Nvidia 'Make Your Make Project’ - May 15th
Last Month I was approached by an advertising agency on behalf of the American computing giant, Nvidia. They wanted me to take part in a project they were setting up to help promote the incredible power behind their latest device, The Tegra Note 7. What followed was 2 weeks of self filming and a whole lot of drawing on a 7” tablet. My brief was to see what I could get out of the tablet, to push it as far as I could to demonstrate (and find out for myself) what it could do for a working illustrator.
One of the unusual parts of this project was that I had to film the process, both whilst creating the illustrations and also little interviews. It's safe to say I am a total rookie when it comes to filming so there were a lot of learning curves. Things like lighting, screen reflection, camera focus, background noise. One of the oddest things I had to get used to was watching myself back on the computer and hearing what I can only describe as some strange little girl dubbing over, what I thought was my 'manly' voice.
The three illustrations I was tasked to created were based around chapter 1 of the book I-Robot, by Issac Asimov. I found it incredibly easy to nail down my 3 ideas as the book is so beautifully written, in fact before I finished my 3 images I had read the entire book.
It has to be said, it did take me a while to get used to using the tablet. Minor things like zooming in became a bit of a bigger task than I would have liked. Also due to the size of the Note's processor, coupled with the size of the image I was asked to create it lead to the tablet crashing a few times, especially when coming to the end of each illustration. Overall though it was a pretty fun experience, I got used to how the tablet worked and was able to focus on what it had to offer like the incredible range of brushes the program has. As well as this the ‘Direct Stylus’ allowed me to vary every line I created due to its excellent pressure feature, it felt like I could draw really expressive, smooth lines which gave the overall image a really unique feel. You can see this best in the second image, each one of the buildings has its own character made up from all the little, sometimes wonky lines.
My aim was to create three very different images, this way I could push everything the tablet had to offer to the max. In the process I picked up a few things along the way that I shall be introducing into my work on a daily basis. One of the images that surprised me the most was my first image, I started it before the other two, but finished it after. As a fairly simple image I was worried that it might look unfinished or rushed, but the figure turned out really well, maybe not quite as characterful as normal but I think it works well with the busy background.
I would love to know what you think of my 7” creations! I think I might have caught the video bug, look out for more of these coming soon.