159 - 3D Printing as a Sketch Process

Episode 159: The Art and Science of Design Sketching and Coffee Chats

In episode 159 of the show, Jamie and Kurt delve into a casual yet insightful conversation that explores various aspects of design, sketching, and digital tools in architecture. They discuss the nuances of recording episodes, adjusting routines, and seasonal weather changes. The hosts compare their favorite coffee blends, touching on Guatemalan and house blends, while also discussing mugging down with Mr. Coffee machines. The conversation shifts towards design and sketching methods, including computational and analog approaches, the use of digital tools like AI in visualization, and the timeless relevance of traditional techniques. The episode wraps up with reflections on balancing teaching, workload, and personal routines.

00:00 Welcome and Episode Introduction
00:41 Snowball Effect and Snowman Building
02:03 Weather Talk: Texas and Hurricanes
02:49 Coffee Conversations: Guatemalan Roast
06:27 Morning Routines and Coffee Preferences
08:39 Teaching and Basements
11:54 Revisiting Classic Movies
12:12 Christopher Nolan's Masterpieces
13:22 Podcast Recommendations
14:04 Family and Chat Dynamics
14:31 Sketching Techniques and Tools
16:06 3D Printing and Modeling
19:21 Drawing Exercises and Perspectives
23:40 Digital vs. Traditional Art
33:58 AI in Visualization
35:59 Concluding Thoughts

Transcript

Kurt Neiswender: 0:32

Hey, Jamie. How's it going?

Jamie Crawley: 0:35

Welcome back, folks. It's episode 159. Howdy, Kurt.

Kurt Neiswender: 0:40

Is it 159? Well, I mean, we're recording 159, but is it really 159 until it's live? Put on the audio platforms.

Jamie Crawley: 0:50

Well, we're just

Kurt Neiswender: 0:51

I know this is it. I did.

Jamie Crawley: 0:53

I did think about that, but you did correct me the last time we got on. And you're like, well, you know, you know, you know, I know we're delayed on some editing, but. They do live out in the universe. Yeah, that's right. So you're right. You're right. You know,

Kurt Neiswender: 1:09

playing my cards against me. Huh? I see. I see how it is. Oh, no,

Jamie Crawley: 1:13

no. Just reminding you of the momentum that we have and it's wonderful.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:18

It's a, yes, it's a snowball. Yes. All snowball. Start small when they roll downhill and then they become

Jamie Crawley: 1:29

an avalanche. Or if you live in a flat area and like it snows in your yard and then you have to make a tiny snowball and then roll it until you can put the stick in it to make the snowman's nose. Right. It's a stick for the nose.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:47

Carrot. Carrot. Sticks for arms. Sticks for arms. Fingers.

Jamie Crawley: 1:53

Yeah. Well, is that right? Oh, that makes sense. Coal

Kurt Neiswender: 1:56

for buttons. I mean, if you go by the frosty. Traditional frosty.

Jamie Crawley: 2:02

Top hat. Or baseball cap with the car keys. Don't put the car keys next to the snowman, cause then You're buried in the snowman. All over.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:13

Nobody's getting a garage.

Jamie Crawley: 2:15

No one's getting that other garage space.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:18

Yeah. Yep. Yep. And we're, what was I gonna say? Oh, but I don't really know what snow is like. Even here in Michigan, we didn't get much snow last year. So, but this year we'll see.

Jamie Crawley: 2:31

I don't want it.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:34

You, you probably won't get any. I mean, there are moments where Texas gets things, like you're going to get a hurricane.

Jamie Crawley: 2:42

No, no, no, no, no.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:45

Is what's the latest one is F or H F right now. I forgot the name. It's a female name. It's heading into the Gulf. Although you're not really in the Gulf.

Jamie Crawley: 3:00

Well, I mean, Texas, third coast, Gulf. Third coast. Well, but you, Austin. Third, third coast. No, Austin is not. Austin's sort of in the middle of the state.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:10

Right, yeah, so. Hurricanes usually don't hit you.

