Encyclopedia of Visual Effects – Peachpit 2006

The challenge in this illustration was to isolate meaningful representations of an industry. This necessitated a bit of a different approach.

One of my fundamental goals in working on the cover illustrations was to avoid explicitly illustrating a process or interface, in favor of abstract representation of concept and intent. The advantage in all of this is that software is inherently conceptual. Simply regurgitating the interface does nothing to illustrate the conceptual model of software’s function. Bypasing interface re-hashing and chosing to overlay concept and workflow helps visualize the underlying reality of the software. Capturing viewers attention on a store shelf introduced another level of complexity that was necessary to address in the compositions.

Given these challenges, an illustration for an industry required a bit of quantization of the topics covered in the book. Three focus points were proposed by the author; 3d effects; 2d digital effects and compositing; and optical techniques. These three areas are represented iconically in the compostion from left to right respectively. I wanted to co-mingle the technique representations since typically, more than one approach is used to solve a single visual effects shot. As a result, all the techniques intentionally overlap in the center framing device/graphic which is set to the wide aspect ratio of cinematic shot work. The final cropping of the illustration was the standard aspect of the rest of the books in the series.

Completed fall 2006.

Apple Pro Training Series:
Encyclopedia of Visual Effects
ISBN: 0321303342
September 2006