Studio Artist Tips

Gallery Show is a new feature available in version 4 of Studio Artist. What it lets you do is run a continuous randomized Studio Artist performance. You could use it to do things like put together a customized automatic painting display using a dedicated computer like an iMac or a digital photo frame. Or you could use it to automatically generate custom artwork and/or mutated paint preset collections.

To run Gallery Show, you just use the Action : Run Gallery Show menu. Once started, it will continue to run unattended until you tell it to stop by pressing the space bar. If you hold down the option key while pressing the spacebar then it will stop the current action it is running and move to the next part of it’s random cycle, so feel free to use this to tell it to move on if you don’t like what it’s currently doing.

What it does is a function of the Gallery Show preferences, which you can adjust in the Gallery tab in the main preference dialog. The Gallery Technique preference specifies what set of presets are used for the gallery show. You can currently choose between the factory PASeq, MSG, and paint presets, as well as the current favorites folder. The MSG and paint preset can be mutated prior to being run, which enables you to generate endless variability as well as use Gallery Show to automatically mutate new preset collections.

By working with custom Favorites folders you can mix and match different preset types to build custom random art processes. This is the easiest way to work with Gallery Show to build your own personalized art processes. You could use Gallery Show to generate collections of artwork you then sort through for keepers. Or you could build custom art displays or live painting picture frames. You can also switch the current favorites folder on the fly while gallery show is running to switch between different sets of presets in a performance situation.

The Gallery Source Option preference lets you choose between a fixed source, a folder of source images, or live video capture.  The source is updated appropriately at the start of each gallery show cycle. The appropriate technique action is then run, followed by a 4 second delay, and then the cycle continues again until you tell it to stop. Both the specific technique preset and the source (if source folder is used) are randomly selected from the appropriate collection for each cycle. If the mutate technique options are chosen, then the randomly selected preset is mutated prior to being run as an action in the cycle.

By recording a gallery show in a session history you can save the entire performance to play again, as well as any generated mutated presets which can be culled through at a late time. You can use Studio Artist’s Image or Movie Stream functionality to save a folder or movie of the gallery show canvas images. And with Movie Stream AutoWrite functionality you can live stream a Quicktime movie while a gallery show is being performed. This is how you can record a movie of all the live painting going on in the gallery show.

For More Information

A tutorial tip that discusses how to generate random vectorizer gallery shows is available here. This tutorial provides some more detailed informaiton on getting started using gallery show features.