Category Archives: art

animation, art, events, fun, graphics, npar, photos

Big Wet Pixels Live at THU 2024

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THU was an unforgettable experience. If you ever get the chance to go, I highly recommend it! I don’t have time right now to do a writeup of the full event, but I can tell you about one slice of it: my demo of Big Wet Pixels was a lot of fun!

One big concern I had in the weeks leading up to the event was the logistics. How could I show my system painting a live subject (ideally a volunteer) on stage in front of an audience? For the experience to work well, the setup would have to fit a lot of constraints: I’d have to be able to reach my laptop keyboard and see the screen. My camera would have to see the subject. The subject would have to see what’s happening on the screen, and also see me. And the audience would have to see the screen, the subject, and me. I wasn’t sure there was a solution to this problem in euclidean 3-space that didn’t violate any laws of physics.

Then I got to visit the venue.  And it looked like this:

The stage setup in the BYD Room at the Tróia Conference Center.

A stage in the center, five rows of seats all around, and great big LED screens on all four sides of the room! It was perfect. Better than perfect. It’s immersive, intimate, and equitable: there are literally no bad seats in the house. And from the stage, you feel close to every single person in the audience. This was by far the most innovative setup I’ve ever seen for a conference venue.

It took a couple of tech check sessions to get everything working (note to self: 15 minutes is not enough time to test out such a complex setup!) and I had to make a few last-minute tweaks to my code to make sure it would fit the aspect ratio of the big screens, and add controls to adjust the framing of the subject on the fly (arrow keys are much quicker than trying to adjust a tripod head supporting a long heavy lens!) but when the time came for the actual demo, everything worked perfectly.

Miguel Pólvora, a member of the THU team, helps me test out the system during our tech check the night before my talk. Here you can see the full setup: laptop on the table, Canon 80D on the tripod, connected to the laptop via USB-C, and a chair on the other side of the stage. I especially liked how the colorful room lighting worked to provide a contrasting backdrop for the subject.
A particularly nice screenshot of Miguel from our tech check. Look at those gorgeous flow patterns!

I didn’t do much advance planning for how I’d operate the system, I just improvised in response to what was happening in the moment. So we only ended up exploring a sliver of the vast parameter space. But the participants that came up on stage seemed to have a lot of fun with it, posing for the camera, making faces, and using their hands and other props.

Olga Andryenko
Flavia Chiofalo

The audience asked really interesting questions, and I encouraged them to give me suggestions for what to do with the controls. (In a nod to Zach Lieberman, I told them, “the DJ does take requests!”) Before I knew it, we were out of time, and I had to pack up my gear and leave this beautiful room for the next speaker.

A panoramic view of the venue.
A few of the participants who sat for their portraits and/or asked interesting questions in the Q&A.
Continue reading Big Wet Pixels Live at THU 2024 →
art, effects, fun, interactive, npar, video

Big Wet Pixels 14

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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!)

animation, art, fun, npar, video

Big Wet Pixels 12

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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…

animation, art, events, fun, npar, self-reference

Trojan Unicorn 2024!

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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!

animation, art, npar, video

Big Wet Pixels: Friends and Family

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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.

art, events, npar

The real Chuck Close

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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.

animation, art, effects, fun, graphics, npar, video

Big Wet Pixels 10: Debug View

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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