Tag: Viewer

Guide to 3D Camcorders
by Leland Richardson on 0

Guide to 3D Camcorders

Camcorders and TVs have a symbiotic relationship (like those birds that pick food off of a rhino’s back). When TVs converted to high definition, it wasn’t long before high definition camcorders appeared. So it’s no surprise that with a new generation of 3D HDTVs hitting the market, 3D camcorders have trotted along behind. Here’s what you need to know about them.

How 3D Camcorders Work

To get a true 3D image or video, you need a camcorder that uses two lenses and two image sensors to capture two sets of images.

This creates the “stereoscopic” effect that fools our brain into thinking we’re seeing depth on the screen. In some cases, these two lenses are built into the camcorder itself. In others, a double-lens kit is sold as an accessory: it can be attached to the camcorder when you want to film in 3D and removed when you want to film in 2D.

Since two lenses and two image sensors can add cost and bulk to a camcorder, some manufacturers have opted to do 2D-to-3D conversions using software inside the camcorder. Many purists would object to the use of software since it’s not creating a full-resolution 3D image, but if you only want to dabble with 3D on occasion, the software conversion minimizes your costs.

Will You Pay More for 3D?

The short answer is basically yes, for now. There aren’t many 3D camcorders on the market as this is written, but based on the selection currently available, you’ll definitely pay more for a camcorder that offers 3D functionality than one without (there are exceptions: see this roundup of 3D camcorders for the latest prices and models).

Do You Need Glasses to View Your 3D Videos?

That depends. Some camcorders offer special LCD screens that can display 3D footage without the use of glasses. The technology is called a Parallax Barrier: it basically embeds the polarized glasses that you’d typically wear on your face, on the display itself.

If the camcorder does not require glasses to view your videos in 3D it will typically work with a dedicated media viewer – basically a small digital frame – that uses the same parallax barrier technology found in the camcorder’s display.

Other camcorders require you to output your video onto a 3D capable TV via an HDMI cable, where you will indeed need glasses to view your videos in 3D.

Can You Edit 3D Video Files?

Yes. Some of the major video editing programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas Pro have added 3D video editing options already. Software included with Panasonic’s first 3D camcorder also allows you to edit the 3D video file as you would a 2D file.

3D Doesn’t Mean HD

It may seem a bit obvious, but don’t assume that a 3D camcorder is recording in high definition. Some 3D camcorder models currently on the market record in standard definition.

Do You Need a 3D Camcorder?

You should definitely not consider buying a 3D camcorder unless you already own a 3D HDTV. Otherwise, you’re only other choice to view 3D movies will be on a small 8-inch media viewer – and that’s not the ideal viewing experience for your home movies. You should also steer clear of 3D camcorders if 3D footage makes you ill. For now at least, most consumers would be better off taking a wait-and-see approach with 3D.

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What is good drawing? How to make a difference
by David Burgess on 0

What is good drawing? How to make a difference

Good drawing – better drawing , how to make a difference

What is good drawing is a question that I was confronted with on my first day in school. The answer I got to that question changed a lot in my life for quite some time. The dimensions of this seemingly innocent question are much wider than one would assume on first sight.

But this question is not put up here to stage a controversy or to seek late revenge for an early injury by a stupid teacher. Rather I want to use it to arouse interest in the many facets of drawing. The question what is good drawing forces to analysis and development of criteria which allow to make a difference in quality between drawings. As a result this process will lead not only to better understanding, but also to enhanced enjoyment of drawings.

At this point it might be clear that this site is not about construction or instruction drawings, but about drawing in arts and in particular about the artistic value of drawings.

How to analyse a drawing

The analysis of a drawing often consists in separating certain aspects of a drawing. Usually it starts with the level of technical skill that the artist shows. As second aspect the content or the picture idea is examined further and finally the artistic value might be considered.
Such an approach is not without difficulty, because it is impossible to separate these three aspects from each other as their combination is what makes for the quality of a drawing. The use of simple lines might indicate a lack of technical skill, but in fact simple lines might be used with purpose as a means of artistic expression for example.

However this method is still a good way to explore drawings and therefore I want to discuss these three different layers of a drawing further.

Craft and dexterity – technical skills and quality of a drawing

What are drawing skills ?

Postcard Forest diary ink drawing postcard

I remember the tale of an artist and his king in China. The king commissioned a drawing of a cockerel to a famous artists and the artists agreed. After waiting one year as the works was still not finished the King got impatient and started to send out messengers to the artists cabin a long way in the woods.
They returned and reported that the drawing was not done yet. This happened a couple of times until the King got so angry in the 10th year of waiting that he made the journey himself ready to punish the artist on site, if he had not finished the work yet.

