ASU - Herberger Presentation

Modus Ingenium presented ‘Exposure to the Global Market’ at Herberger Institute of Design and The Arts at Arizona State University on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. The presenters were members of the Advisory Board. Covered were a wide range of issues. Discussed were also the newest features that Modus Ingenium is offering, to all who seek to find their place in the world of competitive talent:



1.Free Membership
2.Free Search of Graded Portfolios
3.Free Search of Non-Graded Portfolios
4.Ability to link your portfolio to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Modus Ingenium Team also decided to publish all criteria for the grading and is currently
updating the technical infrastructure to allow for informing each portfolio holder of the grade of each
separate criteria. This will allow the portfolio owner to understand where he/she has
excelled and where he/she needs to improve. This information is private and visible only
to the portfolio owner.

The lecture ended with a presentation by Gary Goldman discussing the common fabric
of animation, architecture and design. He emphasized how the universal principles used
to produce excellence in animation are applicable to architecture and design as they all
share one base – art.

Below is the link to the presentation at ASU. Missing are the animation reels presented
by Gary Goldman – pieces of award winning movies.

Please, review the attached presentation for details. PREZI LINK

New Advisory Member - Michael Rotondi

We are pleased to announce our new advisory board member, Michael Rotondi.
recognized as an innovative architect/educator and has practiced and taught architecture for 30 years. He was a founding partner of Morphosis, (1975-1991) and is now at RoTo Architects (1991-present). He was a co-founder and for ten years (1987-1997) the Director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he teaches and is on the Board of Directors.

Evolvo Radix - Concept - 2

Evolvo Radix – Concept 2 – weightless objects

Concept 2 is discussing objects/ buildings that sit on water, based on the laws of gravity and buoyancy.

As you all know from physics, buoyancy is the upward force, caused by fluid pressure, that keeps things afloat.





A static object that is subjected only to the force of gravity is floating on water as the force of gravity is balanced by the water upward buoyancy force, which is equal to the magnitude of the weight of water, or the resulting water pressure displaced by the object.
Of course, of importance is the relative mass of the object, its density and the density of the water, salt water vs fresh water for instance.

Of importance also is the stability of the floating object. Generally, the floating object should have vertical stability. If the object is inhabited by people, it will push down slightly, but the added weight is of such little increase in light of the total mass of the building, that this is of little physical consequence.

So, of greater importance is the rotational stability, or moment of inertia of the object.

Simply, the weight of the object acts as a force pushing down through its center of gravity. The object will be stable when the majority of the weight is pushed to it's extremities, which is away from the center of gravity, thus resisting any angular movement or rotation.

With all this said, our Evolvo Radix model is based on a simple object, which sits over a body of water, whose volume and weight is larger than the weight of the object to be able to compensate the slight changes of future live loads – fig. 1.

Beneath the object are the balance tanks, just like a submarine to control the relative buoyancy.
The purpose of the tanks is to allow for optimal pool water displacement by moving water in and out of the tanks through valves, which are controlled by electronic sensors, to keep the equilibrium between the buoyancy force and the mass of the object.
The placement of the tanks is carefully positioned so that it also helps with the stability of the building in regards to its weight displacement.

Living on the water pool could be a great experience. You can have a boat garage, instead of a car one. You can walk over water as your patio can be part of the object sitting on the water and even flush with the water surface as we control the vertical movement and can precisely adjust the location of the object versus the level of the water surface.

Going further, as mentioned before, you can submerge the object and have the experience of being in an aquarium. Especially when having a party.

Someone will ask – how can you stay self sustained. This is easy – water tanks with potable water on the roof and solar panels on the roof as well. The solar panels will produce electricity. The water from the pool can be treated and used for the basics in the house.

A question comes about the waste – all waste water and heavy waste can be collected, treated and reused in green house gardens that are part of the floating object.

In a way, independent, self-sufficient eco system that can keep the object physically detached from the grounds around the water pool, allowing its utilization even in a larger body of water.