Jamie Crawley: 3:14

No, we just get the tropical storm depression thing afterwards. Afterwards. Yeah. Aftermath. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:22

So what is the you wanted to know what coffee I was drinking?

Jamie Crawley: 3:26

Yes, I did. Well, I mean, I haven't officially asked that yet in this episode, but for those who join us in the green room, there was a moment where I jumped ahead of myself.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:38

I think they're, I think they're fine. I think they're more irritated by me having to. Move my car out of the garage. That was in

Jamie Crawley: 3:46

the green room, buddy. Again, they didn't know about it. Oh, I know. Yeah. But

Kurt Neiswender: 3:50

if

Jamie Crawley: 3:50

they stayed, they're in If they stayed, yeah. They're here now. And yes, in the live.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:55

It's still worthy of another apology. Well.

Jamie Crawley: 3:58

Right? Well, yes. And, and they didn't hear my little subtle diatribe and dig, dig, dig on the coffee in the basement.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:08

Oh, yeah. Oh, right, right.

Jamie Crawley: 4:10

Is that what's in the cup?

Kurt Neiswender: 4:12

No actually, I, what, what, what do I have? I have some Guatemalan roast, medium roast, from that market that I told, that I've gone to, where you can, You know, fill your own, you know, bag. Aw, I know. She's like,

Jamie Crawley: 4:32

she's like,

Kurt Neiswender: 4:33

does not like Guatemalans apparently. She's

Jamie Crawley: 4:35

like, apparently like, I haven't been to this, this market where you can fill the bags. Yeah. She wants you to fill a bag to her. That's, that's what she's saying. She's like, yeah, you, you fill, she doesn't know bagger bowl. Like it's just all one thing.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:51

a vessel, please.

Jamie Crawley: 4:52

Yes. I would like

Kurt Neiswender: 4:53

fill, fill my vessel. So, so that, yeah. It's a, it's a Guatemalan roast. And I'm Guatemalan. So I kind of have some partiality to when I have my choice, right? Yep. If I'm going to choose, I'm going to choose Guatemala. So that's, that's what I I've got. It's a, it's a nice, you know, mellow, nothing, nothing super stand out, you know, but it, it, it gets the job done. You know, has good flavor tastes like coffee has caffeine.

Jamie Crawley: 5:27

That delivery. Perfect. You were just like, it's kind of mellow.

Kurt Neiswender: 5:34

You remember, it's like a commercial, it's a coffee commercial, right? Like, like

Jamie Crawley: 5:39

Tastes like coffee. Like I kinda like it. It

Kurt Neiswender: 5:43

wasn't that bad.

Jamie Crawley: 5:44

No, no, no. But it was It wasn't monotone. See, I'm old, I'm trying to get the facial thing to work. And because of the facial thing, I'm trying not to move like a whole lot of stuff with the eyebrows and stuff. And so that makes the voice do that kind of stupid monotone. So I

Kurt Neiswender: 6:00

look like a robot?

Jamie Crawley: 6:01

Does that make sense? No just me. Or a serial

Kurt Neiswender: 6:03

killer?

Jamie Crawley: 6:04

Maybe. I mean, have you been watching those shows again?

Kurt Neiswender: 6:09

I actually

Jamie Crawley: 6:09

have not. I'm behind. Maybe you need to do that. And that'll just like that. Snap the

Kurt Neiswender: 6:15

streak.

Jamie Crawley: 6:15

Yeah. Snap the streak. And

Kurt Neiswender: 6:17

they see you're smiling already folks. I'm enjoying myself. I I'm almost through a bottleneck. I've built, but it's a self built work workload bottleneck. I've created for myself, which I just said and school started, right? These are all the excuses, you know, my teaching semester has started too. And it's, you know, See, it's just, you know, it's just manifesting into these white hair. Not even, I wouldn't wait right past gray and now I'm into white and into white hair. And look at this. Anyway. So what are you drinking? Cause it should not be a big debate cause that's for later.

