MG Fest & Live Painting
A drawing sample from students in class
Friday night I trekked out to Washington, DC to join the Motion Graphics Festival. The workshops all sounded wonderful, but it especially piqued my interest when I read that VJ Shantell Martin was teaching a workshop in live-painting. On the practical side of what I do, my instinct was to take the After Effects class, but the VJ side of me couldn’t let go of the opportunity to hang with other visualists from around the world, so I signed up.
The class introduced the idea of using a wacom tablet mixed with painting software to drawing live and intuitively to music, while recording your session and being able to cut it up and re-use it as animation in performance or later for editing. I found this particularly useful because I never record what I’m doing directly from the screen. There is a program called I Show You which does this perfectly, creating a high res quicktime file.
While much of my personal VJ style has been to mix motion graphics & after effects work, with video files, I’m interested in seeing what direction the concepts I learned in class could take on for me. Definitely a lot of fun, and definitely a new tool to play with and explore.
Thanks to all of you who I met this weekend. I hope our paths cross again soon!