Read Issue 70 of Digital Art Live

Welcome to this month’s issue of your free magazine. We’re calling it the ’ISOworld’ issue — as in the isometric view, seen as if with a ’bird’s eye’ view that looks down and across an underyling base grid. An isometric view always uses a rigid grid, and we tend to think of ’the grid’ as a key feature and emblem of our modern world. Yet ’the grid’ is far older, first appearing in art in a drawing of an Italian church interior in the year 1480. The regular square flagstones of that church’s fateful floor were drawn ’as seen’ and thus… the 3D grid first entered 2D visual art.

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Inside this issue…

‘APPRENTICE RACCOON’

’Apprentice Raccoon’ is an expert low-poly model maker, who uses Blender to create charming and personal miniature scenes.

“When I create a scene, I do not think about the mood and lighting before I have finished with model-making. Even if I have a general idea of how I want it to look, it’s only when I set up the lighting and color that I know which atmosphere I will give to my scene.”

‘M4NDRILL’

‘M4ndrill‘ adores the Magicavoxel software, and works with it every day. He’s now developing a voxel-art style game.

“I was lousy at drawing as a kid. And as it turned out, I still am. I did try to learn by studying pixel art drawings and by watching tutorials, but the progress was slow. Then one day I accidentally clicked on a voxel art tutorial, and I was immediately hooked.”

DIEGO ARAUJO

Diego Araujo switched career from a field-biologist hunting spiders in Brazil’s jungles, to a 3D specialist in Singapore using Blender and open source software!

“3D artists are trained to create art for games, animations and VFX for movies, often doing more technical work. The creative part comes from the concept art, which then becomes a template for the 3D artist. It’s not in their mindset to use 3D art for a whole book.”

Also in the issue…

• EDITORIAL
• VOXELS SOFTWARE
• MATTIAS ADOLFSONN
• 3D FONTS
• BACK ISSUES
• CONTESTS
• 3D BRIDGE
• ERWIN KHO

Interview Snippet from Issue 70

In a style finely balanced between simplicity and complexity, Apprentice Raccoon makes charming isometric scenes with the Blender software.

DAL: Apprentice, welcome. Many thanks for this interview.

AR: Hello! Many thanks for the invitation to share my experience and ’my universe’.

DAL: Great. First, how did you become interested in digital creativity? Have you been creative that way since you were young, or was it something that developed later?

AR: I had a chaotic journey before I found myself ending up doing 3D modeling. I never imagined I would be doing a ’numeric art’, a math-based art. As a child, I was spending lot of time drawing — I started on the walls of my home, for my mother’s pleasure! My mother always pushed my sister and I into trying new activities, which actually developed my creativity. When I was a teen, I wanted to become a fashion stylist and thus I enjoyed imagining outfits and drawing them. But, for various reasons, I actually grew interest in computer programming. I wanted to create and design websites, even though Web design isn’t art, properly speaking.

DAL: Yes… it isn’t now. But there was a time — maybe 1996-98 — when website design was really quite a creative thing.

AR: At that time I had the feeling I needed to “create” something. Then I changed my mind again and had a go at programming videogames, just little ones. But I ended up deserting game production and I focused entirely on creation of 3D models and I totally enjoy what I am doing now! I sometimes regret that it took me so much time to find what I actually wanted to do.

DAL: I see. Yes, but you were perhaps lucky that it all happened in so short a time. Sometimes it takes many decades for someone to find what they really enjoy and are good at, and also find the time and money for it. What were your ’first loves’ in software? Or you ’first dislikes’, even?

AR: I’d say that the free software Blender is my ’first love’ and I’ve been using it since 2019. I don’t know if I despise a software enough to say “I hate it”, but I recently tried Substance 3D Painter. I was hoping to give more “character” and “style” to my scenes, but even though I only tried it for the 7-day free trial period… it hasn’t been all fun!

DAL: Yes… I don’t recall anyone telling me they’ve adored it, certainly. How did you then first encounter low-poly / voxel art?

AR: I learned to create 3D models on my own, by watching online tutorials. Mainly on YouTube. I started by making quite realistic scenes, but I found that approach was preventing me from adding my ’touch of whimsy’. So I searched for another way to reach my creativity goal. That’s how I came across the low-poly style, which actually gave me the opportunity of expressing myself and to create ’scenes from everyday life’. Scenes like “Laundry Room” through to more futuristic stuff like “City of the Future”, from the ancient classical world in “Apothecary” through to fanciful fairy-tale with “Gingerbread House”.