Category: Artists

HK Illustration & Creative Show 2024 Spring

15/5/2024

We took part in the Hong Kong Illustration and Creative Show 2024 Spring, giving some talk or demonstrattion at the CGLive booth. During his talk, our Dr. Nelson Chu showed a little sneak peak of what he's working on for simulating Western watercolor.

We are lucky to have Sensei Shuen to give a demonstration at the booth. You can learn a lot from her on ink painting and the use of Expresii:

This piece "劔舞乾坤" (sword dance) is spirited. The subject's pose, the composition, the linework, the contrast all contributed to the energetic look of it. Find out how it's done in the above video!

And here's the calligraphy our Dr. Nelson Chu did as inscription for the painting:

The all new WACOM Movink was on pre-oder at the show. It's among the few places where you can try the new hardware first hand. Pretty good price at HKD5889 there (compared to the offcial price in another region next to Hong Kong)! It's really thin and light.

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Hong Kong Illstration and Creative Show June 2023

4/7/2023

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We have invited Sensei Shuen to demo ink painting at the Hong Kong Illustration and Creative Show on 26 June 2023. Listen to Sensei Shuen (in Cantonese, with English subtitle) as she paints, with tips in using Expresii and WACOM hardware:

Thanks for visiting! Hopefully more people are aware of our invention and effort in digital painting development.

The spec of Windows machine used for the demo:

Basically, you need a good GPU (graphics card) to run Expresii smoothly. e.g. an nvidia 1060 with 6GB vRAM is good for running Expresii smoothly on a 4K monitor. If you're only using a full-HD monitor, you can go by with modern integrated GPU like Intel Iris Xe. For example, the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (i7) or 8 (i5) can already run Expresii smoothly on their own 2.5k monitor.

We thank CGLive and Wacom Hong Kong for their support!

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Eastern Calligraphy loved in Germany

22/6/2023

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I was told that recently Japanese calligraphy, or just Japanese culture in general, is much appreciated in Germany and Wacom has been showing Expresii for calligraphy in their German Experience Center in the past few months in events like "Night of Museums", or "Japan Day":

Wacom official artist Miki Amano is also showing the public the use of Expresii with Wacom tablets for digital calligraphy, with sample works including their official tagline written in Chinese.

What's the deal with Eastern Calligraphy?

In China, calligraphy has been the basic training for painting - it lets the artist acquire the dexterity for controlling the brush. Also, calligraphy is inherently an abstract art form. Arguably, cursive calligraphy is considered the highest form of art in China. No wonder why Pablo Picasso said "Had I Been Born Chinese, I Would Have Been A Calligrapher, Not A Painter."

筆有千秋業 - the way of the brush is passed down from generation to generation. And it still develops.

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Shuen Leung tries out Surface Studio & Book 2

18/4/2018

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Hong Kong-based artist Shuen Leung tries out Microsoft Surface Studio and Surface Book 2:

Shuen does artwork in both traditional and digital media. She specially likes Expresii for its ability to undo. "Expresii 是可以undo 的水墨!" (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Shuen in front of her painting 離珠 that gets featured in Microsoft's marketing

She likes the Surface Studio for its gorgeous screen. The screen is so big and sturdy that she can even lean on it to paint.

"屏幕好大手可以枕上去畫好舒服~
解析度很高看得好爽，顏色也好看~"

What about the Surface Pen?

The Surface Pen's weight is just right and feels good in hand. Hope pen tilt will be support on the Studio in the future.
Surface Pen 重心、重量都剛好，手握感是不錯的，
但在 Studio 上未支持側鋒感應，希望日後加入

We too look forward to the Studio supporting pen tilt sensing. ୧༼✿ ͡◕ д ◕͡ ༽୨

Shuen is currently an art teacher and serves as a Background Supervisor in an animation studio in Hong Kong. When not painting, she enjoys practicing Kung-Fu with her fellow Kung-Fu practitioners.

