. In either case, what you’re doing is making a large chunk of the image partially transparent, so the underlying layer can show through. When you split the white or black sliders, you create a gradient transparency over a range of tones. In the case of the white slider, the pixels to the left of the left half are 100 per cent opaque, while the pixels to the right are 100 per cent transparent. The rest are smoothly feathered in-between. By dragging the split slider to the left, you’re making the darker greys more

transparent. By keeping the right half fixed to the right side, only pixels that were already at 255 are fully white. You will never blow out the highlights, because to the left there will always be semi-opaque pixels. If you do want to blow out the highlights, simply move the right half towards the left side a little. You can adapt this technique to create interesting effects – solarized images, for example. To achieve this effect, set up the document as above, but split the black

YOU CAN ADAPT THIS TECHNIQUE TO CREATE INTERESTING EFFECTS – SOLARIZED IMAGES, FOR EXAMPLE. SPLIT THE BLACK SLIDER INSTEAD OF THE WHITE IN LAYER BLENDING OPTIONS

slider instead of the white in the Layer Blending Options – the shadows start to brighten to create this cool, solarized look. Unlike the Solarize filter, this effect is continuously variable, and works well with greyscale images. To give greyscale documents a tint, convert them to RGB. Add a Solid Colour layer between the image and the white layer, then set a tint colour. Choosing a cool grey-blue gives a metallic look, but other colours also work well. Placing the Solid Colour Layer between the image and the white/black layer causes the tint to show up only in the transparent parts, heightening the effect. INFO Expertise supplied by Simon Danaher, [email protected]

CONTRAST AND HIGHLIGHTS

Using Levels works to an extent, but high Gamma settings create noise and a lack of contrast in the shadows, which leaves the image looking flat.

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This is the original image – we want to brighten it up and add more contrast. Note that there’s plenty of detail in the shadows and highlights, but it’s still rather dull.

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Using the White point slider in Levels is a useful trick, but it causes highlights to bleach or burn out, so should be used in moderation – unless that’s the effect you’re after.

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By using the more effective Blending Options technique, you can brighten an image without losing detail in the highlights or contrast in the shadows.

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36 Computer Arts_December 2003

Profile

BÜRO DESTRUCT

These sought-after Swiss designers see books as movies, themselves as their most demanding client, and the Amiga as a classic creative tool

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1. A school class in Hong Kong – one memory from Büro Destruct’s frequent trips to the Far East. 2. The Culture Hall in Bern is one of BD’s most frequent clients. This poster was designed for a video festival in 2003. 3. One of BD’s many logos – in this case, for Sony Robotics’ new Aibo dog.

ittle leaf, you render us void. Sweet little leaf, if we look at you, our heart smiles just for you.” Not the first words you’d expect from an established Swiss design studio in the introduction to its new book, but it’s there, accompanied by a mix of useful information and fanciful prose from the Prophet‘s Beard – the new star of Büro Destruct. Although the team has taken a more or less classic route into graphic design – art college to agency to own studio – its attitude and portfolio are as refreshing as a sunny day in the Alps with a big bag of Toblerones. Büro Destruct was set up by the frequently quoted Lopetz, who we speak to while he’s on a working holiday in Tokyo. The remaining members of the five-man team, based in Bern, Switzerland’s capital, are MBrunner, H1reber, Heiwid and Moritz. Together, they’re responsible for some of this decade’s most fascinating and inspiring print work in advertising, books, corporate identities, logos, character designs, CD covers, posters, flyers and, their overruling passion, typography. Clients have included Red Bull, Swisscom and the IdN Fresh conference. It’s this work that’s resulted in the publication of Büro Destruct’s second book with Die Gestalten Verlag and constant invitations to speak at events all over the world. Japanese interest in Büro Destruct’s work has undoubtedly contributed to its success. Following some prototype and typographic work for electronics giant Sony, the design studio then went on to design campaigns for Sony’s robot dog, Aibo, among others. “It’s great to work with Japanese people. They know what they want, but are open to surprises,“ says Lopetz. “The conversation is serious, so it’s really safe to

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work with them. If they don‘t like something, they‘ll explain exactly why.” Büro Destruct’s own interest in Japan was expressed in the book, Narita Inspected, published in 2002. They were commissioned by DGV to bring over 30 Japanese design studios to the attention of a European and American audience. “It was great to see how young Japanese designers work. There are many similarities to how we work in Switzerland.”

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THE SWISS FACTOR

4. A collection of designs for the Culture Hall in Bern. 5. A personal work by Büro Destruct, entitled ‘Ten Reasons To Live In A Small Town Like Bern‘. 6. Concert poster and flier for a local client in Bern. 7. ‘Tatami-Garden’ featured in the last ever issue of Japanese magazine Minna No Digital Design.

Something Büro Destruct is unapologetic about is its ultra-clean Swiss design ethic. “We‘re seeing a revival of Swiss tradition all over the world,” Lopetz explains. “This care of good forms, clear shapes, legible characters and order. These things are installed in the people of Switzerland.” Nevertheless, the studio is keen to embrace other cultures and styles. Lopetz et al take on two internships a year from all over the world,

for instance. Not only does this give young designers a superb chance to work at the studio, it also provides the team with a vital new cultural perspective. “We’ve taken on people from Japan, Denmark and Germany,” says Lopetz. “We look at it like an exchange. We get a lot of input from their ideas and cultures.” While it has a range of international clients, around 60 per cent of Büro Destruct’s work is for Swiss companies, including Swisscom, the national telecommunications company, Bern Cultural Hall and numerous clubs and event organisers. It’s produced corporate brochures and ad campaigns, as well as countless flyers, album covers and posters. Music, it turns out, is a particular passion – work for clubs, musicians and record labels feature heavily in the studio’s portfolio. If it wasn’t designing, suggests Lopetz, Büro Destruct would all be pop stars… “Most of the work we enjoy doing is for cultural clients,” he says. “We’ve done four books about different architects. We enjoy the challenge of displaying their buildings and plans in creative ways.” Clearly, these guys have a healthy affection for books – just check out their own publications (see the box below for more on the studio’s latest), as well as the

GLIMPSES OF GLORY Typography, 3D, sketches and toons – it’s all in BD’s latest book Four years after the publication of Büro Destruct I, which featured the early work of the world-famous Swiss studio, comes the cunningly titled Büro Destruct II. This second coffee-table tome features an astounding array of styles, media, and both personal and commercial work. Once you’re past the rambling introduction, the staple diet of all design books, it’s a rollercoaster of photography, vector designs, psychedelia, typography, illustrations, sketches and, of

course, fine examples of Swiss-style graphic design at its best. “The most picky client we have is ourselves,” says Lopetz. “There were so many discussions about how we would like the book to look, how it should differ from the first one, and what work belonged where. I think it was the most interesting and challenging project we‘ve had.” This is just another chapter in the studio’s long-running relationship with acclaimed

German publishers Die Gestalten Verlag, whose books cover the very latest developments in the visual arts. Aside from its portfolio work, Büro Destruct has also worked with DGV on a number of non-BD titles. These include Narita Inspected, an exploration of the graphic design movement in Japan, and Los Logos, a campaign to build an online archive of the rapidly disappearing logos created by smaller companies. DGV published the first book based on the archive.

■ Büro Destruct II is currently available from specialist and larger bookshops. Visit www.die-gestalten.de for stockists and links to buy online 38 Computer Arts_December 2003

Profile

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work they’ve contributed to others. “Creating books is like making a movie,” says Lopetz. “You’re guiding a reader through a book like a shape in the movie that’s going up and down and faster and slower. It’s like directing.” Much of the work showcased on the studio’s Website was conceived outside the constraints of a client contract. Personal work is rated highly by all at the studio and fills a large proportion of its two portfolio books. “We give as much time as possible to work on our own

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go out with your personal creative work and see it working in the street.”

TIMELESS IDENTITY

The street is where it began for Büro Destruct. While working at an advertising agency, Lopetz met the intriguing-titled HGB Fideljus at an industrial music club and found they had a shared vision to promote young artists. HGB had set up a group called Destruct Agentur, which had a small gallery space in “IT’S GREAT TO WORK WITH THE JAPANESE PEOPLE. downtown Bern. Lopetz soon got THEY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT, BUT ARE VERY OPEN TO involved. “The whole thing was a youthSURPRISES. THE CONVERSATION IS VERY SERIOUS, SO orientated and enthusiastic venture. It IT’S REALLY SAFE TO WORK WITH THEM. IF THEY DON’T was powered by an underground, LIKE SOMETHING, THEY’LL EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHY” independent spirit,“ he explains. “We did a lot of concept-art exhibitions with different artists and ran our own project called creative work – trying out new software and ‘Weltschmerz’ (World Pain).” playing around with different styles. The fonts Lopetz took on the promotion of the outfit, and illustrations are done in client-free time.” designing more flyers and posters for This mix of commercial and personal work is exhibitions and events as his design work was what keeps the team constantly busy, but does recognised. He soon quit his job at the agency the desire to spend time on their own work and started the business full time. The name encroach on client time? “We wouldn’t prefer a then changed from Destruct Agentur to Büro life without clients and not just because of the Destruct. “It sounded more reasonable for money! Finding a solution between the client’s what we are and what we do. Agentur is a desires for its product and a product that works German word for agency and büro is a Frenchis an interesting challenge. But it’s also great to

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Posters and flyers for EchoClub. Client: Institute of Contemporary Urban Encounters.

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A poster for club night Fri-Son (left) and a font created from a BD sticker.

8. Say cheese! ‘Fondue Explosion’ featured on another poster for the Culture Hall. 9. The Büro Destruct building – erected with its own fonts using Typotown. 10. The result of a BD meeting in a pizzeria…

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Another spread from Büro Destruct II, which features 224 pages of client and personal work.

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11. Poster, flyer and CD art for outdoor rave event Dekadance.

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12. ‘Garden Of Eden 3’ – illustration for a booklet cover.

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German word for office.” In 1994, he was joined by MBrunner, H1reber and Pedä, fellow graphic design graduates and, later on, Heiwid, the operation’s multimedia and 3D expert. Their aims haven’t changed much in nine years. “It‘s always been to give our designs, clients and products a strong and timeless identity. And whenever possible, we try to do it in a humorous way. We like it that way.” The work hasn’t stayed in the office. Not far away in Zurich is Büro Discount, a dedicated design shop, set up by HGB Fideljus, who left the team in Bern to oversee

LAS AMIGAS

“CREATING BOOKS IS LIKE MAKING A MOVIE. YOU’RE GUIDING A READER THROUGH A BOOK LIKE A SHAPE IN THE MOVIE THAT’S GOING UP AND DOWN, AND FASTER AND SLOWER. IT’S LIKE DIRECTING…”

While the team works across many jobs at the studio, each member follows his own passion. Heiwid, the resident CG guy, has been conjuring up multimedia work, 3D characters and animations since he joined in 1994. His fascination with new technologies has led him to design the BD-ROM, a special Büro Discount CD, featuring online applications Typotown, a 3D Shockwave application which enables you to build 3D towers and houses from your fonts,

the venture full-time. The store not only sells the studio’s graphic design goods, but other designers’, too– posters, books, t-shirts, CDs, toys and more. There’s also a gallery space at the back to promote artists from all over the

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Lopetz’s illustration work appears in the new Digital Vision Illustration catalogue.

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The BD guestbook – a novel take on wallpaper from the Hotel des Deux Gares, Paris.

world. “We do four or five exhibitions a year,” says Lopetz. “At the moment, we’re showcasing work from a Belgian guy Fred Platèus called TYPOFLEX (www.typoflex.com). It‘s amazing stuff – 3D graffiti art using big models.” With HGB Fideljus in charge of the store, the team doesn’t spend much time there, but it’s currently working on an online version to be launched in early 2004. “Büro Discount is not the most important thing about us, but it demonstrates that we like to try other things besides our daily work,” admits Lopetz. “We enjoyed producing the shop logos – it was like getting a new job.”

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BD’s Type Different font and EP illustration for Ritmic records (left), plus poster art for the Swiss culture exhibition.

Profile

13. Büro Destruct’s trail biking illustration for a Red Bull event.

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and The Büro Destruct Designer, an interactive nod to 60s Swiss design which creates random logos, patterns and colour combinations. He’s also contributed stunning 3D models to Sony’s Aibo and Humanoid Robot projects, among others. Despite this interest in all things new, Heiwid shares with Lopetz a nostalgia for the Commodore Amiga. Among the Power Macs and PCs sit four of the antique computers, and they get plenty of use from the design pair for video and projection work. “It’s like a hobby for us,” laughs Lopetz. “They’re really intuitive because they’re so basic. We use them as a sketchbook for ideas, because we can animate them so easily.” But using ancient Amiga classics Deluxe Paint (“Much easier than Flash,” says Lopetz) and Scala (“An old version of PowerPoint”) to rough-design the studio’s presentations and nightclub visuals has its drawbacks. “We’re constantly scared that the hard disks will break because they‘re so old,” laments Lopetz. “But perhaps we’ll still be using them in 2010. Everyone should grab theirs from the attic and use it!” From clean, disciplined design to sketchy illustrations to video sequences for nightclubs, even the co-founder himself can’t sum up the Büro Destruct’s portfolio. “It’s hard to define. Maybe you can put us in the same drawer as those musicians which won’t or can’t be put into a specific drawer.“ Oh, that drawer… “What’s sure is that we like to try out the various arts of graphic design – we explore different styles and combine them in new ways. Someone said to us that looking through the artwork in the BDI and BDII books is like watching a road movie.” INFO Words by Vicki Atkinson. For more details, check out www.burodestruct.net, www.lopetz.com

THE BD TOOLKIT “The most important software is the brain and the eyes. The most important hardware is the paper and the pencil” Illustrator Photoshop XPress InDesign Fontographer GoLive Dreamweaver Flash LightWave

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You have been watching…

Deluxe Paint Scala Power Mac G4/G3 PC Renderfarm (3D) Amiga 1200/4000 Digital cameras (Ricoh, Sony, Nikon) Sony DV cameras

Album cover for Balduin’s Choose Cheese (left) and a logo type for ‘Sommerfoyer’.

The BD team: Clockwise from top left: MBrunner, Heiwid, Lopetz, Moritz, H1reber

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This spread features the Büro Destruct Designer, an interactive tool on BD’s Website.

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Quick Tutorial Q&A

SHORTCUTS

www.studio-output.com

FREEHAND Macromedia upped the stakes for FreeHand by introducing more control and creativity when using fonts. We explain how to make your work more dynamic by ensuring fonts appear seamlessly within illustrations – it’s just a case of keeping things simple and skewing for added realism

font or point size not looking right while you type it in, because this can be fixed at the next stage. Once it’s keyed in, click on the Text tab within the floating Inspectors window and make your adjustments. From the image, you can see that the word ‘LIAR’ has been keyed in and changed to a font called Trendy University, set at 36 point. At this stage, it’s been left in black and not positioned correctly. The final position sees the type changed to white to read out of the black of the figure, then reduced in size.

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ore and more illustrators and image-makers are using type, fonts, copy, words and letterforms in their work. Using the written word or language in your images creates a message, communicates an idea and generally helps set a scene. Working with fonts in FreeHand can be trouble-free, enabling the designer to create type with the same accuracy and finesse as drawing vectors with the Line tool. If working with fonts in FreeHand is new to you, start with a simple project. This illustration of a businessman standing, pointing at a chart, means very little in the first instance before type is added. It was created by Lawrence Zeegen for Illustrated Ape magazine, a cutting-edge mag that fuses creative writing, poetry and off-the-wall features with edgy and sometimes controversial illustration work. This image was to express an idea about the nature of truth in marketing and advertising. Without the added words, though, it would be meaningless and rather bland.

So you have your image and you need to add some well-inspired and justified (mentally rather than typographically) copy. Open a new layer and click on the Font tool in the toolbar. In your new layer, open up a text box that you can then key your words into – don’t worry about the

Once you’ve mastered incorporating the Skew tool with your fonts into your FreeHand illustrations, you can start to have fun with all sorts of type. Below are two other examples of imagery being given more depth by the adept sprinkling of a little typo-magic…

SOMETIMES, SIMPLE IDEAS AND EXECUTION CAN BE JUST AS EFFECTIVE, IF NOT MORE SO, THAN OVER-LABOURED, MULTI-LAYERED MEANINGLESS IMAGERY

Once in position, it’s time to add the word ‘LIES’ to the pad. As the angle of the pad is slightly tilted back in the drawing, it makes sense to create the type so that it reflects this angle. Start by creating the word in exactly the same way as before – but then prepare to be amazed at the beauty of the Skew tool in the Transform floating panel… You’re given two options using this tool: you can set the skew of the height by entering an amount into the H field, or the vertical amount of the skew by entering the V field. For the simple skewing of this example text, feel free to experiment. We finally settled on a skew of 8 (in the H field only).

The final illustration, as shown above, is a combination of type and image working together to create a bold yet simple message. It’s worth remembering that sometimes simplicity in both the idea and the execution can be just as effective, if not more so, than frighteningly over-laboured, over-complicated, multi-layered meaningless imagery!

Here’s an image created for a calendar of illustrations for illustration agency Heart, with themes that related to aspects of mail – hence attachments in email.

An illustration based on a quotation from Aesop’s Fables, given a modern twist. INFO Expertise supplied by Lawrence Zeegen, www.zeegen.com

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Tutorial

WORLD FIRST Try out the demo of Flash MX on the CD, and you’ll see that it makes building interactive animation for the Web easier than ever. In our first ever Flash MX 2004 tutorial, we take a look at the new ease-of-use features that can turn anyone into a Flash guru

ILLUSTRATION BY TADO

www.tado.co.uk

Starting life as an animation package for the Web, Macromedia Flash has evolved over time into a powerful application development tool. This transformation has now been re-emphasised with the release of Flash MX 2004 – an upgrade so radical that Macromedia has had to soften the blow by splitting the package into two versions. Flash MX 2004 Professional introduces a whole new way to create Flash movies based on ‘screens’. Programmers and application developers will find this a more familiar approach than the package’s traditional Timeline model. The Standard edition of Flash MX 2004 doesn’t have this particular feature, but it’s in no way a ‘light’ version of the package. It’s still a full upgrade, jam-packed with new features – most of them aimed at making Flash faster and easier to work with. Templates and components were introduced

in the last version of Flash and the new release improves on these, making them easier to build, use and configure. The big time-savers, though, are the Timeline Effects features and the new Behaviours panel. Both automate tasks that were previously the preserve of Flash experts, enabling you to add animation and interaction to your movies in seconds. Follow our step-by-step tour of Flash MX 2004 Std to discover how the new features work and get some ideas for your own work. Next month we look at Flash MX 2004 Pro. INFO Tutorial by Karl Hodge, [email protected]

ON THE CD Look on your coverdisc for the brand new demo of Flash MX 2004.

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^

INSIGHT LEARNING COMPONENTS

PART 1 TEMPLATES Build movies more quickly with Flash MX 2004 templates

The Learning Assets used in the Quiz Template example are bundled in Flash MX 2004 as Common Libraries. You’ll find them in Window>Other Panels>Common Libraries>Learning Assets, where they can easily be dragged and dropped into your own movies, and their Component elements edited in the Component Inspector.

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Other templates have page elements and Components already embedded into them. Click on the Quiz folder in the Start screen and open the second template in the list named Quiz_style_2. The timeline is clearly labelled so you can see which elements are on which layer.

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Launch Flash MX 2004 for the first time and you’ll notice something different straight away – a new Start screen. You don’t need to keep it there; just tick the box marked Don’t Show Again if you want Flash to start up in the old-fashioned way. The Start screen gives you access to recent items, templates and Flash lessons.

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Go to Window>Component Inspector – the editable options for the Component appear in the Inspector. Resize the Inspector so that you can edit the parameters available.

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You’ll notice that some layers are locked – these contain interaction and actions that shouldn’t be edited. Looking through the structure of this template is a master class in Flash movie design – every element is categorised in the library for easy access, and every layer is labelled.

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The other Learning Interactions have their own editable parameters that work in the same way. You can access them through the library, by opening the Learning Assets folder and selecting an item – alternatively, choose Components in the Movie Explorer. Go to the library and double-click on the Fill In The Blank component.

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The Create From Template list gives you a series of categories to choose from. Flash templates were introduced in the previous version of the application but now there are more to choose from. Don’t be caught out, though – some of them include features that are exclusive to the Professional version of Flash MX 2004.

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Next, go to Window>Other Panels and choose Movie Explorer. You’ll find a movie clip labelled ‘mc, frameNav’. Nested within this is a Component which enables you to edit options within your quiz. Simply right-click on it (or use Ctrl-click on the Mac) and choose Go To Location.

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The simplest templates are just documents with the page dimensions already set up. Click on the Advertising folder in the Start screen – you’ll be shown a list of banner, skyscraper and pop-up ad templates at standard sizes.

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Launch the Component Inspector using the button on the Properties panel and resize the inspector so that you can enter the parameters. It’s here that you create the actual questions for your quiz by following the instructions within the component. Objects can be replaced directly, as long as you retain the established component relationships.

