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The World's Most Photorealistic Vector Art

basangpanaginip.blogspot.com — If I didn't know it already, I wouldn't discern that the gallery is made up of drawings. Yes! They are NOT photographs.

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  • Americruzan0, on 10/12/2007, -11/+64NSFW

    Very cool though
    • faulkner, on 10/12/2007, -99/+12SFW unless your boss is from the 1800s.
    • Americruzan0, on 10/12/2007, -12/+109If you think this: http://www.wizard2.com/images/people/nsmoker.jpg is SFW then you probably work in the adult entertainment industry.
    • scrubadub, on 10/12/2007, -42/+12Is it cold in here or is it just my GPU?
      http://www.wizard2.com/images/people/nsmoker.jpg
    • joel2600, on 10/12/2007, -6/+93i feel sorry for all of you working on a saturday
    • hammydude, on 11/10/2007, -23/+29At this point I would rather have a photograph. Art is not just making it look realistic, it is also about the style you choose, what you have in the painting, what it represents, etc. and making it look really real life like looks.... well kind of boring.

      Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting#Baroque_and_Rococo for several types of styles.
    • akira117, on 10/12/2007, -40/+3Google is hosting the links to Illustrator torrents!
      http://www.google.com/search?q=Illustrator torrent
      I think they should be sued! :7)

      http://digg.com/tech_news/Sue_Google_not_us_Torrentspy_tells_Hollywood
    • quasipalm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26hammydude

      It's called Hyperrealism, and it is a style. The point is that you're making things realer than reality. If you take a look at the tape player or the tomatoe full screen, you'll see that the artist is really adding his or her flavor to the image, even though it's subtle.

      Besides, if photography is an art, then reinventing your photographs in illustrator is too. :-)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperrealism_%28painting%29
    • danglerman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22damn that Knightly is hot
    • Experiment626, on 10/12/2007, -1/+38Notice the title of the blog (basangpanaginip.blogspot.com)? For the benefit of non-Filipino diggers, "basang panaginip" is Tagalog for "wet dream" :D
    • vbsurfer, on 11/10/2007, -1/+7I do a lot of illustrator art work. This kind of stuff is done more for a hobby. There is a lot of technique but more of having a lot of time on your hands. Good stuff, but not my taste.
    • vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -36/+5NSFW? Uhm, grow up a bit. Its art and has class. Unless you are that social retard in office space, I think you'll be fine looking at nudes as art...
    • int19h, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15Nova Scotia Wildlife Federation?
      Naval Special Warfare Foundation?

      Should I know what NSWF stands for?
    • int19h, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10ahhh.... safe for work
    • cscalfani, on 10/12/2007, -47/+2The point most people are missing in this thread is that some first had to take a really great picture. That's where the real art lies. Vectoring it is interesting but not art.

      My personal definition of "NOT ART": "If I can do it without out years of training, then it's NOT ART.
    • kubudubudubuntu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8http://www.wade.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tutorial1.htm
      Heres one i thought was amazing that i found a long time ago, but it's apparently already been digged =)
    • Nesh, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17"NSFW? Uhm, grow up a bit. Its art and has class. Unless you are that social retard in office space, I think you'll be fine looking at nudes as art..."

      This would get me fired for browsing at work. We use Watchguard firewalls with content filtering, and one of the categories filtered is "Partial / Artistic Nudity." I also seem to remember a story a while back about content filters that look for fleshtones in image files.
    • Legato, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17cscalfani:

      that's the stupidest thing i have heard all of today
    • yellowperil, on 10/12/2007, -11/+10why are people getting modded down for saying that they rather have a photograph? And saying that if their boss was from the 1800s? Obviously you guys dont have a clue about art and art history. Skill is not always a determining factor in good art, espesially today when computers and photography have taken away the reason for creating photo realistic art. We live in a society that rewards creative ideas, not only skill.

      Anybody can master a skill... not many have great ideas... and fewer still have both.
    • KevinJB, on 11/10/2007, -5/+18"My personal definition of "NOT ART": "If I can do it without out years of training, then it's NOT ART."