Jamie Crawley: 6:59

No. So it is I've resorted to the house blend for me, which is I've gone to the community coffee. This is the breakfast blend. Cause I did not feel like I wanted to get some ground coffee and that's probably the easiest, best, most inexpensive ground coffee that I actually prefer and can drink more than, you know, a couple of days in a row. So,

Kurt Neiswender: 7:25

so we've talked about, you know, in the past our brewing methods, right?

Jamie Crawley: 7:31

Yes.

Kurt Neiswender: 7:32

Still. So you're still in a, like Mr. Coffee territory. You know, like the coffee machine. Oh yeah. The machine. Yes, yes, yes. The brand name. What's like Xerox? I was like, what?

Jamie Crawley: 7:45

Like, it's like 1983 on me here going on. But no, um, yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I have the other, you know, I have the press and all that fun stuff. I don't have the patience for that.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:01

I like French press. I do

Jamie Crawley: 8:02

too. I mean, I, I mean, I will bust it out on the weekend when there was like, like the time constraints and like, you know, you know, the runway of Jamie patience level is just forever. Do you ever

Kurt Neiswender: 8:17

so like on work days, are you, what, waking up 10 minutes before you got to get out the door? Is that the

Jamie Crawley: 8:24

No, I mean Are you that guy? No, I'm not, I'm not totally that guy. No. I mean, I, you know, 30 minutes. I used to be 45, 45 minutes, you know, before I got to go out the door. If I, if, if, if I don't have coffee figured into the, the thing, because if I have coffee figured in, then I want to grind it and do the whole thing and whatever.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:44

But

Jamie Crawley: 8:44

yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:45

So here, you know, everyone's got to have a routine. Well, maybe not everybody, but for me, I like a routine. You can't even find your keys. That's not part of the routine. Oh, okay. Sorry. Jumped ahead. That's step three. But it's a good point. I guess you call out a good, but you know, when, when the, the, this workload over, have you left the house in a while? I have to, I have to go teach. To teach, number one. And then I, but sometimes it's like in what do you call it? Like just in time teaching as in I show up just in time. No, I like to get there a little early. I try and leave, but, but then what, you know, things get sacrificed like food.

Jamie Crawley: 9:38

You need to like, Like, okay, so when it gets cold, which is probably like next week for you guys, like, it might be cold right now. Not yet,

Kurt Neiswender: 9:47

well.

Jamie Crawley: 9:47

So when you show up, do you like do the whole nutty professor thing and like get like, like, like wool scarves and wool hats and like wool scarves? Did I say scarves already? And, and you like walk in, you know, and it's like, you know, like choking yourself with the scarf and you're like, Oh, I'm here, you know, let's do some desk crits.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:10

Oh, it's quite that frantic. Maybe if I was late. Okay. Haven't been late yet, but you know, so so we have, you know, your keys are in your blue hat While we're talking about school. I I did I our friend of the podcast Cormac one half of the dynamic Arca speak duo is teaching with me in studio

Jamie Crawley: 10:41

Now,

Kurt Neiswender: 10:43

Besties. Okay Until I deliver some coffee to to Evan.

Jamie Crawley: 10:49

Just tell him it's in the basement.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:52

I have multiple times. I've, I've, I've exhausted that excuse.

Jamie Crawley: 10:56

No, what you do, like, so is it, is it in the base? Do you have a basement like Blair witch project basement?

Kurt Neiswender: 11:02

Like, like is, well, in Michigan, people like basements'cause tornadoes are a thing. Well, you get tornadoes too, but you don't have basement. Not here, not you up.

Jamie Crawley: 11:15

Not really. Oklahoma. Sometimes, I mean, we get occasional, I mean, so more like North Texas, I mean central Texas. Sometimes we can,

Kurt Neiswender: 11:23

so the Midwest likes a basement. Mm-Hmm. You know, it's a, it's a full height. You know, eight foot wall basement. It's not, it's not scary. I grew up, I grew up in a Blair witch.

