ADAPT 2008

I am now back from ADAPT2008, with some very good impressions. The conference went rather well, apart from a few glitches here and there. The presentations that I saw were quite inspirational, and it was great to see some of the best artists in the field talk about their work and experiences. I had the 2D Masters only pass, so many of the presentations I saw were painting related. Although I missed Craig Mullins on Tuesday, I did get to see Jason Manley, Andrew Jones, Syd Mead, Nick Oroc, and the guys from Meduzarts.

It was great to see Jason Manley talk about applied colour theory, because there is extremely little documentation on the subject. He described the colour theory as it applies directly to painting, and provided a number of examples from classical and modern painting to illustrate the effects of saturation, tone, and value.

Andrew Jones made his first ever presentation of his Wacoscillator, which was pretty cool. It seems to be a large Wacom tablet with Audio Output, and some Audio controls. It looks like he could map different sounds to different tools in Corel Painter, so that he could generate sound whenever he paints. In addition, he was also able to generate music as he was painting, and have a fair amount of control over it, including the generation of rhythm beats. His use of custom pattern brushes is quite inspirational, as he has a rather unique style of painting. It seems that his freedom in thinking out of the box when it comes to the available tools is part of the reason for his unique style.
Check him out at: www.androidjones.com

Syd Mead, on the other hand, is just pure genius. This was my first time seeing him talk, and there were a few things that he said, which I had to write down as maxims. For example, although it may seem rather obvious, the fact that “things look like the way they’re made” struck me like a bolt of lightning. He also talked about how every new design has to have something recognizable in it, otherwise it risks lacking appeal, and that the new designs inevitably build up on what’s already come before them. It also sounded like a lot of his inspiration in futuristic design came from science articles, which proves why his designs have that added quality about them that seems to make sense… that it could be reality one day.