      So then, I guess that makes all the illustrations I do in my freetime NOT ART. Does the same go for any songs I compose for the piano then?
    • dirka, on 11/10/2007, -2/+15@Americruzan

      Be careful of those nipples, someone could lose an eye...
    • hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"My personal definition of "NOT ART": "If I can do it without out years of training, then it's NOT ART."

      That says a lot about the "artists" signed by the RIAA.
    • KaserPro, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0ronically this kind of art is rather common, if you look at any "lads" magazine you'll see lots of this kind of work (commonly called airbrushing, some of it is maticulous painting using photoshop, and other using vector tools to draw gradient meshes.)
    • nathanmock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Mirror of the results:
      http://www.aberrant.us/mirror/realistic/
    • terrya64, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2They do look realistic as thumbnails, but once fullsized the wow factor is gone and to me are not realistic at all.
    • ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I often wondered how I was going to get a 400-foot tall shot of Angelina. Thank god a solution presents itself!

      (As a professional designer, part of me wants to weep at the magnificence, and part of me wants to DoS the domain so my boss never gets any ideas)
  • masterjenkins, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Wow, working with meshes frustrates the hell out of me, so I can respect the amount of work it took to create these vectors. Very cool!
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -15/+6Meshes = Evil. It's as simple as that.
  • abacadabbra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10usually the head lines on digg are sensationalized to an extent but this is no stretch these are photo realistic photo's. i wonder if the artists sale prints? awsome post dreamflows hope to see more of this type of stuff soon!
  • hotbeefman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Scroll down that page, and gawk the baseball glove. Unbelievable.
  • neiltc13, on 10/12/2007, -22/+5I prefer photographs.
    • PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8that isnt the point.
      With photos you snap what is there and maybe take hundreds to get the perfect pict
      for print advertising this could turn into a gold mine.. or even the porn industry.
      And i cant wait until games look like that.
    • rompom7, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19it isn't about what you prefer, and infact, no one cares what you prefer.

      it is about the fact that these vector images were created over countless hours, with much determination, and the fact that these artists have done such a superb job, you can bearly see the difference between this and a photograph.

      i think everyone would admit that a photograph is a lot more realistic, but anyone can take a photograph. not everyone can display such work as this.
    • Sasabune, on 10/12/2007, -18/+2When it is inexpensive to produce lifelike animation with this quality, the problems with child pornography will hopefully go away ; )





      :drool:
    • ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ Sasbune:

      So you're saying you'd rather just buy vectorized kiddie porn to avoid legal problems? Methinks you're solving the wrong problem...
  • punch, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6That's very impressive.
  • NiGHTSChao, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Wow..That is really amazing
  • birge, on 10/12/2007, -6/+51Honestly, this is kind of dumb. The guy basically samples a million points of a picture, and then does gradient interpolatation between them. Granted, he chooses the nonuniform sampling points, but that just makes him a glutton for punishment. In the end, he gets something that is basically a bitmap with linear interpolation. It's a neat effect, but the fact that he does it in illustrator doesn't really make it vector art.
    • samk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Agreed. Many of these are tediously copied photographs, as opposed to real computer art.
    • PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2You did notice it wasnt just one guy.. even a girl in there.. so a bunch of people are gluttons for punishment.

      I dont think all were coppied from photos.. some of them look damn right generated.. aka not real people.

      And I AM VERY ignorant on the subject can you explain why illustrator isnt vector art, when it claims to be and i have always assumed it to be
    • piratepete, on 10/12/2007, -24/+3Ummm, everything made in illustrator is vector art.... Retard
    • PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4you may be correct but i am digging you down for the attitude..
      I think what he is saying just because you cant take photographs doesnt make you a photographer..
      or converting a picture into vectors isnt the same as creating a vector image..
    • nightstar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Agree.. Most vertrizing program wont do beyond 4 to 8 colors. Maybe more. Very few over 32. Most are used in the sign industry to do multi color vinyl signs. So the number of "colors" are usualy limited for that task.