One more example, click to enlarge.

Timur Baysal - Taron - Interview - pt.2

Taron continues to share his insights and experiences.

The previous part covered topics on education, mentor roles, his beginnings with art and computers.
In part two, he shares his take on creative theories, software, and the VFX industry. - "...understand - that you not only enjoy yourself along the way, but truly deliver something with the least amount of heartache."


The Interview, part two:

7. For new art talent that wants a professional career in their chosen field, what should they think about, when it comes to locality, expertise field, motivation, inspiration, and training?

Maybe it's not even all that surprising to understand that it really depends on the chosen field itself.
What has been your motivation, where do you want it to take you; is the activity itself all of you wanted, or did you pick it as the means to gain more freedom for something else?

All these things pull, push and nudge the direction of your path or even alter the nature of your career from path to destination. It's a very big step already, to realize what you really want. In fact it's nearly an impossible step, should you become aware of the nature of your own transformation.

Therefore, it's most important to understand where you can apply yourself wholeheartedly, so that you not only enjoy yourself along the way, but truly deliver something with the least amount of heartache.
I wouldn't be too worried about the fatigue issue, as it is mostly related to the relentless working conditions in the industry or the potential under-appreciation of the scope of your skill set at the same time.

Be worried about losing your believes and your self-definition along the way. It's your life, don't ever forget that, and it's not about delusions of grandeur, but about prolonging your ability to function to the best of your abilities.
Be selfish, when it comes to picking your profession, the field you can hang with, so to say. It's your passion you offer for sale out there and it's the most valuable possession you have.


Move on, by the time you realize the pile of stagnated moments pokes a hole into the roof of your head, you'd starve a part of yourself that you cherished a lot earlier.
Some people comfortably feed on such moments, which is why it'll never be a threat to their head, but most artists must have had an urge that pushed them into this business, but it can only find dissatisfaction by the time they realize that it was in their power to conceive ideas and not translate them.

The training for all artists should ultimately be nearly exactly the same. We all have tasks that require us to create communicative content. Learn to understand what humans perceive. Nature is the ultimate teacher.

Whether we'd been planted here by aliens or are earth grown sentinels, we have adapted to react to life on earth, to structures in nature and concepts that help us survive and feel secure or properly challenged. All of these things come from nature. All of the required forms have been erected by nature.

We often try to simplify in hopes to optimize, while we produce something that nature doesn't even know, which is something to be frozen for all of infinity. However, all the major lessons should come in direct connection with nature.

You may move forward by removing yourself from the direct line to it and observe the interpretations of nature, but that's where misguidance and unoriginality is lurking. Do all of the learning yourself and you'll be as independent as you can be and you can reveal your very own transformations, revelations and imagination.

8. You beta test many types of software, which are the latest ones you tested and are worth talking about?

Sculptris. It has been a tiny little 3d doodle toy that Tomas Peterson began writing a while back. But when people started to recognize the simplicity of it and the harmless beauty of creating useless 3d designs, he somehow did get a giant boost of motivation and started to program the living daylights out of it.
By now it's already one of the most amazing 3d sketching tools ever created, actually. I'm not even nearly kidding, since it does approach the topic in a very different and quite benign way.
It requires no premeditation like in pretty much all other apps out there, while it creates geometries that can later be used either directly for rendering and animating in other apps or as a base to start from in things such as Zbrush, still king of kings in the world of displacement map creation and drowning helpless little objects in stunning details, haha.
Anyway, Sculptris has a unique work flow that just makes you forget completely about technicalities, at least more than anything I've ever witnessed or cared to witness, really. It's still polygon based, which means it's not some curious but scary voxel solution that falls crying to its knees wants you want to celebrate your illusion of freedom.
Sculptris doesn't blow the lid off high polygon counts, but it works beautifully and intelligently right up to your machines waving of a white flag. Then it permits you to take it all for the next big ride, which is painting color, bumps and unlimited materials on top of that geometry, again in unseen before comfort and fun, really.

