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| Author | Vector graphics: How or Who? (Read 11539 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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68040
512 MB  Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done ! 
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on: October 01, 2023, 15:14
Today I am cataloging another 90thousand images, almost 20k of them Corel vector graphics. Now these are incredibly well done. Even so they're stored in the proprietary WPG container format, internally they seem to the true PICT data. They have lots of details and are zommable by many factors w/o loosing any of it. For the life of me I can not imagine someone/anyone sitting down and drawing all these by hand. Not 20 thousand of them! Specially not with the computer equipment available 30 odd years ago. So my reasoning goes that those must have been created automatically by vectorizing real life images. But what kind of software/system could they have used for that three decades ago? Even today its no small feat to create a flawless vector image out of a real life photograph or even a drawing. |
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: October 02, 2023, 08:37
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Well, vector graphics being scalable without losses is one of the key advantages. I haven't heard of vector image generators back then. If they existed, they should probably repackage it and slap an "graphics AI" sticker on it to make it sell like hot cakes given the AI-everything craze.  Could you upload one or two of the mentioned vector images on revontulet and share it here so we get an idea what we are talking about? Just shapes? landscapes? people?
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #2 on: October 02, 2023, 08:55
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Its everything. For real, the images cross the entire width of topics, from humans, to animals to complex machines. Some are serious, some are humorous and others are just a bit weird. There are way too many of them (close to 20k) to have been drawn by hand in that detail on the computer equipment of the 1990's.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #3 on: October 02, 2023, 14:47
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I think you perhaps under estimate the ability of people to just create clip art. Every publishing company had illustrators on staff who regularly made such material for their publication. Ready to go printing plates had been a thing for over century. The arrival of digital automation to publishing got even more people involved. A solid tradesman illustrator/graphic artist can create/recreate these images very quickly in a vector drawing program. With companies like T/Maker and Corel buying up these creations, it would not take long to amass collections of thousands of vector illustrations. I think there is a tendency to see art items as having a bit of mystery and magic. There is no doubt that some of it is, but there is a lot of it that is tradesman work. An illustrator has more in common with the carpenter and nurse, than with Rembrandt.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #4 on: October 02, 2023, 15:12
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I tend to agree. I see nothing in this picture that couldn't be created by a talented person with patience and the right tool. I also dare to point out that back then artists (like programmers) were required to very often work "from scratch", and developed the necessary skills for that. It was a different work attitude compared with today, where many of the graphics artists I worked with often heavily relied on stock photo that they'd retouche or slap a punchline onto. That said, I believe we're going to see a lot more of this kind of topics in the future as the knowledge on how digital pioneers did this or that fades. Much like we're having difficulty comprehending today how Europeans of the 13th century could build those huge castles with their perfect angles, towers and others features. Because we lost the knowledge, we tend to believe other forces must have helped ("No human could have built that. It must have been aliens.")
Last Edit: October 02, 2023, 15:18 by Bolkonskij
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #5 on: October 02, 2023, 15:44
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@wove Quote A solid tradesman illustrator/graphic artist can create/recreate these images very quickly in a vector drawing program.With the 12" or even 10" computer systems of the 1990s, rubber mousepads & mechanical mice in mind I don't see anything "mystical" in these drawings. I just recognize the flawlessness of the execution: All lines connect exactly where they are supposed to. All dimensions fit, the colors, too. It simply lacks those small inaccuracies that are typical for "quick'n fast" mass manual labor. And I have a bitmap-to-vector tool even for my measly 68k replicate system. So I can imagine someone from e.g. Silicon Graphics offering a vectorization suite capable of transforming massive amounts of graphic files from all kinds of established sources into vector images back in the 90s. At least more so than believing in an army of underpaid art geniuses producing 28k+ flawless vector images for just this one collection from Corel which then sold for - what - 30 or 40 US$? Not to mention the competing collections from Adobe, Microsoft and countless no-name digital chop shops. Gosh, they would have needed half the country drawing 24/7 to keep supplying them with enough images for all of those.
Last Edit: October 02, 2023, 15:48 by 68040
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