cintiq touch

So i took this photo with my phone. doing a sketch that might turn into something more. IT'S ARYA!
I'm using a 24hd cintiq touch. Yeah it's pretty great.

blog entry

a link

this is pretty cool.

"Photoshopping it"

“Photoshop is just like makeup. When it’s done well it looks great, and when it’s overdone you look like a crazy asshole.” 
- Tina Fey, bossypants

Hey there. 
I hope you're ready to read because I'm about to do a lot of typing. I have a background in publishing, fashion and currently television. Working with all types of images for a million different uses. When I tell people I use photoshop for work, sometimes to retouch images sometimes on people, many are curious and would ask me if I had any interesting stories. Some times I'd get dirty looks  as if I told them I was a professional "puppy kicker". I end up having to go into detail about what I actually do.
A few weeks ago a group of teenage girls went to Teen Vogue to complain. This was after they went to Seventeen magazine and some other publications that catered to a teenaged girl audience. The media labeled the protests as "anti-photoshop".  This is a ridiculous oversimplification by the media. But I agree with the sentiment of these protestors. I will try to explain what working with photoshop means. And why it's not all rotten.
To be clear I am 100 percent against over retouching to the point where an image is unrealistic. Many Retouchers abuse the liquify tool or don't know the program well enough to begin with (never mind not having any anatomical aesthetic). Rubber people with no texture on their skin and no shape in their bodies. But getting rid of photoshop is not the answer. It's like getting rid of makeup, or lights, or camera lenses. It's a tool. Side note, a lot of the models you see in those ads are really super thin because they're really young, sometimes art directors would ask the retouchers to add some "curves" onto the models. An unskilled retoucher wouldn't know what to do and you end up with shit image that  ends up on huffingtonpost or photoshopdisasters.
One of the biggest problems in the industry is the art directors, untrained (or unskilled, you pick) , they don't have a vision of what they want so they always ask for "more work done", the retoucher wanting to please the client, goes to crazy town.  I've told many clients that if I go further on an image, it wouldn't look realistic and a shitty ad will make everyone look bad.
Retouching people is about 20 percent of the Photoshop user's working pie. 50 percent is to coverup for a lazy photographer (retouching out wires on a shoot, people who wander on to a set, street signs, etc). Another  30 percent is technical stuff (basically everything in the newsstand needs this). Color and look of an image. When I worked in fashion I would have to match the shirt in a photo to the actual product. This can't be done without photoshop because they are selling a product, this is important. The program is called Photoshop for a reason, it's a modern darkroom. We need to adjust colors and contrast to fit a "look" the photographer or art director is after. None of this is real life. This is commercial art. They aren't shooting documentaries (there's a room in hell for people who retouch photos for news organizations).
Most importantly, we have to recognize what we see in these ads are not natural, they were set up and posed and lit and made up to look a certain way. This is a process, a craft.  Teach the children not to let anyone determine their self worth, especially not pictures in a magazine.
Does that make sense?

j

large

hey guys, here's a larger version of an older image, sometimes images look better bigger. click for the full 100 percent size.  I think you can understand why i did what i did while drawing by seeing the strokes, much better than if I tried to explain it with words.

maybe yes.

photos.

I love straight lines in my photographs but I hate drawing them. I love the curves in my drawing, a person did this. There's a beautiful mechanical touch to a tool of technology like a camera, capturing something unnatural like a straight line.

three camera debate.

1. Black Magic cinema camera.

2. Canon 5d mark 3

3. Digital Bolex d16

Here's the deal, I've been getting a little crazy into cameras lately. I've been making animations for the last year and a half (poor ones) but it's only increased my thirst to make live action movies, documentaries. I feel like it combines all the aspects of art that I love. A wonderful craft, I've always been a bit of a story teller and I find nothing to be more rewarding than seeing a reaction from an audience.
But now I find myself dissatisfied with my video equipment, hence me buying a new workstation and searching for a new camera. Previously I recorded with a canon 60d, a fine camera but not very flexible. If I were to stay with the Dslr's I would probably choose the 2. canon 5d mark3. however it's the most expensive one of the three. 1 and 3 are camcorders,  or motion picture cameras (whatever they call them) and they shoot in RAW. Shooting in raw is very important to me because I'm really an editor at heart. I shoot my photos raw, ofcourse, and I'd love to shoot my films in raw too. The flexibility means everything. the black magic cinema camera is the cheapest one of the bunch especially since it includes almost 2 grand in black magic software. But the 3 digital bolex does have my heart. ergonomically it owns the other two for video. But the canon 5d shoots photos, I work on these photos and they are AWESOME, This is a full framed camera and uses that sensor brilliantly, but for video, it does not shoot in raw.
so, which should i get?! ahhh