Check out her website and Facebook page for works, art tips and more.

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Inktober & Giveaway!

14/10/2017

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We are half way through October now and have you started your Inktober yet? This year, Angela Wong a.k.a. GingerCatSneeze on Tumblr. has been using Expresii to do her Inktober (re-posted with permission):

If you're on Tumblr, don't miss the chance to win a license for Expresii and her Inktober Zine! Head over to GingerCatSneeze's Tumblr :

The giveaway closes on 1 Nov 2017 at 23:59 (UTC). All you need to do is the reblog or like that Tumblr post to enter!

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Why Go Digital? 電腦繪畫有什麼好處？

7/7/2016

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Digital Work printed on Chinese xuan paper 數位畫打印在宣紙上

I was recently asked why one would want to paint digitally. The two most common reasons are:

Convenience (can undo, save copies at different stages, no setup and cleanup time, already in digital format)
Cost reduction (no worry for wasting art materials)

And what are the cons of digital painting? Long time ago, I discussed with Wucius Wong on this. Wong suggested two main concerns:

Lack of physicality
No tactile feeling of using a brush on paper

For 1, printing the artwork on real paper somehow solves the issue. For 2, I would leave it to hardware makers.

As a software developer, there's still things we can do. We'll discuss digital painting tech innovation in our next blog entry.

還有就是，畫家如果靠賣畫為生，傳統畫較易賣高價。相反數位（digital）畫，大家覺得打印出來的沒那麼有價值。其實打印出來的東西也可以賣高價，如罕有的郵票。還有傳統版畫，也是重複印出來，但通常限量，畫家每幅記號並簽名。大家大不了就把你的電腦畫用最高檔的（抵擋的放久了會褪色 >x<）墨水打印出來並簽名，然後把原檔刪了就可以'物以罕為貴’了。

Ease of change - good or bad thing? 容易修改熟好熟壞？

Wucius Wong & Nelson Chu. Photo by Shuen Leung

Wucius Wong is one of the few senior (Chinese) ink painters who does make use of computer technology. He exclaimed to Nelson - it is too easy to make changes in your digital art!

王無邪 (Wucius Wong) 是少數很關心我們Expresii 開發的傳統畫家，他自己也很早就有用電腦輔助作畫。他說我們用Expresii作畫，太容易修改了！

It's true that in traditional ink painting, it's much harder to make afterthought changes and thus masterpieces don't come by easily. But when it is easy to make changes, one might be trapped to spend too much time keep making changes.

傳統繪畫難修改，所以精品難求。但就純粹作畫者來說，容易修改應該是一個優點。但這‘優點’有時就帶來更多‘麻煩’ -- 就是改來改去，一幅畫拖太長。

有趣的是Wucius 也講過^ Interestingly Wucius once said^:

When the painting is still there, there's always a temptation to adding a line or a dot to it. I think all artists would do the same thing naturally.

大家也有改來改去的煩惱嗎？以下我也是因為電腦畫太容易修改，所以改來改去。老人耳前的髮絲，都很多考量。畫粗一點好像較好表達老人‘幹活’的情況，畫細一點優美點但會不會給人太年輕的感覺？

If you're a digital painter, do you find yourself keeping changing little details in your art pieces? For me, for instance, I kept changing details on the hairs in from of the ear, trying to find a look that better represent this old lady:

有人說一幅畫磨太久，不如把時間花在下一幅。Some say you should spend time on your next piece rather than lingering on your current one. Anyway, here's the Old Lady 'final' version：

Check out a video showing the process of creation:

^ In video 'Mountain in the Mind', Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1986.

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‘Ashitaka’ in ink painting style 以水墨風重畫宮崎駿作品

18/3/2015

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Ink Painting Style 水墨風

Last year, we had a chance to see the original layout designs of Studio Ghibli. The one layout that I liked the most is the one shown on the right, with Ashitaka riding Yakkul in an arrow shooting post. This is from the 1997 anime Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibi's first movie to use computers. Eighteen years has passed, but the story is still very relevant today and even the animation itself doesn't feel out-dated.