      Wrote a color vectorising program about 8 years ago for a company that with some limits adjustments could convert a photo into enough vectors that could do this. And on today computers would take only a few minutes. Cleanup by a human and your done. One of the test I had was a Japanies shrine picture of various light shadings. Was a nightmare but the program could handle it and was almost impossible like this to tell it was not a bitmap picture.

      So Its impressive it a vector drawing but NOT that it was done. Have seen Fractiles compresssion do the same. Just another way to breake it down.

      That glove is the best.
    • jameshales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Powercow
      Birge isn't saying that Illustrator doesn't make vector art, but is saying that just because this art is made using Illustrator, it is not really vector art.
    • Cine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can see several uses for this. Say you need to really enlarge a photo, for a poster or even billboard? This is perfect, seeing as vectors can be resized infinitely. Or if you want to get rid of a background of a picture? Or you want to change something in the original photo.

      I really don't think it's useless, such as many here in the comments seem to imply.
  • PJBonoVox, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5There's some real skilled artists there.

    There are a couple of pictures that give it away though-- Just look at Jolie's ears for example.

    Still astounded by how talent these Illustrator users are :)
  • megashaun, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Great work by some talented artists. Would have been cooler if there was an option to download the vector files, though.
  • tewcewl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5How does this technology work? What is vector art, exactly?
    • neiltc13, on 10/12/2007, -74/+4It's a really pointless thing where people just go over things in Illustrator with solid coloured shapes making the image look distorted. Totally pointless but the "artists" who do it get acclaim here and elsewhere on the internet.

      They're not artists. An artist is someone who paints or draws using their own hand. Not a computer.
    • IgnatiousReilly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+61"An artist is someone who paints or draws using their own hand. Not a computer."

      That's absurd.
    • poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11oh, i'd say computer-based guys are artists, but i'll also admit to having FAR mroe admiration to those who do it by hand.

      t's the same with electronic muscians vs "real-world" (gtr/piano/etc) musicians. Computers remove the risk or randomness or whatever magical thing makes the art soar.
    • hum4nt0rch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Vector graphics are calculated mathmatically as opposed to being prerendered like what you get in photoshop. If you had the original illustrator file of these you could literal make the image life sized and very little quality would be lost. But if you resize a photograph it looks worse and worse as you resize it.
    • diggik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Only finger-painters are artists?

      Brushes are tools many, if not the majority, of artists use to paint their art.
      A computer and its software is another tool. Frankly, a finger or hand is similarly a tool.
    • ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18@neiltc13

      "An artist is someone who paints or draws using their own hand. Not a computer."

      So, the people who work at Pixar don't create art? Digital Photography isn't art, but film is?

      Computer or paintbrush, the tool helps an artist bring out and produce a vision they have in their head.

      I'm not saying vector art is great art, but who are you to judge based on the tools they use?
    • indicio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5All creative endevors come from your brain. The tool you use to create with matters much less than the quality of your creative idea. Which is more mindless, someone who can only strum 3 chords on a guitar or someone who can only put together canned grooves in garageband.
      Some exceptional composers can conveive and arrange music in their heads and write it down with pencil in paper having never heard the music. Jazz musicians spend hundreds of hours developing an arsenal of musical ideas that they can string together into improvisation, and many electronic musicians spend hours painstakingly crafting their compositions.
    • PabloIV, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Man, Neil. That has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, and one of my co-workers leaves Fox news on all day at the office.
    • nightstar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Simple..... All you do is find the different edges between patches of color.

      Thats the basic and you can dig up more on the net. But thats also a very intersting pice of programming code. Fun but a hair puller untill you understand the secret. Then it like a flashbulb going off!

      Most companies thet do vector art have it built in or as a seperate pacakge. Its a way to edit or adjust in a way you normaly or would be a pain to do with a photo program.
    • Klowner, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6An artist is someone who smears mud on a rock with THEIR HANDS! Not using paint and brushes, that's not art!

      *makes idiot face @neiltc13*
    • pauldonnelly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@neil & poipoipoi

      You guys have clearly got a poor understanding of how computers are used to create graphics and music, respectively.