^

PART 2 TIMELINE EFFECTS Animate anything without direct timeline tinkering

Tutorial

INSIGHT RENAMING

Flash automatically names animated shapes for you after the Timeline Effect type that you choose. To rename the effect to something more intuitive, you’ll have to track it down in the Movie Explorer or library and open the Symbol Properties dialog.

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The Transition option helps you create presentation style fades and wipes. Want to apply one to an entire scene? Place a rectangle shape over the stage on the top layer and apply the required options to create full-screen transitions.

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Third-party programs like SWiSH made Flash effects and animation easier. Now, Flash MX 2004 includes animation effects that don’t require any timeline tweaking – all you have to do is select an object and change the parameters in the Timeline Effects dialog.

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Looking at the Transform dialog, you’ll notice that all of Flash’s traditional animation capabilities are represented. In this case we’ll animate motion, rotation and scale. Select Move To Position from the position dropdown menu and enter 550 pixels in the X co-ordinate box.

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Exploding text is easy in Flash MX 2004. Use the Text tool to add a phrase or logo to the stage. With the text selected, go to Insert Timeline Effects>Effects and choose Explode. Now set the parameters you want in the dialog and Flash does the rest, breaking apart the text into shapes, distributing letters to individual layers and tweening the animation.

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We’ll go through those instant animation capabilities step by step. Start by drawing a shape on screen, then marquee around it to select the whole thing. Drag the object into the bottom-left corner of the stage. Notice that as you do, guides appear within Flash as you position the object.

14

Type ‘2’ in the Spin box to make the shape rotate twice and set Scale to 200 degrees. Click Update Preview to see how the animation will look before clicking OK. The animation is automatically created as a movie clip and placed in your movie.

18

12

Now, with the shape still selected, go to insert Timeline>Timeline Effects>Transform/ Transition and choose Transform. Note that you don’t have to convert the shape into a symbol first – Flash will do that for you.

15

To edit the clip directly, double-click on it to open in the Symbol Editor. However, it’s easier to go to Modify>Timeline Effects>Edit Effect and use the dialog to tweak parameters again.

The Expand Effect only works on text. Other effects like Drop Shadow and Blur work on any object. Any Timeline Effect you apply can be removed by selecting the clip on screen and going to Modify>Timeline Effects>Remove Effect.

Computer Arts_December 2003

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PART 3 BEHAVIOURS Button scripting is now faster in Flash with behaviours

21 19

A major new addition to Flash MX 2004 is the Behaviours panel. Behaviours are analogous to Dreamweaver behaviours or actions in Photoshop. They enable you to build ActionScript-based interaction into your movies without having to edit any script manually.

Go to the Actions panel at the bottom of the screen. You can see the position of current selection with the movie hierarchy within the palette. Select Frame 1 in the timeline. Click the Add A New Item To The Script icon. Navigate to Global Functions>Timeline Control and choose Stop.

24

Choose Goto And Stop At Frame Or Label. In the dialog that appears, enter the frame number ‘2’ to instruct the button to go to frame 2 and stop playing. Notice that you can target specific clips, scenes and objects if necessary. Test the movie by hitting Ctrl (or Command on the Mac) and Return.

25 20

Behaviours can be added to frames or objects. The list of available behaviours alters contextually to reflect the options you can apply. Create a new movie, select the second frame in the timeline and hit F6 to add a new keyframe. On the first frame, add the text ‘Frame 1’ in large type. In the second frame, add the text ‘Frame 2’.

22

Return to the main stage and select Frame 1 in the timeline. Go to Window>Other Panels>Common Libraries>Button. In the library, open the Circle Buttons folder. Drag and drop an instance of ‘circle button – next’ to the stage.

Buttons can also be more easily programmed to load URLs. Select a button and click the Add Behaviour button in the Behaviours panel. Choose ‘Web’ and select ‘Go to Web Page’. Next, type in a complete URL and select a target window from the dropdown.

PART 4 ADDING EXTERNAL ELEMENTS Create streamline movies that load external elements

^

INSIGHT ACTIONS SHORTCUTS

Now there are shortcuts for many of the mostused ActionScript commands. Many of them are intuitive, because they’re a combination of the ESC key and the first two letters of the ActionScript command. Common examples are ESC and st for stop(), ESC and gp for Goto and play, and ESC and gu for getURL.

MULTIPLE CHOICE

Multiple behaviours can be added to frames or buttons, building up scripted responses to timeline events or user interactions. As in previous versions, scripts can be exported from the ActionScript editor for use in other movies.

48 Computer Arts_December 2003

23

With the button selected, go to the Behaviours panel and click the Add Behaviour icon. Navigate through the menu to Movieclip behaviours. There’s a large list of possible behaviours that can be associated with a button.

26

Behaviours have reduced one of the most complex aspects of Flash down to a few clicks. Though the package has had the capability to load external media – from Flash movie clips to MP3s – for a couple of versions, Flash MX 2004 now adds all the necessary code automatically.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT VIDEO PLAYER

The Video behaviours that are accessible through the Behaviours panel actually control movie clip behaviour, so they can be applied to any animation that has been encapsulated as a movie clip and placed within the main stage. The dialog for Video behaviours lets you select any clip within the movie hierarchy. Although the behaviour can be attached to frames, they function best when applied to buttons.

27

30

28

31

Building an MP3 player in Flash used to be something of a torturous process. Now, all you need is a ‘stub’ movie containing an interface for the player and some MP3s already uploaded to your Web space. Start by simply drawing two shapes, suitable for use as buttons.

Select the first of those shapes, go to the Behaviours panel and click the Add Behaviours icon. Choose Sound and select Load Streaming MP3 file. Because the item you have selected is a shape, not a symbol, you will be prompted to convert it. Click OK.

Give the file entered an instance name and click OK. Select the second button shape and go to the Behaviours panel. Click the Add Behaviours icon and choose Stop All Sounds from the Sound menu.

Now test the movie. Clicking on the first button you created will play the MP3 file; clicking on the second will stop playback. To make the script for the first button more efficient, you could add a Stop All Sounds behaviour to it before the Load Streaming MP3 File behaviour.

FINAL STEP

M

ovie clips can be replaced just as easily, enabling you to build up movies that include multiple external clips. This enables you to make your Flash movies in a more modular way, loading in sections and discarding them – much as your browser loads individual Web pages.

29

In the dialog that appears, enter the full URL to an MP3 file stored in your Web space. If the MP3 file will be stored in the same folder as your Flash movie, you can enter a relative path – but using an absolute URL will enable you to test the file.

Computer Arts_December 2003

49

SUBSCRIPTION FORM 3 EASY WAYS TO ORDER: 2. Post: UK readers – Christmas Orders, Future Publishing Ltd, Freepost BS4900, Somerton, Somerset, TA11 6BR Overseas readers – Christmas Orders, Future Publishing Ltd, Cary Court, Somerton, Somerset, TA11 6TB, UK 3. Fax this completed form to: +44 (0)1458 271 146

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Computer Arts_December 2003

51

If you’re using Flash, know a little ActionScript and are mad keen to increase your 3D Web design skills, THIS BOOK IS A MUST HAVE.

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Table of Contents: Chapter 1: Introduction to Flash MX 2004 Extensibility Chapter 2: Commands • Chapter 3: Tools Chapter 4: Timeline Effects • Chapter 5: Behaviours Chapter 6: Using JSFL within SWFs • Chapter 7: FlashCommand.exe • Chapter 8: XML to UI Chapter 9: DOM Chart

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Quick Tutorial Q&A

SHORTCUTS

www.studio-output.com

DREAMWEAVER Dreamweaver’s tag selector is often overlooked, but offers unparalleled ease of access to HTML tags and their attributes. Here, we show you how to get the best from this powerful feature

T

he tag selector is a little grey row of tags at the bottom-left of the document window, and works in conjunction with the rest of the interface in Dreamweaver. Select any element on the page in Layout or Code view, and the Properties palette shows the options relevant to the selected item. The tag selector changes, too, to show the position of the selected element within the document’s element tree. All the tags that your selection is nested within are shown in order in the tag selector, starting with the tag and working inwards. This in itself is useful information – to check if a stray tag has crept in, for example, or to see how many nested tables are in use in that area of the document. When you click on a tag in the tag selector, Dreamweaver highlights that element in the layout view and in the source code – from start tag to end tag, no more, no less. This means you can copy/paste headings without losing the formatting or leaving behind empty heading tags in the code. It’s also a great way of selecting things that are otherwise hard to get at, such as a form tag buried deep in the source code. The trick is to click on something easy, like text or an image inside the element you’re trying to get at, then use the tag selector to select the parent element. The tag selector also has some hidden functions waiting to help you work faster and smarter. It conceals a contextual menu with some useful shortcut commands. On Windows, right-click on the tag you’re interested in, or on Mac OS, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the tag to bring up the contextual menu. You’ll see four options… Option one is Remove Tag. Choose this to remove the opening and the closing tag from the code. This is a great time-saver when you’re removing markup from the page, rather than hunting through the code to ensure you’re removing the right opening and closing tags. It’s also good for removing FONT tags from older pages.

Option two is Edit Tag. This option brings up the Quick Tag Editor pop-up for the tag in question. This little window has three modes, which you can toggle through by pressing Ctrl-T (Command-T on a Mac): Edit Tag, which enables you to edit the selected tag without hunting through code view; Wrap Tag, where you type in the name of a tag to wrap around the selected element (it automatically inserts the opening tag and a closing tag); and Insert HTML, for typing code to be inserted just before the selected tag. You can also invoke the Quick Tag Editor while working in Layout View – by selecting an element on the page and immediately pressing the keyboard shortcut. If you pause while typing a tag in the Quick Tag Editor, or press CtrlSpacebar (Command-Spacebar on Mac), you’ll see the pop-up tag hint menu appear, just like in Code view. The Set Class submenu lists all the CSS classes available for the current

document, and you can apply them to any tag via the tag selector. This is the most convenient and controllable means of applying classes. The Set ID submenu lists all the CSS ID styles available for the current document and you can apply them to any tag via the tag selector. Because an ID should only be applied to one element in the document, and the styles are usually created after the IDs have already been applied, this is the least useful of all the options. However, as part of the visual feedback in the tag selector, if you have classes or ID styles applied to elements, you will see the name of the style as well as the name of the element it’s applied to. This is great for maintaining consistency when editing pages created by others. By clicking within the document and glancing at the tag selector, you can see easily what classes they’ve used in the document. INFO Expertise supplied by Ian Anderson of zStudio, [email protected], www.zstudio.co.uk

TAG-TICAL THINKING

THE SET ID SUBMENU LISTS ALL THE CSS ID STYLES AVAILABLE FOR THE CURRENT DOCUMENT AND ENABLES YOU TO APPLY THEM TO ANY TAG VIA THE TAG SELECTOR

1

The tag selector lives on the left at the foot of the document window. Click on an element in your document to see the tags nested around it.

2

…this contextual menu, which features useful commands for the selected tag. To bring up the Quick Tag Editor, simply open up Edit Tag.

4

3

Click on a tag in the tag selector, and the Properties palette shows you the relevant options for it. Right-click a tag in the tag selector to bring up…

Press Ctrl-T or Command-T to cycle through Edit Tag, Wrap Tag and Insert HTML. Press Ctrl-Spacebar (or Command-Spacebar) to bring up the code hints menu.

Computer Arts_December 2003

53

The cover of Images 27 – the latest edition of the Association of Illustrators’ annual catalogue.

TURNING

0 3

The Association of Illustrators offers inspiration, encouragement and support to the industry. To mark its 30th anniversary, we look at how it’s evolved to meet the new needs of its members 54 Computer Arts_December 2003

i

t’s 1973. People queue round the block to see The Exorcist, Suzi Quatro storms the charts with Can The Can, and Roger Moore steps out for the first time as 007 in Live And Let Die. Bobby Moore puts an England shirt on for the last time. while Jackie Stewart wins his first Formula One. The Sydney Opera House opens, as does The Sears Tower in Chicago. The three-day week, the Austin Allegro, the end of the Vietnam War, and last but most definitely not least, the start of the Association of Illustrators (AOI)… That’s right. 30 years have now passed since the very beginnings of the AOI, and 30 years ago the digital age was a pipe dream; Apple was just the name of a record company owned by The Beatles and micro-soft was a term used to describe toilet paper. Set up to “promote illustration, advance and protect illustrators rights and encourage professional

Feature

STUART BRIARS

The AOI’s Webmaster, Stuart Briars, whiles the nights away online

Fiona Hewitt’s work featured in Images 27. This image was part of a self-promotional pack for clients (www.fionahewitt.com).

standards”, the Association of Illustrators marched in to fight the good fight on behalf of the illustration community, albeit then something of a cottage industry. By the early 70s, illustration as a career had fully emerged from an area of graphic and advertising design known as commercial art, through exposure to the public throughout the 60s. Martin Sharpe’s work for Oz magazine, Michael English’s psychedelic posters, and Alan Aldridge’s illustrations for The Beatles had visually defined an era.

illustrators, including Howard Pyle and Maxfield Parrish, with a remit that must have impressed the two Brits: “The object of the Society shall be to promote generally the art of illustration and to hold exhibitions from time to time.” To organise this, the nine US illustrators met once a month over dinner and invited some special guests… Mark Twain was one.

THE FIRST MEETING

Back in London, armed with ideas and enthusiasm, Manham and Grimwood got together a group of FROM NEW YORK TO LONDON interested illustrators, many of whom would later go It was a fact-finding mission to New York that cemented on to set up and run their own agencies. The first the idea that an association would be the best way to meeting of The Association of Illustrators was held on represent illustrators’ interests in the UK. Illustrator the Exhibition Road site of The Royal College of Art Brian Grimwood (www.briangrimwood.com), the in Kensington, and a committee was formed. man who went on to set up illustration agency CIA “I was the new boy,” explains Grimwood. “I’d only (www.centralillustration.com), recalls a trip with fellow been illustrating since 1969, but had had some success. artist Allan Manham, the man who went onto set up The others had all been going longer, but I got voted on – I think they liked my style.” The dinners experienced across “IT WAS VERY TIMELY. ILLUSTRATORS the pond were soon replicated on this side of the Atlantic: “We NEEDED GUIDANCE AND PROTECTION. IT would have meetings at Nan WAS STILL A NEW AREA, AND THE ASSOCIATION Winton’s house and she was a OF ILLUSTRATORS CARVED OUT RIGHTS FOR fantastic cook!” Earlier in her ILLUSTRATORS THAT WERE NEEDED AT THE TIME” career, Nan Winton had become the first woman to read the another agency, Artworks (www.theartworksinc.com). national news on BBC television in June 1960, and here “In the States, illustrators were gods,” remembers she was entertaining the AOI. “We ate like lords – slap-up Grimwood, “and this was the start of the 1970s and New meals, all very civilised,” recalls Grimwood. However, York was jumping.” Grimwood and Manham arrived at many serious issues were discussed, too – a code of the impressive brownstone headquarters of The Society ethics was drawn up under Virgil Pomfret, the first of Illustrators on East 63rd Street. “It was so cool – up Chair of the AOI. Early AOI members included George Hardie, now on the top floor they were holding life-drawing classes. Professor of Illustration at the University of Brighton, They had a black and a white model walking about to this best known in the 1970s for his album sleeve work classical music. We wanted whatever we set up in for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. He recalls his first London to have the same kudos,” says Grimwood. impression: “It was very timely. Illustrators needed No small order – the SOI had been around since 1901 guidance and protection. It was still a new area, and and originally showcased the work of just nine top

“The first illustration of mine to appear in an AOI Images annual, ‘number 10,’ was a job for Computer World magazine – funny, because the piece was painted in gouache!” admits Stuart Briars. 18 annuals later and it’s hard to find an edition without his work in; Briars has been quietly working away, gradually making the transition from the traditional to the digital. “I was never very good with colour,” Briars claims – hard to believe with a body of work consistently proving him to be among the best in the business. “I first used the Mac to experiment with colour, scanning in hand-drawn visuals and adding colour in Photoshop 3, before going back and painting it in with gouache. It was all trial and error.” A long-standing collaboration with the AOI started by accident, when dragged along to an AGM by a fellow illustrator. “I ended up as a Council Member, and later was voted on as Chair,” Briars recalls. “I then got absorbed with all the techy stuff, helped recreate the AOI database in Filemaker Pro, graduating to GoLive to redesign an early AOI site.” Now fully installed as Webmaster for the AOI, Briars tinkers behind the scenes. “The temptation is always there to fiddle – computer hours are unlike real hours, and they just fly by.”

This intriguing illustration, entitled ‘Leadership’, is Stuart Briars’ cover for a Financial Times supplement.

Computer Arts_December 2003

55

the AOI carved out rights for illustrators, much needed at that time.” Hardie, an active illustrator as well as educator, proudly remembers gaining acceptance. “My work featured in the very first Images annual, and I got a piece in every year for the first 13 – only one other illustrator managed that!” Images, the AOI’s annual collection of top British illustration, was launched in the second year of the AOI and has been published every year since. Work is selected by a distinguished panel from across the illustration, design and advertising world. Grimwood and Hardie both appear in that first annual and the most recent, Images 27. This demonstrates their unique staying power in an area of design constantly changing and dictated by fashion. Only a handful of others can claim the same.

IMPRESSIVE PORTFOLIO So what of the AOI now? Its fortunes have blown hot and cold over the years; from an impressive office and gallery space off Tottenham Court Road in the early 1980s, given back due to escalating rents, to rumoured near-bankruptcy in the 90s. Indeed, for a while it seemed that AOI had lost its way a little, although it’s worth remembering that illustration itself had lost direction, too. While graphic designers embraced the digital revolution, illustrators kept hoping it would all just go away. Typography Now, a ground-breaking book showcasing a collection of the most contemporary and cutting edge digital typography, was published in 1991, but it was another year before a single solo digital illustration appeared in Images 17. It was taking far too long for illustrators to embrace the new technology… Today, the AOI is based just a stone’s throw from AOI member Rowena Dugdale features in the Hoxton and the City, and borrows space from the latest edition of Images. This AOP – the Association of Photographers – an was created in Photoshop impressive 1600 square feet of cool minimalist for a BBC Wildlife magazine editorial piece. Visit gallery space spread over two floors, with a suite of www.rowenadugdale.com. open-plan offices and facilities making up the AOP accommodation. The AOI office, however, tucked away in a corner, although cramped, feels cool too. Cool in a stripped floorboard, sandblasted brick and blueberry iMac, IKEA shelving kind of way. Those shelves, though, are crammed with 30 years of archives: Images annuals, boxes stuffed with copies of various AOI magazines, Illustrators and The Journal, and framed originals en route back “IN THE STATES, ILLUSTRATORS to exhibitors from this WERE GODS… WE WANTED year’s Images exhibition. Despite the tight WHATEVER WE SET UP IN LONDON squeeze, behind these TO HAVE THE SAME KUDOS AS scenes a group of THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS” dedicated individuals contribute to the AOI’s impressive portfolio of offerings for its members. A hotline is manned for legal and pricing advice, free portfolio consultations are set up, a bi-monthly journal is written, designed, printed and distributed, and the Website (www.theaoi.com) performs an excellent service, keeping members informed with up-to-date info and in touch with each other through

56 Computer Arts_December 2003

This is Brian Grimwood’s cover for April 25 issue of the The New Yorker magazine. His style is much admired across the globe.

Another Grimwood piece, this time a striking Platform For Art Brick Lane poster created for London Transport.

BRIAN GRIMWOOD

The man who changed the face of British illustration tells us why failing his 11+ never did this illustrator any harm Listening to Brian Grimwood speak, it’s impossible not to catch his infectious enthusiasm for British illustration. Grimwood knows everyone, and everyone knows Grimwood. From the early days of the Association of Illustrators and the front cover of the first ever Images annual to national advertising campaigns for Eurostar and Perrier, plus cover illustrations for The New Yorker, Grimwood’s work has appeared pretty much everywhere. Print magazine, the respected US design publication, credits Grimwood “as changing the look of British illustration” and it has a valid point. When the AOI set up its first online discussion forum, it was Grimwood

who was chosen for the first Q&A session. Every illustrator wants to know his secret. Having spanned three decades of image-making, the last two at the helm of his own agency – Central Illustration Agency, or CIA as it’s known – Grimwood has seen many changes since the early days. “I failed my 11+,” he admits, “so went off to Bromley Tech at the age of 13 to an art course run by Peter Frampton’s dad. David Bowie was in the year above me! At 16, I left and got a job at Carlton Artists, assisting these fantastic guys who were airbrushing thousands of illustrations of shoes. I just worked my way up from there.”

the forums. It also acts as an online archive for articles and features.