Jamie Crawley: 11:37

The

Kurt Neiswender: 11:39

basement I grew up in was a Blair witch basement. That was scary. Dirt, dirt floor. Yeah. It was an old farmhouse. Yeah.

Jamie Crawley: 11:47

Okay.

Kurt Neiswender: 11:49

You know, stone wall, good guy down there. Spiders

Jamie Crawley: 11:54

in the

Kurt Neiswender: 11:55

guy. I, I, I, there probably was a guy for sure. The boogeyman.

Jamie Crawley: 12:01

Did you see that in the movie theater?

Kurt Neiswender: 12:04

Witch.

Jamie Crawley: 12:05

That.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:06

The Boogeyman?

Jamie Crawley: 12:08

Which?

Kurt Neiswender: 12:09

Oh, yes, I did, actually.

Jamie Crawley: 12:10

Me

Kurt Neiswender: 12:11

too. When I was in high school, or right after college. First, somewhere, it was 98, 99, something like that.

Jamie Crawley: 12:19

99 was a good year for movies.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:24

The The Matrix. Yes. The Matrix. I think Memento, too. Oh, yeah. That was a good one.

Jamie Crawley: 12:32

Yep. Need to watch that again.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:34

Saw them all. Yeah, it's worth, it's, I could

Jamie Crawley: 12:36

watch

Kurt Neiswender: 12:36

that. Many times. That

Jamie Crawley: 12:38

one's worth a rewatch, for sure.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:42

I've seen it multiple times. Oh yeah. I mean, can you, it takes more, like Christopher Nolan things take more than one time.

Jamie Crawley: 12:52

Do you know that they're, they're, they're re releasing or maybe they, maybe I missed it. Like Interstellar, like in the theater.

Kurt Neiswender: 13:01

Oh yeah.

Jamie Crawley: 13:02

Yeah. That was a good one. Yeah. Excellent.

Kurt Neiswender: 13:05

That's the one that's McConaughey, right? Yeah. That was a good one.

Jamie Crawley: 13:11

Anne Hathaway and oh, and then

Kurt Neiswender: 13:16

those people. That was a good movie. That was, that was really cool. I like the way they visualized time, I suppose, really. It's, it's kind of just about time. If you boil it down, let's our movie. This is the movie podcast where we distill everything down to single word concepts. Coffee. It's pretty good. It's good. I like coffee.

Jamie Crawley: 13:45

Coffee. Caffeine. Guatemala. Guatemala. Beans. This is like word association, but like not word association.

Kurt Neiswender: 13:54

I've been watching too much or listening to too much smart lists. Are you familiar with that podcast? It's Will Arnett. Jason Bateman. Are you cheating on

Jamie Crawley: 14:04

this podcast?

Kurt Neiswender: 14:06

I have to listen to other things. I'm not trying to emulate. Okay. Necessarily. Keep going. I enjoy listening to other people talk. Just not, not, not this. These guys. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've already demonstrated, you know, basically all that we've got going for us. So anyway, we should probably talk about a sketch. Yeah. I think it's time. What do you think? Yeah. Folks. Yep.

Jamie Crawley: 14:34

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:36

I would, if they were in the chat, if the chat actually worked, they would be saying, well, I mean,

Jamie Crawley: 14:42

your cousins in the chat, so, or nephew or

Kurt Neiswender: 14:45

I think he's my cousin, cousin, cousin in law,

Jamie Crawley: 14:49

cousin in law. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:50

You get cousin in laws. Oh, it's all,

Jamie Crawley: 14:54

it's all family. I mean,

Kurt Neiswender: 14:55

we were going to talk about.

Jamie Crawley: 14:57

This,

Kurt Neiswender: 15:01

but maybe a little bit of this.

