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According to Ed Catmull surveying Pixar staff, there doesn't seem to be much more than a minor correlation between ability to visualise and artistic ability.
by vidarh 20d ago
According to Ed Catmull surveying Pixar staff, there doesn't seem to be much more than a minor correlation between ability to visualise and artistic ability.
- culopatin 20d agoI can personally watch a movie in my head, eyes open and I’m super not artistic but very engineer oriented. To the point that I realized I should be dropping software for mech eng
- fatnoah 19d agoI'm the same. As a student, I could vividly picture the page of the book containing the details of whatever problem I was working on. I have close to zero artistic and design ability, but am very strong in engineering and spatial reasoning.
- dr_hooo 19d agoI've wondered about this: if you can hold an image clearly in your mind - e.g. the Eifel tower - wouldn't you be able to reproduce it well on paper? I know that's not artistic ability in the creative sense, but still..
- vidarh 19d agoPeople often can't reproduce what is right in front of their open eyes well. Conversely, I have aphantasia but can draw reasonably well from memory (at one point well above average, but I'm about 30 years out of practice). There are people who can "trace" what they imagine, but it doesn't appear that being skilled at drawing is that closely linked to ability to visualise. An interesting thing, though, is that if I draw from memory my lines are more precise, while if I draw from something I can see, I will sketch out and refine. I think the two are quite different skill sets - drawing what you see often requires paying attention to spatial relationships and transferring those to the drawing to get proportions right etc.