'Ashitaka' redrawn in Expresii

水墨風で描きたくなったので模写してみました。
We decided to redraw this layout in ink painting style with Expresii. Admittedly, it's hard to draw with a real Chinese brush. The good thing about digital ink painting with Expresii is that you can always go back and redo the strokes until you get them the way you like. Using the digital brush in eraser mode also helps to create shapes that are not easy to get using a brush in real life.
毛筆水墨是難控制的。如果搬到電腦裡，側可以重複筆劃而不傷宣紙畫面，且可以用把筆換到 ‘橡皮’ 模式，以畫出用真筆難以做出的造型呢。
The process was recorded with Nvidia's Shadow Play on a GT750Ti graphics card:

Escalator decorated with Ghibli's layout design

In Ghibli's animation, fur and hair are depicted with the usual 'outline-and-fill' (單線平塗) method. In Expresii, we of course would like to use brush painting's language to depict the objects where appropriate. We use 'scratchiness' (飛白) to depict the hairy nature of Yakkul's fur. We use organic flow patterns to fill that area. Scratchiness is also useful for rendering the straw cape.

Visual Language 表現手法

What holds for the Future?

It's good to hear news about the new painting app Mischief, which is praised for its infinite canvas and infinite zoom. Expresii doesn't have infinite zoom, but is capable of exporting to a very large bitmap (16k pixels max in dimension, depending on available memory). This addresses the low-res issue commonly found in today's "nature media" painting apps. In fact, when we show zoomed-in views of our Expresii artwork to users of existing digital graphics tools, they often asked "wow, is it vector graphics?". Below are more closeups for you to check out. If you would like to see a large output (8k x 10k) in one piece, you can download it from here.

We value true innovations in digital painting technology. As long as there's something left to be desired, we will work our butts off to bridge the gap! Your feedback is important to us, so please let us know what you think!

And, finally, watch in these videos how such an animation was produced with attention to great details at Studio Ghibli :

Left: Straw depicted in cel animation. Right: In digital Chinese brush & ink.

Left: Fur depicted in cel animation. Right: in digital Chinese brush & ink.

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Tracing Demo 描圖示範

5/12/2014

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We love Junggi Kim's work so much that once we saw an interesting drawing of his labelled 'Brush pen on paper' in it from his Facebook page, we thought, can we redraw this with our virtual brush and get a nice "brush pen" quality digitally? The result is shown in the following video:

Expresii Lite's Overlay function allows you to load an image and trace over it. Watch the above video and see how organic the brush strokes are. It's really a dream come true for digital artists!

The following is the final digital image we made. However, it's scaled down so, again, watch the above video in full HD to appreciate the organic quality please!!!

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HK Illustration & Creative Show 2024 Spring

Hong Kong Illstration and Creative Show June 2023

Eastern Calligraphy loved in Germany

What's the deal with Eastern Calligraphy?

Shuen Leung tries out Surface Studio & Book 2

Inktober & Giveaway!

Why Go Digital? 電腦繪畫有什麼好處？

Ease of change - good or bad thing? 容易修改熟好熟壞？

‘Ashitaka’ in ink painting style 以水墨風重畫宮崎駿作品

Ink Painting Style 水墨風

Visual Language 表現手法

What holds for the Future?

Tracing Demo 描圖示範

Expresii 寫意

Previous Posts
以前的文章

Categories 分類

What's the deal with Eastern Calligraphy?

Ease of change - good or bad thing? 容易修改熟好熟壞？

Ink Painting Style 水墨風

Visual Language 表現手法

What holds for the Future?

Expresii 寫意

Previous Posts 以前的文章

Categories 分類

Previous Posts
以前的文章