Aaron Campbell (Digital Media)

Digital media covers a wide array of styles and techniques, which makes it both incredibly interesting and diverse, but also sometimes confusing to decipher or understand.  Most of the artists I have looked at so far are heavily focused on the commercial aspects of their work.  Work that has been requested or designed exclusively to fit a particular commercial purpose.  I have never enjoyed looking at art from a commercial perspective.  My approach has always been to try and create interesting art, and then look for ways to commercialise it.  This most likely comes from my background trying to make comics and such.  Ultimately, for me, the best and purest examples of digital art come from digital illustrations.

As a result of this, it was important that I look in depth at (at least) one digital illustrator (which did not have an immediately evident commercial use).  Aaron Campbell is a Canadian artist who I have been aware of for some time.  His work has always caught my eye.  Though some of his work has been used commercially (and some even created for a solely commercial purpose), the majority of his imagery is created out of his own desire to create art.  His images set beautiful scenes and suggest a wonderful and whimsical narrative.  They have subtle surrealism hints about them, subtle enough you might not notice at first glance.  The images feel familiar yet alien, beautiful yet eerie.

Looking solely at his designs and form, Campbell warps shapes and creates an almost cartoony look to his subjects.  Simple objects are thickened and rounded and turned into caricatures of themselves.  But not excessively.  Nothing is warped beyond easy recognition.  The two most striking aspects of this can be seen in the above image.  The fence post which is thickened and warped into a over simplified shape.  And the pick up truck, which is covered in exaggerated little details.  The oval shape of the wheels, the jarring shape of the exhaust, the over-sized wing mirrors.  Campbell has clearly been inspired by a variety of cartoons, most likely starting with old Disney and Tom & Jerry cartoons.  This sort of imagery always feels nostalgic to me, likely for these reasons.

Earlier I mentioned surrealism and how Campbell uses it in a subtle barely noticeable way.  He most commonly creates whimsical shapes and patterns in his nature elements.  Here we can see how he's created an almost liquid like effect with the clouds, droplets of cloud coming away with the wind.  It's such a subtle suggestion that some people don't even notice it.  The motion feels (literally) fluid and organic, and fits the scene perfectly.

One of the most striking things about Campbell's work is the atmosphere he's able to create within his images.  Every one of them (on varying levels) has a relate-able and details sense of atmosphere.  His use of piercing light, bright like through trees (or the headlamps as shown above) and other sources, the vibrant and striking colour choice.  All of them come together to create a real sense of atmosphere.  He even uses subtle 'camera' techniques to help make his work feel more real.  What I mean by this is that he intentionally creates faults in the way his images are perceived in order to replicate photography flaws.  This in turn makes the image seem more real, as our perception of it is one we consider more real and natural.  The above image does this by having the pick up truck be out of focus, as a real world camera could not focus on the truck and the garage at the same time.

Shadow and light play a big part in the atmosphere that Campbell creates.  These images show heavy shadow contrasting with bright piercing light, which really capture a sense of sunrise or sunset.  This cartoonish rural village that he's created seems all the more real as a result.  The shine on the water and the selective reflections add to the depth and complexity of his images.

Campbell's colour choice is another area worth noting.  Depending on his scene and time of day, he uses colours to help evoke his sense of atmosphere.  Oranges and blues can often be seen to create this sense of morning, whilst purple and pinks are used to suggest night and twilight settings.  His colours are bright and over saturated, in-keeping with his cartoonish inspirations and designs.  Collectively, all of these aspects come together really well to create a vibrant image that is appealing to look at and (certainly in my case) really tugs at our sense of nostalgia.

One of Campbell's earlier projects was to work directly with Adobe to show what Photoshop was capable of.  The beauty of a project like this, is that he was unlimited in what he chose to create (something that is often not the case with commercial work).  To help illustrate the abilities of Photoshop (and in turn the power of digital illustrative software), Campbell's image was released at various stages of completion.  Above we see the initial sketch; which (I can tell from my own experiences) has been drawn digitally, most likely using a tablet of some kind.  It demonstrates how simple the starting point is, and what elements from the image came straight from Campbell's own drawing ability.  This sketching phase is also why I consider Campbell to be more of an illustrator and less of a designer (unlike Alice Potter who I also talked about).

The next image jumps multiple stages.  To put it simply, the sketch has been coloured and simply shaded.  The gradient tool has been used to create more general shading across flat shapes, as well as the difference in light in the sky and clouds.  In addition, he's used hard (almost cel-like) shading, to give the clouds and the ground (underneath these islands) more texture, depth and shape.

The above is the final image.  This version has been treated to a great deal of treatment and changes.  The original sketch is still apparent though.  Working an image to this standard involves a number of techniques, most of which I am clueless. about.  Campbell has posted some time-lapses of his work on some websites, and watching them can provide a great deal of insight.

Ultimately, I really love Campbell's art, and unlike most other artists I've looked at, I can best sum up his work as 'Art that happens to have been created digitally', something which immediately comes to my mind when I think of digital media and digital art.