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Interview with Theo Prins

Cross-eye 3D Viewing Instructions

Hi Theo, it's great to meet you and thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by us today. We usually start with an obvious one to get the ball rolling. Can you tell us a little about yourself? How did you end up in the digital art industry?

Since I was young environments have always intrigued me. I would craft little worlds of clay or cardboard, draw city layouts and create tunnel systems in thick blackberry bushes. I love the feeling of how objects relate to each other in space and I've always tried to re-create that feeling in my artwork.

Phases came and went as I was growing up. When I was about two, I started drawing strange airplanes. Then I moved on to dinosaurs, cities, and again back to airplanes. At one point in my early teens I decided to pursue a pilot license, which I financed by drawing airplane portraits for pilots at the local airport. This ended abruptly when I was introduced to a Wacom tablet and exposed to some concept art in high school. I stopped flying and started painting digitally. I ended up creating a Deviantart profile and posted frequently on the Sijun forums. Through this I got my first job at CCP games in Iceland in 2007.

I can tell by some of your paintings that you must be well-travelled. Which parts of the world would you say have influenced you the most and is there anywhere that you would like to go that you think will be inspirational?

The place I keep going back to is Asia. I've lived in small, quiet places by the water for most of my life, in the US and in Holland. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I wound up with a fascination for dirty, sprawling cities. So, over the past four years I've fed this habit in my art by traveling to those sorts of places. In 2008 I had the wonderful experience of living in Seoul, South Korea, working for Reloaded Studios. After that I spent some time in Vietnam and Thailand working on stereoscopic paintings. Now I've just come to the end of a year spent between India, Nepal and Hong Kong, working on the go with my laptop and graphics tablet. It's the lively density and visual chaos that I love about cities in Asia. The mix of Victorian colonial architecture and slums in Kolkata, India has been especially influential. There's always more to explore, but before I start thinking about the next destination I want to just sit down somewhere and focus purely on painting.

This is the question I have been looking forward to asking: where did you get the idea to create stereoscopic paintings and how do they work?

After taking many wobbly stereoscopic photos some years back, I became curious about the possibilities of mimicking stereoscopic depth in paintings. It all comes down to creating two slightly different perspectives of a scene and presenting these two perspectives to each eye separately so that they overlap in our vision. The process of making them involves cutting a painting into hundreds of pieces in Photoshop. I then duplicate the painting and set it next to the original. Either by crossing my eyes or using a viewer, I merge the two images in my visual field and shift each little piece in the duplicate painting to create a second slightly different perspective. Depending on which direction I move objects, left or right, they appear to move farther away or closer. Slowly I'll move each piece into place until the entire scene feels solid. It feels a lot like sculpting, actually. There's definitely the feeling that I'm manipulating something physical in 3D space.

On a side note, it's also fun to exaggerate the distance between the two perspectives, simply by shifting each piece farther. This creates the illusion of a miniature world, or that we, as viewers, have eyes very far apart like some giant creature.

I highly recommend shooting two photos a few seconds apart from an airplane. Viewing the two photos as a stereoscopic pair will create this miniature world effect because the plane has moved a substantial distance by the time one snaps the second photo.

Can you tell us a little about the process you use to create an image? And how does this need to change if you are creating a stereoscopic painting?

I start my paintings in a variety of ways. Sometimes an image will flash to mind, say when I'm walking around town. It usually causes me to drop whatever I'm doing and race to my computer or pull out my sketchpad to jot down the idea before it drifts away. Other times I'll start without any clear ideas, just an inspiration to paint. In this case I'll throw colors, shapes and textures on the canvas until I suddenly see a composition. It's a very intuitive process. I'm always open to changes in direction while I'm painting. Typically, the initial stages of a painting just act as base for ideas that might come along later.

What I notice is that keeping a painting loose allows me to more vividly experience the mood of an image. When viewing a loose painting my mind's eye is more active, imagining details, textures and potential color relationships here and there. These always serve as clues for what to bring into the painting next. I'll carefully carry on like this for awhile until I've brought the image to a higher level of detail without undermining the spirit of the original sketch. At a certain point I stop seeing things I want to change or add to the painting. That's when I call it finished. However, there's always a chance that I'll peak at the painting a week later and continue working on it. The process is ongoing.

While any image can be converted to 3D, it doesn't necessarily improve the image. 3D has to be taken into account from the beginning of the image-making process to take advantage of what stereoscopic depth has to offer. For instance, there can be a feeling of emptiness in the 3D space when I convert just any 2D composition. Many times when I've taken my older paintings and converted them to stereo, it's awkward to have so much depth in between certain objects. While there may have been a sense of fullness in the original 2D version, now it feels empty, like something is missing in the in between space. As a result I bring in lots more objects to fill the space. This would make an ordinary 2D painting feel cluttered and messy, but it feels right in 3D and allows me to craft a much more intricate world. Working with stereoscopic depth opens up a new realm of possibilities with how to arrange and layer objects to create a sense of space. That's what I'm having a fun time experimenting with.

Cross-eye 3D Viewing Instructions

1. Slowly cross your eyes over the pair of images until a third image appears in the middle. If you see four images
you've crossed them too far.
2. The middle image may appear out of focus at first.
3. Relax your gaze without uncrossing your eyes. The middle image will pop into 3D.

