Chapter 1 Response

            Since the dawning of human existence, art has always played an important role. From communication, to story-telling, to beauty, art remains alive and well in our culture. In the 1960’s, a spark of a new age of art swept through a computer screen. A simple digital image was made on a computer screen, and with it came a wave of a new art form. Now, pictures can be painted on a screen. Ideas can look like reality with 3d animation, photography can be manipulated into whole other settings. Great development has been made with the leap into digital art in our society, but there are times when its pros slide into cons.

            First, lets take a positive look on what digital art has done for us. First, the creation of 3D characters using programs like Maya. With this, we have brought movies to a much more believable standard, like “Avatar”, “Transformers”, and the reanimated “King Kong”. Even cartoons have taken use of it, producing movies like “How To Train Your Dragon”, and “Toy Story”, taking the craft to a whole new level. Digital art as become a sweeping sensation too. All of the effects, minus the mess and the expensive tools. Patterns and stamping tools can make copying a breeze. The only drawback is that it can only live in a screen, the scrapes of paint dabbled on a traditional canvas bare on a digital print.  Photography has also been affected for the better. Now, effects like different colored objects, adding in characters, even morphing objects together, is all possible. Our ideas can come to life in ways we thought were only for the most realistic painters. Digital art is now showcased on art websites, making finding artists for jobs easier, and getting critiques from people around the world. Digital art has taken us to so many levels in art, in a matter of decades.

            But with this revolution, comes many drawbacks as well. Photography, pictures, paintings that had so many hours put into them, can now be “stolen” online. With a picture and a description, an art thief can take your work and claim it as their own. In a worst case scenario, they may even convince others that you’re the fraud, which is why all artists must be careful in displaying their own work. Watermarks and signatures can help this from happening, but even now clone stamps and healing brushes can erase any evidence. What’s more, People can take any photo or picture, and slightly alter it. And technically, that partly makes the new creation their own, the worst is when they don’t even credit the original artist.  Art thievery over the web has become the biggest problem in the last decades for artists everywhere. Still, it barely leaves a dent considering all that digital art has provided us with.

            The breakthrough of computer-based art continues to be upgraded and improved, we can only see what it will further lead to. No doubt, its effect in the art community has been vast, tilting the perspective of how we view art today.