Dr. Woohoo!

It’s hard to believe but it’s time for Flash on the Beach! I’m bringing my daughter this time, so I will only be at the conference for the day of my presentation because she doesn’t want to miss too much school. ;) 

I present on Monday at 11:30 am with a focus on transforming ideas-to-pixels-to-atoms. Following the flow of ideas-to-pixels and how my artwork comes to life on the screen, I will discuss two new Adobe tools that will make driving the CS3 & CS4 Creative Suites (CS) dramatically easier than previous methods. I will also explore automating Maya via code and integrating it with the CS apps. I’ll wrap things up with how-tos on different options for converting your pixels-to-atoms: using innovative printing techniques that allow you to print to any substrate from your inkjet printer, laser cutting/etching and more. 

Hope to see you there. 

Update: As a side note, for my early experiments driving the CS apps via code, I used ExtendScript ToolKit (ESTK) – as simple ExtendScripts (ES) to begin with and then with embedded swfs that could communicate through the ES. When Apple’s Leopard was released, Apple changed how the windows, including the swf palettes, redraw and this made swf palettes unusable in CS3 apps. Luckily, Adobe and specifically Michael Daumling and Bernd Paradies were already working on the follow-up to ESTK. With the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, it made perfect sense to combine some of the great technologies and out of that came Adobe SwitchBoard and PatchPanel. Both are SWC libraries for Flex Builder, the former allows an AIR app to communicate to the target CS app, the latter enables a swf palette/panel to communicate to the host CS app. SwitchBoard is available here and PatchPanel will be released at some point in the not-to-distant future.

I still recommend playing with ESTK because it’s easy to get up and running because the code feels like JavaScript and ActionScript 1 and it’s free if you have any CS3 app installed. Get to know the DOM (eg., in ESTK Help > Adobe Photoshop CS3 Object Library) of the CS app you’re interested in developing for and how to set/get different values, like the name of a layer.

Using ESTK is a simple stepping stone to developing AIR apps with Flex Builder and SwitchBoard – which brings the code up-to-date with current standards, such as strict data types, code hinting, etc. For all of the demos I did that involved AIR apps, I used Flex Builder and SwitchBoard exclusively, including the color apps for In The Mod. 

Hope this helps.

Dandelion v2
archival inks
aquarelle watercolor paper 
deckle edges 
16 x 10” (40.64 x 25.4 cm)
$350 (US Dollars)

Dandelion v3
archival inks
aquarelle watercolor paper
deckle edges
16 x 10” (40.64 x 25.4 cm)
$350 (US Dollars)

What happens when Aviary Peacock + Adobe AIR + Painter Scripts + Watercolor Paper + Deckle Edges + Precoating + Rubber Stamps + Dr. Woohoo are mixed?

Deckle Edges
To my surprise, deckle edges on paper are extremely easy to create. All you need are: watercolor paper, glass of water, a sponge brush, exacto knife and a metal straight-edged ruler. I start by marking where I want to cut the paper. On my Epson, the maximum size is 13 x X-amount, so I’ll cut the paper about 1/2 - 1″ shorter on the width and my desired height of each sheet so that the deckle will still fit within the maximize width and height of the printer. Once the paper is marked, I paint a brushstroke of water over the line and let that soak in for a few seconds. I then place the metal straight-edged ruler over the pencil line and rip the paper in small sections at a time.

There are two tricks here: pull the border of the paper that is on the outside and not the main body of the paper; and adjust the amount of my index finger is under the paper in order to control the amount of deckle for each pull. For the former, if I pulled on the body of the paper and not the border, I tend to get a straight-edge rip and the paper tends to rotate enough to ruin a straight rip. For the latter, the more my index finger is under the paper, the more it will rip inward, and vice-versa for having the deckle rip outward.

Precoat
I was precoating watercolor paper that I picked up at a local art store so that I could run it through my Epson R2400 printer and the inks would stay vibrant and not wash out and I discovered something wonderful during the process. When I brushed on the white matte precoat from Inkaide and then printed on top of it… the texture of the watercolor paper and my brushstrokes were still visible underneath the ink. The latter was a wonderful and unexpected side-effect – and highlighted one of the characteristics of printing with manufactured precoated substrates that I am not fond of – that missing dimension of depth. When I was in Zürich, I saw a Jackson Pollock painting from the side and the levels of paint on that canvas was just as exciting to see as it was from the front perspective – and here it was again.