VISUAL INSPIRATION Now, 30 years on from that first AOI meeting, the future looks bright. Unlike that annual with the one digital image 11 years ago, the current edition sports a total of 132 images that utilise the digital – proof enough that a new way of working has finally been fully adopted. With events planned throughout the year to celebrate the organisation’s 30th anniversary, AOI’s fans are numerous; John Hegarty, the Chairman of influential ad agency BBH, describes the Association’s past simply as, “30 years of visual inspiration,” while Brian Grimwood, in right from the start, admits that, “Because of the AOI, illustrators are now considered a professional body – we are listened to and our rights have been established.” Turning 30 is a stressful time for anyone, but the AOI seems to be pulling it off with style. A lot more style than 1973 ever had, that’s for sure. INFO Words by illustrator and educator Lawrence Zeegen. Zeegen has worked on commissions for numerous newspapers and magazines, design companies and ad agencies. He is Academic Programme Leader for Communication and Media Arts at the University of Brighton. View his work at www.zeegen.com.

ILLUSTRATION BY JASON ARBER

www.pixelsurgeon.com

58 Computer Arts_December 2003

Tutorial

PHOTOSHOP

VISUAL NIRVANA By taking the extreme step of setting fire to your own photographs, you can create a kind of grunge image, full of depth and texture. All you need is a transparency, some matches, a scanner and Photoshop There’s something about digital photography that can sometimes be a bit too perfect. By removing the negative or transparency, all the old problems of hair, scratches and thumb prints have been removed, perhaps with a little of the magic, too. But there’s still plenty of mileage in the old technologies, especially when you want to try and create a grungy image that makes a feature of scratches and other imperfections. In fact, in this example we’ve gone completely the other way and increased the defects by burning one of the transparencies used. The blemishes and warping created by this process are unlike any texture easily created by a digital process alone, and instantly give your artwork an analogue feel which owes as much to chance as it does to your technical ability. Interesting textures can be found all around you, from newspaper adverts to slate tiles and all kinds of material in between. As long as you’re sensible and careful when placing heavy items on the fragile glass plate of your scanner, there’s a whole world of possibility. INFO Illustration and tutorial by Jason Arber, [email protected], www.pixelsurgeon.com

ON THE CD Look on your coverdisc for the Tutorial\Pshop folder, where you’ll find all the files you need to complete this tutorial.

Computer Arts_December 2003

59

^

PART 1 LIGHT MY FIRE Create an illustration that’s dark and distressed, grungy and textured

INSIGHT CLIPPING GROUPS

Information on Clipping Groups is hard to find in Photoshop’s documentation, but they are a powerful and quick solution to creating masks, especially when you want several independent layers to be masked by a single layer. In a Clipping Group, the base layer (the bottommost layer) acts as a mask for the entire group, and includes the base layer’s opacity. Create Clipping Groups by Alt-clicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Mac) between layers.

7

Isolate just the white scratchy background by duplicating the main image, selecting the layer mask, inverting it and dragging it to the trash. You’ll be asked if you want to apply the mask layer before removing it, so click the Apply button and you’ll be left with the trimmed background, which you can drag to the top of the layers to maintain a white background.

1

Scan your transparencies if you have a transparency scanner or a good transparency adaptor for your flatbed scanner. Alternatively, open up the images main_image.psd and burnt_image.psd, provided on the CD, and use these as the basis of your artwork.

4

You’ll probably find plenty of dust, scratches and hairs to remove, and a combination of the Clone Stamp tool and the Healing Brush tool – which proves to be nothing short of miraculous – can help. Both tools sample similar pixels to paint over areas that need repairing.

8

Do the same as the previous step, but don’t invert the layer mask before applying and you’ll end up with the foreground image isolated. With the Hue/Saturation window, drag the Saturation slider almost completely to the left.

2

Even though the end result will be a grungy mess, the first step should be to get the photographs looking as good as possible. Rotate the main image if necessary, then open up the Levels (Image> Adjustments>Levels…) and click the Auto button to give you a good starting point.

5

Add a layer mask by clicking the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers palette. Select the mask, and by painting in black you can ‘paint out’ the layer (painting in white reverses this process). Using a small brush, paint out the photograph’s background detail in a scratchy fashion.

9

With the Levels window, drag the grey triangle to the left so that it sits about a third of the way from the beginning, then drag the black triangle and the white triangle from the far edges so that they sit very close to the grey triangle. This creates an extremely contrasty image with blown-out highlights.

3

The colour may look a little flat, so pump up the depth by opening the Hue/Saturation window (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation) and dragging the Saturation slider to the right. Be warned – doing this will permanently destroy pixel information, so use with caution.

60 Computer Arts_December 2003

6

Time to get dirty. Paste in the burnt_image.psd above and below the main image, using various opacities and Blending modes, such as Screen and Overlay (selected from the dropdown menu at the top of the Layers palette). Use layer masks to paint out unwanted detail.

^

Tutorial

INSIGHT THE HEALING BRUSH

The Healing Brush tool is a real testament to Adobe’s engineers, and is a boon to anyone who retouches photographs. Unlike the Clone Stamp tool, which samples exact pixels, the Healing Brush will also try and match the texture, lighting and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels. In this way the results can be slightly unpredictable, but they’re pretty impressive.

PREPARING FOR PRINT

10

Do the same again with another duplicate foreground image, except this time make sure the grey triangle in the Levels window is two thirds across. The image should be extremely contrasty again, but with very dark shadows.

More and more people are learning their Photoshop skills with one eye on producing graphics for the Web, and are neglecting to learn how to produce print-ready images. Although most of the skills are the same, there are some crucial differences. The major one is resolution: while screen resolution of 72dpi (dots per inch) is fine for the Web, it will result in pixellated images when printed out. Print resolution should generally be 300dpi in order to produce sharp images. And as a final step, convert your images from RGB to CMYK to ensure they print correctly.

15

With the ‘contrasty’ images created earlier, set the darker one to a layer mode of Overlay and the lighter one to Multiply. Then, with a new layer created, load the new alpha channel by choosing Select>Load Selection… from the menu and selecting Alpha 1 from the Channel dropdown menu.

16

With the marching ants indicating a selection, copy the red_texture.psd file and paste into the selection (Edit>Paste Into), which automatically builds an unlinked layer mask.

11

With a third version of the foreground image, take Saturation all the way to the left to create a black and white image, and adjust Levels to create an image with massively blown-out highlights again.

13

The default value for an alpha mask such as this is that white areas become selected when the channel is activated, so you may need to invert the channel’s black and white values (Image> Adjustments>Invert).

12

Copy this new layer, and in the Channels palette create a new channel and paste the layer into it. Don’t worry if you have to manually move it so that it aligns or snaps to the lefthand edge.

17

Resize the red texture to cover the necessary area by dragging the resize handles. You can see how pasting a lighter texture into the dark shadows creates a posterized effect and tonal remapping.

14

To create our texture, paste together a few selections from the burnt_image.psd Photoshop file, using Multiply to create a dense, dark image. You may want to create a new layer, fill it with bright red and, using Multiply or Overlay, colour the whole texture. As a final step, flatten it (you could also use the red_texture.psd file provided).

18

To isolate the image, drag a duplicate of the White background to the top of the layers. Drag the layer you want to duplicate to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

Computer Arts_December 2003

61

^

INSIGHT CREATING BRUSHES

There are many Websites that have sprung up where you can download custom brushes to use in Photoshop, offering a wide variety of shapes and textures. But why not create your own? Brushes can be created from any greyscale image, ideally on a white background and up to 2500x2500 pixels in size. Simply use the Rectangle Marquee with a Feather set to 0 pixels to select your custom brush. You can create libraries of brushes with special textures and effects to quickly call up and use in your artwork.

23

The horizontal division seems harsh, so we’ll add more texture. Scan in some patterns and textures in greyscale (or use the supplied Pattern Photoshop files), then use layer modes set to Screen, soften the edges and add interest.

19

Time to do something about that T-shirt. With the Pen tool from the Tools menu, click-drag a basic T-shirt shape using as few points as possible. Because the arm was previously cut off by the edge of the film frame, use the Pen tool to fill in the missing parts.

24 22

Link the background layers together and then, from the flyout menu on the top-right of the Layers palette, select the Merge Linked option. Use the Hue/Saturation and the Levels windows to colourise and lighten the texture if necessary.

Using the Clipping Group function again with layers set to Multiply, you can colour the textures and experiment with different approaches and techniques. Pretty much any texture – from letters to old books – can be scanned in for their unique patterns and markings.

FINAL STEP

H 20

Convert the Pen path into a selection by choosing the Paths palette, and with the path selected, click the dotted circle icon at the bottom of the palette (Load Path As Selection), which will turn the vector path into a pixel selection. Fill the result with black for a dramatic effect.

21

Paste multiple copies of the red_texture.psd into the background using the Clipping Group function. Make sure the layer that you want to use as your clipping shape is below the layers you want to be clipped, position the pointer between the two layers, then Option-click (Mac) and Alt-click (Windows) to create a Clipping Group.

62 Computer Arts_December 2003

ow far you push the image is up to you, but at some point, put the mouse down and evaluate your image. Not enough detail will make the image seem unfinished, but too much detail is overkill and will make your image seem fussy. Spend some time practising to find a happy medium.

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Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, FreeHand, Cinema 4D, After Effects

Creative Collection

3

On sale 6 November, £12.99

An exclusive collection of Computer Arts’ best tutorials. Get to grips with image manipulation, illustration, Web and graphic design, typography, digital video and 3D techniques

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COMPUTER ARTS AT MAC EXPO RUSSELL BROWN PROFILE

WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE FOR YOU AT MAC EXPO 2003

We talk to Photoshop guru, product evangelist and Senior Creative Director at Adobe

A

t Mac Expo 2003, we’ll be holding two ‘Master Illustration On Your Mac’ seminars. We’ve lined up top agencies Pixelsurgeon and Identikal to inspire, teach and entertain. Put this info in your diaries…

COMPANY WEBSITE www.adobe.co.uk PERSONAL WEBSITE www.russellbrown.com

There are a few people you immediately associate with Photoshop –John Knoll, his brother Thomas, Jeff Schewe maybe. And you can guarantee that somewhere on that list, Russell Brown’s name will appear. Senior Creative Director at Adobe and Photoshop aficionado, Russell Brown could almost be classed as an entertainer. Everywhere he goes to preach about the benefits of Photoshop, people sit up and take notice. This could be to do with his often wild and a little weird attire, but is more often than not because of the passion he has for Photoshop and its uses. On the development team since version 1, Brown continues to be a key player in the development of Photoshop, and will be hosting this year’s Mac Expo London keynote, in association with Computer Arts and Adobe. What for you is the killer feature of Photoshop CS?

The greatest new feature has to be the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment. This incredible tool lets the average user create results that only an expert could have produced in the past. How will the new CS release benefit the photographer, graphic and Web designer?

It has something for everyone, from the new File Browser to the new ImageReady support. It’s great! Who are the most talented Photoshop users around?

That would have to be Jeff Schewe, Michael Elins, Louie Fishauf, Jack Davis and Jeff Kelby.

Seminar 1: Vector vs Pixel with Identikal and Computer Arts Date: Thursday 20 and Friday 21 November Time: 11.30-12.30 The Identikal Corporation was founded five years ago by identical twins Adam and Nick Hayes. Since then, it’s become recognised for combining an eclectic mixture of typographic design, moving image and illustration. Clients include Guinness, Virgin and Sony. Using vector-based programmes to start this tutorial, Identikal will show you how to develop the composition,

shape and colour of your vector illustrations. In the second half of the seminar, Identikal will demonstrate simple but effective ways of using pixel-based programs to add depth, detail and texture to vector work. The final result will show the qualities of using a range of packages to broaden the scope of your designs. INFO www.identikal.com, www.computerarts.co.uk

Do you use Photoshop every day? Which tools are your favourites?

Yes, I’m almost embarrassed to say that I use it every single day. The Clone tool has to be one of my favourite tools. When did you first discover Photoshop?

John and Thomas Knoll created Photoshop, and I got my first demo from John Knoll when he brought it to Adobe for the first time. Do you ever run out of things to say about Photoshop?

You can never run out of things to say about it. It’s endless! What book are you reading at the moment?

I’m reading Captain Underpants with my kids and Harry Potter for fun. What annoys you most?

Really stupid interface design and bad politicians. What inspires you?

Really great movies and cool toys from Japan. What image is on your desktop?

If you’re a serious Photoshop user, you use a neutral grey background. If you weren’t busy being a Photoshop guru, what would you be doing now?

I’d be a professional surfer, travelling the world looking for great waves. INFO See Russell Brown at Mac Expo 2003 (www.mac-expo.co.uk) and www.russellbrown.com

Seminar 2: Live Photoshop tennis with Pixelsurgeon and Computer Arts Date: Saturday 22 November Time: 11.30-12.30 Pixelsurgeon is one of the leading online arts magazines aimed at creatives, with news, reviews and interviews covering design, art, music, games and movies. There’s no better way of showing off the capabilities of Photoshop and other Adobe software than a creative battle in the form of Photoshop tennis. Different styles and techniques are pitched against each other, with the

aim of creating something greater than the sum of its parts. For Mac Expo, members of Pixelsurgeon will be battling each other, armed with nothing more than Adobe software, a couple of Macs and their imaginations. Taking part will be Jason Arber, Richard May, Rina Cheung and preshaa. INFO www.pixelsurgeon.com, www.computerarts.co.uk

Computer Arts_December 2003

65

Quick Tutorial

SHORTCUTS AFTER EFFECTS Backlighting with smoke creates a fabulous sense of depth, but is difficult and costly to achieve on set. This shortcut is a rapid way to add smoky rays of light to the background of your footage

If you have the time, then backlighting your set with smoke and hidden lights is an excellent way to achieve depth. Just watch any Spielberg film to see how effective it can be. But what happens when you’re using stock footage, an old clip, or if you can’t afford the time and money to backlight? Thankfully, realistic depth lighting can be achieved in moments with AE. The results can even look more consistent than those created with a smoke machine. It’s one of the simplest ways to make a shot look more expensive. The effect works best if you have a ‘contrasty’ background, with areas of light

SMOKIN’ BACKGROUND

1

Drag the file Raysraw.mov (on your CD in the Tutorial\QA\After Effects folder) into the timeline, duplicate it, and click the lower layer’s eye icon to make it invisible. Watch through the clip before you begin working.

2

Now apply the Direction Blur, and change the Direction and Blur Length parameters to create the impression of slanting rays of foggy light, as shown. Experiment until you create a look you’re happy with.

4

3

Once you’re familiar with the scene, apply the Key Colour filter to the upper clip, and use the Eye Dropper to select the dark brick colour. Use Tolerance and Edge Thinning to leave only a few patches of light.

Use the Pen tool to draw a matte around the rays, so that only the background is given the required backlighting. If necessary, animate the matte with keyframes. See Rayscomplete.mov on the CD.

www.studio-output.com

set in a generally dark area. Begin by dragging the Raysraw.mov clip into the timeline and duplicating it. You should turn off the visibility of the lower clip, so you can see the work in progress. You create the rays by duplicating the bright area of the top image and blurring it dramatically. In this example, we’ll simulate a shaft of sunlight that comes from the right at about 45 degrees through the archways. You can create rays of any kind with experimentation, by changing the colours you select, and by altering the direction and blurring levels. With the top clip selected, choose Effect>Keying>Colour Key, and use the Eye Dropper to select some of the dark brick colour close to the archway. Now set Tolerance to 38 and Edge Thinning to 4. This leaves only the bright areas. When using your own clips, it will take some experimentation to find the best solution. You can use any of the keying tools, and you may find the best solution is to use the Luma Key filter. In some cases, it’s easier to key out your chosen light colour, rather than the surrounding colours. Imagine you’ve shot a fairground against a blue sky; keying out the various foreground colours is impossible, but keying out the blue is easy. If this is the case, key out the chosen colour, but then choose Effect>Channel> Invert, set to Alpha. This will also leave the patches of light that can then be blurred into rays. Apply a Direction Blur to the layer, with the Direction set to 225 and the Blur to 150. Make the lower layer visible again and you’ll see the rays in place. Even where there’s movement over and around the light, the effect can appear quite realistic. If you’re working with 16:9 footage in a 4:3 environment, your rays may spill onto the black. To remedy this, apply a widescreen matte to the finished footage. To complete the image, use the Pen tool to draw a matte, selecting the area that you want to be filled with rays. Here, we ensure that only the distant background is backlit, and leave the actor’s face untouched. In complex shots, you may need to animate this matte as the camera or actors move. Although subtlety is usually the key to good effects, backlighting can be quite overt and dramatic, and the audience will still accept it as a naturalistic look. INFO Expertise supplied by Chris Kenworthy, [email protected]

66 Computer Arts_December 2003

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Quick Tutorial Q&A

SHORTCUTS

www.studio-output.com

CINEMA 4D Introduced in v7 of Cinema 4D, the Advanced Rendering feature incorporates the muchrequested Radiosity (aka Global Illumination) method. Here, we simplify the time-consuming process of setting up Radiosity renders

T

he Radiosity rendering technique simulates the way that light bounces between objects, illuminating every nook and cranny. In a normal 3D render, objects that are not directly in the path of the primary rays from a lightsource are illuminated. If another object is blocking these rays, then the object is rendered totally black – unless it’s self-illuminating, you’re using scene ambient light, or there’s fog in the scene. Simply put, it makes for a very stark, unrealistic image, unless you take great pains to add in extra lights that add in this missing ‘bounced’ light. With Cinema’s Radiosity, you don’t need to fake it any more. However, using Radiosity isn’t a matter of flicking a switch – there’s some set-up work needed, and the settings in the Render panel can be very confusing. The problem boils down to the fact that Radiosity rendering is highly time-consuming, despite Cinema’s notably speedy implementation. Test rendering can become a long-winded process, especially if you stick to the default settings. This situation is confounded by the fact that different scenes react differently to the same settings, so even if you happen upon a quicker test setting, it won’t always work for every scene. What you need are a few general-purpose settings that you can use to test-render a range of scenes, yet also easily adapt for scenes that don’t render so well. Cinema’s Radiosity controls are as complicated as they are, because the Radiosity system is adaptive: it tries to calculate the solution only where it’s most needed, in order to speed up the calculation. It does this using sample points, and it’s the Min/Max Resolution setting that controls the distribution of sample points. The default is Min=3 Max=70. This is fine, but can be slow for test rendering, when all you want is a

general idea of the overall exposure of the scene. The high Max setting puts a lot of sample points in areas of detail and object intersections that you might not need. Here’s a good rule of thumb. Set the Max Resolution setting to twice or three times the Min setting for testing. So, if you’re using Min=3, choose a Max setting of 6 or 9. Renders will be much faster. Another tip is to change the Accuracy and Stochastic Samples as well. Try turning the Accuracy down to 60 and the Stochastic Samples down from 300 to 100. Used with the Min/Max settings tip, you’ll realise quickly that Radiosity rendering is a good approximation of a final-quality render. In actual fact, this setting is fine for some scenes as a final-quality render. When you do need to improve the quality, increase the Accuracy to say, 70 or 80. Also, if there are a lot of intersecting objects, increase the Max Resolution, too. Problems often occur when the scale of the scene is either very small or large. If

you keep the units around the default settings of Cinema’s primitives, then you shouldn’t have a problem with compact scenes. However, large objects (such as distant terrain) can cause the Min/Max setting to misbehave – or seem to. In reality, it’s just the adaptive algorithm trying to do its job. In such cases, you may fine you have to increase the Min value hugely (ten times or more), and correspondingly the Max setting will have to change, too. This doesn’t affect the render times, because the settings are relative to scene scale and distribution. However, a better option is to split the render into near and far scenes. Render the foreground scene in one pass, and the large background elements in another, setting the radiosity values appropriate for each. Don’t forget to remove big objects from the foreground so they don’t skew the Radiosity settings. INFO Expertise supplied by Simon Danaher, [email protected]

REDUCE YOUR RENDER TIME

WHAT YOU NEED ARE GENERALPURPOSE SETTINGS THAT YOU CAN USE TO TEST-RENDER SCENES, YET ALSO EASILY ADAPT FOR IMAGES THAT DON’T RENDER QUITE SO WELL

1

Using the default settings creates a pleasingly comprehensive Radiosity solution, but even on a simple scene rendering times can be quite high.

2

By reducing some of the Radiosity values, particularly Max Resolution and Stochastic Samples, you can easily reduce the time it takes to render.

4

3

This one, for instance, took a rather sedate 24 minutes – not great for test rendering. But it needn’t be this way – as you’re about to discover…

Here’s the image again – this time, the render took only three minutes. The image quality is almost as good, and is certainly fine for test purposes.