      While tracing a photo is less impressive than actually drawing from scratch, it makes no difference whether a person draws on a computer or with a pencil.
  • webspy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Awesome.
  • Saiing, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4There are guys out there who used to do this with a real airbrush (not a computer-based one) building up layers of paint. That's not to say these aren't incredible pieces of work. It's amazing the humans posses this level of artistic skill.

    The Bert Monroy station scene was featured before. It's actually HUGE. The tiny train in the background can be blown up to almost screen size with no loss of detail.
  • substrom, on 10/12/2007, -20/+10its painting by numbers for nerds....its not "art"
    • IgnatiousReilly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I agree. They're technically skilled, but most of them aren't artists. Take this tutorial for, example: http://www.creativebush.com/gmeshtutorial/ he's just tracing and sampling to recreate the photograph. God knows how long it took, and all he gets out of it is a scalable image that looks identical to the original photograph. What sort of masochist does this?

      Their are, of course, exceptions: http://www.bertmonroy.com/
    • Markie1006, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Holy sh*t that picture is amazing.

      The initial image is impressive, but then you see some of the close-ups which blew me away even further.

      Bravo Burt
  • poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3For some of them, i literally DO NOT BELIEVE they're drawings -- they've gotta be photos!



  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1*****.

    These are fantastic.. good digg.
  • david76, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5"pyrotechnic showcasing of their technical mastery"

    Who writes like this?
    • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Most written output from art critics is unreadable, insider, "let's see how many big words can I throw into this" masturbatory crap. Stuff like:

      "And yet, the failure of the avantgarde to recognize a new life praxis through art and politics resulted in precisely those historical phenomena which make any revival of the avantgarde's projects today highly problematic, if not impossible: namely, the false sublations of the art/life dichotomy in fascism with its aesthetization of politics, in Western mass culture with its fictionalization of reality, and in socialist realism with its claims of reality status for its fiction."
    • KyleGoetz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9@Wavey:
      Have you ever read any academic papers in any field? They are all like that; hell, to most people, most of the comments on Digg and Slashdot are jargon-filled. It's simple: the piece is written for a specific audience. In the case of what you posted, it was meant for an audience of art critics. In any case, I can understand what they wrote, and using no jargon just dilutes the information. For example, as someone who is (assumedly) knowledgeable about computers, would you rather read, "I torrented a file the other day, and some n00b included a MD5 file in the zip," or would you rather read, "I got a copy of a file from a hundred different people the other day (torrent), and the person who made the file was obviously clueless (n00b) because he included a document with it intended to check the validity of the file's contents (MD5 file), but the method I used for acquiring the file in the first place already uses that method to check the integrity of the file (again, this is implied already by using the word "torrent")"? As you can see, using the non-jargon merely increases the length of the comment AND deletes accurate information.

      Now here's the meaning to what you posted (jargon-free and only semi-accurate because of that):
      "And yet, the failure of the avantgarde to recognize a new life praxis through art and politics resulted in precisely those historical phenomena which make any revival of the avantgarde's projects today highly problematic, if not impossible: namely, the false sublations of the art/life dichotomy in fascism with its aesthetization of politics, in Western mass culture with its fictionalization of reality, and in socialist realism with its claims of reality status for its fiction."

      Because the avantgarde movement failed to create a set of customs and practices related to real life through art and politics, various circumstances arose to prevent the revival of much of the avantgarde movement. Specifically:
      1) the false sublations (this is a philosophical term that I don't fully understand, but it's like ending a concept and elevating it at the same time; Hegel, a German philosopher coined the term, I think) of the art/life dichotomy (please tell me you understand this phrase, I learned "dichotomy" in public school junior high) with its artistic rendering of politics
      2) the movement treated reality as fiction in Western mass culture
      3) and in socialist realism (a branch of avantgarde I, as a person who is unfamiliar with art, have never heard of) where the creators claimed their fiction was reality

      The only phrases I wasn't able to understand immediately were "socialist realism" (I'd be willing to bet that it was a movement that used socialist philosophy to render subjects realistically) and "false sublations". Everything else an American should have learned in junior high or high school (except for the word "praxis").