It's changing the idea of 3d in more fundamental ways than Zbrush had already suggested. While I stand by what I said above about Zbrush, Sculptris just takes it a bit further by really simplifying the process to the easiest possible level thus far.
I thought it was a nice gimmick when I started playing with it and found myself depending on it only a day later, really. True 3d sketching!.
And Tomas, the developer, is such a bright light, it's a blast to watch him grow his little tool.

I think, when people talked about how fun it is to watch me sculpt something, it's that kind of fun to watch him create, really. And it's just as fast, too. I'm thrilled now, because I know it's been happening already and even if the sky were to fall and he turned into a homicidal slacker while the tool imploded, that which he has already made me witness is priceless.
 
9. As most creatives you dabble in other fields as well, I heard music was one of those, how come, and what draws you to that field?


Ultimately I want to communicate, I guess. I'm so full of micro revelations, urges to confirm, to share, to connect and the shear pleasure of experiencing the transformations of what comes out through me right before my eyes or straight into my ears.
 
But as I've written already, and said so many times, the real thrill to me is the collaboration with the medium. It's such a magnificent amount of presences, if that's still ok with the English language. I'm referring to the layers of participants in the process of working on computers, or even playing an instrument.
You tickle a piece of it and it vibrates through the entire system until something divine comes out on the other end. The great benefit on the computer is that you can store it and witness it again and again and grow it, help yourself to evolve your own connection and command to create and mature ideas. This provides you with the seasoning of life, the inspiration and meditation that takes you to the known right through the unknown.

Music is the honest truth, the one you can have for yourself and offer to others without sacrifice unless you submit yourself to their pleasure. Music can so easily be innocent, it can reveal parts of you that words can't ever dream of illustrating and when you're strong enough, you can make that music twist you into what ever state you'd like to be.




It's the organic transporter that grabs you with its invisible fingers and pulls you into your own imagination and pushes you into it, or let's you slumber in peaceful reflections of all that you love.

I am what music allowed me to be. That kinda draws me into that field.

10. What are the biggest differences between Europe and the US when we are talking about the creative fields you have been involved in, and what did you learn from it? 

I can't speak for all of Europe, really, especially not since I am from Germany, which in so many ways appears to be exceptional. Haha!.
I can only speak of some of my experiences with artists and aspirators of neighboring countries. Generally, it appears that by nature they are all rather humble, yet pushed into an unnatural need to compete with the US spirit, which somehow makes many artists there believe it's clever to claim high quality just as long as you believe yourself that you can deliver it, hahaha.
It's not the US artist's fault at all. I think it's not unusual that Europeans don't think about it in that kind of forgiving way, as they don't know how beautifully supportive American families generally are and the kids really grow up thinking they are in fact the greatest ever and the good teacher tells them to claim to be the best in order to make sure their client knows.
Then, when the truth comes crashing down on them, they get terrified and spiritually curl up underneath their desks. They often have great talent, but their mouth simply has been stretched to be just a bit greater than that.

Eventually the talent catches up and they become known for their brilliance to the industry, or it doesn't and they become known to the industry for other reasons. European artists used to have to go through a not so supportive growth, being doubted for their choice to become an artist to begin with and being denied the title "artist" for the longest time even during their actual careers in the field.
They can get horribly arrogant, don't get me wrong, but it's often extremely well backed up by what they can do.

The southern countries, however, have a stunning number of excellent artists, who's liveliness makes occasional flares of arrogance more than forgivable and their style is often beyond delightful, really. My Italian artist friends mean a lot to my heart and, while I feel related to artists all over the world, they will always have a special meaning to me. I think I want them to be my brothers, haha.


I still have to encounter the local artists where I am now.
I've already had contact with one, who seems to have a wonderful spirit, too, and is madly talented.