In the cabin the king urged the artist to do the drawing otherwise he would be killed. The artist replied that the king just came on time as he was ready no to do the drawing. He fetched a piece of beautiful rice paper, prepared the ink and laid down the drawing with his brush within a few minutes. The king was totally amazed and pleased with the quality of the work, which was a perfect piece of art and a beautiful representation of a cockerel.

The king asked the artist, why for heaven sake didn’t you do this quick drawing already ten years ago? The artist said nothing but turned to his big wall cupboard to open the doors. As the doors opened hundreds and hundreds of drawings fell to the floor, documenting that the artist had done nothing but drawing cockerels over the years until he thought that his skills were good enough. The King was ashamed and fell silent.

The most realistic or illusionistic representation in a drawing is often seen as the ultimate proof of quality in a drawing. The more a drawing conjures with a photographic image the better the quality it seems. Indeed it takes very long and talent is needed to achieve skills that enables the artist to depict a subject in aphoto realistic way.

Training of drawing skills was a major task of art academies during centuries. These academic skills were abandoned in modern art not because artist were too lazy to do the exercises, but the value of academic drawing was questioned by modern artists. Pure imitation no matter how skillful it is conducted seemed to be without artistic value.

These are two main position that have been discussed in art for a long time and it seems there is no end to this. I think that there cannot be an end or a final valid judgement on these issues. The interesting thing is the discussion itself, the different views on drawing which open new perspectives for the participants in this discussion.

Content , image idea, meaning of a drawing

Drawing as visual language

The formal content of a drawing is what we recognise first. Our perception is constantly and immediately interpreting what we see and offers meanings to us saying : This is a dog or a house what I see for example. This is a rather simple level of understanding and usually we perceive a lot more of impressions which go much further than that at the same time. Apart from rational thoughts drawings like any other picture evoke emotions.

The quality of a drawing can also literally be seen in the way and in the efficiency the artist manages to communicate with the viewers and in his capacity for original inventions and modes of execution. Drawings can be seen as a kind of visual language and some artists are better speakers than others.

At this point the connection to the previous paragraph has to be considered. What happens if the viewer is not capable to understand the visual language of the artist properly ? There are many misunderstandings regarding the quality of drawings simply for this reason. As the artist improves the skills of his visual voice with exercise the viewer improves his skills of listening i.e. understanding drawings by looking and examining drawings on a regular basis.

Artistic value in a drawing

academic versus artistic drawing

To determine the artistic value of a drawing is the most difficult task. People who might agree in considerations about technical skills and image idea still can come to totally different conclusions about the artistic value of a drawing.This disagreement is based on different ideas about what artistic value is.
It is very interesting to study many different opinions and to compare the points of view. The more one tries to define artistic value the more it seems to vanish into something vague and undefined. Words seem not to be able to grasp what is meant. “The there is a harmonic sense in lines and their relationships, a music of line that is found at the basis of all good art” This quote from the book: ThePractise and Science Of Drawing, by Harold Speed, might illustrate this difficulty.
I heard drawings praised because the artist was able to draw lines that were considered fast, suspenseful or dynamic and so on. All these attempts to address the quality of a drawing are very much based on personal standards which have beenacquired.
Over the years my own standards are changing constantly and I am eager to see drawings that are executed in a way I did not see before.

Almost every art lover has a kind of internal hit list of works or artists he likes or dislikes. The comparison and ranking of different artworks is a good method to learn about the quality of a work,especially when we want to know why we like something better than the other and start to ask questions in that direction. It can take some time to evaluate the quality , works that had been in a lower ranking might advance to a better position after some time when the work is better understood.

What is good drawing ?

The one that does not wear off !
I had the opportunity to attend workshops given by a great artists and watercolour landscape painter named Simon Fletcher. Simon Fletcher has a traditional point of view on landscape depiction and puts great emphasise on graphic skills in his work. The underlying drawing, the visual grid that constitutes a painting, establishes according to him the potential of a painting. If the drawing or graphic skeleton is not good the painting cannot be good. He also explained to his students that once the drawing has been established successfully the artist gains maximum of freedom to do with thecolours whatever he wants. His works illustrate these principles, that I tried to lay down here in short, very well.
This alone does not get us a step forward to an answer to the question what good drawing means. I found the answer Simon Fletcher gave for pictures in general applies also to drawings very well.

This is a very simple criterion, that covers all aspects and conditions of the picture itself and those of the viewer. There is indeed the phenomenon that we consume certain pictures with the blink of an eye and move over, others intrigue us, stay in our memory and attract our curiosity again and again. This is also a holistic approach that is valid without sophisticated intellectual analysis.