Computer Arts_December 2003

69

ILLUSTRATION BY PETE DRAPER

www.xenomorphic.co.uk

70 Computer Arts_December 2003

THIRD

Feature

THE DIMENSION Has the use of 3D in illustration and design worn itself out, or can we inject some new blood into this medium? We look at how 3D can enhance your 2D work, and talk to those who combine the two dimensions

A

rtists, illustrators and designers the world over have been incorporating 3D into their work for years. Often relying on basic geometry as a foundation, they use 3D to help structure their designs or better incorporate rendered elements in the final composite. But of late, the medium has become rather stagnated. Most contemporary 3D-orientated design tends to involve a conceptual piece, and much of it is so generic it’s difficult to determine the subject matter without some kind of a textual prompt – a heading, say, or descriptive caption. Is this the way we want 3D design to be remembered? Even though many of us have gone down this route, this style of 3D work has been done to death – so much so that art directors and artists alike are now looking to do something new and exciting. The question is: why has this

style been so popular and so emulated? Well, because much of the work is purely conceptual. When accompanying a report or article where you don’t want the artwork to detract from the main piece – the real content – such generic, ‘uncomplicated’ design complements the text perfectly. The other main reason is that it’s relatively simple to create. Render out a basic geometric shape in a 3D app, blend it with several other elements – then throw in a touch of motion blur and a nice wireframe, and there you have it. One bona fide 3D illustration…

CHANGING TRENDS Magictorch, a company that’s been at the cutting edge of 3D illustration since the early days, recognises times are changing. “Fashions change – in illustration at the moment the abstract 3D style seems to be on the wane, whereas styles incorporating drawing

seem more popular,” says Magictorch’s Sam Williams. “It won’t be phased-out; it will just change in the way it’s implemented. There’ll always be a popular style of illustration that incorporates 3D.” Like Magictorch, there are many illustrators, designers and animators who use 3D – though you wouldn’t suspect at first glance. Even though 3D is used heavily in their design, it doesn’t dictate the final image – thanks to careful image manipulation. “3D is usually the cornerstone of our images,” adds Williams. “We tend to build objects that carry the message of the illustration in 3D. It’s a means to an end, in that we don’t want to say, ‘Ooooh, look at our lovely render!’” However, Richard Kenworthy of multimedia outfit Shynola (see boxout

Z

Z-AXIS ILLUSTRATION This feature’s opening ‘Z-Axis’ illustration uses 3D to make object positioning and deformation easier, as Pete Draper explains

1

The brief was to create an ‘old’, aged advertisement. The original template photo of the model holding a bottle was then traced using Photoshop’s Pen tool, outlined in black and coloured in.

2

The background consists of several overlapping rectangles, which were positioned and extruded, then rendered in 3ds max with a wide-angled lens to create an interesting distortion.

3

The label was created from a map in Photoshop and applied to a plane object in 3ds max, then wrapped ‘around’ the bottle. Extra cubic particles and bubbles were then added.

4

To soften the ‘3D’ effect, all the 3D elements were overlaid and colourcorrected in Photoshop, before Glow overlay layers were applied and a wood grain mask used to dirty up the image.

Computer Arts_December 2003

71

This image is the promo Shynola (www.shynola.com) created for Queens of the Stone Age’s Go With the Flow. It’s a combination of live-action performance and CG background, featuring hand-drawn elements combined to give the promo a distinctive look. A limited palette of red, black and white helped to cover the joins, so that it’s often hard to spot where one technique ends and another begins.

72 Computer Arts_December 2003

Start with the manuals! This may sound like an obvious suggestion, but a lot of the most common questions asked by people starting out in 3D are quite basic, and are covered either in the manuals or in tutorials included with the software. 3D is just another medium – you just need to handle your brushes slightly differently.

3

Even though most artists and designers have been raised on

Learning how to manually use orthographic projection will help the process. This is mainly due to the way the views are constructed, and their similarities with Viewports in 3D apps.

For Lambchop’s Is a Woman promo, Shynola enlisted the help of illustrator Fiona Hewitt – look out for her profile next issue. All the elements are 3D, but a combination of long lenses and flat shaders flattens the image to match Hewitt’s illustrative style.

AN EASY LIFE

2

INFO [email protected], www.shynola.com

Some 2D artists may have difficulty initially working with the third dimension. To aid with the learning process, go back to school and learn some of the traditional technical drawing methods, including one, two and threepoint perspective techniques.

the team has been making promos and ads for four years. Clients include Nike, Orange, PlayStation, BBC and C4; it’s also worked with such bands as Quannum, Stephen Malkmus, Lambchop, Junior Senior, The Rapture, Queens of the Stone Age and Radiohead. Shynola’s latest video is for Blur’s single, Good Song.

1

Richard Kenworthy is one of four directors at Shynola who met at art college while studying illustration, working on collaborative projects before Shynola was formed. The company’s first commission was to work on the James Lavelle and Dj Shadow project, Unkle, making an animated video for the track, Guns Blazing. More promos followed. Now

Can’t get your head around the Z-Axis? Has your print-res scene got a severe case of the jaggies? Here are some tips to ease those early 3D ailments

Shynola’s style has been much emulated since it broke onto the motion graphics scene. Richard Kenworthy tells us why

TOP 10 TIPS

SHYNOLA

left) thinks differently: “We rely on 2D more than 3D, because we’re faster at it. For our first full-length video [for Quannum, 1999], we made all the background buildings as illustrations. It was partly a time-saving device – we could draw it, scan it, colour it in Photoshop and stick it on a plane much faster than we could model it. But it was also an aesthetic decision.” Kenworthy admits that 3D has its advantages over traditional methods. “If you ever make a hand-drawn animation, you’ll quickly learn how laborious it is. When we first got into 3D, we were amazed. You make a character, animate it, render it, then decide you don’t like it. No problem. Go back and change the animation, the camera angle… that’s the big appeal in terms of computer animation, especially when you’re working for a fussy client or on deadline: computer animation has undos!”

traditional methods, many have touched on 3D at some point in their careers, and often in different ways. Traditional illustrator Richard May explains: “The closest I got was a DPS image for Computer Arts, back in the day when I did a screengrab of a Bryce wireframe for a futuristic, Tron-style cityscape, and used it as part of the image. It wasn’t even ‘real’ 3D – just a load of wireframes that, when viewed from a certain angle with the Bryce camera, seemed to work together!” Magictorch made the transition to 3D for different reasons. “We were inspired by movies like Tron, and had an overwhelming desire to build spaceships – you need 3D software to do that!” Richard Kenworthy describes why Shynola made the switch to 3D. “We all trained as illustrators, and we have an unhealthy interest in design as well. Animation for us was a way to tell stories using our artwork.” The use of 3D varies, of course. It isn’t just about playing around with geometry; it can take on other shapes and forms, from experimenting with camera techniques to playing around with image plates in compositing software. Removing that ‘rendered’ feel is quite tricky, but can be reduced by careful image processing and working with long lenses. “If you use a ridiculously long lens then the image becomes flattened, perspective is lost and the image

Create guides for any hand-drawn work, such as perspective lines and simple geometric shapes, to get the basics down for a landscape or character, and then paint in the rest by hand.

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Once you have rendered out your 3D plate, unless you have made use of motion blur and/or depth-of-field effects, your rendered lines will be harsh, so you may wish to blur them slightly – a one or two-pixel Gaussian blur should suffice.

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INFO Feature and opening illo by Pete Draper, a freelance CG artist living in a bunker in the South West of England. Contact him on [email protected] or head to www.xenomorphic.co.uk. Thanks to Richard Kenworthy (www.shynola.com), Chris Sayer (www.intro-uk.com), Sam Williams (www.magictorch.com) and Richard May (www.richard-may.com).

To remove the 3D feel, try using nonphotorealistic rendering techniques. These require either a change of shader or plug-in solution, but can be relatively easily created using standard kit and scanned material (such as pencil shade) as maps – these can be mapped onto objects to make them look hand-drawn.

Design is all about creating something new, pushing the creative envelope and not being confined to the same boundaries. Using 3D software gives the designer an extra tool to play with to try to develop new styles and explore new horizons. As Williams puts it: “Those crazy maths hippies who came up with the software to make Tron possible, and the stuff Attik was doing in the 90s – mixing 3D elements into 2D designs – it all definitely influenced the kind of work we, and loads of others, do today.” So now it’s time to elaborate on these traditions. Use the medium to enhance your own style and to create a new one. 3D within illustration and design is simply another medium; just like moving from canvas to ceramics, it requires a slightly different approach, although most of the basic rules still apply. Even though you’re creating an object using polygons instead of ‘standard’ pixels or traditional methods, you should still treat the final composition or rendered piece with the same respect as any other medium – it needs to portray the message of the brief across to the client. The technology is versatile enough, and if used creatively could help usher in a new era of digital illustration. See how with the Z-Axis walkthrough (page 71), where CG artist Pete Draper explains how he created the illustration that opens this feature, plus our Top 10 tips (facing page) for breaking into 3D yourself.

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CRAZY MATHS HIPPIES

Any maps you use in your 3D scene should be around twice the size of its physical presence in the render. For example, say the render is 3000x2000 pixels, and the textured object takes up about a third of the canvas. To reduce any texture bleeding or smearing, the original texture’s map should be at least twothirds of the canvas size (2000 pixels).

become a flat piece of artwork, even when the camera moves,” says Kenworthy. “The new Blur and Rapture videos were made this way, because we wanted to emulate cut-out animation. We also worked on ‘twos’, which helped make the technique more convincing and much less CGI.” According to Intro’s Chris Sayer, the company mainly uses compositing software to distort and add an extra slant to images. “We use After Effects, but are finding it limited, so we’re starting to look into using Maya to create even more complex moves.” Time-saving seems to be a consistent reason for using 3D in illustration. As Magictorch’s Sam Williams puts it: “You can spin around the scene, zoom in or out, change the lighting – it provides a greater level of creative versatility for us, and enables the client to ask for those niggling little changes that would otherwise be impossible.” Which is what it’s all about – making the designer’s life that bit easier, and pleasing the client.”

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When rendering out 3D elements, don’t forget that as everything is much bigger, discrepancies will stand out a lot more. Objects may have to be refined (more detail added), otherwise that nice curve could appear jagged.

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To aid in this process, create your canvas size with the required DPI in Photoshop, and make note of the physical size of the image in pixels by going to Image>Image Size. You can then bang these settings into your 3D app and the output will be the same.

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The majority of 3D applications do not have a unit (such as inches or centimetres) output or an option to amend the DPI of the rendered image – it’s all in pixels. Therefore you will have to determine the correct canvas size to output to.

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Swift 3D $169 www.erain.com Mainly used for producing 3D content for Flash, Swift 3D exports vector images. There are plug-ins available for other 3D applications to render out 2D cel-shaded images.

Another high-end package, this one boasts a comprehensive set of tools, but may be priced out of the reach of most designers.

www.softimage.com

Softimage|XSI $6750-$11750

plasma £552 www.discreet.com Marketed for Web designers and real-time 3D developers, plasma is based on 3ds max technology and sports a UI not dissimilar to Photoshop or Dreamweaver.

Maya Complete £1449 www.alias.com Primarily used in motion graphics and effects industries, Maya is one of the big-league players in 3D production.

LightWave £892 www.newtek.com Another one of the big boys, LightWave is primarily used in motion graphics for TV and film. Cheaper, sure, but the quality of its images can easily match rivals’ output.

Houdini $1299-$17000 www.sidefx.com Houdini comes in a range of guises, offering everything from modelling and animation to compositing and 2D image manipulation.

form•Z £1288 www.formz.com Lower-cost system, its main selling point being the NURBS modelling system. More suited to detailed, precise modelling than ‘artistic’ work.

Cinema 4D £499 www.maxon.net A comprehensive package that, despite its low price, easily competes with high-end products.

Animation:Master $299 www.hash.com Budget-priced software, but with features comparable with its more expensive counterparts. Excellent software and feature-set for its price.

3ds max £2814 www.discreet.com One of the big boys and still one of the most versatile, 3ds max is primarily used in games and production industries.

Your 10 key options for 3D work…

SOFTWARE

Feature

Magictorch (www.magictorch.com) created this cover for Computer Arts’ sister publication, Computer Music – the feature was about recording different musicians onto your computer.

A B-Movie-inspired illustration for Computer Arts Projects: “The 3D aliens were rendered out with matched lighting, then blurred and tweaked in Photoshop,” explains artist Pete Draper.

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IL

VE :T EN

w LU w ST w R .tw AT el ION ve te BY n. T co W m EL

Tutorial

NEW RELEASE

DREAMWEAVER MX 2004 Get to up to speed with the exciting new features in the latest release of Macromedia’s indispensable Web editor, with our exclusive demo and tutorial Dreamweaver MX 2004 isn’t quite the revolutionary upgrade that MX was, but its essential improvements include changes to long-established parts of the program, such as the way the Page Properties and Property Inspector work, as well as many other welcome refinements. In the following in-depth tutorial, we explore some of the new features more fully. The biggest changes relate to the way Dreamweaver creates and displays Cascading Style Sheets, but we’ll also explore new features like the Tag Inspector and the live Target Browser check. Use the demo on your coverdisc to try out the new features yourself and see what’s new in the upgrade. This tutorial assumes you’re familiar with some of the basics of Dreamweaver, such as setting up a site, inserting images and working with the MX workspace. We’ll also pay a brief visit to Fireworks to customise the imagery. Turn the page for your first play with MX 2004. INFO Tutorial by Ian Anderson of zStudio. zStudio is a new-media consulting practice that provides out-sourced Web development and training to designers and agencies. Feedback, questions or business enquiries are welcome: [email protected], www.zstudio.co.uk

ON THE CD On the coverdisc you’ll find demos of both Dreamweaver and Fireworks MX 2004, plus all the files you need in the Tutorial\DW folder.

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^

PART 1 GETTING STARTED First, copy the Start folder from the cover CD to your hard disk

INSIGHT CSS AND YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Most Web users have browsers equivalent to IE or NN v5 or higher, which means you can use much of CSS as it’s intended. If you’re designing for an audience relying on versions 3 and 4, however, you may wish to stick with HTML formatting for a while yet.

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Choose Headings from the Category list. Choose Heading font: Arial; Bold, Heading 1: 24 pixels; Colour: #660000. Choose Apply to see the result. If you wish set similar options for Heading 2 and 3, make the sizes 18 pixels and 14 pixels respectively.

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Open Dreamweaver MX 2004 and, in the new Splash screen, click Create New>Dreamweaver Site. Switch to the Advanced tab, click the browse button for Local Root Folder and locate the Start folder. Select it as the local root folder and name the new site DW Tutorial, as shown.

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Choose Edit>Preferences>General category and ensure the ‘Use CSS instead of HTML tags’ option is selected. Page Properties now creates CSS styling information, instead of the deprecated HTML attributes previous versions used to insert. Click OK, then click the Page Properties button in the Properties palette to open the new Page Properties dialog.

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Change back to the Appearance category, and set the margins as follows. Left Margin: 25 per cent, Top margin: 50 pixels, Right margin: 25 per cent, Bottom margin: 10 pixels. Test the page in a browser; the content should be centred with flexible margins, giving readable lines at most common window sizes.

2

Open the file start.htm, and ensure the Properties palette is visible at the foot of the window. Choose Window>Properties if it isn’t open. If you’ve used Dreamweaver before, you’ll notice that the default font is larger and the layout slightly different. Note the new Page Properties button on the Properties palette.

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In Page Properties, choose Page Font: Verdana, Size: 11 pixels, Text color: #333333, Background color: #e6e6e6. Dreamweaver now sets up tag styles for BODY, TD and TH, so that other elements on the page can inherit the formatting attributes.

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Switch to Code view using the large buttons at the top of the document window, and locate the STYLE element in the HEAD of the page. This is where Dreamweaver stored the settings; it always embeds the style information in the HEAD, even if there’s a linked style sheet attached.

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Ensure the Tag Inspector palette is open (there should be a tick beside Window>Tag Inspector) and examine the three tabs: Attributes, Behaviours and Relevant CSS. The Attributes panel contains new options for all the HTML attributes available for the selected element, and the Relevant CSS panel shows all the CSS rules now affecting the selected element.

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Choose Links from the Category list. Choose Bold, Link color: #0066FF, Visited links: #003399, Rollover links: #CC0000, Active links: #FF3333, Underline style: Show underline only on rollover. In previous versions, you had to create specific styles by hand to achieve the same result.

^

PART 2 STYLES Next, dynamic style creation and checking for browser compatibility

INHERITANCE PROBLEMS

CSS properties applied to top-level elements like BODY are meant to affect all the child elements in the HTML; this is how the basic text formatting is meant to work through the new Page Properties. Netscape 4 was especially bad at inheriting attributes correctly, and it’s something that other browsers may also have problems with. As long as your primary audience has moved on from Netscape 4, you shouldn’t have too much trouble.

EMBEDDED STYLES

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Highlight the text in the first paragraph using triple-clicking or dragging. Note that the Properties palette shows the formatting we chose in Page Properties. Choose a larger size: 14 pixels. Dreamweaver now creates and applies a new class called Style 1, which you can see in the new Style menu in the Properties. Choosing another font or colour will amend the style definition.

Tutorial

INSIGHT

The ability to define styles on the fly is great, but Dreamweaver can’t seem to get its head round putting its new styles into a linked style sheet – it always embeds them in the page. Unfortunately, if you use the automatic styles from the Properties or Page Properties, you’ll have to get used to moving them into your linked style sheet as you go along.

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Choose Next Error or Previous Error from the browser check menu to highlight the affected areas of the page, or choose Show All Errors to open the Reports panel and list all the problems found. We’ve selected version 3.0 browsers only to show the check working; these are not problems you’d actually wish to fix, since less than one per cent of users rely on version 3.0.

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In order to share the style information between pages, you need to create an external style sheet. This is just a text file. Choose File>New, then choose Basic Page and CSS. Click Create. Save the new CSS file as styles.css in the site root.

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Dreamweaver can now handily check your pages for browser compatibility as you go along. Open the browser check menu beside the Title text field in the toolbar at the top of the document window, and choose Settings. Tick Netscape Navigator and select version 3.0.

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For convenience, you can rename the new style. Choose Rename… from the Style menu in the Properties palette, and, in the dialog that appears, change the name to “firstPara”. To apply the new class to other text on the page, simply highlight it and choose firstPara from the Style menu.

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Open the Code view for the page you’re working on, and locate the STYLE tag or tags in the HEAD of the page. Highlight the contents of each STYLE tag (but not the comments ) and cut/paste them into the new CSS page you created. Save and close the CSS page, and delete the empty STYLE tags from the HEAD of the page.

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A yellow warning triangle should now appear on the menu, indicating that Dreamweaver has identified some incompatibilities. If it doesn’t appear after you click back into the page, choose Check Browser Support from the menu.

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To edit a style, you now need to either click the Edit Style button in the CSS Styles palette with the name of the style highlighted, or right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) on the name of the style in the CSS Styles palette and select Edit from the Contextual menu. Edit the style definition for firstPara to make the colour #660000.

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Now you need to link the new style sheet file to the page. Open the CSS Styles palette and click the Attach Style Sheet button. Browse for the file you created and then click OK. Use link if you wish Netscape Navigator 4 to see the attached styles, or Import if you wish to hide them.

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^

PART 3 TABLES AND TAGS Dreamweaver MX 2004 offers new table features and enhanced access to tag attributes

INSIGHT EDITING STYLES

The hardest thing to get used to in MX 2004 is that double-clicking the name of a style no longer edits it through the Edit Style dialog. Instead, Dreamweaver opens up the style tag or linked style sheet for you to edit the CSS by hand. This is good for hand-coding, but the point of a visual editor is to use the editing tools. Instead of double-clicking, you need to select the style in question and click the Edit Style button to get the Edit Style dialog. It’s a shame the user doesn’t get a choice here.

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Using the Relevant CSS panel, you can see all the CSS formatting that’s applied to the selected element. The panel is divided into two areas; the top area shows all the Applied Rules currently affecting the selected tag on the page. The lower area shows the actual properties of the style that’s selected in the Applied Rules area.

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Click at the end of the page and choose Insert>Table. Enter width: 300 pixels, rows: 3, columns: 3, cell padding: 0, cell spacing: 0, border: 0. Note the new options for specifying accessibility features; these are used only in data tables. Click OK.

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The Tag Inspector’s Attributes panel offers another way of setting options for selected HTML elements, and provides the complete range of attributes for any tag. The Properties palette is easier to use, but only offers commonly used options.

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The alphabetical list is more useful for seeing the formatting in one go, because all the properties that are currently set are found out of order at the top of the list. The category list is sometimes better for applying new properties to the rule. Try choosing the Applied Rule “Body, TD, TH” and setting Line Height to 20 pixels.

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When a new table is inserted, the table has new menus at the top to control the widths and make it easier for you to insert columns in the right place. After resizing a table, choose ‘Make cell widths consistent’ to ensure all the cell widths add up to the overall table width.

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Click in the linked text in the second paragraph – see how the Tag Inspector title changes to Tag . Try clicking different elements on the page, and see how the attributes available change. List the options alphabetically using the second button at the top of the panel to make it easier to browse them.

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You can hide the menus by choosing View>Visual Aids>Table Widths. Choose View>Table Mode>Expanded Tables Mode or press F6 to make it easier to position the cursor within table cells – this turns on an artificial cell padding. Drag in the images from the slices folder to try it.

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You can use this instead of editing the code to set specialised options. Click back on the tag in the Tag Selector, and click in the space beside Title in the Attributes panel. Type in a brief message to appear as a tooltip when the user hovers their mouse over the link, then test the page in a browser.