Every culture has a certain degree of authenticity that just doesn't go away, no matter how much they had been influenced by contemporary concept art orgies of Hollywood. Often it's that heritage that people in Hollywood respond to without knowing it, and soon they want to have it for themselves.
But as most humble Europeans do, they try to adapt, at the beginning being pushed to do so and at the end being brainwashed to continue, and it always takes a while for them to snap out of it again, if they're lucky, haha.


The meaning of our art is being pulled from beneath our feet and the potential of its true function is being tied down into the engines of a system that appears to have no interest in raw and true human growth.
We can't transport a true past experience through our creations, nor can we rely on the cultural foundation to be advantageous for our understanding of how to continue.

While art has always been our most explicit means to carry on that which goes directly above our immediate needs. This brings us back to a more direct answer to the question above.
The system of Europe still has roots that reaches into the field and the pride of art. Aware of the cultural evidence of art, it is a matter of status to respect the creative fields in Europe, and it still serves as a role of satisfying the sense of identity for its citizens.
I feel truly inadequate to even voice my deductions and impressions in any way that may suggest that I know, or had any right to judge a field.
But I know that there's more innocence in European art than in that of the US, as artists there -unaware of its origin and permanent influence- often follow the call of success, popularity and wealth as opposed to the artistic subject itself, the respect it demands and it's requirements.
Forgive me, if I generalized this topic to some degree, as I know that this may insult some, while others understand that I don't mean to judge or to blame, but to inform that true power and joy is in the sincere devotion to an inner calling.
That it manifests itself and its selfishness, not in pride or parade, but in humility and the love to share the stimuli that helps everyone to grow as humans, and help each other to become the best we can be, to create the best we can imagine.

Taron


Timur is also part of the core group of advisory artists at MI - Link

Timur Baysal - Taron - Interview - pt.1

Taron or Timur Baysal, as is his name, talked with us about his craft, inspiration, education, drive, and the VFX industry.

In this very honest and candid interview he shares his thoughts.

Due to the length, and other practical considerations, this interview is split in two parts.
Note: Due to the art subject, some of the images might be disturbing to some viewers.

The Interview, part one:

1. Where do you come from, and how did the native culture affect your ethics?

I was born and raised in Germany. It's ethics revolve around systematic dogma, not questioning the state and its authority, trickling down through the educational system into the idea that every profession requires proper documentation and certification.
Teaching yourself is being honored by a patronizing chuckle and positions of authority ordinarily
require proper boasting backed by many years of academical toiling.
But the beer has always been great. Aside from joking around, it has some great bonding qualities that make social interaction easy and plentiful as well as adding a great sense of humor about not having any.
Even while this may read like a joke, the concept of knowing what NOT to do had also great impact on my ethics.




By my own example, I've managed to go through the system in most unorthodox ways by skipping the years spent by others in universities and even dropping out of 12th grade, I think (school system is a bit different in Germany than in the US). I did so, because I had managed to make myself a freelancer and already earned more money than most, who'd come out of college. That also meant that I had to learn to market myself comfortably, or at least that became my choice.

I developed the rational of mutual benefit,
making sure that my work was serving the needs of the clients beyond expectations, while requesting a price they could easily justify and adequately satisfy myself.

A  win-win strategy. The German spirit gives artists only few choices to deal with the way it meets them.
Either you become piercingly over confident and try to demand respect, or you humbly allow your work to speak for itself.
I chose the second route, which made me feel like a perfect alien in the US, but served my nerves quite well.

2. When you grew up, did you, as most artists, draw, paint, and act?

Yes. (of course he did .ed)

3. At what point did computers interest you as far as a tool for art, and why?

I was 14 when my father suddenly jumped up the chair after we saw a commercial for the commodore C16 on TV and asked me, if I wanted to go right at this moment to buy one. That was the first time in my life when my head exploded with joy. My sole interest has always been to create on these machines.
Not a big deal at the time, since nothing much was available in regards to software. Together with my friends, we wrote adventure games right away, making ASCI graphics and silly sound effects. But only a short time after that I understood how to deal with pixels.