Jamie Crawley: 15:03

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why don't you, why don't you share, it's like a show and tell Kirk needs to show and tell this is, this is all part of the process folks.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:10

Well, you know, speaking of sketches and methods to sketch, I'm looking for the keys again, I got to get the right model to match. I found it. Look at that first try. So I don't know, the camera's not going to pick it up very well. Is it? You know, I tried photographing these things like, well, this is a, Smartphone, I tried using like a nicer camera a while ago, and I don't know if it's the white, you know, the, the way the lighting hits it. It's, it's not, it's like if you photograph a good sunset, it never looks as good as the real thing. Is that, is that a little too braggadocious, beating my own horn over this model?

Jamie Crawley: 16:08

I think, I think everyone was following the logic. Well,

Kurt Neiswender: 16:12

cause you can't really see all the little bits and the nuance. I mean, especially when it doesn't focus very well. And

Jamie Crawley: 16:20

well, I

Kurt Neiswender: 16:20

mean, but, but talk about, talk

Jamie Crawley: 16:21

about the process though. Oh yeah, sure. I think, I think that's the intriguing part for me. I,

Kurt Neiswender: 16:27

I, I kind of like these, they're little cubes. Well, they're sort of. eroded cube, if you took a cube and kind of started to pull pieces out. But basically, it's it's derived from a grasshopper. So a computational script, I'll stay agnostic, that sort of subdivides the a two dimensional plane, and then starts randomly extruding these subdivisions, right? Sort of these, Trapezoidal or poly polygonal, polygonal cells right in 2D and then starts extruding it in the third dimension so that you get this volume. And then it sort of, kind of, it, it, it sort of, kind of, it, it winds up kind of looking like a, an urban condition, right? Like a abstract set of skyscrapers or something like that. Right. And and so I, I run a few, I, I've run a few of these. Which I don't need to show them all, but this is 1 example and I, I then 3d, you know, send it to my 3d printer. My new 3d printer, which is a lot nicer than the old 1. and now I have these objects, which I'm going to. They are here now, but they're going to go to campus to my office on campus to you know, decorate the space a little bit. And I'm actually planning on doing something a little more like have you ever done an exercise in school where they, you get like, it's kind of, you get a square in the grid and then you have to match up, you know, you can model whatever you want and then you have to match your edges up with your neighbor, like your classmate gets the other edges.

Jamie Crawley: 18:13

Oh yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 18:13

You ever do that? Yeah.

Jamie Crawley: 18:14

Yeah. We did a, we did a project. It was a, it was a bridge project. And so sort of a. spring first year project or, or like, or fall second year project, sort of an early exercise. And it was, you know, kind of everyone had terrain and they, they had a, they had a square. And so each, each piece of the train ended up being this ravine that was the river. Right. And so you had, you had to build a bridge

Kurt Neiswender: 18:49

pathway or.

Jamie Crawley: 18:50

Or, but it also had to be habitable. And so some people had habitation on both sides of the ravine. Some people had habitation on one side of the ravine with a bridge to the other side, but then they would just sort of be lined up. So at the end of the day, you have this sort of series of. Cliff houses kind of all the way, all the way down the, the, the piece. So similar to what you're talking about it in terms of lining, lining up the squares or lining up the cubes and the edges.

Kurt Neiswender: 19:20

Yeah. And so in this case, the, I have three or four of these that I recently ran. They're all different. But they don't have any common edges. So the next iteration, right, the next round, I'm going to try and you know, adapt the, the, the, the algorithm to hold an edge to sort of hold. Yeah. Hold, hold a boundary. Condition so that I can then try and sort of cluster them together into a larger sort of piece of context.

