Digital Illustration: A Master Class in Creative Image-Making - Rotovision / 2005
Book Extract - Introduction

Today's innovators in graphic image-making have grown up with the digital, with a computer in every classroom. For some, it's worth recognizing that even before school, digital kit in the bedroom, the playroom has been the real starting point of their creativity.

Today's image-makers have not had to adapt to the changes that digital technology brought but have developed their skills intuitively, utilizing the huge advances that have been made. Digital technologies are much more connected with everyday lives than ever before, and for many, from an earlier age. Young creatives no longer consider the computer 'new.' Having grown up with PlayStation, Nokia mobile phones, the Canon IXUS, and, more recently, the iPod, they understand the ins, the outs, the ups and the downs of digital media. It is no coincidence that nowadays, a basic start-up computer package includes a scanner, printer, and digital camera alongside the computer itself. Increasingly, packages also include a wi-fi box and card, allowing instant web access from anywhere in the home as well as bundled digital-manipulation software and royalty-free photographic images, clip-art and fonts; the 'perfect' recipe ingredients. Encouraged to manipulate and create 'visuals' from the outset, for today's image-makers the computer, with its adjuncts, really is 'just another tool.'

Access any Availability

Greater access to constantly improving hardware at ever-decreasing prices has helped drive the purchasing demand from the public. Over the past fifteen years, 'stack them high and sell them cheap' computer warehouses have appeared on the outskirts of every town and city across the computerized world. Drive in, speak to a 'qualified expert,' road-test some kit, make an educated choice, and scoot away with hardware and software more powerful than even governments had access to 20 years ago, at a price unthinkable just 10 years ago. With the computer retail industry becoming increasingly cutthroat, buying a computer has never been cheaper or easier.

For those already within the digital loop–and that number rises daily–it is the issue of constant upgrading that requires attention, or so the manufacturers would like us to believe. No time to get to the warehouse? There is always the option of buying the necessary kit on-line, opting for 'hassle-free, no-nonsense, next-day delivery' and 'easy' deposit and payment terms to get your hands on the most up-to-date kit. Simplicity is the key.

The Rise of Hardware and Software

And as the quality of available hardware continues to rise, so does the software industry's output. Creative imaging and manipulation software has become far more powerful and easier to use, with manufacturers recognizing a new market growing quietly alongside the traditional market of creative professionals. Modified versions of professional applications have been created for and marketed toward the creative home-user. Neither a true professional image-maker, nor a complete novice the home-user is a motivated, skilled and keen amateur. With greater computing experience than ever before, the home-user has a wider range of basic skills from which to draw; with access to the latest hardware and software, they are able to approach the creation of digital image-making in an increasingly professional manner.

The explosion in the use and accessibility of both the Web and digital photography has also helped to fuel the rise in digital image-making. With the tools for manipulating digital photographs now readily available, many illustrators and designers have sought to increase their range of skills and move into areas closer to commercial digital illustration. For the home-user looking to find an audience for their work, publishing on the Web has been the logical progression: it avoids print, production, and postage costs which, in other media, can be frighteningly high; most e-mail hosts now offer cheap domain names and limited web space; and web-design software is now far easier to use than the raw hypertext mark-up language (HTML) required at the dawn of the Internet. Increased access to the web continues to grow daily as more and more users join the superhighway for the first time, and the speed of connections hits new highs as users ditch dial-up for broadband services.

In the analog world, magazine publishers have leapt to the challenge of creating monthly publications to cater for the needs of digital image-makers and would-be web designers providing easy-to-read, step-by-step, know-how in an instant. Instructions for using software, offering tips, and tricks and creative and technical advice alongside examples from industry professionals has seen readership figures easily surpass those of the pure traditional design journals and magazines. The success of these new glossy PC-D-I-Y magazines has ensured that they are a publishing phenomenon across the globe.

The Education of the Image-Maker

Art and design education has also contributed to the image-making boom. The number of graduates from creative design and media-related courses has risen dramatically in recent years. This is due both to the rapid growth in the number of courses offered and to the increase in student numbers, in response to demand. International competition for students is another contributing factor; many institutions have increased their annual spend on the digital, resulting in more fully equipped computer labs and better informed teaching staff. In terms of choice, there has never been a better time to study communication design.

Twenty-First Century Flux

At the start of the twenty-first century, professional image-making is in a state of flux. Cutting-edge graphic design, with its constant reinvention, demands new and innovative ways of visualizing concepts and bringing ideas, moods, and movements to life. The discipline had been struggling to find the next 'big thing,' a fresh look, ever since the excitement of digital typography, delivered in the mid-nineties, had began to diminish and the fashion for hyperrealist photography became overblown and overused toward the end of the decade.

Changes and developments in contemporary music and fashion often occur at street level, with cultural shifts led by small, but influential groups of movers and shakers. The same is true for art and design. Away from the prying eyes of the media, new approaches and new visions start to emerge. The 'style' press, often the purveyors of all things new, bright, and shiny, began to recognize and reflect new means of creating 'cool' images. Previously creatively constrained by the sole use of photography, brave steps have been taken to break with tradition and to showcase work from the undercurrent of emerging image-makers.

Breaking Boundaries

Neither graphic designer, photographer, nor illustrator, these 'graphic image-makers' have started to cross boundaries, creating their own visual languages, their own innovative brand of picture-making, to capture the essence of the stories they are commissioned to cover, and the products and artists they promote–they are providing the visual zeitgeist.

The secret of the most successful work lies in its artistic combination of the digital and the traditional in an unobtrusive and subtle manner. Using digital photographic techniques alongside or in combination with drawing and painting skills, and merging these with aspects of practice developed from printmaking, letterpress printing, stencilled street art and the like, this cutting-edge approach demands attention. A visual equivalent to the scratching, sampling, and remixing of contemporary music, this new aesthetic draws upon many creative inspirations and techniques. Often working alone or in small studio set-ups, sometimes even as part of independent design studios, these mavericks have started to change the face of contemporary illustration and graphic design.