      In summation, one should always write to the target audience, and I'm sure the source of that paragraph did not intent for a bunch of computer geeks to read his piece. Similarly, art critics have no right to criticize the authors of The Handbook of Applied Cryptography as jargon-filled because they do not understand computer technology.
    • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Wow, I didn't expect my little comment, half made in jest, to evoke such a passioned counter-argument.

      Your argument would make some sense if:
      1. The text in question WAS actually written for the "target audience." But you see nearly the same sort of obtuse language creeping into art reviews in mainstream magazines and newspaper articles. (I've seen a lot of it, having worked in print media.)
      2. The art was not publicly displayed (implicitly stating that it is intended to be appreciated by laymen), but instead only shown to the "insiders" who are supposedly "enlightened" enough in the art form itself and its attendent jargon to "get it."

      I understand that nearly every profession has SOME degree of jargon associated with it, which outsiders will not readily understand. And I understand that a lot of it is out of necessity -- the movie-making industry, for example, has a huge number of insider terms and acronyms that only insiders or people actually doing the particular job will understand. But somehow, I can read a movie critic's writings and figure out what he thinks of a film.

      Art criticism, on the other hand, still strikes me as being willfully and unnecessarily obtuse and elitist, and more masturbatory than celebratory of the subject in question. Sure, you may say that fine art isn't like the movies -- that movies are 99% crap that is geared toward the masses -- and I might even agree with you except for the fact that if you look beyond the Hollywood machine, there are a lot of great indie and foreign films out there that there that display "art" in its truest form, and are every bit as nuanced as a painting hanging in a museum.

      It sometimes seems to me that, rather than communicating in complex, obtuse, insider language out of necessity, the actual reality is that art critics MADE it that way. By over-categorizing and overanalyzing every aspect of it, they themselves created this insular language and environment around it. And it sometimes seems that the only reason that this insular language and environment exist is so that they can wave one pinky in the air and say, "You think you know art? HA! You peons know NOTHING! You can't POSSIBLY comprehend what you are looking at, or appreciate it on the same level as us! Philistines, all of you!"

      One thing that stuck in my mind as being incredibly ridiculous was a display I saw at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in L.A. some years ago. It consisted of a 10' X 20' canvas, which the artist had spread glue on, then dumped the contents of his vacuum cleaner bag on top of. The resulting "art" (a canvas with vacuum cleaner lint all over it) was proudly hung in the museum and given some ridiculously abstract name that had nothing to do with vacuum cleaner lint.

      Then the local newspaper wrote about it in glowing and insufferably obtuse terms.

      This is the kind of stuff that laymen such as me, I think rightly, make fun of. Have you ever seen the Calvin & Hobbes strips where Calvin moves from making boring "regular, mass market" snowmen -- you know, the kind with hats and carrot noses -- into other more exotic art styles? I just love the way Bill Watterson skewers the whole elitist attitude that is built up around that stuff. And Bill Watterson probably has room to talk about such things, having created just about the best, most creatively written, most artistically drawn (check out his watercolors) comic of all time.

      Much of art criticism seems to me to paint a big, elitist bullseye on itself for the rest of us to make fun of.
    • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Guess it's fun to digg people down without any explanation as to why. It's debate for the TiVo generation: thumbs up, thumbs down, no other effort required.

      Believe me, there are many, MANY people, even within the art community, that feel the same way I do about much of the modern art community, art criticism, and the abundance of "pretentious blowhards" (Bill Watterson's words again, not mine) that make up both.

      I've used Bill Watterson as a well-known example (it is even referenced in his Wikipedia entry), but there are plenty more. One of the most hilarious articles I read about it was from Dave Barry, a few years back. Wish I could find that one again -- it hit the nail on the head.

