Niklass Janson, 2005

Foreword

When I mention rules and art in the same sentence I often get a knee-jerk reaction from people. Many people say that there are no rules in art. Maybe I got my own definition for the word, but I really think that there are rules and logic behind why a picture looks good or not.

Since I think there are definable rules, I also think that it's possible to build an art AI. I don't think there's anything 'spiritual' about art which only allows human to do it. I can't make any predictions about future AI, but currently we're nowhere near it. The development of AI (into I?) can progress very rapidly and end with a technological singularity, but that's another story.

Now, this tutorial is an attempt to break out and isolate the rules I consider every time I make art. It's important to note that my rules are very generic, not very consistent, and maybe even erratic. I've pretty much figured the stuff out myself so take it with a grain of salt.

The far most useful critique I can give developing artist is:

Practice. Make studies of everything with every media. Yes, that also means drawing stuff you hate. So what is this tutorial for if you all you need is practice? Well, I think there are a few things that it helps to know early on, but you won't see any improvement from just having read the tutorial. It will no doubt take you a while to digest everything I've written here, so you might need to come back to the text with a few months separation.

Terminology

I'll try to stay away from complicated words. Here's a few basic ones.

• Hue - Variations in color. Skin has hue variation, such as cheeks being rosy.
• Saturation - How much color there is. Neon colors are very saturated.
• Value - Brightness/darkness, as if it was greyscale.
• Read - You can see what it is.
• Radiosity, ambience - reflected light - When light is reflected of a surface and then hits something else. In a green room everything will get a green hue for example. Radiosity is a 3D rendering term for the whole phenomenon. I use reflected light for sources I can trace, and ambience when the light has bounced around an entire scene mixing with everything.
• Speculars - Dots of light that appear on glossy surfaces. Light generally is broken up by small bumps in surfaces, so it doesn't matter much where you stand, the surface will look almost the same from different directions.
• Flatten - Removing unnecessary texture and values.
• Form - The 3D shape of something.