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      Christoph Niemann “Trompe-l’Oeil”

      March 26, 2018 | By Françoise Mouly for Yellowtrace
      Christoph Niemann’s “Trompe-l’Oeil”

      (Above: Christoph Neimann’s latest cover for The New Yorker’s Mind Issue)

      The artist Christoph Niemann’s latest cover, for the Mind Issue, winks at you when it’s displayed on a digital device. Bringing a drawing to life isn’t new for Niemann: in 2014, he drew The New Yorker’s first gif cover, which saw raindrops slipping down a windshield on a stormy day. Since then, he’s used the cover as a departure point for an interactive tennis match, a virtual forest, and more, each experiment a freshening of the form. Niemann, who’s based in Berlin, recently sat down to discuss his work on adding movement to still images.

      Here’s his interview by the New Yorker:

      What first drew you to animated and interactive elements?

      I’m very curious about how they enhance visual concepts. Drawing is usually all about abstraction, limiting choices—a specific angle of a specific scene. An animated or interactive dimension changes that.

      When you start drawing, is that potential already in your mind?

      Usually, I just focus on the still 2-D image—that’s difficult enough! Once we’ve settled on a concept, I start thinking about interaction. This might slightly alter the style or technique of the illustration but shouldn’t affect the punch of the still drawing. When I draw, I constantly switch between being an artist, who makes marks on paper, and a viewer, who judges whether those marks make any sense. As I draw, I observe, and sometimes I witness a lucky accident that leads to a new direction.

      Has the technical work of animation become easier?

      I work with extremely talented programmers, but animations take a long time, and if I have to contact a developer for each of the endless tiny variations, a fluid creative process becomes all but impossible. Instead of asking them to execute my ideas, I use their input to develop methods that allow me to experiment. I can only execute fairly simple concepts, but, as often happens with creative endeavors, limitations can be an inspiring source of new inventions.

      Read more at The New Yorker

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