As digital imaging software advances, the amount of time needed for an artist’s vision to manifest as a completed image is rapidly contracting. As a result, digital art has become the chosen production medium for the entertainment industry, especially videogames and blockbuster films. Using both 2d and 3d modeling programs, this presentation will give a mindbending demonstration of how to integrate custom toolsets in Zbrush, Painter, and Photoshop into a coherent workflow for an unlimited flight of the imagination.

This presentation will also pose a series of questions about the role of mainstream media entertainment in our civilization. Given the ability to create anything you can imagine, what will you choose to bring into existence? Another consumer distraction loaded with violence? Or perhaps this power can be used to create a finer world? This talk will give a brief overview of interrelated subjects such as corporate media control, the environmental impacts of consumer electronics, the responsibilities of the artist to society, and the use of archetypal imagery/Jungian dream psychology as a means of hacking the subconscious of the audience, exemplified in productions like Star Wars and the Matrix.

Art shapes dreams. What kind of world will you create?

George Atherton
I’m a digital painter and concept artist for ‘Illuminated’ (illuminated.com), an animated film project affiliated with podcollective.com, Guerrilla News Network (gnn.tv), and conceptart.org. My education at the Evergreen State College empowered me with a vision of how to use art to serve the causes of social justice. I’ve had the opportunity to learn firsthand from some of the top concept artists in the entertainment industry, and it is an honor to pass that knowledge onward.