Where the name of a property has a red strikethrough, this indicates that the property is inherited from another Applied Rule. The Relevant CSS panel is a very powerful way of exploring the way that the CSS rules interact with each other.

^

PART 4 IMAGE EDITING This version introduces several useful image-editing features

TABLE ACCESSIBILITY

Dreamweaver now always offers accessibility features when you insert a table, such as caption, summary, headers and so on. It’s important to remember not to use these for layout tables, however. They’re only intended for use with data tables. Unfortunately, Dreamweaver still doesn’t offer any visual interface for the more advanced table accessibility features like ROWGROUP, COLGROUP and header IDs.

NEW TAG INSPECTOR

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Press Return at the end of the first paragraph to create an empty line, then choose Insert> Image. Import the Cuillin.jpg and ensure it’s selected.

Tutorial

INSIGHT

This is probably the least intuitive of the new features. The key to using the Tag Inspector is to select the element you wish to work with via the Tag Selector at the bottom of the document window first. The Attributes, Behaviours and Relevant CSS panels then offer fine control over the settings for that tag. The confusing bit is that if you select a CSS rule in the CSS Styles panel, this is another valid context for the Tag Inspector, and it changes to display only the Relevant CSS panel so that you can quickly edit the properties for that style rule. This can be confusing until you get used to it.

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Click the Create button in the Properties palette to open the image placeholder as a new untitled document in Fireworks. Using the Text tool, type “The Black Cuillin of Skye” and format it appropriately. Choose Modify>Canvas>Fit Canvas to resize the image to fit the text precisely, then select Done to return to Dreamweaver. Save the PNG file and the GIF file in the site folder when prompted.

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The exported GIF is now displayed as the page heading in Dreamweaver. Note that the Properties palette has recorded the source PNG image. If you now click the Edit in Fireworks button, Fireworks will open the source PNG and re-export the GIF, once you’ve finished working in the app.

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Choose the Cropping tool from the Properties, and resize the cropping rectangle to outline a square area of the image. Press Enter or click the Cropping tool to crop the image. This affects the file on disk. To cancel without cropping, press Esc.

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You can now effectively create a new image from scratch in Dreamweaver and switch to Fireworks to customise it. Delete the heading text “Adipiscing Elit” and choose Insert>Image Objects> Image Placeholder. Resize the placeholder image to make it about 150 pixels wide and 30 or so high.

FINAL STEP

W

e’ve highlighted some of the most interesting features in DW MX 2004 in this tutorial, but other more subtle improvements include superior performance and stability, as well as better CSS rendering. There are many more features to explore – check out www.macromedia.com for details.

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Resize the cropped image to make it smaller; about 100 pixels wide. This is usually a bad idea, because there are now too many pixels in the image being downloaded. To correct this, click the Resample button on the Properties – this applies image-sizing to make the file the correct resolution.

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PROFILE

JOHN McFAUL EMAIL [email protected] WEBSITE www.mcfaul.biz

John McFaul’s life involves a lot of driving and a lot of juggling. This Liverpudlian-turned-Londoner is both a prolific freelance illustrator and Senior Lecturer at Surrey Institute of Art & Design, where he teaches Graphic Design: New Media. “I get up at 6:00, then either design/illustrate something or drive the 60 miles to Epsom. As an illustrator you rarely work normal hours…” He moved to London to study at Kingston University, and started receiving commissions when he swapped screenprinting for the computer. Nine years down the line, he has clients such as The Guardian, FT, O2, BP and BA, and agents in both London and New York. When we spoke to him, he was out and about taking photographs of parks…

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1. Chopstick Etiquette is an illustration McFaul created for Director magazine. “Sticking chopsticks straight up in your rice can be interpreted as wanting somebody at the table to die,” he says. Tools of the job: Photoshop, Illustrator and his trusty 2B pencil.

What image is on your desktop?

Sock monkeys. What are you obsessed by?

Random information, bicycles, hills, mountains, clear skies, the sea and my girlfriend Rachel (not in that order, obviously!). I’m quite obsessive. Name one brilliant illustrator/designer

Jean-Michel Basquiat. The collaboration stuff he did with Warhol was fantastic!

2

What are you working on now?

Snowed under today. I have to take photographs of parks for an ongoing collaboration called Parkkit (www.parkkit.com), I’m trying to finish a magazine cover for a New York company about adult mental health falling through the system, and I’m also trying to get an invite off to the printers and into Sleazenation for ‘A Lovely Pair’ – an exhibition of mine and Adrian Johnson’s work coming up in November at the Coningsbury Gallery, London (www.alovelypair.com). I’ve got a few commissions from regular clients that I have to look at today sometime, too – a spectacle magazine and an estates magazine – and I need to get on the phone to sort out an O2 marketing commission and a Web animation that’s in the pipeline for an architectural firm… What do you read in bed?

I’m reading Danny Wallace’s Join Me at the moment, which is very amusing, and I’ve been digesting Schott’s Original Miscellany whenever possible. What is your ultimate ambition?

To work alongside some of the names that have influenced me. How do you celebrate completing a project?

By getting stuck into the next one usually, sneaking a few beers along the way with friends and influential people… Best album to work to?

Doves – anything by them gets the creative juices flowing. If you weren’t busy being a designer, what would you be doing now?

Riding my bike for lots of cash. What keeps you awake at night?

Rachel’s need for three quarters of the bed.

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2. This self-promotional piece depicts some of the highly uncomfortable moments of being a parent. McFaul used Photoshop, Illustrator, that 2B pencil and a biro. 3. This is the invite for McFaul’s forthcoming London exhibition, A Lovely Pair, with fellow illustrator Adrian Johnson. “I’m the one on the right. For this image I used Photoshop, Streamline, a felt-tip about to run out and some nail varnish remover.” See www.alovelypair.com.

3

Profile

4. This illustration was for New York illustration agency Berstein & Andriulli, and it simply represents the word love. McFaul used Photoshop, a 2B pencil, a biro and his fax machine.

4

5. McFaul used his favourite biro and Photoshop to create this editorial illo, entitled Red, Irritated Eyes. It featured in The Guardian’s weekly ‘Ask Emma’ column.

6

6. No Status is a recent illustration for Director magazine, generated in the Adobe twosome Photoshop and Illustrator. 7. “This image was produced for a Smirnoff Experience pitch,” says McFaul. “I used Photoshop and Streamline.”

7

8. Visual Communication is one in a series of Photoshop illustrations created for Vision Now. 9. “This is called Chill, and it’s one of a number of images created for a booklet, used by Sledge as a pitch for next year’s O2 marketing campaign. We won!” It was produced in Photoshop and Illustrator.

5

8

9

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MFX® is turning the world metallic China Australia Korea Dubai India Vietnam Malaysia Taiwan Hong Kong Japan Indonesia

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With over 100 licenses sold at IGAS 2003 and major worldwide brand names adopting the technique, MetalFX® is fast becoming a worldwide name.

With metallics going mainstream, can you afford not to shine?

Finalists in Business Innovation of the Year in the National Business Awards 2003

www.metal-fx.com

Tel: 01943 884888

Official sponsor of the Northern Packaging Dinner

[email protected]

REVIEWS

★★★★★

SOFTWARE

OUR FIVE-STAR RATING EXPLAINED

DVD Studio Pro 2 p84 3ds max 6 p86

For a piece of software or hardware to make it into Computer Arts’ reviews section, it has to reach a certain standard. Truly dire products will be ignored, which is why you’ll rarely see one-star ratings. Our reviewers are experts in their own fields. We assess tools from the viewpoint of the professional designer. Does the product do what it’s meant to do? Is the interface clean? Is it quick, reliable and useful? And is it good value? Computer Arts Recommended awards are only given to products that are particularly good value, or truly excel in what they do.

BodyPaint 3D R2 p88 Shake 3 p90 MetalFX p92 Mimic 2 p94 HARDWARE

PowerBook 15-inch p96 Power Mac G5 1.8GHz p97 Creative Stuff p98 GROUP TEST

DIGITAL CAMERAS p102

Minolta A1 Fujifilm S5000Zoom Nikon CoolPix 5700 Pentax Optio 550 Canon EOS 300D

The world of professional DVD authoring on the Mac has just received a huge boost: DVD Studio Pro 2 is an undeniably brilliant tool – and one that succeeds in blending awesome power with sublime ease of use. And there are few apps that can boast that… In this month’s section, you can also look forward to a world-exclusive review of Apple’s Shake 3. Although it may be out of the reach of many pricewise, it’s an unbelievable compositing and effects tool that effects pros really can’t afford to ignore. In addition, you’ll find a preview of Discreet’s latest 3D tool, 3ds max 6, and an in-depth review of Maxon’s BodyPaint 3D 2. We also managed to get our hands on a G5 1.8GHz, a machine that delivers extreme power at a relatively low price, as well as the eminently desirable PowerBook 15-inch, reconfigured and better than ever. Given the growing popularity of digital photography over the last few years, we also picked out five of the best digital cameras for creative users in this month’s Group Test, including the brand new Canon EOS 300D. Find out which model came out on top on page 102. Rob Carney Deputy Editor [email protected]

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DVD STUDIO PRO 2

MAC

£399

DVD AUTHORING Apple’s app returns with creative tools that are simple yet powerful CONTACT Apple Buy online www.apple.com/ukstore 0800 0391010

SYSTEM MAC 733MHz G4 • 256MB RAM • 2GB HD • OS X 10.2.6 • DVD drive

FOR Drag-and-drop functionality Three new interfaces ● Great for pros and amateurs ● ●

AGAINST ●

High system requirements

VERDICT

★★★★★ Apple has completely redefined the way DVD Studio Pro looks and feels – and the new version is fantastic. A mix of high-end tools are complemented by easy-to-use features that everyone from the novice to DVD pro will find useful.

W

hen DVD Studio Pro first hit the shelves, Apple had a tool that made it relatively easy to create professional-quality DVDs on the Mac. Still, the application was never perfect. It required a certain way of thinking – building menus and tracks was often a little convoluted, and the interface had a few quirks that made it tricky for creatives to get their heads around. With version 2, Apple has obviously thought long and hard about the usability of the tool, and in doing so has opened up the feature-set not just to DVD professionals, but anyone in the creative sector. This is borne out in a take-it-as-you-like approach to DVD authoring, one in which you can choose one of three interfaces to suit your ability or needs.

MULTIPLE CHOICE The Basic, Extended and Advanced views in DVD Studio Pro 2 add and take away various interface elements and palettes – so you can effectively make DVD authoring as difficult as you want it to be The Basic interface (by default) includes the main viewer window, with options for displaying menus, slideshows or assets, the Browser (which enables you to view and apply templates, Styles, Shapes, Audio, Still images and Video – see boxout) and the main toolbar. Also by default, the toolbar contains just a few options, such as fonts, colours, simulate and burning, but you can customise it to your liking – giving you the ability to hide and show other palettes and dialogs. For beginners and those not used to creating DVDs, this Basic interface is an ideal starting point,

and is reminiscent of the iDVD interface. The fact you can customise it as your skills progress (perhaps before moving onto the Extended interface) makes it an easy way to get to grips with what is generally considered a tricky medium. The Extended interface offers more in the way of control for intermediate and professional users. It introduces the timeline-based Track Editor, which brings a familiar videoediting like timeline to DVD Studio Pro. This enables you to assemble your video (up to nine angles), audio (up to eight tracks) and subtitles within a single track. This provides a similar way of working to Adobe’s Encore DVD, and it is a big improvement over the 1.5 way of working. For instance, you can now link menus and buttons to tracks with ease – the contextual menus guiding you through the process. Adding chapter markers is simply a matter of clicking on the area above the timeline, and if you need to know at a glance where links go, the Connections Editor is a fantastic addition. You can also create slideshows with ease – the Slideshow Editor provides a simple and straightforward way to show off your images to friends and colleagues. In addition, the Extended interface brings the Asset Manager to your attention, displaying each of the assets in your project and giving you an outline of file type, timestamps, length, bit rate and so on. One of the handiest additions Apple has made to DVD Studio Pro 2 is automatic transcoding. After using this feature for just a few hours, we can tell you that it’s an absolute godsend. Instead of having to prepare movie files in another application (cleaner, etc), DVD Studio Pro includes automatic MPEG-2 encoding, which means you can import any file supported by QuickTime. Subtitling

The DVD Studio Pro 2 Basic interface is reminiscent of iDVD, and provides a simple DVD authoring solution that’s convenient for newcomers.

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Review

BROWSER AROUSER It doesn’t just help you search for files

Move on to the Advanced view and you get a timeline-based Track Editor, which enables you to easily organise footage and audio.

tools have also been built in, and the new Subtitler enables you to add up to 32 streams per track.

SUBLIME FEATURES Before we move on to the Advanced interface, we must stop and mention the one single feature in DVD Studio Pro 2 that blew us away for its sublime ease-of-use: the inclusion of context-sensitive Drop Palettes. One of the most annoying and even dull aspects of DVD authoring is making sure all assets are assigned to the right menu or buttons and so on. These Drop palettes not only make it a breeze to assign assets, they also make the whole procedure quite fun. As you drag an asset over a menu, or drop zone (more on these in a bit), a palette appears asking you what you want to do with the asset. You may want to simply set the asset, for instance, or perhaps create a button and track from the asset. All you have to do is select the option from the palette and everything is applied. When Apple boasted that this tool would enable drag-and-drop authoring, it wasn’t lying. Another feature that brings amazing ease of use, and complements the drag-and-drop functionality of DVD Studio Pro, are Drop Zones. You can define Drop Zones from shapes on the canvas by simply Control-clicking and choosing the appropriate option. You then simply drag and drop assets from the Assets palette (or even from the Finder) into the relevant Zone. It really is a joy to use – and once again proves how Apple has successfully brought

The DVD Studio Pro 2 Browser is a great addition to the app that enables you to search for and add all manner of assets to your project. The Browser contains six tabs by default: Templates, Styles, Shapes, Audio, Stills and Video. Templates offers a number of Apple templates to get you started, although these will only be of use to enthusiasts wanting to get their head around the way DVDSP works. You can

also define your own templates from here. Styles are similar, enabling you to define a style of text, button, Drop Zone or layout to use across your projects. The app ships with many, but again you can create your own with little effort. Shapes are simply shapes that you can add to your canvas for various purposes (including creating Drop Zones). Where it gets interesting is when you reach the Audio, Stills and Video tabs. These integrate with iTunes, iMovie and iPhoto, enabling you to quickly import music, video and audio. Of course, you can specify other folders if you like, but the fact that you can have your iTunes playlist within DVD Studio Pro 2, ready to drag a tune onto a menu is pretty cool, to say the least.

drag-and-drop functionality to DVD Studio Pro without sacrificing any of the app’s professional features. The Advanced interface doesn’t actually add that much more to the working environment in terms of creative features; rather, it brings tools for creating copy-protected DVDs, exporting to DLT devices and generally building and formatting pro-quality DVDs. Whatever interface you go for, everything is fully customisable. Simulator is the new Preview, enabling you WE MUST MENTION ONE FEATURE THAT BLEW US AWAY FOR SUBLIME EASE-OF-USE: to quickly preview your DVD using standard remote control features. CONTEXT-SENSITIVE DROP PALETTES It’s worth noting that DVD Studio Pro 2 also comes bundled with Compressor, for transcoding media, A.Pack, for encoding audio into Dolby Digital 5.1 and other surround sound formats, and Peak Express – which gives you the ability to quickly edit audio files.

TOP MARKS

Context-sensitive Drop palettes enable you to quickly assign assets as buttons, tracks, and so on. DVD authoring finally comes of age.

There’s no doubt that DVD Studio Pro 2 is a powerful DVD authoring tool. From v1.5, it’s been the number one choice of Mac DVD pros. What version 2 adds, however, is an ease of use never seen before. Even if you have no experience of DVD authoring, you’ll get to grips with this in no time. By mixing the experience it’s gained from its consumer DVD tool with its pro application knowledge, Apple has created a superb and extremely intuitive tool accessible to all. £399 for this app is a nominal amount. Combine DVD Studio Pro 2 with Final Cut Pro 4, and you have a suite of high-quality editing and authoring tools that’ll bring you professional results for just over a grand. Amazing.

FEATURES Drag-and-drop DVD authoring ● Choose one of three interfaces ● Customisable interface ● Timeline-based Track Editor ● Up to 9 video angles on each track ● Drop Zones ● Automatic transcoding ● Subtitling tools ● Dolby Digital tools ●

The Basic interface of DVD Studio Pro 2 contains extremely simple tools for quickly creating home DVDs and showreels.

The Extended view adds many dialog boxes and palettes, giving DVD professionals the tools they need to create motion menus, subtitle tracks and more.

Professionals wanting features such as Region Encoding and CSS Encryption, as well as the ability to create dual-layer discs, should opt for the Advanced interface.

One of DVD Studio Pro 2’s best features is its Drop Zones. Now you can literally drag and drop assets onto your canvas.

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PREVIEW

3DS MAX 6

PC £2814

3D Plug-ins move into the standard package in 3ds max’s fastest upgrade ever CONTACT Discreet Buy online www.discreet.com

SYSTEM PC 300MHz Pentium • 256MB RAM • Win 2000/XP

VERDICT 3ds max 6 does include some useful enhancements to the basic tools, but the real meat of the release is in the plug-ins. mental ray will, of course, make everyone happy, Particle Flow will open up new avenues, and the improvements to reactor and Vertex Painting should help to keep 3ds max popular in the games industry.

The new architectural materials were developed to help move files from Discreet’s 3D Studio VIZ to 3ds max. In this way, Discreet hopes to encourage architects to create professional quality 3D flythroughs of their work using 3ds max rather than rival applications.

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ith the shortest upgrade turnaround in the product’s history, you wouldn’t expect much to have changed between the release of 3ds max 5 (at the end of 2002) and version 6. Actually, there’s a lot that’s new, but less that’s unfamiliar. A lot of tweaks to improve workflow, for instance – especially for the new features introduced in max 5 – and a few enhancements to popular tools like Subdivision, Patch Modelling, the animation Curve Editor and Dope Sheet. Most of the main headline features on 3ds max 6 are in fact plug-ins and add-ons that have been available before, but never as part of the standard max release. THE TWO REAL CENTRE-PIECES OF THE Particle Flow is a case in RELEASE WILL ALREADY BE FAMILIAR TO point, as is mental ray. The additions are an answer to SOME OF YOU: MENTAL RAY AND REACTOR the criticisms being levelled at max after the price-cuts enjoyed by its main competitors recently. Although the price of the package remains the same, the plug-ins now included certainly add value.

INSIDE THE BOX So what is new? Well, the interface sees improvements. You can now arrange your toolbars pretty much as you like around the screen. The Renderer toolbar has been tidied up

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and now includes tabs containing controls that used to be spread around the interface (like Raytracing and Advanced Lighting settings). You might expect effects and environment controls, and the Video Post tools, to be brought into the Renderer, but these don’t appear. There’s also a new concentration on organisation of scenes with an improved schematic view, and a new layers manager. This helps you hide, freeze and manipulate scene elements en masse. For example, you can turn on or off the background objects in your scene to help you work more efficiently with the foreground, or you can set only the relevant objects in your scene to render while you’re finetuning the settings of your particle systems. Blobmesh is a new metaball modelling system that enables you to create amorphous shapes by simply placing objects close together. Blobs that are positioned near each other automatically stick together to form curved surfaces. This is ideal for liquid animations, but is a little slow for more complex modelling. There are a couple of simple enhancements that will make life a lot easier in modelling and texturing: The first is a new shell modifier for giving thickness to open-edged objects. It’s a simple idea that will save you a lot of time in constructing the interiors of objects. The second is a relax function for UV Mapping. This gets over the problem of

Review

FEATURES Comprehensive 3D modelling tools ● Keyframe animation ● mental ray renderer ● Games production tools ● Dynamic soft and rigid body animation ● Event-driven Particle System ● Full scripting ●

The interface in 3ds max 6 hasn’t changed much in version 6, but the tabbed toolbar has been removed, and now there’s a new set of icons down the left-hand side of the screen.

Patch and Subdivision modelling have been tweaked rather than revolutionised, but the ability to work on high-resolution models without having to see all the vertices is helpful.

tangled vertices – where a texture can’t be properly applied because the model isn’t unwrapped correctly. The new Architectural material is slightly misnamed. It was developed as an easy way to get materials from VIZ into max so that architects could easily produce realistic 3D flythroughs of new buildings. However, it’s actually a lot more flexible than that, enabling you to quickly create a range of simple materials for all kinds of purposes. max now ships with several libraries of architectural materials from plastics to carpets, masonry to roofing.

painting tools on vertices and use symmetry to copy values over symmetrical objects. The laborious process of skinning boned objects is much improved, too. The most impressive addition is the ability to copy weighting between objects which are similar but not identical. In other words, if you’ve got two different characters that you need to animate, in the past you would’ve had to spend several hours skinning each one. Now you can skin the first, and then copy most of your skinning data straight across to the other in a couple of steps. This alone could save animators a great deal of time and irritation.