As a freelance concept artist you must have worked on various different projects. What would you say has been your favorite project to date? And are there any projects you would like to work on in the future?

In general I've been most excited by the projects that got me to experiment with ideas and subject matters that I didn't know I would enjoy. Recently I worked on some aerial visualizations for a theme park, which definitely pushed the boundaries of my comfort zone. It was also a great opportunity to work on a project that will actually be physically built, instead of just viewed or navigated on a screen. Working within the boundaries of physical limitations just brought a whole new mindset into the process of creating the images.

So, for the future I want to stay as open as I can with what projects I take on. I don't know what's out there and what I'll even enjoy until I'm actually working on it. I'm open to surprises and I like putting myself in challenging situations. That's the way to discover new directions and keep expanding. It's easy to get too comfortable otherwise.

I have always thought that where you live and the environment that surrounds you will influence your art and that is certainly clear in your case. But beyond that, would you say that there is a specific artist or style of art that has influenced you?

Since I was very young I've always loved James Gurney's Dinotopia books. His work was a big inspiration to me when I first started using oil paints in my early teens. During my pilot phase I was looking at a lot of aviation art. Artists like Robert Taylor and Nicolas Trudgian. When I first started working digitally I was definitely influenced by the whole speed painting movement and Craig Mullins's work especially. Other sources of inspiration have been National Geographic magazine, Moebius, Rien Poortfliet, and the gemstones among the ever-expanding collection of art and photography on the internet.

Something that I have realized over a period of time is that a lot of artists we interview started down one career path and later turned their back on it to take up a career in digital art. Is there any advice that you would give to someone who was thinking of taking that step? And do you ever think about where you would be now if you had pursued a career as a pilot?

Working digitally has been great for me. However, I sometimes feel trapped on the computer. As an artist, so many of my basic necessities, like tools and sources and inspiration, can be found on the computer that there's a tendency to depend on it
alone for these things. On the other hand, working digitally has freed me up tremendously. As a freelance artist I can work from anywhere on the globe, travel, and support myself at the same time. That's something I'm trying to take advantage of as much as I can. For instance, I recently worked on a big freelance project while I took a container ship across the Pacific. That was very fun. So, digital art has opened a lot of doors, but if there's any advice I have it's just to keep a balanced lifestyle and not get entirely absorbed by the computer. Remember your body and get out and about in the world!

A career as a pilot was a dream of mine before I realized art was important to me. I'd spent most of my childhood drawing and painting. As a result, I took it completely for granted. I'd never considered becoming an artist. I was more interested in the subjects I was drawing, like airplanes. I don't think I would have gotten very far as a pilot before coming around to the realization that in "real life" it wouldn't have worked for me. I'm very glad that I learned the lesson at age 16 and not 23.

I understand there was an exhibition in America that displayed a lot of your stereoscopic paintings. How did that come about? Do you think that having a traditional exhibition of digital art improves people's general impression of the subject and raises its profile?

Yes, I had an exhibition in 2010 at the 3D Center of Art and Photography in Portland, Oregon, USA. It's a cozy museum and gallery showcasing antique and contemporary stereoscopic imagery. I made good friends with someone in South Korea who was coincidentally very much into everything stereoscopic. He pointed me towards the 3D Center as an outlet for stereoscopic art.

I've had a few digital art shows over the years and people have been very supportive and curious about the medium. So, from my experience, I'd say having a traditional show has improved at least someone's impression. Digital art is just new, and people I've spoken to often times don't know it's possible to "draw" and "paint" on the computer.

One thing that I really enjoy when I am looking through your portfolio is your ability to come up with unique ideas. Your overall style of painting is really quite different and recognizable, and the stereoscopic paintings are obviously unique. How important do you think it is to stand out and be able to come up with original ideas and styles?

In my personal artwork, uniqueness in itself isn't my goal. I just want to paint what inspires me. That's what makes me happy. Occasionally something unique might come out of this, but I think uniqueness is hard to plan. It just comes along every once in awhile for certain people, or during certain stages of their artistic development.

I often find that although artists can be very quiet and humble about their ambitions, they are, in general, very ambitious. You seem to have achieved a lot in a short space of time, so what would you say is your greatest achievement to date and do you have any goals, artistic or otherwise?

The ongoing challenge is to keep painting. Perhaps I'll have a sense of achievement years down the road if I stick with it. In general there are tons of things I still want to learn. So far, I'm just very happy to have kept drawing and painting since childhood. As for specific goals, every time I make a painting it feels like I'm adding a piece to a mysterious project I'm working towards, but can't yet clearly see. My goal is keep putting the puzzle pieces together until it all suddenly clicks. Hopefully this will keep me occupied for some years.

Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by us. You're a fascinating artist and the team and I have really enjoyed looking at your stereoscopic paintings. I hope to see a lot more from you in the future.

You're welcome. I've known about 3DTotal for a long time, so I'm happy to have taken part. Thank you!

Cross-eye 3D Viewing Instructions

1. Slowly cross your eyes over the pair of images until a third image appears in the middle. If you see four images
you've crossed them too far.
2. The middle image may appear out of focus at first.
3. Relax your gaze without uncrossing your eyes. The middle image will pop into 3D.

To see more by Theo Prins, check out Digital Painting Techniques: Volume 5
Digital Art Masters: Volume 7
and Prime - The Definitive Digital Art Collection

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