The C128 came shortly after and with it there was no stopping me anymore. I wrote music, demos, intros, little games and we started a little scene group. When I was 15, I already knew exactly how to deal with pixels and manually antialias my illustrations.
That got me into my first professional job right then. But that's a different story.

Initially I only had a hunch that possibilities would be nearly endless on computers to not just create still art, but to animate, even interact with it, and all the creative fields would find their application in them. I wasn't even interested in films as such, but rather the abstract wonder of art including time, sound and access. I was equally fascinated by programming, the brilliant puzzle that awarded you with adventures beyond your own imagination.
I think all that made me recognize the power of the machine on a different level, acknowledging the benefit of working with the nature of the source, the suggestions of the machine itself. It later became part of my 3d modeling method's foundation to accept and follow the nature of the geometry and working with its directions.

4. Did you have any mentors, or artists, that affected the direction you took?

My mentors often found their connection to me through the above mentioned mutual benefit. Only a few key encounters gave me some wonderful revelations to carry with me to this day.
I'm so sorry, I forgot so many of the names, yet, I remember the faces and the spirit. I was almost always tied to wonderful, even if sometimes kind of sad spirits.

I tried to mention above that Germany isn't easy on artists and those with a gentle soul and not enough guts just fall by the wayside and can never really discover their full potential completely. Expectations are just so limiting and security is something that is tied to a denial of artistic freedom.
In the end I consider all my friends my mentors, even if it often might have been the other way around, but as for most fortunate people with exciting, or simply good friends, they have a strong influence on the direction one takes.

I must have been 12 or 13 when a friend of my older sister turned me on to fantasy art. I saw pictures from Boris and Frazetta (I'm happy for him, that he's made it to the next round, while I'm sad the world had to lose such a passionate and brilliant artist.
He left us with an immortal style that won't ever stop to influence the generations to come.). Seeing those pictures excited me a lot, of course, since I was already drawing wildly, but not with this kind of realism.
 
Most traditional art just doesn't have this kind of take on reality, so to say. Sure, there was Dali, who in his weirdness and odd simplification of realistic circumstances made it appear nearly easy to explore surrealism and take the detour into his own fantastic world. But at some point I had to shake them all off, because it all wasn't what I wanted to feel.

5. A lot of the works you are known for, has that "Taron" look to it, disturbingly beautiful, strict in it's tone range, and both directly communicative, as well as subjectively ensnaring.

Is this a conscious decision, or a result of progress in the development of the creative process?

I respect the subject I create tremendously. I do not respect the technicality of the process at all, but the process itself, yet, never take my focus away from writing the nature and history of my creations.

I was going to write "creature" or "character", but to me any subject has the same need, be it a house, a hill or a jelly fish. Sometimes they are just passing by, doodles, funny little encounters. But most of the time when I really want to explore something, they become something or somebody, I know then. I don't make them as showcase puppets, I don't make them as means for anything but themselves or my own education, actually, whilst only initially.
Sometimes they grant me permission to exhibit certain advances, like Zbrush demonstrations or to show Messiah:Studio features, well...that might make them showcase puppets every now and then, but it's a side effect.
Test animation using Animation 01 Animation 02

I have always been seeking reality in a rather wholesome way, one that includes time. Even if it's not an animated picture, should be a testament to an unseen time, that explains what you're looking at. No method other than respect and a joy to connect to anybody and everything.

6. In your career you've been involved in some very interesting projects. Which of those gave you the greatest benefit as an artist, and what was it?

I severely dislike that question for some reason, because it casts a dark shadow over the majority of projects I was involved in, hahahahaha. Maybe three "ha"s would've been enough for this one, but frankly, the most unlikely jobs gave me the biggest kicks and the biggest kicks were for the most ungrateful projects.