REACTIVE PLUG-INS These updates are useful, but not ground-breaking. The two real centre-pieces of this release, however, will already be familiar to some max users: mental ray and reactor. 3ds max 5 gave us two new advanced lighting options, and greatly improved the quality of final images. Version 6 now ships with mental ray as standard. This renderer has become the industry’s favourite – albeit rather costly – max add-on, but is also used with Maya, Softimage and other 3D packages. New users will probably take a while to get to grips with it. Get your settings wrong and you can give your project an unnecessarily long render time, without adding much to its quality. That said, in the hands of an expert, mental ray can go far beyond the level of realism generated even by max’s light-tracer, or radiosity setups. It’s capable of creating ultrarealistic lighting, shadows and radiosity, reflections that include focus effects, and caustics. The second important addition to 3ds max 6 is Particle Flow. This is another, much more recent add-on which vastly extends what you can do with Particle Systems in max (see Particle Flow boxout). It enables you to make your particles a lot more intelligent, and with max’s increasingly good dynamics tools, the automation of animation now looks both more accessible and more realistic. reactor is certainly more reactive – you can actually watch a real-time preview of what your setup is going to produce. For example, in Interactive mode, you can simply grab an object and hurl it against a wall, getting an instant look at what will happen when you animate it. There’s also a rag-doll setup, which enables you to simulate the effect of gravity and collisions on a lifeless body. This is excellent for stunts, throwing figures down stairs, or hitting them with cars, but could also be used for non-human or even noncharacter simulations. Car suspension is also improved for those essential car-chase scenes. Game designers are sure to find the improvements to Vertex Painting useful. You can now use more traditional

Discreet hopes its improvements to the Schematic view will make users feel more comfortable working with hierarchies.

ADDED VALUE 3ds max 5 was only released last winter, so, less than a year later, this upgrade can hardly be called revolutionary… But then, while Discreet has improved the toolset, the real head-turners are the excellent plug-ins that now come as standard. mental ray, reactor and Particle Flow beef up the package enormously, improving 3ds max’s value for money considerably and opening up exciting new possibilities for its use. ■

Particle Flow introduces another flowchart to the app. This one enables you to give intelligence to your particles with simple links.

PARTICLE FLOW It’s part of v6, but what does it offer? Particle Flow was first introduced as a plug-in to 3ds max 5. Within a few months, it’s now been re-designated and brought into the standard 3ds max 6 package. This tool is an eventdriven Particle System. What this means is that from the moment your particles are born, you can direct them by simply linking Operators, Events and Tests in a flowchart. For example, a particle’s speed and colour are Operators, so just by

dragging and dropping a Test for the particle’s age, you can create an event in which it stops moving and changes colour a set length of time after it has been produced. That’s a simple example, but using the flowchart view it’s easy enough to produce much more complex sequences in which particles behave differently when involved in collisions – when they reach a certain size, or even when a series of conditions are met.

Discreet sees architectural work as a growing market, so new tools will enable you to import and render such models more easily.

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BODYPAINT 3D R2

PC AND MAC £499

3D The second iteration of Maxon’s intriguing 3D texturing app delivers a rack of new features CONTACT Maxon UK 0500 223 660 www.maxoncomputer.com

SYSTEM PC Intel Celeron, AMD Duron and compatibles with 500MHz • 256MB RAM • Windows 98/NT 4/2000/XP MAC PowerPC • 256MB RAM • OS 9.2.2+/OS X

FOR Much improved workflow Works with the major 3D apps ● Seamless Projection Painting ● ●

AGAINST ● ●

Convoluted workflow Manual UV editing tools a little rough around the edges

VERDICT

★★★★★ 3D texturing and UV editing is a difficult task, and Maxon’s latest release of BodyPaint offers a strong solution. There are a few flaws, but great features and usability far outweigh them.

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ccurate texture mapping is one of the trickiest jobs in 3D production. While you can often map simple primitives using standard projection methods, more complex objects require an elaborate method for applying textures to their surface without smearing. UV texture co-ordinates help by turning a model into a flat plane, essentially making the model fit the texture rather than the other way around. Another option is to paint directly on the model’s surface in 3D. All three methods have their pros and cons, and few programs successfully combine them all. This second outing for Maxon’s dedicated 3D texturing and painting system is in many ways a unique program. The program is offered as a well-integrated module for Cinema 4D, Maxon’s flagship 3D animation app. It’s also offered as a standalone program, which you can use to texture models from any 3D program, as long as there are mutually compatible file formats that support UVs. Maxon is actually the only 3D developer to offer a serious 3D texturing solution compatible with competitors’ apps – by providing exchange plug-ins for Maya, 3ds max and LightWave. This is a serious move to make BodyPaint the de facto 3D texturing solution, and on first impressions, BP R2 looks to be a serious contender.

THE NEXT LEVEL… From the first release, BodyPaint was clearly something special. Built on the same interface technology as Cinema 4D, the program was easy to customise and quick. Its Raybrush technology was and still is second to none,

enabling you to paint on a near final-quality render of your model, complete with reflections and proper bump maps. Version 2 takes the core features of direct 3D painting and UV editing to the next level. Workflow in the new program has been rethought, which is good, although delving straight in isn’t a good idea. The way the program operates isn’t intuitive, but it is logical and consistent, which is important. The new Setup Wizard will make preparing models and materials for UV editing and painting much quicker; it automates the entire process and enables you to set up a model composed of multiple objects in one fell swoop. This leads us to one of the other big features in BP 2: Projection Painting. Projection Painting has been available in other texturing systems for a while, but its inclusion here finally rounds off the BodyPaint toolset. With Projection Painting, you can paint across multiple materials and objects in 3D from the camera’s point of view. Interface-wise, there have been a couple of important adjustments and additions. The Material Manager has come under scrutiny at last, and no longer limits the display to icon mode. Now there are five different list modes, making objects with many materials, and materials with lots of textures, much easier to manage. Even better, the Material Manager supports tabbed grouping of materials. You can also assign materials to user-created tabs and group related materials together – a long overdue feature. Being based on the core technology of Cinema 4D 8, BodyPaint 2 takes advantage of all those other pleasing workflow and interface advances. These include multiple

As with Maxon’s 3D app Cinema 4D, BodyPaint supports HDR (High Definition Recorder) images. You can open these in the Texture view, and even convert Cross and Probe them into spherical maps. Unfortunately, you can’t yet edit the HDR images themselves.

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FEATURES Standalone application or integrated Cinema 4D module ● 3D painting ● UV editing ● Photoshop filter compatible ● Dodge and Burn tools ● Massive Brush library ● Maya, 3ds max and LightWave exchange plug-ins ● New UV tools ● Improved workflow ● New palettes and interface scheme ● Setup Wizard ● Projection Paint ●

3D painting is one of BP’s key strengths. In Projection Paint mode, you can paint across multiple objects’ seams without distortion.

Dodge, Burn and Sponge modes are now available for your brushes. Select them in the Filter section of the Brushes Manager.

selection (so you can paint across multiple objects), interactive parameter editing via the new Attribute Manager, and raycast selection – to name a few. A neat feature is the ability to paste ready-created artwork onto a model. Using a similar technology to the Projection Paint mode, bitmap images can be slapped directly onto a model’s surface, projected from the view of the camera. Before accepting the placement, you’re free to move, scale and distort the bitmap.

PRO AND CONS

AN EXCELLENT SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF 3D TEXTURING AND UV EDITING, WHICH IS PROBABLY WHY SONY IMAGEWORKS USES THE APP the Move tool, it doesn’t require you to select points first – just click-drag to move one point at a time. When you have loads of UV points to edit, having to select them before moving them can be a real chore. However, the new Projection Painting feature and Optimal unwrapping do make the need for hefty manual UV editing less important, although there still seems to be a lack of finesse about the UV editing toolset. Still, the Relax UVs feature is a great time-saver, because it enables you to automatically spread out selected polygons that may be too squashed up in the texture area. Unfortunately, it’s quite a hit-and-miss affair, not always working as well as you’d

The new Material Manager features five different list modes, enabling you to view the materials associated with a particular segment more efficiently. Tabbed groups are also implemented.

expect. When it does work, though, it can save you a good 20 minutes of manual UV editing. 2003 © Baldasseroni

Having all this cool technology is one thing, but it would count for nothing if the program weren’t set up to take advantage of it. Painting a scratch across a smoothly painted surface, for example, would be tiresome if you had to duplicate the stroke in each channel (diffuse, specular, bump, reflection) individually. In BodyPaint, you can paint into multiple texture channels using a single stroke, and you can save the brush and channel parameters as a preset, if you ever need a ‘scratched paint’ tool again. UV editing is built in, unlike some 3D texturing apps, where it comes as an optional extra. It does seem a little weak, though, or maybe the tools are just unfriendly. For instance, the Scale tool works from the centre of your mouse click only, so you can’t anchor one corner and drag out the other – you have to change to the Move tool and reposition the polys, scale again and reposition until you get things right. A Free Transform tool, like Photoshop’s – a bounding box with handles enabling you to move, scale, rotate and shear selected polygons – would’ve been better. Another annoyance is that point snapping doesn’t work with the Magnet tool. The Magnet is great when used with zero size and Nearest Point Mode enabled, because unlike

TEXTURING WEAPON Other innovations in this release are new Dodge, Burn, Smear and Sponge tools, a redesigned Colour Chooser, including a Colour Mixer and preset swatches, a Gradient tool with noise and presets, plus several fixes and tweaks. BodyPaint 2 is an excellent solution to the problem of 3D texturing and UV editing, which is probably why Sony Picture Imageworks has selected the app as its texturing weapon of choice. It’s not perfect by any means, but it arguably offers the best workflow and features yet. ■

Exchange plug-ins enable you to texture and paint work built in a variety of apps –here, 3ds max.

SETUP WIZARD Setting up the painting of multiple objects couldn’t be simpler –thanks to this Wizard The trickiest thing when getting started with UV texturing is making sure the right materials are set up correctly –ensuring that there are texture maps ready to receive paint in the correct channels, and that objects you want to paint have materials assigned. If you have a character or object consisting of lots of individual objects rather than a single skin, this set-

up process can become a real headache. The Setup Wizard in BP2 solves all this. When activated, it enables you to choose which objects you want to set up, which channels you want to paint in, and how big the textures need to be (or it can work this out for you). After about three mouseclicks everything is done and your multi-object character is ready to paint.

Use the UV tools to unwrap a mesh’s UVs, then fit them to a texture map for painting.

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SHAKE 3.0

PC AND MAC £3799

3D High-end compositor Shake 3.0 brings state-of-the-art special effects to OS X CONTACT NMR – New Media Research 020 7255 2700 www.nmr.com

SYSTEM PC 550MHz Pentium III • 256MB RAM • 1GB HD space • Red Hat Linux 7.2 • NVIDIA Quadro2 or Quadro4, ATI FireGL 8700 or 8800, ATI FireGL2 or ATI FireGL4 • 1280x1024-pixel res, 24-bit colour display MAC 800MHz Power Mac G4 or PowerBook G4 • 256MB RAM • 1GB HD space • Graphics card with at least 32MB of video memory and OpenGL hardware acceleration • 1280x1024-pixel res, 24-bit colour display

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pple’s canny involvement with such epic, effectsrich blockbusters as The Lord Of The Rings is far more than a healthy propaganda move; industry leaders are eager to use Apple products because they’re often considered the best, most cost-effective solution available. Final Cut Pro helped make Apple look like a viable feature film platform, and that image was bolstered by the introduction of Shake for OS X. When Apple bought Nothing Real (the developers of Shake) in early 2002, it was clear the company took the film industry seriously. Shake continues to be one of its most popular compositing solutions, many opting for the Mac platform simply because it provides such a relatively cheap way to composite in 3D. At first glance, Shake may seem like just another compositing package, such as After Effects. Not so. It’s now an industry standard, adopted by such effects giants as

FOR Industry-standard Sophisticated features ● Incredibly powerful ● ●

AGAINST ● ●

Steep learning curve Not exactly cheap…

VERDICT

★★★★★ If you can afford it, and you’ll be doing plenty of effects work, don’t hesitate to buy this. Rock-solid compositing in a resolution-free environment makes Shake superb value.

By linking blur elements to animation movement –as with this whirling fan –you can simulate powerful depth-lighting effects.

Weta and DreamWorks, and has already demonstrated its sophistication in hundreds of movies, including The Matrix Reloaded, X2, Ice Age, and, of course, the Lord Of The Rings movies. These films demanded highly complex composites, often with hundreds of layers, and Shake delivered excellent results time after time.

INDUSTRY LEADER If you’ve ever used After Effects, Commotion or combustion, Shake certainly feels like more of a high-end app. Instead of dragging and dropping files, then applying filters, you work in a node-based environment. It’s daunting at first, admittedly, but easier to pick up than you might think. Think of nodes as filters, file input or scripted actions, which are connected by visible strings, called noodles. These give you control over every node and its sequence of effects, in a highly visual environment. For complex compositing, it really does simplify matters. Shake runs independently of bit-depth and resolution, which means you can import just about any image and work with it effectively. Imagine that you shoot a scene on film, with a blank TV screen; Shake enables you to easily corner-pin video footage to the TV screen and keep it in place during a handheld shot. Complex operation like this becomes rapid tasks for experienced Shake users. The interface is surprisingly clear, too, considering the program’s complexity – Shake is such a vast, sophisticated program, many wouldn’t dream of using it without taking a lengthy training course. But while it does take time and brain power to master, the reward is an astonishing degree of control over your images. Keying is handled by the two industry leaders: Primatte and Keylight. But when keying isn’t possible, drawing and

WORLD

EXCLUSIVE

Because Shake is resolution and bit-depth independent, you can mix and colour-correct images and movies of all kinds in one environment.

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Review

GRAIN WITHOUT PAIN Recreate a genuine film look with ease There are many ways to add noise and grain to footage, ranging from experimental techniques in After Effects to expensive packages such as CineLook. The beauty of Shake’s built-in FilmGrain node is that the grain more accurately reflects the look of real-world film stocks, and takes only moments to implement. When adding 3D CG characters to a filmed

scene, you need to add many layers of dust, light and atmosphere to ensure a good effect. The new FilmGrain simulator that comes with Shake is fully adjustable, making it easier to match the look of the disparate elements. Although film grain is often applied to DV to simulate (badly) the look of 35mm film, accurate graining remains a must for modern composites.

Keylight and Primatte are industry standards for keying work and, considering how powerful they are, surprisingly simple to use.

animating rotoshapes is a relatively simple procedure, although it does require skill. But it’s when you come to Depth Keying and Depth Blurring that you start to see why Shake is streets ahead of the competition. If you import objects with z-depth information, depth is controlled almost automatically, but you can also simulate it effectively using mattes. This means you can composite a few 2D layers together to create the impression of a true 3D environment. The tutorial that comes with Shake shows you how just a few clicks transform some rather bland images of New York and some airships, into a rich, foggy image, with depth-based fade-out. It would be a struggle to create this sort of effect with lesser packages. Vector painting works well, and with practice becomes as easy to use as Commotion, yet offers a greater level of control. Cloning, for wire removal or replacing people or

(Panther), it’s expected to be exceptionally quick. Rendertimes are also speedy, although some manual toggling is required to keep things manageable. If you have a few spare Macs lying around the office, network-rendering is kept simple through the Shake Qmaster, which shares the load around without you having to worry about the details.

FEATURES Resolution and bit-depth independent compositing, to work with SD, HD and film. ● Subpixel tracking ● Unlimited distribution of rendering, with software to control the whole process ● Operations combined in a way that speeds rendering ● Support for third-party plugins from The Foundry, etc ● Support for a broadcast monitor ● Audio tracks synchronised with visual effects ● Import Photoshop layers with Blend modes ● Keyframeable shape-based masks ● Keylight and Primatte Keying software ●

SUPERB NEW FEATURES

Apple has brought many new features to this latest iteration, including – finally – the ability to import Photoshop layers with blend modes, which is most welcome. Audio has also been included , which helps provide a better impression of the image, and can prove significant for synching of effects. The Curve controls have been revamped so thoroughly that most users consider this a new addition to Shake. Turns out you can animate just about every parameter in the app, the Curve Editor providing IT MAY BE EXPENSIVE, BUT SHAKE IS GREAT you with as much control as you need. You can also VALUE FOR MONEY, GIVEN THAT IT’S THE apply tracking data to Rotoshapes, and the BEST HIGH-END APP OF ITS TYPE AVAILABLE broadcast monitor support in OS X will be a godsend for many. One of the most welcome new additions is the objects, is far in advance of the competition. Tracking and QuickTime-based flipbook, which renders your current image stabilisation is highly advanced. MatchMoving is project into a floating window. Far better then previewing in made as automatic as possible, so you can easily pin backgrounds to horizons, and attach objects to moving After Effects, this gives you a crystal clear look at what vehicles, cars or people. you’ve achieved. You can render from any node, so you can see the finished project, or just one aspect rendered out. Shake runs smoothly, even on a system with minimum To get the most out of Shake, you will need to learn a system requirements. On a brand new G5, running OS 10.3 little programming language. Experienced users create Macros (the raw information from nodes combined to create a new function), and enter command lines directly into the interface. Although terrifying for the average user, this soon becomes a boon rather than a bane. Command line functions give you a depth of control that you could never get with a more simple application. Shake may be expensive, but it’s great value for money, given that it’s the best high-end app of its type available. If you’re only planning to do a few simple composites, mind you, opt for After Effects instead. But if you’re doing a lot of effects work, in a variety of formats, to a tight deadline, there’s no comparable solution for the price. Shake could never be a casual purchase – it’s too expensive and labourintensive for that – but if your projects scream for industryAnimate Rotoshapes and attach them to tracking data. This often standard effects, nothing else can touch it. time-consuming process is automated as far as possible.

Tracking, MatchMoving and Image Stabilisation rely on subpixel technology, so superb accuracy is assured.

Use the excellent FilmGrain simulator to add realistic film grain to your footage.

Now you can import Photoshop layers of any resolution into Shake, with their Blend modes intact.

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METALFX

PC AND MAC £325

SPECIAL COLOURS Print up to 104 million metallic colours – by adding only one extra spot colour CONTACT MetalFX Technology 01943 884 888 www.metal-fx.com

FEATURES •104 million colours for creating metallic printing effects •Lite-FX –makes imagery change colour •Holo-FX –makes imagery appear and disappear • Photoshop actions that do what they promise, without hitches •Colour palettes that you can import into XPress, Illustrator, and other leading apps •Swatch book of 615 metallic colours

FOR •Easy to use •Unparalleled metallic effects •Excellent Web resources at www.metal-fx.com

AGAINST •Base ink can have a darkening effect •User guide could be a little more comprehensive •A lower price for the Universal Colour System might get more studios trying the process out

SYSTEM PC/MAC Compatible with Photoshop, FreeHand, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, InDesign and more – full listing at www.metal-fx.com

VERDICT

★★★★★ The MetalFX printing process is one of a kind. The simplicity of working with only one extra spot channel is exceptional, especially when you consider the diverse results that can be achieved. Although you can obtain these results without buying the Universal Colour System, for £325 it’s worth having the Photoshop action and swatch book.

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raditionally, adding metallic inks to the printing process was reserved for simple effects like spot colours. Until now, printing millions of metallic colours, as well as special effects, was logistically unachievable – until the advent of MetalFX Technology and its Universal Process and Spot Metallic Colour System – which we showcased on issue 88’s cover. MetalFX Technology is readily available under licence to the print industry. Printers holding a licence are then able to output your print jobs and deploy the various metallic effects on a single pass of a five-colour press. The MetalFX system relies on the use of a base ink, a high-lustre silver pigment that produces a unique high-quality sheen. It’s on top of this base ink that the CMYK inks are printed to produce the metallic results. What makes MetalFX outstanding is how the use of the base ink is so flexible – and you don’t have to print a solid opaque base underneath. By creating a custom spot colour in your Photoshop images, you can create virtually anything you want with the metallic ink. However, for the process to work, you need to follow the basic protocol. In short, this involves creating an identical grey-scale version of your existing Photoshop file and pasting it into the base ink spot channel. It’s essential for there to be tonal variations in the spot channel for the ink to live up to its potential. Then you can use image adjustment tools to lighten dark areas and brighten highlights. The highlights are brightened to white, removing the metallic ink and thus making them appear brighter. A Photoshop Action that handles these adjustments well is available in MetalFX’s Universal Colour System, which you can buy online. Packaged in a metal box, the Colour System includes a swatch book of 615 metallic colours, a user guide, and a CD-ROM with plug-ins and hi-res metallic imagery. In addition to continuous-tone Photoshop images,

(Left) Our CMYK image for issue 88’s cover. To make the squares on the cube c‘ hange’ colour when the piece is moved, we filled these areas in our base silver channel (right) with 0 per cent white.

you can also use MetalFX in such apps as XPress, InDesign, Illustrator, FreeHand and PageMaker. The MetalFX colour plug-ins supplied on the CD can be used in most major apps, or you can create swatch palettes manually by using the supplied CMYK breakdown sheet. As well as the overall metallic appearance, it’s possible to take your artwork to another level using Lite-FX and HoloFX. The former makes an area of artwork appear to change colour; the latter makes areas appear and disappear. Special effects aside, MetalFX will make your printed output shine like nothing else can. You can buy the Universal Colour System from the MetalFX Website, find a licensed printer in your area or download a copy of the free user guide. If you’re nervous about results, MetalFX has an in-house reprographic studio that specialises in the creation of metallic imagery and artwork. ■

HOLO-FX AND LITE-FX Create startling images that change colour –and even disappear Lite– FX is a process that can be applied to your artwork so that areas appear to change colour. This is done by having an area of the image containing the same CMYK values as the rest, but with nothing (0 per cent) in the base silver channel. When you move the printed piece, this area turns from light to dark, depending on how the light hits it. Holo-FX, using the base spot channel, can be used to make areas of your image appear and disappear. By reducing (not removing) the amount of base silver in certain areas, you can create subliminal messages or elements that appear and fade as you move the printed image. For light metallic colours, the recommended base silver for areas affected by Holo-FX is 70-75 per cent base silver; for dark metallic areas, it’s 50-60 per cent.