  • emaicee, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2This vector art stuff is so boring. And this version is the lazy man's airbrush. many of these kind of "artists" can't draw. I can only look at about 2 or 3 of these is it "live or is it memorex "illos before i'm bored. where's the struggle and mistakes? thats what makes good art worth it.
  • bleutuna, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Amazing technical skill - but what use is this? It's a copy of a photograph, without any style used.

    I had a discussion with an up and coming graphic artist not too long ago, who was worried he was becoming useless due to Illustrator's LiveTrace2.0 technology, and how that will progress as time goes on. He felt that he wasn't needed, becuase software could now do vector stuff so well on its own.

    Then I explained to him that the point of vector art isn't to simply mimic a photograph, but instead, show the artists view on the world and that particular image. Using a photograph as a reference point, then subsequently manipulating colors, shadows, and forms to create something derived - but wholey original - is what vector's good for.

    With this stuff, as technically amazing as it is, the only purpose i can see is for print reproduction in REALL HUGE applications. Cause now you've got a huge vector, so you can print it as big as you want. Otherwise - why not just look at the photograph in question?
    • ggroves, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@bleutuna - You hit the nail on the head. Think billboards.

      That's the main reason for converting a photograph to vector art.
    • Zareste, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0That's what I was thinking. You can duplicate a picture by copying it from a file system, and without any changes. To do the same thing by taking a week and diminishing quality is not a very good use of time. Why do people pay attention to it? "Hey look it's a picture that looks like the original but not as real"
  • indicio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think those are technically impressive, but the perspective of an art director or buyer, I am not sure where a peice of vector art like that would have a real benefit. If you are placing a photo in a magazine modern digital formats and traditional medium and large format photos more than suffice for fidelity. If you are using a large format - billboards, building installations, buses etc., the image is not really intended for close scrutinty, they need to look good as you are wizzing by in your car.
  • rompom7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10The server is starting to get slugish.. heres the dugg mirror.

    http://www.duggmirror.com/design/The_World_s_Most_Photorealistic_Vector_Art/
  • AzzX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Corel Trace - Illustrator trace tool would be a very good start for this sort of stuff.
  • Llanowar, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6Opinion of most diggers: It's done with a computer and I can't do that so it's not art.


    Grow up guys.

    • PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Opinion of most diggers: It's done with a computer and I CAN do that, so it isnt art.

      The point most people try to make is it is almost automated, the only creative skill is choosing the picture to vectorize.
      or atleast that is how i read it.

      I personaly dont think all were photo copies, click on some of the indivual artist pages.
  • IgnatiousReilly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think Plato would have something to say about this stuff.

    A copy of a copy of an image that represents the real thing.

    Not that I actually agree with his views on art :)
  • Miro, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Check out the http://www.vexels.net/
  • kippie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i think the problem with a lot of "computer art" is that its actually artistically irrelevent. as with a lot of 3D artwork renders they're just ugly or conceptually pointless. technical skill is one thing, but artistic vision is another.

    Computer art is a dirty term. if its art its art, regardless if its made on a computer but i think that most artists that use a computer and do serious things wouldn't label themselves computer artists.
  • GMD1987, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2So if I went to the Louvre, painted the Mona Lisa piece by piece, so that there is an exact likeness to my copy and the original work, would I be an artist? Granted, some of the images are very realistic looking, but it only takes close inspection to see that there is something distorted about them. Esentially, these people are spending hours upon hours of work to create something that very well could be automated by a computer in the near future (if it isn't now). And sure seems like a lot of work to just get a copy of a photograph that can be scaled.
    Technically skilled? Yes
    Prodigious? Maybe
    Worthwhile, from an industrial point of view? Sure
    Art? No
  • Kailash.Nadh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Amazing.
  • Billistic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Here's a vector of an engine I created

    http://www.billylog.com/vecengine.jpg
  • Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13The problem with these vectors is they take weeks, sometimes months to complete. A good 3D artist(and believe me there are more good 3D artists than good Vector artists) could create any of these images, and probably much better in just a few days. On top of that, they would be viewable from any angle, poseable, and scalable (the only big advantage of vector art)

    Basically, this is like someone carving a life size marble figure using a needle. Painstakingly pointless.
  • Billistic, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Basically, this is like someone carving a life size marble figure using a needle. Painstakingly pointless.