So the question was – how can I incorporate this into a print? I knew I wanted to do something subtle and decided on an ornate type of pattern. I’m on the beta for Peacock – Pattern Maker that Quasimondo is working on for Aviary. Woohoo!

So I decided to generate a pattern in Peacock, then I exported and brought that PNG into Photoshop. In Photoshop, I copied the image into a new channel, loaded that as a selection, converted that selection to a new work path (in the Path Panel) and exported that path to Illustrator (AI) (File > Export > Paths to Illustrator). I then opened that file in AI, touched up the paths a bit and then emailed that file to a local stamp maker. Here’s where it gets good.

Within two days, the rubber stamp was ready. On my next print, after I applied the second precoat on the paper, I pressed the rubber stamp down on the paper and left an indented pattern. I repeated this step until all of the paper had an impression of the pattern on it. There’s easier ways to do this I’m sure, but for the first pass, I love the results.

I apply two precoats to the substrate because the first precoat tends to leave some gaps and any gaps in the precoat may lead to ink not sticking to the surface in that location. I wait between the 1st, 2nd precoat and the actual printing about 8 hours in-between for each precoat to dry thoroughly. In the image above to the right, I’m hang drying the procoated paper in the top row in order to avoid the curling up of the paper. If I didn’t, I would have a difficult time feeding it into the front slot of the printer.

In this image, I placed the print on the window so that it is illuminated from behind to give you an idea of what the pattern looks like in the print.

This is the final result of the print with deckle edges, and a very subtle imprint of the pattern. The design is a style I like to call Organic Color Visualization and was generated from a color palette that was captured with the application In The Mod: Your Images Edition and a custom AIR application that I created that takes that color analytic data and generates a painting script that I run in Painter.

This unique print (1 of 1) is available for $750 (US dollars)  here.

Color Visualizations: Exploring the Circle, vol 02 by Dr. Woohoo!
New Mexico’s finest – In search of the perfect color palette, Dr. Woohoo’s artwork explores the visualization of colors. Woohoo uses software he developed to generate his artwork by extracting millions of color pixels in each image, analyzing and organizing the color data and then building the composition with absolute precision. Embracing the past, Woohoo uses archival pigment inks when printing the 16 x 10″ (40.64 x 25.4 cm) single editions onto art-, rice- and japanese papers using a variety of techniques including underprinting, overprinting and gelatin transfers onto frescos. The book includes over 100 new pieces, a discussion on color between Dr. Woohoo and Darius A Monsef IV, founder of COLOURlovers, and a secret web address that enables you to enter a private gallery that displays the final prints, special editions, as well as the opportunity to purchase the single editions.

10 x 8 in. (25×20 centimeters), 114 pages
Softcover: $44.95
Hardcover, Dust Jacket: $62.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap: $66.95

The first 50 buyers who purchase the book directly from me will receive a limited-edition signed print. To get the free signed print 1) send me an email 2) with your mailing address and 3) your shipping preference to sales @ drwoohoo.com and I will send you the PayPal invoice via email with the included shipping charges. In addition to PayPal payments, major credit cards are accepted.

If you would rather bypass the limited-edition signed print and like to purchase the book now, you can do so here.

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Collaboration with the Ronin. Showing the before & after process of the color analysis and visualization.

iced honey chai

a moment of serene perfection

aloof tranquility

captivatingly enraptured

Transforming ideas to pixels to atoms
The only way to allow my artistic vision to take form was to create applications and scripts that could intelligently analyze colors, influence brush strokes by music and other data streams, control the behaviors and the form of the paint influencing the paint from natural dynamics like gravity and wind and shape-shifting the form into unexpected shapes like glass, and then paint it onto the surface or texture map of the digital 3d models.

For the final transition from pixels-to-atoms, the form needed to embrace properties that allowed me to print it in a 2d plane on canvas or laser-cut/etched on acrylic, as well as cnc-milled into a 3d physical model that I could use for casting that would eventually become the glass, ceramic and metal sculptures.

Woohoo’s presentation will explore the process and tools of tranforming ideas-to-pixels-to-atoms as well as the end results. The session is scheduled for September 29th, 11:30am.

Only a few tickets are left and ticket sales will close on Friday, September 5 – you can purchase them here.