MIMIC 2 PRO

PC AND MAC $200 (£120)

3D Get your characters talking to each other with the latest version of Mimic CONTACT DAZ Productions 001 801 495 1777 www.daz3d.com

FEATURES Creates animated Poser files from audio or video clips ● Can accept different character files ● Displays OpenGL, textured preview ● Add non-verbal gestures ● View video alongside animation ●

SYSTEM PC Pentium 700MHz • 256MB RAM • 25MB HD space • Sound card • 32MB graphics card with OpenGL • Win 98+ • Windows Media player MAC G4 500MHz • 256MB RAM • 25MB HD space • Sound card • 32MB graphics card with OpenGL • OS X • QuickTime

FOR Simplifies lip-sync animation ● Timeline view is easy to use ● Supports video ●

AGAINST Default phoneme configurations are unrealistic ● Only as good as the models you animate ● Even the test files can be out of sync with the source speech ●

VERDICT

★★★ Mimic 2 Pro vastly simplifies the process of lip-synching, but the supplied expressions are far from perfect, so you’ll probably want to create your own expression library.

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oser is known for the ease with which you can use it to pose and animate human or animal characters. With each successive iteration, the included figures become more detailed, and perfectly good enough to use in lip-synched animation, where a character’s expressions and mouth are animated in time with an audio file. However, using Poser to do this, while easier than most alternatives, can still be excruciatingly tedious. Fortunately, Mimic Pro 2 is here to turn a long, fiddly job into one that takes hours (and sometimes minutes) rather than days. To create a lip-sync, you start by loading in your WAV audio file. Alternatively, you can record some speech directly if you have a microphone, or import a video (only AVI is supported). You can now preview your sound within the Session Manager, but you’ll have to wait to get fully into the program to see your video. Once you’ve selected your source, you need to type in (or load) text to correspond to the words spoken in the selected media. Mimic uses this to analyse the speech phonetically and provide a visual cue on the timeline. Last but not least, you need to select the CR2 corresponding to the character you wish to animate. CR2s are the Poser files that reference body geometry within Poser. They can also contain texture, morph and pose information. By referencing CR2s rather than base geometry, it enables you to create lip-syncs of characters you may have modified. It also enables you to use Victoria 3 and Michael 3, which don’t store facial expression parameters in the conventional way. Having selected all the elements involved in your project, it’s off to the main room, where you can edit and fine-tune your lip-sync. The room has a timeline at the bottom of the screen, which displays the waveform of the imported speech. Surrounding that are phoneme, expression and gesture tracks. The most important of these is the phoneme track, because this shows the way that the speech has been disassembled into its component elements. Phonemes are the primitives of speech, and you can construct any English words using English language phonemes. Each phoneme is assigned an expression. The program comes with a default set, but these are not always very accurate. The truth is, until Michael and Victoria 3, Poser’s characters lacked the ability to precisely express every

phoneme. Even with the latest DAZ figures, the expressions are somewhat understated. Thankfully, you can at least vary the magnitude of each expression, and it seems to be more effective if you create larger-than-life expressions, just as a stage actor sometimes has to exaggerate his or her gestures. There are so many subtle wrinkles and lip distortions in real speech that Poser characters cannot truly duplicate yet. Still, you can create your own phoneme expression library, which is probably a better way of working in the long-term. It also enables you to create expressions for non-human creatures. Having created your animations, and previewed them within Mimic, you can then export the animation as a PZ2 file for use in Poser. When you now load up Poser, the new file can be loaded as an animated pose file. If you own Body Studio for Poser 5 or the Pro Pack for Poser 4, these animated characters can also be used directly within LightWave, 3ds max or Maya.

Mimic 2 Pro’s new timeline display is extremely intuitive to use. You can add particular phonemes and gestures in the same window.

Use the Session Manager to decide which character and source files you want to use. You can’t view your video files here, though.

BODY LANGUAGE Give your characters a gesture When you set up your lip-sync in the Session Manager, you can also add gestures. These are head and facial movements that aren’t required to articulate the words, but which add character to the delivery. Gestures come in four types: head, eyes, eyebrows and blink. There are 11 possible gestures to choose from, each with its own timeline, which is displayed beneath the phonemes track. Only one

gesture can be viewed at a time, and you can adjust the strength of each one and immediately see how it looks in the preview window. The head-wobbles, rising eyebrows and blinks that form the non-verbal component of communication are an important addition to this version, and without them, the lip-syncs look as unconvincing as models without any textures.

POWERBOOK 15-INCH

MAC

£1999

LAPTOP Apple’s 15-incher finally gets an update – the new release is both portable and powerful CONTACT Apple 0800 039 1010 www.apple.com/ukstore

FEATURES 1.25GHz G4 512MB RAM ● 15.2-inch widescreen ● ATI Radeon 9600 mobility ● Slot-loading SuperDrive ● 80GB 4200rpm hard drive ● Airport Extreme ● Built-in BlueTooth ● Backlit keyboard ● ●

FOR Great design Good graphics card ● Excellent connectivity ● ●

AGAINST ●

A little slow to boot up

VERDICT

★★★★★ The 15-inch PowerBook is a fantastic laptop for Mac-based designers. More portable than the 17-inch, better specs and bigger than the 12-inch, this fast machine will be snapped up by art directors and designers everywhere.

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he long-awaited aluminium overhaul of the 15-inch PowerBook came at the Mac Expo in Paris back in September, and although many Mac fanatics were disappointed with the specs, this update brings some interesting features to the designer’s favourite laptop. It’s a difficult one to assess, with the announcement and current shipment of the G5 desktops – a G4 PowerBook seems old even on the day it’s released. Nevertheless, Apple has made an effort to consolidate the PowerBook line and drop in the fastest G4 processors it has. The model we’re looking at is the top-end PowerBook, costing nigh-on two grand and sporting a 1.25GHz G4. This is coupled with one of the best mobile graphics cards around – the ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility. This model also features a 2x slot-loading SuperDrive, meaning you can burn DVDs on the move, 512MB RAM and one FireWire port, a FireWire 800 port, two USB 2 ports, gigabit ethernet and DVI-out, s-video out and a PCMCIA slot. All this connectivity makes the PowerBook an ideal desktop replacement for all but the most demanding of tasks, and it hooked up to our 20-inch Cinema Display (by means of the Apple DVI to ADC converter, sold for £79) without a problem. The PowerBook 15-inch – like the entire range – has BlueTooth built-in, meaning you can pair and sync a number of devices, as well as use Apple’s recently announced wireless keyboard and mouse. Wireless networking is provided in the form of a built-in Airport Extreme card. Onto aesthetics. The aluminium housing looks every bit as good as its 12-inch and 17-inch brothers, and ports are arranged on the side, keeping everything simple and compact. This laptop looks fantastic, and it feels rugged enough to be knocked around a little. One thing that worries us is the noticeable gap between keyboard and screen when the laptop is closed, but this could be Apple’s way of preventing the keyboard damaging the screen. On the subject of the keyboard, this model sports the same backlight system as the original 17-inch PowerBook (available as a £50 build-to-order option on the lower-end 1GHz model). It may sound like a gimmick, but if you’ve worked on a laptop in a poorly lit room, possibly showing a client a presentation, you’ll love it. The screen acts in a similar way – as the light in a room decreases, the screen dims. Our review model had no dead pixels. The laptop runs silently, it won’t burn your legs if it’s sitting on your lap, and the instant-on sleep feature makes shutting down a thing of the past. One niggle, though: the model we reviewed featured a 4200rpm 80GB hard drive, and boot-up times were slow to say the least.

THE POWERBOOK G5? Many thought the next revision of the PowerBook would feature the G5 processor; this is obviously not the case. There has been a lot of speculation concerning the heat produced by the processor, and how Apple would cool it or run it at lower speeds. In a recent interview, Steve Jobs admitted that the company is working on a PowerBook G5, but no release date has been set. Rumours point towards liquid-based

cooling systems (similar to IBM’s own laptops), and even fuel cell technology in order to keep the G5-based notebooks cool and running for longer than a minute or so (we jest) on a single charge. For commentary, discussion and banter concerning the possibilities of a G5 PowerBook, tune into www.macrumors.com. For the meantime we have the G4 – undeniably an excellent machine.

It took around a minute and a half for the Mac to boot – making the instant-on feature all the more useful. This is a fantastically designed and engineered portable Mac that has enough power for day-to-day Photoshop, Web and layout work. More portable than the 17-inch model, a better size for designers than the 12-incher, it will undoubtedly be one of Apple’s best-selling models yet.

Review

1.8GHZ POWER MAC G5

MAC £1849

MAC We check out the top-end single processor model of Apple’s latest desktop machine CONTACT Apple UK 0800 039 1010 www.apple.com/ukstore

FEATURES 1.8GHz PowerPC G5 processor 512K on-chip L2 cache ● 900MHz frontside bus ● 512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM ● 160GB Serial ATA hard drive ● SuperDrive ● 64MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra with ADC and DVI ports ● v.92 modem ● Gigabit Ethernet ● ●

FOR Fastest single-processor Mac Exceptionally quiet ● Easy, no-tools-required maintenance ● ●

AGAINST Big Fewer optical drive and hard drive bays than G4 ● Exorbitant price for 8GB of DDR SDRAM ● ●

VERDICT

★★★★ The highest-end single processor G5 performed well across all our tests, and at £1849, there’s no denying that this is a great-value machine. Of course, we’ll soon get our hands on the Dual 2GHz G5, so if you can wait that long, check out next month’s CA for the verdict.

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s we go to press, Apple still hasn’t shipped the Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5, but we did manage to get our hands on the next best thing – the 1.8GHz model. From the moment we lifted this 39-pound machine out of its shipping box, we knew that the G5 had arrived in a big way. Although the 20.1-inch G5 is only about three inches taller than its predecessor, the Dual 1.42GHz G4, its straight- line solidity makes it appear to tower over the curvy G4. Much of the G5’s height can be credited to its independent-compartment thermal zones – one each for its power supply, processor, expansion cards and media – equipped with fans that, coupled with mesh front and back panels, waft cool air quietly over the G5’s innards. Apple promised the G5 would be a quiet machine – and it is. Helping to keep the G5 even cooler is a new technology called processor and bus slewing, in which the processor runs only as fast – and, thus, as hot – as is needed. Run complex Photoshop filters, for instance, and every ounce of the G5 works for you; but while in Word or surfing the Web, the CPU intelligently potters along – the processor flipping between 1.3GHz and 1.8GHz, with its frontside bus running at half speed. What’s more, the G5’s default state is idle – even cooler, in more ways than one. And just look how thoughtfully engineered the G5 case is. Popping optical and hard drives in and out is a snap, and doesn’t require the use of a single tool. Memory is equally

easy to add and subtract. PCI and PCI-X cards pop in and out easily, too, whether they’re larger pro cards, or morestandard 6.926-inch cards. Task-wise, things are more complicated. Our old Dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4 performed faster than the new G5 when encoding a DV file to MPEG-2 in QuickTime Pro. With the G4 running Mac OS 10.2.6 and the G5 running 10.2.7 (the G4 can’t run 10.2.7— the newer OS is G5-only), and both running QuickTime 6.3, the G4 encoded our 2GB test DV file in under 5.5 minutes; the G5 required more than 6.5. Apparently, QuickTime either takes great advantage of dual processing or isn’t yet G5-optimised. Probably both. There are other quibbles. The G5 can’t run Mac OS 10.2.6 Server; it won’t accept our old 5V PCI cards (only 3.3V cards); there’s nowhere to plug in our Apple Pro Speakers (its internal speaker is cheesy beyond belief); it doesn’t support third-party Parallel-to-Serial ATA adapters; the USB ports on the keyboard are USB 1.1–only (unlike the USB 2.0 ports on the front and back of the machine itself); and pumping it up to its full 8GB of PC3200 DDR SDRAM capacity and adding AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth cards balloons Apple’s build-to-order price to a staggering £5797. However, at £1849 for the model we tested – that’s £440 cheaper than the Dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4 – the 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 is a bargain. Now it’s even harder to wait for the Dual 2GHz G5 to arrive.

A NEW CHAMPION Putting Apple’s latest Mac to the test For our testing, we chose Photoshop 7.0.1 with Adobe’s G5 Processor plug-in installed, because at press time Photoshop was the only popular app optimised for the G5. We not only ran our battery of tests on the new 1.8GHz

Power Mac G5 and the former top-of-the-line Dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4, but also on a machine you’re likely to have at home: a Dual 800MHz Quicksilver Power Mac G4. We then compared the G5 and G4 to the Quicksilver.

1.8GHz Power Dual 1.42GHz Dual 800M Save 115MB Photoshop file Open 115MB Photoshop file Unsharp Mask The Dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4 and Dual 800MHz Quicksilver Power Mac G4 were running Mac OS 10.2.6. The 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 was running Mac OS 10.2.7. All three had 512MB of memory.

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ESSENTIAL KIT FOR THE MODERN DESIGNER

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Review

PHILIPS HD100

LOMO CAMERAS

PRICE £350 COMPANY Philips WEBSITE www.philips.co.uk

PRICE From £20 COMPANY Lomographic Society

International WEBSITE www.incognito-uk.co.uk

QRIO PRICE £TBC COMPANY Sony WEBSITE www.sony.net

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AIBO, Sony’s incredibly popular (and expensive) robot dog is about to meet his new master – QRIO. Demo’d by Sony back in September, QRIO is literally at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence technology. According to Sony, QRIO can gather information and move around on its own accord, dance, recognise peoples’ faces and voices, and even carry on a conversation. One of the most impressive features of this robot is its ability to protect itself from harm if falling over, even checking himself over before getting up again. Sony says: “We decided to create a ‘partner’ that talks to you, plays with you, encourages you.” Now everyone can have a friend.

The Philips HD100 has something quite familiar about it: the 15GB hard drive, the sleek styling, the touch-sensitive operation – it’s just the colour that seems to differentiate it from Apple’s ever-popular iPod. In fact, the styling of the Philips HD100 is a direct contrast to Apple’s offering, being dark black in colour and featuring a white-on-black LCD display. Almost identical to the iPod in terms of functionality (with the exception of a USB 2.0 port for transferring music), the 15GB HD100 is almost as expensive as the 30GB Apple unit – making us question why anyone would choose it over the iPod. Still, there’s no denying that this is a great-looking piece of kit.

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POCKETDAB100

PANTONE GEAR

GALAXY GAUGES

PRICE £170 COMPANY PURE Digital WEBSITE www.pure-digital.com

PRICE From $10 COMPANY Pantone WEBSITE www.incognito-uk.co.uk

PRICE £1.90-£8.25 COMPANY Rell Studios WEBSITE www.rellstudios.com

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If you want the choice of a bit more content on the go than your entire CD collection (offered by Apple’s iPod), or perhaps want to sap up a bit of culture on the way to work, or even listen to Sarah Cox on Radio 1 or Terry Wogan on Radio 2… All these needs can be met by the PURE Digital PocketDAB100 – a stylish and excellentquality DAB receiver. As digital portable radios go, this looks and feels the part – it has a certain iPod quality about it and the battery life is excellent. If you want to sample the enhanced quality of digital radio, then this is the ideal unit. It is a little pricey, though.

Ever since a pack of students discovered the original, and slightly odd Lomo Kompakt Automat camera in 1991 in Prague, the Lomographic Society has been going strong. Today it has a massive number of members, and sells some amazingly designed cameras. Relatively cheap and yet strangely attractive, some of the new Lomo range will give you the chance to take four exposures on one picture – creating interesting and dynamic shots. The new Colour Splash camera is also a triumph of design; no, it’s not digital, but it will give you some great material for illustrations. Check out the full range now at www.lomography.com. Every designer should take at least one roll of film with a Lomo.

Recently purchased by a member of the Computer Arts team, these Pantone wallets, purses and other designer accessories are bound to have colour fanatics across the industry panting with joy. Whether you’re after a Pantone 17-4432 purse, an 18-0306 toiletry bag or even a 11-0601 PVC shopping bag, then Pantone has the product. It could be a bit embarrassing for those times when you’re not hanging out with your designer mates and someone questions why your bag is made by a print technology company, but those who love their colours won’t really care, will they?

Remember these from art college? Galaxy Gauge has released some extremely useful tools for graphic designers everywhere – and what’s more, these DTP tools are extremely cheap. Featuring no less than 21 tools – including inches, conversions, metric, picas, angles, proof-reading marks, design references and greyscale tools – these rulers are truly useful for anyone in the graphic design field. You can also buy a Galaxy Colour Map, a tool aiming to take the pain out of guaranteeing a colour when designing in CMYK, and this really will bring back memories of art school. Top stuff.

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BOOKS

ALL AROUND THE WORLD AUTHOR Nicolas Andre, et al PRICE email [email protected] PUBLISHER L’EDITION POPULAIRE ISBN 2951645511

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ersuading over 140 international digital artists and designers to submit work for a single book is an ambitious idea. The mindboggling extent of the project might also explain the late arrival of Worldwide.Designers.2007, but all credit to the French publisher L’EDITION POPULAIRE for persevering with it – because the results are impressive indeed. Passionately compiled and promoted by Nicolas Andre, this book truly showcases a wealth of creative talent from all corners of the globe, taking in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and beyond… Displayed across glossy pages are such famous names as HungryForDesign’s Nando Costa and Praystation’s Josh Davis. But there’s also a superb selection of lesser-known artists producing suitably

impressive work, including France’s own Traces de Freins and South Korea’s Fluxen Design. Production values are good, but you can’t help wishing the book was bigger. The varnished cover is superb, bringing Marco Di Carlo from Velocity Studio’s striking illustration right out of the page. The title also comes in Spanish, French and German versions. Worldwide.Designers.2007 is more than just a coffee table book. It gives those interested in the realm of design a strong sense of global community and a fascinating look at how culture can affect a designer’s style, while also demonstrating what styles are proving to be the most popular on an international level. Each artist has produced original illustrations for the project, some choosing to make statements, both political and personal, via their work. This definitely adds to the book’s cultural interest. So why would you want to own it? Reasons are many: unending inspiration, a wealth of style ideas, and a chance to contact such a large number of international design studios and freelance designers.

RESTORING PHOTOGRAPHS

3D EFFECTS IN FLASH

AUTHOR Katrin Eismann PRICE £38.99 PUBLISHER New Riders ISBN 0735713502

AUTHOR Aral Balkan, et al PRICE £28.99 PUBLISHER friends of ED ISBN 1590592212

any recent Photoshop titles have dealt with the art of retouching and restoration – the art of making scanned or digital photos look better. Katrin Eismann, author of Photoshop Restoration & Retouching, is one of

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the world’s leading figures in the field, and her expertise is very much in evidence in this book. The variety and quality of the tutorials here are nothing short of excellent. Opening with advice on setting up for this kind of work, the book soon goes on to explain improving contrast and tone, the art of colour correction, and how to remove such elements as mould, dust and unwanted texture from old photos. As you’d expect, eliminating wrinkles and other unwanted blemishes is covered in great depth. Whatever your retouching or restoration job, Eismann’s book is packed with insightful and genuinely useful tips and tricks. Whether you’re into photography, Photoshop, restoration, retouching, or all four, this really is an essential buy. And at £39, it’s a bargain, too – and will save you time on any photography project.

es, it’s official: friends of ED is back from the dead. The company that over the last few years has produced all manner of diverse creative tomes has recently released a new Most Wanted series – a vibrant range of books that aims to teach designers how to create commonly requested effects with little effort. Flash 3D Cheats Most Wanted is arguably the most interesting of this new series, and from the outset the text is clear and concise, offering you a simple yet informative introduction to the fundamentals of creating 3D graphics, buttons and so on in Macromedia’s application. While intermediate and expert users will inevitably skip the opening chapters, they will be impressed by the examples that follow later in the book, which gives ideas, advice and, more importantly, sample code on how to create all manner of 3D effects

in Flash – from parallax scrolling to text effects in 3D space. If it had been ten quid cheaper, this inspirational tome would’ve been an essential buy for any Flash user eager to flex their creative muscle – but at nearly £30, it’s a little overpriced.

