4x4 Photoshop and 3D

By Nathan Flood, Tom Muller, Dave Smith, Brian Taylor

Please note that this title is now out-of-print, and so availability is likely to be limited.

For more information, please visit the 4x4 mini-site.

The 4x4 Project invited four leading designers celebrated for their experimental work in 3D to create new pieces on the theme of Geometry and Chaos.

Brian Taylor is the creator of www.rustboy.com and www.xl5design.com
Nathan Flood is the creator of www.nginco.com
Tom Muller is the creator of www.ximeralabs.com
Dave Smith is the creator of www.deepseat.net

In this book you'll find the information and the inspiration to bend tools to your own ends. The designers describe how they use applications including 3ds max, Carrara Studio, and Strata 3D to create the components for their final images, before processing them with Photoshop to add depth, color, texture, and complexity.

This book immerses the reader in the four phases of the process:

Theory: personal accounts of the creative process, manifestos, diaries, mental sketchbooks, and associated ephemera
Geometry and Chaos: the finished original art works
Process: detailed, first hand, technical descriptions of the creation of each piece, along with original source files on the accompanying CD
Noise and Interference: the four designers discuss, sample, and remix their colleagues' work
Reviews

3D World

Review by Ed Ricketts

4 Star

" Tutorial-based books for just about every software package under the sun are ten-a-penny these days, but there's still a distinct lack of 3D-related books written simply to inspire. Friends of ED set out to rectify this with the 4x4 Project, four books with the same basic format but different content which aim to both inform and inspire.

Each book focuses two areas of software- in this case, Photoshop and 3D. Four established and experimental artists in those fields are then given a particular theme and asked to create anything they like based on it. Afterwards, the artists take each others' and 'remix' them in their own style, with thte whole process mapped out in the book.

The theme of this 3D tome is Geometry and Chaos, which as you can imagine is rather a broad remit. The four artists involved are Brian Taylor, creator of Rustboy; Dave Smith, a Canadian designer who founded Math studio; Nathan Flood, an American who's worked largely on the Web; and Belgian artist Tom Muller. Although each artist touches on their software of choice (ranging from 3ds max to Strata 3D) and the way the use it, the bulk of their sections is dedicated to initial thought processes once given the brief, first attempts - and subsequent experimentations.

It's unusual to have such an in-depth look at the workings of any artist's brain, evin if sometimes Taylor and company can't explain any further than: 'It feels and looks right' (Tom Muller). Despite the book's slight pretentiousness, the artists themselves are refreshingly down-to-earth, discussing inspiration from the type of music they like, to smoking (cigarettes, that is) and visual design systems for electric power grids.

Perhaps the least successful area of the book is the 'remix' stage, mainly because the artists are quite reluctant to change each others' work drastically. This is understandable, particularly given the wide range of styles on display. However, they do at least have a damn good stab at it and the results certainly should inspire.

The 4x4 concept is a refreshing and in some ways risky idea, but in this case at least it certainly seems to have paid off. The four artists' approaches are radically different - Brian Taylor, for instance, cranks out around ten pieces, and is perhaps the least abstract of the four, while Dave Smith experiments largely on the same basic, very abstract theme.

If you're a 3D artist, at the very least what you'll get from this book is that perhaps your own working practices aren't quite so bizarre and seemingly unstructured as you thought. And at best, you'll pick up some new techniques and tangents, particularly as all the relevant pictures and models are included on the accompanying CD.

Even if you're just a dabbler, it's a thoroughly absorbing read, and certainly recommended."