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Manually overlaying all the frames seems tedious. I wonder if it somehow helps make the edges and background more natural. I once made a simple motion detecting

Manually overlaying all the frames seems tedious. I wonder if it somehow helps make the edges and background more natural. I once made a simple motion detecting video recorder with OpenCV which generated the same type of images automatically. Overlaying only the moving objects on the static background.

GuiA 9y ago
Artists will often do things by hand that take them countless hours. Occasionally, a programmer will see that and exclaim “I could write a script to do that in an afternoon!” I have been both on the programmer side and the artist side. While the programmer is right, they often tend to overlook a few things: - a lot of artists don’t know how to program/use complex technology to automate things, but they want to make things so they just grit their teeth and do the shit work. It’s pretty humbling to see an artist spend thousands of hours doing something code could have done in 5 minutes, or come up with completely new ways to do things without the help of code/computers. I used to hang out around RISD students a fair amount, and many of those kids are more creative and resourceful than the stereotypical “hackers” (if I had to find promising startup founders, I’d place bets on RISD students over Harvard students any time) - doing things by hand lets you understand what you’re working with in a deep, intimate way, which often benefits the work. In this example, I’m sure the photographer developed a second sense for what photos to keep, which ones to discard, what factors led to a more interesting final result. If you were to write a program to automate all that, when you want to tweak the end result you’d have to spend hours tweaking various parameters of your software, writing edge case code, etc. This can be as time consuming as making the art itself, albeit more frustrating and with less sense of control - doing things by hand lets you stumble upon “happy little accidents”, which can dramatically improve your work for the better which would not happen if you wrote the code first and then made the art with it All that said, the way to go is to be educated enough to be dangerous in both technical and artistic skills, as that really lets you play with your process and automate the really tedious parts.
- chrisparton1991 9y ago
  Well said. Regardless of what side you're on, the journey is a reward in itself. The process of learning while creating is immensely satisfying, even if nobody sees the end result.

GuiA 9y ago

Artists will often do things by hand that take them countless hours. Occasionally, a programmer will see that and exclaim “I could write a script to do that in an afternoon!” I have been both on the programmer side and the artist side. While the programmer is right, they often tend to overlook a few things: - a lot of artists don’t know how to program/use complex technology to automate things, but they want to make things so they just grit their teeth and do the shit work. It’s pretty humbling to see an artist spend thousands of hours doing something code could have done in 5 minutes, or come up with completely new ways to do things without the help of code/computers. I used to hang out around RISD students a fair amount, and many of those kids are more creative and resourceful than the stereotypical “hackers” (if I had to find promising startup founders, I’d place bets on RISD students over Harvard students any time) - doing things by hand lets you understand what you’re working with in a deep, intimate way, which often benefits the work. In this example, I’m sure the photographer developed a second sense for what photos to keep, which ones to discard, what factors led to a more interesting final result. If you were to write a program to automate all that, when you want to tweak the end result you’d have to spend hours tweaking various parameters of your software, writing edge case code, etc. This can be as time consuming as making the art itself, albeit more frustrating and with less sense of control - doing things by hand lets you stumble upon “happy little accidents”, which can dramatically improve your work for the better which would not happen if you wrote the code first and then made the art with it All that said, the way to go is to be educated enough to be dangerous in both technical and artistic skills, as that really lets you play with your process and automate the really tedious parts.

chrisparton1991 9y ago
Well said. Regardless of what side you're on, the journey is a reward in itself. The process of learning while creating is immensely satisfying, even if nobody sees the end result.