Part 4: Research - The Future of Digital Illustration

 Thinking about digital art and traditional art and the distinction between the two, I believe that as time goes on and technology continues to advance the distinction will get harder to define in terms of how we view the illustration. You won't necessarily be able to tell the difference but the process for the artist will be what distinguishes it.

For example in animation which started with stop motion from hand drawn illustrations, created over and over again in very slight adjustments to make the character move, back then it was very obvious that the image was created with traditional mediums due to the textures and overall look. When drawn traditionally lines are harder to get perfect, there is a simplicity to it and of course in the days of Steam Boat Willie, animation was still quite new and the team at Disney did not have the equipment we see now to create detailed illustrated characters. This does not take away from the skill of the animators but is evidence of the nature of hand drawn work.

When you compare Steam Boat Willie with Disney's Frozen 2, you can see just how much animation has evolved with the use of computers. Backgrounds and scenery that once were painted by hand are now created to the most life like accuracy. So much so, hair or fur looks so real you can almost feel it through the screen. Water and ice look so realistic and each element has been skilfully built through the use of initial sketches right through to mapping movement with software to gain accuracy down to the last drop. Each movement has been timed and shaped by the computer.

It's not just animation that shows the advancement of technology so well but also drawing programs such as Procreate. Allowing us to draw on an iPad just like you would with a normal sketchbook and using a pen that looks and feels like a real pen. The brushes offered in the program are created to be life like, from the simple 6b pencil through to washes of gouache, acrylics, textures and more.

Artists are now making their own brush packs for Procreate and they are becoming more like the real thing all the time.

If you want a brush that looks like a wash of watercolour you can find it on this app. Of course there are some limitations in that they aren't 100% accurate yet but they are certainly very close to it.

As a painter myself, I have wanted to try bringing my painterly style into my digital work and this year tried out the Max Pack Gouache brushes which are amazingly accurate like real paint strokes. I was able to create that painterly look without using a drop of real paint.

I don't personally feel like there is a clear distinction between digital and non-digital illustrations these days. The advancement of technology right now is so accurate that you could easily be fooled into thinking that an illustration created digitally was not traditionally made.

This video is a good example:

However, it does depend on the intention of the artist, some digital illustrations are obviously digital and others like the illustration above are made to look like non-digital but are in fact created digitally.

I don't believe digital art will ever completely take over non-digital because both mediums are very different and have their own skill sets. Depending on the artist and what they enjoy working with will determine what is used to create the artwork. 

Despite being able to create art that looks traditionally made doesn't mean that traditional is dead. You can't create the feel of real paper or the messiness of oils on a computer. It may look like the real thing but to the artist it won't feel like it. Some artists like being messy and using traditional supplies and some prefer the portability and cleanness of digital. You can love both and I personally do.