I think my personal research and urge to figure out aspects of natural forms have always given me the most benefit as an artist. But the second best benefit came from a friend of mine, Goro, who introduced me to a simply method of making paintings in Photoshop.
It made it so simple to create entire environments and I was immediately taken by it. Prior to him I was mostly just doing isolated experiments, but that's when I finally got to explore truly wholesome sketches.
An experiment would be a mountain landscape, an alien city, a scene from a dream. I joined a 'daily sketches' forum back then for which I would actually do full paintings, everyday, within a few minutes, or some hours sometimes, but it really took me to the next level.

I later got to apply it on many projects, just the spirit of being aware how to design a complete canvas was so very liberating. I may have wished I could start mentioning some of the great films I got to work on, but I spare you the giggles for those, which were the most fun to me.

Ironically one of the biggest "AHA" moments came from a large scene for a teaser I did get to make, which triggered one of the most devastating moments for me personally and awarded me with one of the most grandiose moments of my career.
I overestimated myself and then somehow did not. I thought it was an awful precedence to go by, because it nearly gave me a heart attack, when I thought I could not pull it off, but... now you want to know what it was, right? Since you wouldn't even find it, if you were looking for it, I'm just gonna leave it as a mystery.

Some projects he have worked on (addition by editor)
Film: Gothika, Syriana, Battlefield Earth, Dogma
Timur is also part of the core group of advisory artists at MI - Link

End -interview part one - Continue to part Two

Evolvo Radix - Concept-1

Evolvo Radix

Evolvo Radix is a concept environment, in which gravity is questioned. The newest theories and outlandish ideas of anti-gravity are still in the movies. Although the notion of anti-gravity is on the far away horizon, there is no reason why we can not use existing technology and know how to essentially create the illusion of the non-existence of gravity.



Evovlo Radix is such an attempt to bend reality, or at least to feed the perception of the observer to such a level that he/she suspends reality and serves the immediate wishful belief that the gravity is non-existing.

What Evolvo Radix is presenting, is a collection of geometrical solutions, that naturally produce gravity forces, but in Evolvo Radix they only appear through the illusion of their existence. The general theory of relativity describes gravity as a geometric property of space and time. Evolvo Radix is presenting objects and their gravity relationship relative to time of recording and time of projecting, which could happen with time delay, pre-arranged scenarios or in this first case, real time.

It is a fact that most of our perceptions are engraved in us by our physical experience, consciously or unconsciously. So one way to upset the status quo, is to present the familiar in a completely new and unexpected way; in a context that enables the observer to make natural unconscious assumptions engraved in the very physical fabric of his/her being.
We have conceptualized about 10 various projects, that we will present here.

This is the first Evolvo Radix model:  "levi'tabox"

Although the object is firmly attached to the sloping surface, the created illusion of a void between the object and the base is so real that the mind reads only the absence of the gravity.

Here is a brief explanation of the actual physical model that produces the illusion:

The space between the object and the base on its four sides is covered with segmented LCD screens or holographic prism sheet. Three cameras are installed on each of the four sides, which are part of the surface screens (fig.1).

The cameras from each side are simultaneously feeding the screen at their opposite side.

The cameras are arranged so that the outer two film at 45 degree angles, and the center one at 90.
The silver screen (prism sheet with crystalline background) informs the observer of what is happening beyond the base attachment, on the other side of the object, thus creating the illusion of a void.




There is also some graphic manipulating of the transmitted camera signal to help the illusion by including the effect of the light occlusion that happens inside the void.
The simultaneous feed of three separate cameras that cover their entire service area allows for the image information to be spread over the multiple hologram prisms of the screen, so a moving observer is always informed about the image as if it is a real one (fig. 2).

For all artists who plan to show team work

Portfolio Note:

When presenting work where you only had partial responsibilities in the development of the final project, it’s important that you focus on the portion that was created by you.


Please, provide a detail image of your contributed work – see example below (you still can reference the entire project by showing a small image of it in the background). Still using the file requirements for size, 800X600, 600X800 and 1024X512


To stay objective in the grading process, we only need to see your personal work. If needed, please explain in detail, your role on the team using the ‘additional information’ dialog box , as you fill in your profile.












MI-Team