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Creating a New Yorker Cover On the iPhone
Jaime Leifer writes "The cover of the June 1, 2009, issue of The New Yorker, entitled 'Finger Painting,' was drawn by Jorge Colombo entirely on his iPhone — a first for the magazine. Colombo, a New York-based artist and illustrator, uses the iPhone's Brushes application to vibrantly depict New York street scenes." There's a video recapitulating the creation of the piece, omitting all of the undos.
Artist using new technology is nothing new. I like Apple and the iPhone but this is just a plain "Apple PR News" story, nothing for nerds, nothing that matters.
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This is kinda cool. Not so much that it was an iPhone, but that it was a handheld device. How much longer until these phones replace a laptop for most of our day-to-day computing?
a group of 30 4 year olds using a magnetic refrigerator alphabet wrote all the features and articles in the same magazine. In un-related news the New Yorker seems to be having financial problems as fewer and fewer people read the garbage they publish.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think one important issue with the capacitative screen as used in Apple's phone is that while it does support multitouch, it does not support different pressure levels corresponding to force applied against the screen? To get pressure sensitivity similar to a Wacom-style pad, you'd need to be using a Palm/WinMo handheld which, with resistive screens, can support different pressures applied by finger or stylus. Is this correct? If so, then it's remarkable that he managed to produce quite a nice cartoon given the limitations of the device he was using. But you have to wonder how much more efficient a similar artist could be with a more artist-friendly approach. I assume that this brushes application lets you create a swipe, then click it afterwards to increase or decrease the transparency/strength/brush effects. That's got to be a lot less intuitive than just pressing your finger/stylus more or less to get the same effect. In effect, a single gesture dimensioned using pressure has been elongated into a mutli-step gesture dimensioned with serial, semantic twiddling.
Da Blog
FTA: "Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner's hat, I could not draw in the dark."
Apple, thank you for finally enabling us artists to draw in the dark. Only Apple could pioneer this astounding technology.
How ironic that TFA has a flash video that does not work on the iPhone. I'm sure there's a youtube version out there somewhere but I'm too lazy to look.
Peaple are drawing Mona lisa in MS Paint. THIS is an achievement.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
The video of the process is a work of art all its own, capturing the evolution of the scene. There is a sense of change and even of loss, which you wouldn't get from the finished work alone.
sure, it's not the first time, but the point is much more subtle: why use a laptop or desktop computer?
What this is is the next level of miniaturisation, and it is an important one. There is fundamentally no difference between an iPhone or iPod and a computer - they all have input devices (keypads, sensitive screens, cameras), RAM, Storage, and output (audio, video, files).
an iPhone with a beefier processor, some USB ports and a mini HDMI port (a la Macbook) and you have your next desktop replacement device. Not only would you have phone calls, but with an HDMI - VGA adaptor, you have a screen to do world processing, image editing, video editing, audio editing, 3D, whatever.
It's the next big deal.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
to refrain from complaining about a kdawson post, but I saw this early this morning and thought it was cool as well. So sue me. Yes, people have been drawing on computers for a Long Time with lots of different input devices; and no, it's not the best tool (portable or otherwise) for drawing with. And I detest all the often-unmerited love that Apple gets...but this was cool, it is an example of how, even on a converged device that can't touch dedicated devices, technology has become accessible enough that people are able to do real worth with it, no matter where they are. It's similar to Chase Jarvis and his iPhone pictures. It's not the best camera, not even the best camera phone, but it's both a demonstration of how art isn't about the technology, it's about the artist; and it's a demonstration of what we could each accomplish with even these limited tools if we had the talent and discipline to use them to their fullest. It's not, to me, about it being an Apple product, it's about art, talent, and the progress of technology.
Given that I'm reading Slashdot from an iPod touch, from my deck, while grilling, I'd say they already have. The only trick here is that they have gotten a lot, lot cheaper than your average, non-netbook laptop. If you can't beat them with horsepower and features, you will always get them by being the cheapest ride in town.
Calling an iPhone a communications device is like calling a computer a word processing device. Apple has made damn sure with all of their marketing that people associate more than communication with the iPhone, it's made out to be more like a PDA with a phone program than a phone. And I doubt this is the first time an artist has made "print-ready" work (for various definitions of "print-ready") from a PDA. This still seems like a piece of Apple fluff.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
an iPhone with a beefier processor, some USB ports and a mini HDMI port (a la Macbook) and you have your next desktop replacement device. Not only would you have phone calls, but with an HDMI - VGA adaptor, you have a screen to do world processing, image editing, video editing, audio editing, 3D, whatever.
This is a joke right? No serious professional is going to be doing image/video editing or drawing on a color-inaccurate 3.5" screen.
Guess what, you're wrong.
Why bother
The DS has a homebrew drawing program called 'Colours'. Check out the drawings people have made with it. Unlike the iPhone the DS supports pressure sensitivity, although it's not used in official programs (if I remember correctly it's due to per-unit variance and being forbidden by the official guidelines).
A PSP-sized device with that kind of capability would be a pretty great portable drawing device. The DS is a bit too small for me.
an iPhone with a beefier processor, some USB ports and a mini HDMI port (a la Macbook) and you have your next desktop replacement device. Not only would you have phone calls, but with an HDMI - VGA adaptor, you have a screen to do world processing, image editing, video editing, audio editing, 3D, whatever.
This is a joke right? No serious professional is going to be doing image/video editing or drawing on a color-inaccurate 3.5" screen.
This is a joke right? No serious professional is going to be doing image/video editing or drawing on a color-inaccurate 3.5" screen.
Yeah. So the guy that just created and SOLD the cover of the bloody NEW YORKER on the iPhone is not a "serious professional", right?
Matter of fact, in my field, thousands of working photojournalists (those in the top ranks among them) work with similar (color-inacurate) screens and no color correction. The color differences are subtle in 99% of the cases, and don't matter in 99.9% of them, especially when printed in newspaper and/or magazine papers.
Another thing that's cool about this particular project is that the artist said it allowed him to just quietly work in the corner. He didn't have to set up with an easel and influence the behaviour of the people around him. To everyone else, he must have just looked like he was texting.
I've used the brushes app before. This was not edited outside of the iPhone. That application really does a good job simulating paint and brushes. And yes, you can do this with a WinMo device. The difference is the interface of this application, the accuracy of a capacitive screen, and the multitouch make the combination of this app and this phone seem natural. Zooming in and out is effortless by pinching in and out. And the speed and sensitivity is perfect. I have used paint applications on my Winmo, and they don't feel very natural. Doing multiple strokes with textured brushes with transparency set on a winmo device doesn't feel very good ... not as fluid.
A "real artist"? I don't even know what to say to that. You must have been living under a rock for the past 4000 years. If there's such a thing as a "real artist" it's the artist who challenges conventions, like by presenting a finger painting as print-quality commercial art. Art is all about expression, and I can't think of anything artsier than noticing a poignant urban scene and sitting down on the spot and spending a few hours capturing it. Not a color-accurate, realist perfect reproduction but a blurry finger painting just enough to communicate what the artist was feeling.
Agreed... just the fact that this piece instigated a "what is art?" debate, IMHO, shows that it is art.
There are a lot of folks on Slashdot who try really, really hard to hate Apple and iPhones, but I think this story really is news for nerds, and really does matter. If you disagree, go click on another story.
E pluribus unum