Category Archives: npar

Big Wet Pixels 14

Raquel practices guitar while my watercolor simulation paints her portrait.

Here you can also see a first glimpse of the GUI I’m building for live performance. This was my first dry run of the whole system, including webcam and external monitor. Still could use some optimization: the frame rate dropped to 16fps, I think due to thermal throttling. (You can hear how hard the poor laptop is working… just listen to that fan!)

Big Wet Pixels 12

Spent some time refining control of the instrument: a richer parameter space for stroke planning; new colorspace mapping that handles poor camera conditions (over- or underexposure); two new types of limited color palette (inspired by the gorgeous plein air experiments of my friend Susan Hayden). I’ve also exposed a bunch of fluid sim parameters so they can be tweaked on the fly for maximum effect. This is starting to feel almost robust enough to play live on stage. Lots more work to do though…

Trojan Unicorn 2024!


Okay here’s something fun: this goofball will be speaking at the THU Main Event 2024 in Tróia, Portugal! For those who don’t know it, THU is an annual gathering of artists working in film, games, comics, and more. Or, as the organizers describe it: “a 6-day event designed to be a transformative experience filled with innovation, genuine connections, and a creative mindset. It’s the perfect place to take some time for yourself, reset, and fill your mind with innovation and creativity. THU2024 marks the 10th edition, and it promises to be an epic event with an unbelievable lineup of artists and the ultimate creative reboot!”

I’ll be giving talks about animation, non-photorealistic rendering, and my recent research, and (if all goes as planned) also a live demo of Big Wet Pixels with audience participation!

Big Wet Pixels: Friends and Family

Here are some portraits of friends and family I’ve made over the past few months. I love seeing people through this strange lens. Originally I imagined this system as something that would stand on its own in a gallery, automatically painting whoever stopped by. But there’s something special about the way people react in real time as the machine paints their portrait. There’s a feedback loop between subject, painter, and machine. So now I’m working on making the system more interactive, so people can see what’s going on inside the black box, and I can play the controls like a musical instrument.

COGGRAPH 2024

Image excerpted from Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud (1993)

Here’s something new! A group of researchers from MIT, Stanford, Cambridge and UW Madison have put together a new interdisciplinary workshop “at the interface between cognitive science 🧠 and computer graphics 🫖“, aptly named COGGRAPH. I’ll be on a panel about non-photorealistic rendering, next Tuesday, July 16th, at 11am Pacific (2pm ET). It’s virtual, free, and open to the public. If you’re interested, you can sign up here to see it!

The real Chuck Close

A diptych by Chuck Close: two portraits of artist Fred Wilson, painted in grids of pixels using layered glazes of transparent oil paint. The effect makes the paintings look almost like watercolor.

Chuck Close, “Fred/Diptych”, 2017-2018, oil on canvas, 36″ x 30″.

I was stunned to see this series of Chuck Close portraits painted in an almost watercolor style.

“These full-color portraits and self-portraits employ a palette of only three colors: red, yellow and blue. Layering transparent glazes of paint, Close created an effect of abstract likeness entirely different from that of his previous work. The complex color relationships that unfold in these paintings are visible at the bleeding edges of each square within the grid, where the ragged ends of each individual color are visible.”

A half-finished Chuck Close portrait of Michael Ovitz. A faint pencil grid on bare canvas is partly filled in with squares of transparent oil paint.  You can see from the incomplete squares that the artist started with a layer of magenta, followed by blue and yellow.

Chuck Close, “Michael Ovitz (Unfinished),” 2020-2021, oil on canvas, 72-1/2” × 61-1/2” × 2.”

When I started working on my “Big Wet Pixels” homage, I had no idea that the artist himself had spent the last few years of his life painting this way. Seeing these paintings now is bittersweet. It would have been wonderful to see what he would have done next had he lived long enough. But it’s also encouraging to see how many different interpretations are possible in this space. And that makes me want to keep exploring it.

The paintings will be on exhibit at the Pace Gallery in New York, from Feb 23 – Apr 13, 2024.

Big Wet Pixels 10: Debug View

I’m midway through a (major, long overdue) overhaul of the fluid transport layer of my watercolor simulation. Made some good progress over the weekend. But more importantly: I made lots of new bugs. Glorious, unrepentant, face-eating bugs. I almost don’t have the heart to squash them.

https://vimeo.com/cassidy/big-wet-pixels-10