    You're probably missing the point of art, there is no point.
    • Fnatt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Well said.
    • Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2There is always a point. 3 main ones though.

      "Expression", "Fun" and "It's your job"

      The reason vectors are created, especially these photo realistic ones, is for companies who want a very very large image on a billboard, the side of a building, or other large surface and whatnot. Vectors do not suffer from pixelation like raster images do. (If you ask me, the difference in this application is negligible but that's another topic)

      I'm almost certain these guys don't do it for expression, as these are just realistic recreations of normal things. I doubt they do it for fun because that would be like counting sand for fun. It is highly likely they do it for a living, which sucks, because there are other guys who can do it better in a fraction of the time.


    • Billistic, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2"Expression", "Fun" and "It's your job"

      Nope. I could easily draw a doodle with no expression and it would still have to be considered art.

      You're saying the ends don't justify the means. The thing is the means is the art, the art isn't the final piece the art is the process.

      A marble statue carved with a needle would be far more impressive than a statue carved with a chisel.
    • Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3"Expression", "Fun" and "It's your job"

      Nope. I could easily draw a doodle with no expression and it would still have to be considered art.

      You're saying the ends don't justify the means. The thing is the means is the art, the art isn't the final piece the art is the process.

      A marble statue carved with a needle would be far more impressive than a statue carved with a chisel.

      I tend to disagree almost everywhere with this post.
      First of all you touch on forbidden land. The "what constitutes art" argument is as old as arguments get, impossibly hard to argue. Everyone has a different opinion on this so lets not even start.

      Randomly drawing a doodle is something you do for fun, or expression, you could even be a professional doodle drawer. Drawing a doodle for use in a hypothetical situation to argue on the internet would fit into that expression category quite easily.

      The appeal of the "ends" is what counts when you do it for a living. Your employer does not care how you create something, just how it ends up looking. This certainly applies in this case concerning the vector art.

      A marble statue carved with a needle would be far more impressive than a statue carved with a chisel, but what if it looked much worse?
      There is a guy out there painting portraits with his dick(http://www.penileart.com/home.html) IMO they look absolutely awful. Sure, the means by which he painted it is somewhat impressive(and creepy) but in the end, as a dude trying to sell his work, the end product just isn't looking as good as the guy who painted it with a brush.

    • Billistic, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2You should goto art school.
  • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That baseball glove is really cool. So much detail.

    I'm looking forward to having GPUs that can handle the amount of polygons required to bring meshes as detailed as this to life in games.
    • Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This is kind of different. The meshes do kind of look like 3D meshes but are not, they are 2D. I mean I guess they can be compared in terms of "polygons" but it's apples and oranges.
    • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Right, I understand that these are 2D. Guess I should have been more clear. I was just musing about how cool it would be when GPUs can handle 3D meshes that have the sort of complexity displayed in these 2D examples.
  • jbus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Great work... Can we please have some SVGs???
  • Matt2k, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Some of these guys seriously needs to get laid
  • NeutrinoQ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5So this is how playboy does it......
  • xuphrus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Damn, got here too late. Bandwidth exceeded all over the site.
    • MasterChi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0you do know that all those pics are hosted somewhere else right ?? Though the main site says bandwidth exceeded just click on one and it will bring you to a full size pic of the image. Who cares if you didnt get to see a thumbnail, just click the damn pic. Lazy.
  • Piglith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Many negitives about how this takes much time, waste, etc... But the reality to this work is that it is the initial stages to Digital Actors, etc. I could see some applications to this work in the Digital Actor field but it would seem to me that 3D mesh and rendered actors would be a better route to any kind of animation.
    Personaly I would like to see the creators use their time to learn applications such as 3DStudio to create their art as the final product would be more viable. I suppose using vector tools is a good interim.
  • alanfalcon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anyone bother to create a mirror of some sort?
  • shertzerj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Bah... they've all been struck by the Digg effect. :/
  • random19, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7http://www.duggmirror.com/design/The_World_s_Most_Photorealistic_Vector_Art/

