:: bradreid.com ::

TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and it is an annual conference that defines its mission as the spreading of ideas worth spreading. There are many intriguing films over at ted.com that I could have passed on to you here, but this being an art blog, I thought the story of illustrator Siegfried Woldhek’s search for Da Vinci’s self-portraiture would serve as a natural first time out.

BRADREID.COM remains in a holding pattern. Following the most costly software expenditure that he has ever made in his entire life, the artist is currently investigating the possibilities offered by 3D computer graphics, of which the above test pattern is in no way representative. (I’m talking about the same technology you see in the movies, folks.)

He hopes to have some little thing or other to show for it here very soon.

Please stay tuned.

May 28, 2008: I put quite a lot of time and effort into the CG thing, but truth be told not much came of it. CG is a lot to take on in one’s spare time. Oh well, I don’t have much else to do but brush myself off and try to get on with something else. Too damn bad I spent so much money though.

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One Dozen Flavours, (c) Brad Reid 2005 ^,1,2,3,4,5
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Think of this as the shorter, edited version of what was previously posted at this url, the most difficult post for me so far. Despite its apparent simplicity, One Dozen Flavours, presented ‘live’ as a work-in-progress here at bradreid.com, had an arduously prolonged development.
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What the problem came down to was a failure to follow my own advice. As someone working in the theatre might say, “if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage,” so too I told myself that everything that can be accomplished in pencil, should be accomplished in pencil. Yet, if you look to the earlier process links under the illustration you will find that my original sketches were indeed underdeveloped. (Certainly nothing fit for presentation to an art director.) Given such a poor start, it should not have been unexpected that throughout the inking and colouring process, when I should have been primarily concerned with embellishing and drawing out my illustration, I was instead preoccupied with making repairs.
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Much to my relief (and more than a little surprise), with its latest, small repairs, I now count One Dozen Flavours as a marginal-to-fair success, a satisfying step above the marginal failure that it was at stage five.
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Next time I really should follow my own advice.

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Watchmen (Issue 5, Page 8 detail), Dave Gibbons 1986
Colours by Brad Reid 2005
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Basically, ever since a lack of funds forced me out of my painting studio four years ago, I’ve been racking my brain for some new inlet – economically feasible inlet – back into the full-time creative life. Such was the problem that led me to two or three months this past year during which I did little else with my free time outside of figuring out the new digital methods of comic book colouring.
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I’m sure there was some regression involved here. From the third grade on until I began to favour painting at the age of 22, my whole ambition in life, filled with youthful naivety and a whole-hearted love for comic books, was that I should become the greatest comic book artist that the world had ever known. Yeesh. But still, I must admit, even now, that if some work with comic book colouring were to happen by my way, it would thrill me more than just a little bit.
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Gold Digger (Page 4 detail), Jean “Moebius” Giraud 1987
Colours by Brad Reid 2005
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I expect that the methods of digital colouring that I worked out during this period of learning will stick with me and continue to develop throughout the rest of my career. Repeat visitors to this site will see them implemented in upcoming work. A future post just might feature a tutorial on the basics of my approach to digital colouring. Suffice to say, any kind of advanced work is not as straightforward as Photoshop dabblers might guess – my initial efforts were devoid of any real sense of light. One should consider that Photoshop was never intended – at first anyway – as a generator of content, but rather as an editor.