Digital canvas: artists and designers in the 2D/3D marketplace
Authors: R. Carpenter, J. Derry, C. Barry, P. Conn, V. Sorensen
Venue: ACM SIGGRAPH 89 Panel Proceedings (1989)

I'm Rachel Carpenter, and this mike seems to be really alive.The films that you've been watching on the screen are from the Animation Screening Room, which is really hot this year. We've got a lot of wonderful pieces. It's in the Sheraton, just as you walk in from the Hines, and you'll see signs there. There are three viewing environments. Right at the beginning, there is a cafe environment where you can sit down with food and just watch things. There's a room next to it with monitors and then there's a large room with rear projection, large screen, lots of seats. There are schedules available. At any time you can watch two different things. I decided to put this panel together when I was working at a computer graphics school for artists and designers. People were always asking, "Well, where are the jobs? What kind of work is there, and why should I bother with computers?" So I got these people together who have been in the business, in various aspects, for many years, and have found their own way. They will tell you their stories and give you an idea of how to look for things. There are some very specific ideas. Other people seem to have been having the same thoughts because the education committee put together this wonderful Volume 23, Careers Handbook, and I suggest that you get it. It's in the education booth as you come into the Hines, there are all those booths --- well, the one on the end, toward the entrance, is called Space, they have up the student artwork. Volume 23 has categories of different kinds of jobs, career profiles, colleges and universities which are organized by topic first, if it's art and design or engineering or other types of signs or medical or whatever, and then by state. Then they have about the job search process. There's also a questionnaire at the end, which the people who put this together really urge everyone to fill out the questionnaire and send it in. It's a tremendous amount of information. They are available at the booth or you can call up ACM and order one. It's Volume 23. I also want to tell you about another really good opportunity for artists. I happen to be the United States Representative for Prix Ars Electronica; it's a competition in Austria for computer art, animation amp; music. They have significant cash prizes. So if you're interested in entering that after this is over, give me your address and I'll see that you get entry forms for that. You can also call me in California at 415-892-8254. Also, you've seen a lot of things while you've been here at SIGGRAPH and I want to let you know that everybody can participate. I started going to SIGGRAPH in 1980 when it was in Seattle. I'm not sure quite how many people were there then, but it was probably something like 17,000, and when I was SIGGRAPH '85 Art Show administrator in San Francisco, there were 27,000 people attending the conference. It keeps on growing because people are interested and because the industry is growing. You can contribute too. If you have an idea, write it up, present it as a course, panel or submit to someone on the committee. The Animation Screening Room shows works representative of what is going on in computer graphics, over 50% of the work in there is science related. Some of that's medical, some engineering, geology, molecular modeling --- various things. The are lists there; you can look and see types of job categories. A large group is composed of works that could be considered commercial production. Architecture, art and character animation form a smaller amount of what is being produced in computer graphics. So search out those other areas. There are many fields out there. This handbook will help you and we hope you get some ideas from our panelists. The amount of material in the Screening Room is about 8-1/2 hours. It's taken a lot of work to put that together. There were 21 hours of work submitted to the film show jury and all of that had to be gone through many times. I want to let you know also that afterwards we have a breakout room for people who want to get together. I know we have a lot of artists and designers here, besides the panelists, and there may be some of you who are looking for --- maybe you have jobs for people or maybe you're just interested in listening. So we will find out where that breakout room is going to be and I'll tell you at the end. <b>A:</b> J as in Jones. <b>CARPENTER:</b> Okay, the breakout room is going to be in J Room --- as in H, I, J, K. J. Tonight there is going to be a reception at the Computer Museum and buses are leaving from the Hines at 5:00, 5:30 and 6:00, and there's no video or audio taping of this, and there we've got that. Okay. The way we're going to do this is John Derry will speak next and then all our other panelists will speak and then we'll have questions. So you need to sort of keep track of your questions. John has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He has been involved in computer graphics since 1982. John has found exciting ways to combine traditional methods with computer graphics to create pieces unique to both worlds. He feels that the public has become so visually aware that the static image has to have more excitement in it to compete with the many moving images that people see each day. Derry enjoys each new project and approaches it as a creative challenge. He works in the areas of fine art and pre-press.