Back in the late eighties I saw my first computer-generated cartoon. A field trip to the National Renewable Energy Labs, (or was it the National Center for Atmospheric Research?) up near Boulder ended with our class sitting in a small theater watching an exquisitely-crafted CGI cartoon about a love story between a bird and a fish who lived with all their fellows in a large sphere. As any kid would be, I was utterly entranced with the short piece. A few years later, I made a ray-traced picture for a chess club flyer using good old POV-ray, a small freeware program. It looked great, especially since somebody else had built the framework for the chess piece models.
Of course, I quickly forgot about POV, and it never entered my mind until I discovered the POV Hall of Fame and CGTalk.com's Choice Gallery. Sci-fi, fantasy, M.C. Escher, and Terry Gilliam's films are obvious influences. But at the moment what particularly strikes me about the medium is its many artists' dedication to realism--even if it is "magical" realism. Supposedly realism in painting declined with the invention of the photographic camera. But now that CGI artists are attempting to make nearly photorealistic portrayals of the images in their mind, it looks like the style might be up for renewal.
In the better art galleries, one comes across students planted in front of some finely-made painting with an easel and a pallette, hoping to learn the techniques of the masters. Likewise, some CG artists try to recreate classic works. There is an admirable attempt at remaking Jan Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, and one talented artist has made a stunning copy of Michaelangelo's Pieta.
A few "magical realist" pieces that caught my eye are Medieval Airport and one called Family, a snapshot of life amid a sea of pipes and machinery.
But perhaps the saddest artwork I have found in this medium is Innocent Shadow, depicting one small space in Nagasaki a few years after the atomic bombing.
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