landscape

[craig mullins]

This is my first try at alchemy, I love it and am frustrated by it.

I am looking forward to how Alchemy will develop!

That said, I have to say something that probably will rub the wrong way, so sorry in advance if it does. Really, I may be all wet.

I have mixed feelings about procedural design- if a technique is not controllable enough, everyone's output looks the same. There is a little bit of laziness that can develop. At first, users turn out new and exciting stuff, but if the process is not controllable enough, it ends up being a ubiquitous gimmick you can get tired of real fast. It really is a balance between what the program does and how you control it to make the end result your own. The spiky shapes that Alchemy puts out are very characteristic and a little overpowering.

But if you make it too controllable, you don't get the whack on the side of the head you are looking for.

So if I had my wish as to how the program could grow, maybe towards controllability. But I bet that users who spend a lot of time with it may find it balanced perfectly right now.

[Karl DD]

Thanks for your comments.

I actually agree with you completely. Alchemy does give you a certain look, but we are trying hard to expand that.
It is worth keeping in mind that Alchemy is not intended as a tool for finished artwork, but more to act as a springboard.

Adding more controllability tends to make things a lot more difficult to use - making things programable would be one answer but a lot of people would find this quite difficult. Would be interested to hear your ideas on how to add more controllability.

Karl

[NDean]

I totally agree with both of you. I would quite like to see functions on alchemy that can aid in work looking more complete however looking at the amazing style that Craig has here it appears Alchemy is quite versatile anyway.

Any controllable functions could be switch-off-able... as in, anything that adds to more control can be switched off for users who want the chaotic factor. Just a thought.

And sorry to have my name all over your forums. I just love alchemy

[Simon Dominic]

I agree with Craig about the potential for sameness of the output (even though he undermines his own argument a little with that great sketch!) but I see Alchemy as being useful for promoting ideas rather than actually exporting the results and using them in an image. If it helps me to define - say - a more dynamic character than I would have done normally I can use the results simply as reference and paint that character as I normally would. The speed at which concepts can be produced is also a big plus. (I say that with all of 30 minutes' usage behind me but so far I like it!)

[Ryan Walsh]

I bought a Craig Mullins Original' And I still cant get him to speak. Even though I disliked the painting. I still wanted to see what he think, what he say, Just for fun.

[mr. mo]

yeah, Craig is right in one hand (awesome enviro btw ), but in the other hand the biggest thing for me in alchemy is the randomness. I feel my mind is full on with standard and almost cliche like compositions/characters/creatures/etc. and alchemy helps me to start my work on a different way - its really refreshing to experiment purely with shapes.
yeah, sometimes I miss to have more control over the tools, but I think if I would have that, alchemy wouldn`t be that interesting anymore. I think the whole thing is just about different people and different way of workflow, so the best thing might be to give the choice to the user and have controllable tools what you can switch on and off somehow.

[jason slavin]

I see where Craig is coming from (swell landscape, mate) but to me, adding too much control in Alchemy would be a bit like pushing it to be something it's not... Why move it toward being a painting tool when you have Painter and Photoshop? That is not to say I'm against refining the application, though. There's still plenty of room to make Alchemy go from neat to super neat.
As I see it right now, the only person who is really meant to see the images you come up with in Alchemy anyway is yourself - in your head. I doubt anyone would use Alchemy as the sole software for creating images for a project when far more robust painting tools are available to them at the click of a button. To me it seems the beauty of Alchemy is in its simplicity and its ability to inspire your mind, not marvel an audience.

Cheers, and great job so far.

[NDean]

I see where Craig is coming from (swell landscape, mate) but to me, adding too much control in Alchemy would be a bit like pushing it to be something it's not... Why move it toward being a painting tool when you have Painter and Photoshop? That is not to say I'm against refining the application, though. There's still plenty of room to make Alchemy go from neat to super neat.
As I see it right now, the only person who is really meant to see the images you come up with in Alchemy anyway is yourself - in your head. I doubt anyone would use Alchemy as the sole software for creating images for a project when far more robust painting tools are available to them at the click of a button. To me it seems the beauty of Alchemy is in its simplicity and its ability to inspire your mind, not marvel an audience.

Cheers, and great job so far.

The more I think about alchemy the more I think it should be solely random based. As you've said Jason, you can get more refined (for want of a better phrase) tools on other programs. Alchemy is about, well... alchemy within art, not the technicals. Does that make any sense? XD

[dave nielsen]

First I want to say I love Alchemy too, and it's been cool seeing some of the new stuff that's been added. Particularly the pressure option. I think the more variables that are dynamically controllable at once, the more a user can discover and control new ways of creating an abstraction. Stated another way, the more human input, the more advantage a human can take to make the results imperfect, unique and less computer/procedural. That's the thing that makes abstraction and ideation so fun.. Going in and doing something with an unknown result, but just enough control over it that you can push results you're getting if you like them, and mess things up to create those happy accidents.