ILLUSTRATION BY SCOTT HANSEN

www.ISO50.com

DIGITAL CAMERAS With so many well-built, user-friendly digital cameras on the market, how do you know which one is right for you? We put five premier cameras to the test to find out The digital camera, perhaps more than any other modern tool in the graphics world, has brought artists and designers an unprecedented level of creative freedom over the last few years. Instead of waiting for film to be processed and scanned, you can now capture images instantly and incorporate them into drafts and proposals for client pitches. In some cases, the images produced are good enough to include in a final piece of work. But it’s not just as a straightforward recording device that the digital camera has endeared itself to designers. Such a fast and convenient method of recording images also opens up a world of possibilities in illustration. For instance, much modern design relies on images snapped on a digital camera, then manipulated in Photoshop or processed by plug-ins. Although digital photography won’t replace film-based photography for some years to come, it remains ideal for design and graphics work. Even

budget-priced offerings can produce images that are more than adequate for professional use in brochures, catalogues or on Websites. So what should you be looking for? Well, for a graphic or design studio, we suggest opting for a digital camera that offers somewhere between 4 and 6-megapixels of resolution. This lies at the upper end of the consumer camera scale and is a minimum quality threshold if you want to use your images in a finished project. For this month’s Group Test, we’ve selected five digital cameras that offer both the speed and convenience of the digital medium, with the image quality designers would normally expect to find in a mid-range conventional 35mm SLR film camera. Each camera has its own unique handling characteristics and suits slightly different types of work, but all are at the upper end of the market and should serve you well in both a professional and semi-professional environment.

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MINOLTA A1 PC AND MAC £899

SLR performance, but without the weight and hassle of interchangeable lenses

F

ollowing on from the company’s highly successful Dimage 7h, the Minolta A1 turns out to be an ideal prosumer digital camera. The lens is fixed and therefore eliminates the problem of dust entering the camera chamber and obscuring the sensor. This is sometimes a problem with true digital SLRs that have interchangeable lenses. The focal range of the A1’s lens is a useful 28–200mm equivalent, which should suit most users. A mechanical rather than motorised zoom provides excellent control when framing images. The A1 is the first still digital camera to incorporate a unique anti-shake mechanism that compensates for camera movements and can help produce far sharper images at slower shutter speeds. A useful feature, because digital cameras aren’t as sensitive as faster speeds of film stock. The body of the A1 is finished in black and wrought from a rugged magnesium alloy. To the rear is an LCD screen that can tilt down through 20 degrees or swing up through 90 degrees. This makes it ideal for taking ground-level shots or photos over heads in a crowd. Of course, a conventional viewfinder is provided, and Minolta has retained the autoswitch function. Place your eye to the viewfinder and the mini LCD screen CONTACT within comes to life. Take your eye away Minolta and it shuts down to preserve battery 01908 200 400 life. Talking of which, power is provided www.minolta.co.uk by a Lithium-Ion cell ; it takes around two hours to charge up fully. VERDICT Images are stored on a CompactFlash card, but because the A1 adheres to the The Minolta A1 is a worthy FAT32 format, introduced on the latest successor to the Dimage 7h. cameras that use CompactFlash, the The mechanical zoom is camera can also accommodate superb and the anti-shake MicroDrives (even large ones) for mechanism really works. extended shooting. Construction isn’t that Images produced by the A1 are rugged, however – the A1 exceptionally good and smooth. might not withstand too Controls fall easily to hand so that much rough handling. switching between different image sizes or ISO speeds really is a cinch.

★★★★

FUJIFILM S5000ZOOM PC AND MAC £430

Remember to check the small print and megapixel count before you buy

T

hanks to its sleek, aggressive profile, the Fujifilm S5000Zoom must be one of the meanest-looking cameras on the market. But looks can be deceptive. You’d expect from its model number that this camera sports at least a 5-megapixel CCD. In fact, it’s a 3-megapixel device, and offers only average image quality. The biggest selling point for the S5000 is the 10x zoom lens, which provides a 37-370mm range in 35mm terms. While the 370mm may find favour with sports photographers, the wide end of things is too limited, even for amateur use. The controls aren’t as extensive as the other cameras in this Group Test, either. Perhaps the most important omission for graphics specialists is the lack of manual white balance control. If you’re taking shots in a studio with mixed lighting sources, you really need to be able to set things up manually. We were also surprised to see a maximum shutter speed of only 1/1000th of a second – quite low given the range of the zoom lens. This could be a problem in really sunny climes. As far as images go, the Fujifilm S5000Zoom offers a respectable maximum size of 2816x2120 pixels. But read the small print and you’ll notice that this is an interpolated value, drawn out from the camera’s highest CONTACT native resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. Fujifilm This disingenuous massaging of the 0207 586 1477 figures is quite normal for Fujifilm, www.fujifilm.co.uk but is slightly misleading. Images generated by the S5000 are VERDICT stored on an XD Flash memory card. This is a new format used only by Although it’s the cheapest Olympus and Fuji and promises high camera in our Group Test, storage capacity. Unfortunately, this the Fujifilm S5000Zoom model is only supplied with a 16MB reinforces the old adage card which is, frankly, next to useless, of “You get what you pay even on a 3-megapixel camera. You’d for.” At just 3-megapixels, be lucky to squeeze in a handful of it’s not even a contender decent images on it for semi-pro work. Save Power is derived from four AA cells, up for something better. but even with the batteries the S5000 weighs a surprisingly light 430g.

★★★

104 Computer Arts_December 2003

Group Test

NIKON COOLPIX 5700 PC £879

Nikon has always been a safe bet, but does it represent good value?

W

hen it was launched a year or so ago, the CoolPix 5700 was considered the acme of cutting-edge prosumer tech: a 5-megapixel wonder with an SLR-style body and impressive 8x zoom. A year on and much has changed. The crushing downward pressure on prices and relentless technological progress have taken their toll – and now the 5700 looks a little tired. That said, it’s still a terrific camera. Nikon’s legendary build quality oozes from every pore. The electronic, eye-level viewfinder works like a charm and the lens is second-to-none in terms of resolving power. This would make the perfect camera for travelling. Unfortunately for the enthusiast, the fixed lens is a drawback. While an SLR with a noninterchangeable zoom keeps out dust, it does restrict you in the wideangle department. The 8x zoom (equivalent to a 35mm-280mm) is limiting, but at least it’s less bulky than using interchangeable lenses. The CoolPix 5700 stores its images on CompactFlash cards and accepts MicroDrives up to 1GB in size, although not the larger models that require FAT32 formatting. Image quality is good, though, with minimal CONTACT noise and faithful colours. You can also Nikon shoot in Nikon’s RAW mode. Shot-to0800 230 220 shot times are good, too, so you won’t www.nikon.co.uk miss any action waiting for the CoolPix to write images to your card. VERDICT There are a few annoyances. The lack of an auto-focus assist light makes the No doubt about it, despite taking of photos in low-light conditions the relatively high price, rather difficult. And there’s no release the CoolPix 5700 is a handy button to make the flash pop up; you camera. It’s perfect for have to inelegantly pull it out yourself. travelling when you need A really nice touch, however, is the high quality images, but reversible LCD screen at the rear. You don’t want to be dragged can turn it inwards when not in use to down by a full SLR kit. prevent scratches – and nose smear!

★★★★

PENTAX OPTIO 550 PC £550

A smart profile and great resolution from Pentax’s 5-megapixel offering

T

he Pentax Optio 550 is the smallest camera in our Group Test and makes no pretence at being an SLR – it’s a compact, pure and simple. But packed into its aluminium alloy case is a full 5-megapixel CCD that can churn out some very decent pictures. Part of this is down to the superb 5x optical zoom that enables you to zoom right into the action without having to do too much cropping later on in Photoshop. That’s a great way of saving on resolution. However, the Optio 550 is not without its problems. We noticed a certain degree of ISO noise in the images, and if you’re in a desperate hurry to capture an important picture, then the slightly sluggish start-up time may be a problem. Power for the 550 is derived from a substantial Lithium-Ion battery that seems to last for ages between charges. Just as well, since you can’t substitute the proprietary batteries with standard AA cells should the need arise. Images are stored on the ever-popular Secure Digital format. This offers reasonable capacities in a case the size of a postage stamp. Settings on the Optio 550 are legion. Virtually any exposure method you require is included. Set things up in “idiot” mode and simply snap away, or take your pick from aperture and shutter priority or full manual control. Metering is switchable from evaluative to spot for those awkward shots. And you can store individual settings CONTACT separately – so if you always want, Pentax say, the flash to be switched off each 01753 792 731 time you start up the camera, you can www.pentax.co.uk tell the Optio to remember that. The same goes for other settings, such as VERDICT turning off the digital zoom. Shutter lag is insignificant, with an The Pentax Optio 550 is a ‘appropriate’ alert sound that’s easy versatile little camera that to switch off. (And should the default offers a big CCD in a fairly ‘click’ prove tiresome, you can always small package. It’s small try out the ‘cat’s meow’ option instead.) enough to slip into your Although it’s small, the Optio 550 isn’t pocket, yet usable with it. particularly pretty, but what it lacks in Well worth a closer look. looks it makes up for in performance.

★★★★

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WINNER

CANON EOS 300D PC AND MAC £999

Groundbreaking is the only word to describe Canon’s new ‘budget’ digital SLR, which at last promises a professional quality camera at a price even amateurs can afford CONTACT Canon 0800 616 417 www.canon.co.uk

VERDICT

★★★★★ The Canon EOS 10D is one of the best digital SLRs ever. The EOS 300D takes pictures that are almost as good, and at a price that’s astonishing. Unless you want a few extra pro-level features, cut your digital teeth on the EOS 300D. You can’t do better – on price or performance.

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C

anon took the world of digital photography completely by surprise when it launched the EOS 300D. Not only did it burst through the £1000 price barrier with an unashamedly prosumer offering, but it did so with a camera that, for all intents and purposes, uses the same 6.3-megapixel CMOS sensor found in Canon’s superb and much more expensive EOS 10D camera. Although the innards of the EOS300D aren’t so far removed from the more expensive EOS 10D, Canon has taken steps to differentiate this beast from its dearer sibling. For starters, the body is constructed from plastic rather than magnesium alloy. Granted, it’s good plastic, but it’s still plastic. Second, it seems that Canon has purposely ‘crippled’ certain software functions in the camera’s firmware so that it can’t compete on Canon’s professional turf. Canon says it’s done this to make the camera more automated and easier to use… To accompany the device, Canon has launched a new short back-focus lens that is 18-55mm (28– 80mm in 35mm talk), which is specially designed for digital photography and only costs £100. It’s a real breakthrough in breaking wide-angle lens to the digital SLR market. It focuses further back than standard Canon EF lenses, which means you can’t use it on other Canon camera bodies, but at least you can use other Canon lenses on the 300D, so you get the best of both worlds. Images are stored on a CompactFlash card or MicroDrive. The 300D uses the FAT32 format, so you can

use it with larger size cards and different types of drive without any problems, too. Unusually, the 300D can photograph in Adobe RGB colour space, which will please graphics professionals. The 6.3-megapixel sensor is sensitive from 100-1600 ISO and because it’s a CMOS design and incorporates a special high-pass filter, there’s virtually no digital noise. In fact, the only artefacts you’re likely to see come from JPEG algorithms. Even then, you can shoot in Canon’s RAW mode and import the result directly into Photoshop 8. Images from the 300D are truly stunning. You’d be hard pressed to tell any difference between pictures shot with this camera and the EOS 10D, which costs another £400 without a lens. And speaking of lenses, the new EF-S 18-55mm lens that’s sold alongside the 300D is a delight. Okay, so it’s not as good as Canon’s professional L series, but it’s still pretty impressive, and offers a low-price wideangle that no other manufacturer can match. It really is hard to find a fault with the 300D. It doesn’t offer the tank-like build quality of the 10D or Canon’s flagship 1Ds, admittedly, but it suits prosumers perfectly. And for the first time, it provides an attractive upgrade path for those switching from film to digital who already have a stock of Canon lenses. Once you’ve familiarised yourself with the 300D, it’s tempting to get annoyed at the artificial restrictions Canon’s imposed to differentiate it from the 10D. Despite this, the 300D is a fantastic camera, and for most users the auto functions will handle things extremely well.

Group Test

MODEL

MINOLTA A1

FUJIFILM S5000ZOOM

NIKON COOLPIX 5700

PENTAX OPTIO 550

CANON EOS 300D

MEGAPIXELS

5.24

3.1

5.24

5

6.5

VIEWFINDER

Electronic

Electronic

Electronic

Optical

Pentaprism

IMAGE SIZE

2560x1920

2048x1536

2560x1920

2592x1944

3072x2048

LENS

28-200mm

37-370mm

35-280mm

37.5-187.5mm

28.8-88mm

ZOOM FACTOR

7x

10x

8x

5x

3x

SENSITIVITY

ISO 100-800

ISO 200-400

ISO 100-800

ISO 64-400

ISO 100-1600

MAX SHUTTER SPEED

1/6000th

1/1000th

1/4000th

1/4000th

1/4000th

LCD

1.8-inch

1.5-inch

1.5-inch

1.5-inch

1.8-inch

STORAGE

CompactFlash

XD Card

CompactFlash

(32MB supplied)

CompactFlash (16MB supplied)

Secure Digital

(16MB supplied)

FORMAT

FAT 32

–

Non-FAT 32

–

FAT32

BATTERY

NP-400 (1500mAh)

4xAA

EN-EL1

D-L17 (1800mAh)

BP 511-512

DIMENSIONS

117x85x114mm

113x81x79mm

108x76x102mm

100x59x40mm

142x99x72mm

WEIGHT

639g

430g

512g

247g

835g (inc lens)

PRICE

£899

£430

£879

£550

£999

SCORE

★★★★

★★★

★★★★

★★★★

★★★★★

CONCLUSION

Canon is the outright winner – but Nikon, Pentax and Minolta fare well, too Normally, a Group Test in this category of digital camera is a tough job. At this price range, there’s often little to separate compact cameras and pseudo-SLRs. Not this time. One camera stood head and shoulders above the others in every respect. Whether you judge it by image quality or value for money, the EOS 300D is the clear winner. For the first time, a digital camera with interchangeable lenses and professional performance is available for under £1000. When you consider just how good an all-rounder the EOS 300D is, you can’t help but agree with our decision to award it top honours. However, an SLR isn’t to everyone’s taste, particularly if you’re travelling light. For this type of user, we very much liked both the Nikon CoolPix 5700 and the Pentax Optio 550. The Nikon offering is compact, has a superb zoom lens and is so jam-packed with features you’ll find yourself discovering something new every time you pick

it up. It’s the sort of camera that grows with you as you develop your photographic skills. The build quality is impeccable and well up to Nikon’s high standards, and it’s keenly priced, too. Our third choice is the Pentax Optio 550. For a compact digital camera, the 550 can produce amazing photos. The zoom is excellent and the device small enough to stash away in a pocket, yet not so small as to encourage camera shake. Of the two remaining models, we liked the Minolta A1. Its images look great, though we had reservations about its relatively fragile build quality. We also think it’s overpriced compared to the competition. Finally, the FujiFilm S5000Z looked nice but boasted only an average image resolution and didn’t really press our shutter button. It’s in a different price bracket and may well attract those on a tighter budget.

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EXPOSURE SUBMISSIONS: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, United Kingdom Turn to page 120 for full details

1 NAME Ian Attard JOB Design Studio Manager CONTACT [email protected], www.ianattard.com SOFTWARE Photoshop, Poser IMAGE TITLES 1. Change of Skin, 2. Out of Art, 3. Man or Machine, 4. Butterflied “Graphic illustration is the perfect virtual and international language through which I feel comfortable communicating as part of a fast-moving society. Through my illustrations I aim to provide simple visual messages that can portray our contemporary society.”

1

2

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Exposure

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Computer Arts_December 2003 117

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2 NAME Jason Cawdwell JOB Product Designer CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, CorelDRAW IMAGE TITLES 1. Team Window, 2. Green Room, 3. Cody “These images were created for fun, inspired by my love of Japanese animation and cult movies. I have always enjoyed illustrating using a range of traditional media and more recently, Photoshop and CorelDRAW. DRAW is excellent for achieving perfect line weights and flat fills that I’ve never been able to achieve with traditional materials.”

2

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Exposure

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3 NAME Nora Cocan JOB Freelance Illustrator CONTACT [email protected], members.rogers.com/noracocan SOFTWARE Photoshop IMAGE TITLES 1. Passage, 2. Passage10, 3. Passage2, 4. Due, 5. Elevator

5

“I source my inspiration from the things we don’t see until we’re behind the camera. I’m trying to bring back the surprised experienced of seeing something for the first time – the flavour and excitement of it. New media has given us the means so craved for centuries: the tools to give shape to our dreams and visions without going through decades of training.”

Computer Arts_December 2003 119

1

GET EXPOSED Send your work to us, along with an explanation of your techniques and software, the titles of each piece, your telephone number and email. Images should be sent as PC or Mac TIFF or JPEG files, on CDROM or Zip disks. A hard copy is a great help. We will endeavour to return all entries that provide an SAE. All contributions are submitted on the basis of a non-exclusive worldwide licence to publish, both in printed and electronic form. Post hi-res files for print to: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW.

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4 NAME Nick Tonge JOB Graphic Designer CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, Illustrator IMAGE TITLES 1. Sucked In, 2. Silver, 3. Lonely “The work I do during the day has its limitations creatively, so in my spare time I like the freedom to create my own artwork. These days though, I am going in the direction of Web design and see my future in this area.”

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5 NAME Nicola Paton JOB Digital Artist CONTACT [email protected], www.nicolapaton.com SOFTWARE Photoshop IMAGE TITLES 1. Qxf1-/+, 2. Rxg12=, 3. Nxd8++ “Four years ago I became a mother and my way of working changed. I stopped reaching for my sketchbooks – instead images came to me fully formed, staying in my head until I produced them. Today it’s still the same.”

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RETROSPECTIVE ISSUE 25 DECEMBER1998 Christmas 98, we were gossiping about something called InDesign

A

ww, how sweet. Photoshop was just 5, and still at the stage where it wasn’t particularly interested in grown-up things like the Web. Our cover tutorial, by redseal, introduced you to the delights of new Blending modes, among other gimmicks. Um, features. Painter, on the other hand, definitely was hanging out on the Web, as news of the 5.5 Web Edition proclaimed. There was hushed talk of Adobe’s ‘Quarkkiller’ K2, which of course turned out to be InDesign. We contrived to misspell Domanic Li’s name consistently throughout his profile, which is quite impressive – although not as impressive as his artwork. The other profilees managed to escape our doltsome demi-dyslexia, although we do wonder if Arne Kaupang started life as Arnold Kopeland. As usual, the reviews section was a-chunk with meaty packages such as Illustrator 8 (“priceless”), Softimage|3D 3.8 Extreme (“stunning”) and trueSpace 4 (“anisotropic”). But what of Webtricity 2, Assembly Line or Organica? Actually, the last one is still around, and doesn’t appear to have changed in five years. A bit like QuarkXPress, then. Ho, ho, ho. ■

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PRODUCTION DAVID MATHEWS ad design point of contact KATTY PIGOTT production coordinator MIKE THORNE commercial print buyer

CIRCULATION & LICENSING RICHARD JEFFERIES circulation manager RICHARD BEAN overseas licensing manager SIMON WEAR overseas licensing director Computer Arts has licences in China, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain

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THE FUTURE NETWORK ROGER PARRY non-executive chairman GREG INGHAM chief executive COLIN MORRISON chief operating officer & managing director UK JOHN BOWMAN group finance director Tel +44 1225 442244 www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Computer Arts is a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Jan-Dec 2002: 30,024

FLASHBACK

ABOVE Steve Rawlings: a designer for whom one page is simply not enough. RIGHT Domanic

122 Computer Arts_December 2003

Li, circa 1998.

It’s no less than eight years since a small team of digital art enthusiasts at Future Publishing kicked off what we now know and love as Computer Arts, and it’s now the leading title in its field. That field has changed massively in those eight years – DVD is no longer a mystery, and Photoshop is now a household name. We continue our look back with 1998’s issue 25…

Computer Arts is the registered trademark of Future Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks and copyrights in this issue are recognised, and are acknowledged where possible. If we have failed to credit your copyright please contact us – we’re happy to correct any oversight. Material submitted is accepted on the basis of a worldwide right to publish in printed or electronic form. All contents © Future Publishing 2003. Future Publishing is part of The Future Network PLC. The Future Network produces carefully targeted specialist magazines for people who share a passion. We aim to satisfy that passion by creating titles offering value for money, reliable information, smart buying advice, and which are a pleasure to read. Today we publish more than 90 magazines in the UK, US, France and Italy. Over 80 international editions of our magazines are also published in 28 other countries across the world. The Future Network PLC is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FNET).