The Democratizer

Hey everyone!

First of all, sorry for not posting anything in here! Less time spent online, and some lovely spring weather caused a bit of a timeout for me.

I have been making some art as well though, and I'm going to share it bit by bit in the upcoming weeks. We'll start with the very most complex one: a new part of my Electric Bazaar series called The Democratizer. Complex means: it's great for a little concept & ideation walkthrough :)

I'm sure most of you have seen the ChatGPT image generating trends a couple weeks ago. First, people turning everything into Ghibli-style images, followed by those starter pack action figure things. There's been so much talk about this, it all polarizes a lot, and I shared a little own view to it in a newsletter.

However with all the hate and black & white opinions going round the web, I think the best to do is comment on this through art. My art isn't really known for being political, or to deliver comments on society. The Electric Bazaar series does that in it's own entertaining way though, at least that's my thoughts behind it, so I sat down and made The Democratizer.

I've decided to make this post accessible to everyone. However if you're a Patron already or would like to support me, you can access a premium post with a high res version and an open PSD file here!

Concept & Planning

On the visual level, it was important to me to meet that special vibe of the series, but to not repeat too many shapes. Turns out there's not exactly an infinite number of ways to layout a vending machine..you need some kind of window or display, and some (tactile) interface elements.

The first three Electric Bazaar machines.

I roughly scribbled down some parts and ideas, while also taking notes on ideas for what the machine should actually include and do. Very soon I knew I wanted to put a focus on the energy consumption and waste of resources that is one concern connected to gen AI. So I split the machine in two parts: a front with a screen where a user orders their AI image. And a larger back part with lots of GPUs, fuel pipes, maybe even a small nuclear power plant.

The little versions you see in my sketchbook page don't represent all the layouts I tried, as I erased and overdrew a couple. The one on the right is already pretty close to the final one.

Carving out the detailed scene

For the further - more detailed - scribbling phase, I head over to Procreate. I started with some very simple boxes to find a nicely weighted design for the machine. Here's three quick tips/learnings if you scribble such a detailed isometric scene:

• Make use of the advantages that the isometric view gives you: you can easily push around elements, and change their size. So before settling on an idea, experiment and try to find the right balance and proportions for shapes within the canvas.

• Keep a little eye on the coloring already - and especially on the lighting! I noticed lately that I sometimes don't pay attention to where I want to put my light source during the scribbling phase. Which led to important parts of the artwork (the ones I want viewers to focus on/see first) being in shaded areas. So this is a tip, and a reminder to myself, to keep that in mind :)

• Mirror the canvas! It's really like a magic trick to me, especially with such complex arrangements. It helps to identify imbalances and perspective issues.

These were just some thoughts and experiences I had during the process, that I wanted to share with you. And this was the sketched result I went on with:

Planning for the animation

Now before I went into the outlining process - a very time consuming part for this piece - I took a moment to make some plans concerning the animation. This was crucial to do at this point, as some parts need to be drawn separated. Here's what I had in mind, and further below you see how important the planning was:

These three parts were the main animated elements I wanted to include, apart from some blinking lights and the screens. Especially for the rotor blades, just drawing outlines wouldn't have worked. Instead, everything behind those grilles had to be on separate layers, and the turning rotors between the front and the inner part. This is what the front layers look like, without the inner layers:

This results in some very big files with many layers, but it also allows me to create animations that create very special effects. :)

The smoke and the flying paper are both frame-by-frame animations I made in Procreate. The screens are kind of the same - I make them in separate files and later put everything together in After Effects.

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That's all my planning and concept process for this artwork/animation! Hope you found it insightful, and of course I hope you dig my little comment on those gen AI trends ;) - if you have any questions, drop them below!

And if you'd like to go even deeper, check out my PSD file here or enjoy the 4K version of the animation!

Cheers
Stefan