The reason I love the new pressure tool is that now I can control a shape just by pushing down harder or lighter. But, instead of making Pressure solely a "creating mode" What would open the program wide, wide up would be If I could click a checkbox to dynamically control any setting within any drawing mode through pen inputs. What if I could vary the amount of random distortion based on how hard I push or what angle or tilt I use on my Wacom?

What if there was fractal/flame generation that would respond dynamically to my Wacom input?

What if there was a timer that ran a global "filter" on everything, after a certain amount of time has passed? For instance, I'm drawing for a minute, then the program screws things up for me a little bit and makes some happy accidents (maybe after autosaving what I've done so far). Then I draw for a minute more, and the program jacks my drawing again so I have to keep improvising.

What if I could save my program settings and access them through a submenu?
If the timer settings were a little more sophisticated, I could set a timer to switch between program setting presets. So I have a minute to draw purely abstractly. Then it switches me to a pressure brush at a certain size for a minute and I draw opaquely to flesh out the shapes I've found. Then it dumps my image to the PDF and starts the cycle over.

What if there are some more control variables to make the randomizations less spikey and more bubbly... Or more square/triangular. Something that really varies the outputs users are getting so my abstractions look different than the next guy on the forum. Like... Maybe Alchemy bases the shapes that it randomizes from a vector file. Kind of like the "Pull Shapes" works now, but instead of the dropping the shape itself like a symbol brush tool, the computer is calculating a randomization that has the geometric character of a circle if that's what you have in your vector file.. Then it squashes or stretches that template file, kind of like if you were working in photoshop and did pinch or pull operations, but the program is doing all that on its own.... Orrr, like I was saying earlier, responding to one of your Wacom inputs to decide how much to pinch or pull. This puts all of the control into the users' hands. To decide how controlled or abstract to go.

Anyway, this is just some brainstorming. I love Alchemy. And I would basically pee myself if you were interested and able to add any of this stuff,

- Dave

And of course, respect for Mr. Mullins.

[NDean]

First I want to say I love Alchemy too, and it's been cool seeing some of the new stuff that's been added. Particularly the pressure option. I think the more variables that are dynamically controllable at once, the more a user can discover and control new ways of creating an abstraction. Stated another way, the more human input, the more advantage a human can take to make the results imperfect, unique and less computer/procedural. That's the thing that makes abstraction and ideation so fun.. Going in and doing something with an unknown result, but just enough control over it that you can push results you're getting if you like them, and mess things up to create those happy accidents.

The reason I love the new pressure tool is that now I can control a shape just by pushing down harder or lighter. But, instead of making Pressure solely a "creating mode" What would open the program wide, wide up would be If I could click a checkbox to dynamically control any setting within any drawing mode through pen inputs. What if I could vary the amount of random distortion based on how hard I push or what angle or tilt I use on my Wacom?

What if there was fractal/flame generation that would respond dynamically to my Wacom input?

What if there was a timer that ran a global "filter" on everything, after a certain amount of time has passed? For instance, I'm drawing for a minute, then the program screws things up for me a little bit and makes some happy accidents (maybe after autosaving what I've done so far). Then I draw for a minute more, and the program jacks my drawing again so I have to keep improvising.

What if I could save my program settings and access them through a submenu?
If the timer settings were a little more sophisticated, I could set a timer to switch between program setting presets. So I have a minute to draw purely abstractly. Then it switches me to a pressure brush at a certain size for a minute and I draw opaquely to flesh out the shapes I've found. Then it dumps my image to the PDF and starts the cycle over.

What if there are some more control variables to make the randomizations less spikey and more bubbly... Or more square/triangular. Something that really varies the outputs users are getting so my abstractions look different than the next guy on the forum. Like... Maybe Alchemy bases the shapes that it randomizes from a vector file. Kind of like the "Pull Shapes" works now, but instead of the dropping the shape itself like a symbol brush tool, the computer is calculating a randomization that has the geometric character of a circle if that's what you have in your vector file.. Then it squashes or stretches that template file, kind of like if you were working in photoshop and did pinch or pull operations, but the program is doing all that on its own.... Orrr, like I was saying earlier, responding to one of your Wacom inputs to decide how much to pinch or pull. This puts all of the control into the users' hands. To decide how controlled or abstract to go.

Anyway, this is just some brainstorming. I love Alchemy. And I would basically pee myself if you were interested and able to add any of this stuff,

- Dave


And of course, respect for Mr. Mullins.

Youve got some seriously good ideas here mate, seriously good.

there is an forum where you can put your ideas, put them there! be seen alot easier

does the pressure tool only work with a wacom tablet btw