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Foreshortening in the art of drawing
by David Burgess on 0

Foreshortening in the art of drawing

What is foreshortening? Some answers and drawing examples and video tutorial

What is foreshortening? Foreshortening in the arts refers to a specific way to depict three dimensional objects on the two dimensional paper planes. One of the most famous examples of foreshortening in visual arts is the painting by Andrea Mantegna, the mourning of Christ. The painting on wood shows the dead body of Christ from an extreme perspective. The viewer is put on the same eye level as the mourning figures at the side in close distance at the very end of the bed near the feet.

The painting was done in the 15th century in Italy, a period called Renaissance. During that time depiction of three dimensional spaces was fully explored and displayed in visual arts with almost scientific “correctness”.

Foreshortening in this painting means the perspective compression of the body and it’s proportions to a fraction of the actual size. Feet and head come very close together; the limbs are foreshortened in perspective. Mantegna created a stunning and very dynamic piece by choosing this extreme perspective.

Foreshortenings are inseparable connected with the depiction of illusionist three dimensional spaces. Until the 13th century pictures were mostly flat, at least space often was not depicted “correctly” and thus lacked the illusionist effect. Since Mantegna and others renaissance artists drawing and painting foreshortenings has become the standard of illusionist painting.

Andrea Mantegna – the mourning of Christ

An impressive example for foreshortening in visual arts

Image credit: Wiki media commons An impressive example for foreshortening in visual arts

Using a grid to draw foreshortening

 

The image above is from the 18th century. In the old days using grids in drawing was the state of the art method to produce exact perspective drawings. The draughtsman has a paper with the same grid proportions on his drawing table. All he has to do is to transfer important points where outlines in the scenery cut the vertical grid on the grid on his paper. Then he can connect those points to reproduce the outlines of trees and other objects in the drawing to get an exact flat projection of his view on the drawing paper.

There is a very famous illustration by Albrecht Dürer in his tutorial on how to measure in drawing. It illustrates perfectly how foreshortening in perspective drawings of the human body can be obtained. There is also the vertical grid used to transfer a flat projection of a there dimensional space on the flat surface of the drawing paper.

The effects of foreshortening in drawing

Extreme perspective with foreshortening effect changes a couple fo things. What are the effects of foreshortening in drawing?

1. Foreshortening changes geometric forms: circles will change to elliptic forms, squares will change to rectangles and cylindrical subjects change to a more conical shape for example

2. Foreshortening changes proportions: foreshortening on the human body will change the proportions for example. Parts which are closer to the viewer’s eye can appear much bigger than from a “standard” figure drawing. Limbs might look much shorter, hands or feet might look bigger.

Super retro comic hero thinks about a fly

Video lesson in drawing foreshortening

In this video lesson you can see an example of a manga or cartoon figure stretching the hand directly to the viewer in extreme perspective. As the hand is much closer to the viewer than the body the hand is bigger in size than the head of the figure. This is one of the dynamic effects of an extreme perspective look. The artist shows in real time how he develops the position of hand, palm and fingers in relation to the perspective extremely shortened arm. The video demonstrates the characteristics of foreshortening very well.

Drawing Tutorial: Foreshortening
by markcrilley

Extreme foreshortening as means of a drawing composition

Foreshortening in drawing, charcoal drawing, houses and street

This charcoal drawing of mine (Basic tips for charcoal drawing) uses an extreme perspective with foreshortening as dynamic composition concept. The viewer is massively forced to follow the fence line from the foreground in to a mad dash down the road to the center of the image.

Foreshortening applied in a street sketch

foreshortening in a street sketch
This is a detail of one of my humble sketches of the city of Stuttgart. In the center there are some cars parked and the effect of foreshortening is compressing the outlines of the chassis. It is rather difficult to draw the wheels not as circles but as flat ellipses and the wheel wells so very narrow to shorten the sideview of the vehicle according to the perspective. It helps a lot to close one eye to observe and see the object as it would look as flat projection on paper.

Exercises to learn foreshortening in drawing

One can think of many exercised to learn foreshortening. The first one I did was taken from Bert Dodsons classic book “Key to drawing”. He request the reader to draw is/her own hand with the fingers pointing towards the viewer. It sounds easy but it is a quite tricky thing to do.
Drawing still life subjects like bottles , that are lying flat on a table for example, are also good exercises. Foreshortenings on the human body are a great challenge to

Drawing books that can help to understand foreshortening

In architecture drawing the term foreshortening is rarely used. Foreshortening mostly is mentioned in connection with drawing the human body. Here are two books that deal among others with this topic. especially in comic drawing foreshortening is an often used means to create dynamic and stunning sceneries.

The batman comics are well knwon for their extreme vertiginious perspective views of skyscrapers and the comic hero moving within this environment

Foreshortening in a tree sketch

This sketch is an exercise in drawing foreshortening. The base of old treet trunk pointed towards me. As a result the branches are very close together and the shape of the trunk appears to become a lot thinner from base to top.

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