fbpx

Category: Zac Retz

Posted on

Follow the money

What can we learn from contemporary animation?
Waves of Mercy and Grace, Carol L. Douglas. Would I want to wander around a world that looked like my paintings?

The global animation industry brought in about $254 billion in 2017, versus about $45 billion for the fine art industry. Unlike many other growth industries, big parts of the animation industry are located in the old developed economies, including the United States and Canada. It’s a fast-growing sector, averaging about 5% per year.

If you’re a young person interested in a career in the arts, you will do well with a degree in computer graphics. Computer graphics designers working in the motion picture and video industries earn an average of $64,350, and there’s a lot of demand for them in other industries as well. (In fact, the Federal government is the top-paying employer of computer graphics professionals.)
Keuka Lake Farm, by Carol L. Douglas
This means that animation plays a big part in developing our national aesthetic. I don’t play video games, but I’m curious about their imagery, and I like speculating on how it will influence painting. I see this in the work of two young brothers from Syracuse, Tad and Zac Retz. Zac is a visual developer for Sony Pictures Animation. Tad is a painter. Their toolkits are very different, but the end result is often eerily similar.
Horia Dociu is a video game studio art director at ArenaNet. He identified three pillars on which all visual design rests:
  • Idea â€“the intellectual content of your work.
  • Design â€“ the stylistic and compositional choices you make.
  • Technique â€“ your method of rendering.

He then went on to mention ‘tone,’ which I’m going to call ‘vibe’ because tone means something else in painting. Painters achieve their vibe through color choices and lighting, but most importantly with the subconscious things we bring to the easel. In fine art, we often think of our vibe as a natural state, but it’s also the easiest thing to manipulate into dreck. That’s a good reason to avoid being overly self-conscious about it.
Still, there are some fine painters out there whose work relies heavily on controlling ambiance. An example is Tarryl Gabel. She has an enthusiastic following for her misty, gentle, elegiac landscapes.
Piseco Outlet, by Carol L. Douglas
My kids sometimes play a game set in a landscape that looks like New Zealand on steroids. I enjoy watching because it’s a beautiful landscape, even though the actions are dorky. This raises a question that we painters never ask ourselves: given a choice, would we enjoy wandering around in a world that looked like our paintings? If not, we might have a problem with our vibe.
Dociu went on to suggest that video artists ask themselves the following questions:
  • Why am I doing this?
  • What do I want to say?
  • Who am I speaking to?
  • How can I be most expressive to reach the audience?

Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove, by Carol L. Douglas
In the end, his talk came down to craftsmanship. It plays a big part of animation development but is given little credence in modern painting. Perhaps that’s why the money flows so heavily in the direction of animation. They’re giving the people what they actually want.
Posted on

Work ethic

He committed to painting two paintings a week, despite working at a full-time job on the side.
Sun Above Nant Peris, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA (courtesy Rowles Fine Art)

Sir John “Kyffin” Williams was a landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll, on the island of Anglesey. He is widely regarded as the greatest Welsh artist of the 20th century. (If you’re like me, this is the moment where you first come to grips with the idea that there is a Welsh school of painting at all.)

His painting looks a great deal like the lunchtime noodling of my young friend Zac Retz. Zac is a video developer at Sony Pictures Animation. He has a brother, Tad, who’s equally talented as a painter. However, Tad’s work in the ‘real’ medium of paint doesn’t look quite as much like Sir Kyffin’s paintings as Zac’s electronic paintings do.
Fedw Fawr, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA (courtesy Thompson’s Galleries)
That has something to do with their toolkits. Zac’s electronic brush works more like a palette knife than a real-world brush. Sir Kyffin relied heavily on black, which is frowned upon in contemporary painting but not in electronic art. Sir Kyffin’s work looks very contemporary to modern eyes.
It’s not just the technical side of Sir Kyffin’s paintings that compels, but his attitude toward the craft of painting.
Sir Kyffin was born on Anglesey in May of 1918. He joined the 6th Battalion Royal Welsh in 1937, intending to make a career in the military. He failed his medical examination of 1941 due to epilepsy and was forced to retire.
Morfa Conwy, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA (courtesy Christies)
His doctors advised that he take up art for his health, intending it as a hobby. Instead, Kyffin scraped his way into London’s Slade School of Fine Art, despite an indifferent academic record. He went on to be senior art master at Highgate School from 1944 until 1973, at which point he was famous as a painter. Sir Kyffin died on Anglesey at age 88, leaving his entire fortune of ÂŁ6m in paintings and other assets to Welsh arts organizations.
Knighted in 1999, Sir Kyffin was a Royal Academician and Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales Colleges, Swansea, Bangor and Aberystwyth.
Sir Kyffin was a highly-disciplined painter, setting himself up a target of completing two paintings a week while teaching at Highgate. He kept this rate of production up through his lifetime.
Mount Snowdon from Nantlle, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA
“I never had to think what shall I paint,” he said. “I don’t think how I should paint it. The whole thing to me somehow is far too natural a thing. It is there and I am the vehicle for expressing it.”
He was a self-described depressive and obsessive. “I paint for kicks rather like Van Gogh painted for kicks—excitement. Maybe if you’re an epileptic you crave excitement,” he said. “And I wanted the excitement of a strong dark against the bright light. It does something for me like other people take alcohol.”
David Wynn Meredith was interviewed by the BBClast week about Sir Kyffin. “He believed that you had to love your subject matter, and if you don’t love anything you can’t communicate,” he said.
“And Kyffin certainly did love. He loved people, he loved the mountains, he loved the seascapes. He was totally committed to his craft as a painter. Painting was his life. And he viewed it not in any emotional way at all. As he often said, ‘it’s my job.’”