After the Great Clint Cline spoofed the Grand Exalted Leader of PIXELS about his "no Big Border" decree (and I, of course, couldn't resist jumping into the fray - see my earlier blog entry on this), Clint came out with an image titled: "Precipice" (image #1). Other than the fact that this is another fine example of Mr. Cline's creativity, what caught my eye was a comment he made about this image on iPhoneArt.com. He made what I thought (at the time) was an outrageous claim that this image was created using the iPhone application Tiny Planets. He, of course, explained exactly how it was done (in Tiny Planets), and I was left with mud on my face.
Not one to sit still for this sort of embarrassment, I immediately set out to create a similar effect using Tiny Planets. Naturally, I had immediate success (due, of course, to Mr. Cline's excellent instructions). My 1st thought was to create an image using this new-found technique. But, what to do? Wouldn't it be rather obvious that this new work would be easily spotted as a "derivative" work? I could simply justify it by following Pablo Picasso's line about "Good Artists copy; Great Artists steal". However, I decided to take the high road and give credit where credit was due. The result was image #2, which I titled: "What Clint Might Do (if only he knew how to do a dotted line arrow)...".
Clint, being Clint, took up the challenge. He came out with image #3, which is officially titled: "Tightrope", but is unofficially titled: "What James Might Do (if only he knew how to shade his cubes)".
When this image was posted on Facebook, my response was that it was a good effort, but it could benefit by having a shark added somewhere. Clint responded that he'd get on it, but had to watch his alma mater (the Air Force Academy) play football first. While he was doing that, I came out with image #4, which I titled: "What James might do if he were trying to do what Clint might do if he was trying to do what James might do".
After the ball game, Clint came out with image #5, entitled: "Surf's Up" (unofficially called: "What Clint might do if he were surfing with James...").
I wasn't quite ready to let this go, so I responded by challenging Mr. Cline to get busy & add some shadows to his images somewhere, somehow. In the mean time, I came out with image #6 called: "What James might have done had he come up with those cute little clip-art guys before Clint did...".
Taking up the "shadow challenge", Clint responded with image #7, which he calls: "Shadowcam at 30 meters...".
Not being one to let anyone have "the last word", I responded with image #8, called "Shadowcam in 3 dimensions...".
I think this will most likely be the end of this little "challenge", but Clint and I both agree that we both had some fun & it was great to be "pushed" a bit by a fellow Artist. I hope you enjoyed the progression of images we created as much as we enjoyed creating them!
I’m quite enamored of this challenge. Not only do I like the outcome but I’m curious, as I bet many are, at how this was done. So simple yet so rewarding. True art.