Jamie Crawley: 19:53

Well, I mean, I, so yeah, that's, you're talking about, you're talking about photographing them before, and, and I think that that's the, the nice thing about this image on the screen, even if you don't particularly like it is or it wasn't exactly the way you, you'd hoped it, it turned out, I think what's great about it is that it, it in and of itself is sort of this worm's eye kind of view or this sort of abstracted aerial. View of the object. And it, the, the motion about it, you know, for me is about the lines and, you know, I think what would be interesting. And this is maybe an exercise, you know, if you ended up doing this, maybe with students or something is it's, you know, I don't know how. comfortable a lot of them are with sort of drawing and sort of using their eyes, you know, to see. But, you know, I think early design exercises for people who are learning to draw or to challenge themselves with different drawing techniques, still lifes. It's, you know, it's, it's, Instead of having these sort of complex you know, figure field or figure that you're trying to draw or a perspective of a building or something like that, sometimes it's having an object in the middle of the room or in this case on your desktop. And picking a vantage point and actually trying to draw what you see and, and, and trying to understand kind of the, like, this is great with this image because it, there is a vanishing point, you know, to, you know, or perceived vanishing point to this and it's, and it's optical it's your eye kind of creating that vanishing point, especially that object that's sort of off your index finger, you know, that, that one spot, Shard as it moves back into the plane of the table, you know, it's receding towards that vanishing point. In real life, it's really not right. I mean, it's sort of, it's, it's, you know, somewhat going up and down.

Kurt Neiswender: 21:49

Oh, I see.

Jamie Crawley: 21:49

Right. And so it's an optical illusion. And what that does is it gives an opportunity to kind of experiment with vantage points. For images and this kind of idea of vistas and framed views and perspective, which is really, you know, that's what, you know, all those, you know, folks that we, we think of as artists, architects you know, I'm sorry, folks, you know, I'm still of the mindset that architects are also artists. You know, we definitely have a whole nother skill set to things too, but those concepts are translatable. Absolutely. And and this is, this is just one indication of that, you know, where you're, you're, you're able to, you're, you're able to kind of play those kind of visual games that become really, really apparent. And you can't tell me that you don't do those types of things as an architect, when you're sort of laying out spaces.

Kurt Neiswender: 22:49

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and what I'm adding in here, I'm sure you've done this too, is like the, then the crop, right. The obscuring right. Certain, certain, you know, you have the overall, I've captured the whole thing, but then we also, when, when I was a student, we did these exercises of sort of abstracting and further cropping in, right. So within this box, you're only drawing that. And then you, so then it creates another, Iteration or evolution to either than 2D or 3D, you know, so this idea that you've shared with me, it's kind of interesting, you know, as if I haven't overwhelmed myself with work too much. I've been wanting to develop a elective course for students that kind of blends a little bit of what we do with sketch, you know, well, we, what we talk about, right? Sketches And, and hand, you know, mixing hand with digital as an elective. And maybe this is a one of those, this could be an exercise into that. If I, well, I mean, and generate the,