    For future reference, just replace digg.com with duggmirror.com in the address of the story...;)
  • SlashNot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4while the technique is cool, The result is SO similar to a photo I really do not see the point in doing it at all. Drawings are great because there is still a touch of unreality in it. These are so close to actual photographs its like..."huh ok"
  • Jerky1312, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Imagecave, winner of the 2006 Most Unreliable Image Hosting Company.
  • macdaddydwj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Art is not to be judged based on how it was created, but by what it does for those who experience it.

    If it invokes some feeling, then it was good art.

    If it doesn't, then it may be wanting.
    • SwamiG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0What about making a copy of someone else's artwork and calling it your own? How it was created is very important.
    • hobo05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@SwamiG
      How the hell does copying it matter? If I sent you a 200 mega-pixel photograph (this is likely not possibly, because they won't let you) of Mono Lisa, are you gonna tell me it's not art because it is presented in a photograph? So in effect you're claiming two identical paintings can evoke different emotions...wow, that's mind blowing, do you have a carbon dating/fact checking nanomachine attached to your retinal sensors? Mr. Terminator+Curator 2.0, I believe it is the impression the said "art" gives you, not which patron employed which artist to paint whatever.
    • SwamiG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Okay, I just took a picture of the Mona Lisa off my monitor using my digital camera. According to you I just created a masterpiece on my SD card! The art world is not ready!
  • SlashNot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This doesnt invoke feeling, it just looks like girls highly airbrushed.
  • ThisIsMyName, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Wow! All those "Bandwidth Exceeded" images do look photo realistic! Who woulda thought...
  • prestonspcworx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1cool.
  • skyspine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'm somewhat amused by all the crying over whether these are art or not. Art is subjective, people. There is no right answer.
    • milo77, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that "taste is subjective." They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it's beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it's expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses....Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true." (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html)
    • skyspine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I took a look at the link you posted, milo77. Aside from being a rather boring read, it had no real bearing on what I said. The fact is that taste is entirely subjective. To say otherwise is rather dumb. Whether a person's taste is influenced by one factor or another in that person's past makes no difference to the actual argument. The specific quote you referenced is exceptionally ridiculous because it attempts to use personal preference, experience, and stimulus as a way of invalidating personal taste. Of course positive stimuli will improve my reception of a visual piece. If taste wasn't subjective, there would be no variation in art and everyone would have the same favorite visual style.
    • hobo05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think both of your arguments were forcing the issue (either way) by saying taste per se is subjective or objective. I think even if we all physically get the same electric impulses into our brains and get the exact same data as everyone else our preferences would still be different. But really, this borders on the nature Vs. nurture issue, which has yet to be resolved decisively. I think because of our experiences (you can tell which side I'm on) we will like or dislike things because of it. We may both taste the same bitterness in a lemon peel, I may like it and you may dislike it. We all see that the featured images were painstakingly made, I may think it's a complete waste of time and therefore stupid, you may think that the techniques used were esoteric and the time spent astounding and therefore praise it to be art.

      I think this sums it up best:
      You say tomato (TOE-MAY-TOE), I say tomato (TUH-MAH-TOE)
  • krisper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, now I know never to post anything on Image Cave, unless I enjoy seeing "Bandwidth Exceeded" warnings. Maybe they should call it Image Grotto, or possibly Image Sinkhole.
  • mos6507, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2At a certain point with vector artwork gets so dense that it works almost like a bitmap and the vectors are like pixels, just oddly shaped ones. It's really just a form of compression, then, sort of like palette optimized bitmaps images back in the 8-bit days.

  • runn1ng, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0wow, dont tell me that this - http://duggmirror.com/design/The_World_s_Most_Photorealistic_Vector_Art/0cccc13e9ca641017e2b22151e229707_Zghira.jpg - is not real photo ... it is so realistic...

    ok, it is a little bit pointless to do this, but it's good to know that this IS possible
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