Jamie Crawley: 23:58

and I think, you know, other things along those lines, just to consider, you know, just to kind of run this, run this, you know, trap a little further is, you know, I think the, the beauty of the sketchbook for me is it's, it's fast, it's comfortable. But at the same time, you know, folks, I am, I do draw on an, on an iPad as well. And, and I do work and yeah, I know, I know, shucker. And so I do do some digital stuff. I just don't share it with folks. Because it's, because it, well, for me, it's, it's not where I want it to be yet. And there's parts of it that are, I love the layering of things, you know, the, the quick and easy, you know, access of my skills in Photoshop, you know, to bring that into a digital drawing environment. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's, it's, it's blending those things and it, and I do that anyways, you know, for workflow, but I think the things that are missing for me. are, are some of the textures that I can achieve really, really quickly, as well as experiment with on the fly, you know, with, you know, different media in my hand. And, and I think that that's something that I'm pushing myself digitally to get to. It's not to say that those things you can't do, there's plenty of folks who do it and are much more adept at it than I am in that kind of an environment. But I'm not, I want to be, I look at their, I look at their work to kind of understand it. But I think that that's, that's, you know, there's a the, the methodology of it and the, the thinking that's going on in your brain. I think is really the same thing. I would make that argument. It's just the, you know, the medium here is, is, is different. There is, there is some different etymology to how these drawings are, are developed, but I, I think that there's, there's something to it and I think that it's also, you know, I've had this sort of conversation with, with some colleagues recently. It's, it's almost sort of a generational type thinking is, you know, if you handed somebody today a sketchbook and they, and that sort of wasn't their, their mode and they felt more comfortable digitally. You know, it's sort of a digital native, you know, pure and simple you know, they might be able to draw a little bit, but they're still going to have that. If they're sketching isn't their, their forte, they're still going to have all those rough spots and criticisms of their own work. Whether they're on a piece of paper or on a screen you know, and working on a tablet, it's just that once you get past that level of frustration and start to realize you can start to break down that whole process, just like we talk about in the sketchbook, you can do the same thing on a tablet with a stylus. The, the benefits, I mean, honestly, of the tablet and the stylus is, is scale doesn't matter at that point. You can zoom, you can expand, you can, you can shrink, and it's all things that, that I would have to, have to do using a copy machine, you know, and collage, you know, you know, from before where you would have things bigger. So you can get, get more detail into it and then shrink it down so that it looks tighter, you know, and the line work changes and the line weight changes. You know, you'd do that in Photoshop if you were digitizing something and all that kind of stuff, but now with a tablet and a stylus, you know, you could, you could do that on the fly and do that as part of your iterations in your process without having to add those extra steps.

Kurt Neiswender: 27:37

So, Yeah, but you know, with our, our friend Kevin from Archie Marathon he, he He likes to remind when it comes to the digital is The conversation moves, or the terminology moves away from scale toward resolution, and it's really because you can still then utilize resolution in an architectural, you know, which, which I mean, is dimension. Right? So you can actually put it in. Proportion things and actually pull a dimension from it. It's, it's the, it's definitely more of that. That digital native is thinking in pixels, not, you know, 8th of an inch and so, but being able to go back and forth is, is, is where you can become a little even more valuable or facile, right? You know, bouncing back and forth between, like you said, the, the paper, the large format. Which then reduces and then zooms back out. So, you know, I think resolution it's, it's, it's tricky. It's tricky for me. I'll admit to try and wrap my head around pixel versus scale. You know, I don't know about

Jamie Crawley: 29:01

you. Well, I mean, look at, look at the sketch that you pulled up for today. You know, it's, it's one where. You know, again, it's forced perspective. It's playing with scale. But it's also playing with line weight to achieve two different vignettes, you know, of the same kind of composition.

Kurt Neiswender: 29:22

Right. Yeah.

Jamie Crawley: 29:23

To give you that distance and to give you that sense of scale. as well as the, the level of detail. I mean, the thing that is nice about this for me is it also sort of speaks to an effort on my part to try and explain, you know, like when you, when, when folks look at like good black and white photography or good photography today, there's sort of a grain and a grit to some of that. And did you know, I mean, photographers are working digitally now and all that stuff and, but you can still achieve that level of kind of quality, you know, in those kinds of images and there's something that's there's a soul to it, I think, in that image, right? And we, and, and, and we, you appreciate it, right? It's sort of what you were saying about sort of that that. You know, expression of that sunset or that kind of image in your mind and that kind of almost that dust in the air kind of, you know, twilight with a sketch, you know, I'm trying to achieve some of those things from texture and sort of quality to bring, bring that whole statue that's in the sketch forward, you know, and drive it towards the viewer so that all the other stuff sort of recedes into the background. You know, even though it's all done with the same pen, there's a, there's a consciousness of the cross hatch and the texture and all those types of things. Now, can you do that digitally? Absolutely. You know, but, but I think that. There's a, there's a reluctance sometimes to draw it. It's a, it's at, at the point when you go digital, sometimes folks will put kind of use almost like airbrush and paint tools to kind of get that splatter and that effect or that affected pen, you know, that certain pen, you know, and to get that sort of same technique. And, and not to say that that, you know, it's cheating or something, it's just a different way of working. For me, I'm trying to, consciously go through those steps for this image, but I'm doing it all with, you know, with one implement, you know, as I'm, as I find myself moving to that digital environment to try and say, draw this same image or the same kind of concept, you know, I might flip to those different pens myself. And, and kind of play with that splatter and and masking certain things so that it doesn't get kind of into that white area. That's sort of nice in this sketch, you know, kind of, you know, around, around the form and the figure. But I hope, hopefully that makes sense is that I think that that's the thing that sometimes the digital image to me, you know, feels when someone's just doing it and not kind of understanding. All the tools that they have, you know, at, in their arsenal. For lack of a better term that sort of grit and texture that you can get with a a stipple or a crosshatch that is not machine made, you know, that is, you know, that has a little bit instinct in, in, in terms of it and almost error, you know, there's some error in, in, in the way it's drawn. It, it feels more crafted and sort of resonates a little bit more. Whereas the other feels fabricated.

Kurt Neiswender: 32:37

Yeah, well, you know, sometimes like I liken it to like, you remember when 4k TVs started coming out and then they had like this super high refresh rate, like the, the cycling so that like, and they call it, they kind of call it the soap opera effect. So like the image on the TV was so crisp that it kind of looked fake right or Over it's just like overcooked and like and like you said having a little grit and grain you know on top of that allows the brain to do be more creative and filling in those blanks or drawing their You know filling out the picture in their head rather than the screen trying to produce it all.

Jamie Crawley: 33:30

Well, I mean, you know, we, we sort of talked about like film stuff kind of at the beginning of this episode. And it's like, I don't want to be that sort of, you know, navel gazing, like, you know, you know, Oh, tear, you know, like, Ooh, well, you know, film, you know, film needs to be this perfect, you know, you, you must shoot on such and such, you know, I mean, I've heard it. I understand it. You know what I'm talking about? And it works with your 4k. Cause yeah, it's, there's something that feels a bit artificial. I think maybe is the word we haven't, we haven't said it, it feels a bit artificial. It's not that it's bad. It's just like it's overcooked in, in a way that doesn't feel real. And I think that realism is something that resonates with people. It's subconscious. And I think you can achieve both in either media. But I think that there's, there's still some skill involved in, in, you know, whether you're a digital artist or, you know, somebody who's, who's doing with, you know, traditional media.

Kurt Neiswender: 34:31

Yeah, you know, like one other thing, one last thing, I know you want to, you want to catch a debate, but these and, and, and, cause this could definitely go on into a future episode too, is, you know, implementing or leveraging AI. And the, the Dean at the university and our architecture department is, is definitely been exploring a lot of AI visualization tools and techniques. And there's, they're getting to a point now where like, I don't know if you've seen it, seen any examples, but basically it can now render like five second animations to where the camera, the cameras. Position moves, so it starts to pan, say, across. So like your sketch here, if you had an AI generate the image of your scene, it then is also, can create like a, a bit of movement. It can't, it can't interpret a whole 360 or anything like that. You know, it can do like five second turn and I find it very interesting because now you're starting to talk about three dimensional, not just a still image, but now sort of more depth, right? And

Jamie Crawley: 36:00

well, and it's interpretive. I mean, there's an interpretive aspect to it, which I think, you know, that to me is exciting. You know that, I mean, You know, that's where, you know, it becomes, it truly becomes this augmenting tool, you know, and, and I think that that at that point. Yeah, I'm all for it. Let's experiment with it.

Kurt Neiswender: 36:20

Yeah, I'm thinking, can, can, well, anyway, this, like I said, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but yeah, I, I, I'm glad you're excited in that prospect too. And so we should just leave it there. Because I think that,

Jamie Crawley: 36:36

yeah, we have to get another cup of coffee if we had to go on. So let's, let's leave that one there for now, but because I think it'll be an

Kurt Neiswender: 36:42

interesting expanded conversation for sure. So, yeah, thanks. I will talk to you soon, Jamie,