Exclusive Interview to :



David Runyon



Interview by Jerry Composano

Digital Artworks presents David Runyon, 
a Graphics artist showing talent and improvement in each rendering.

Digital
Artworks
David, tell our readers about yourself, where you live, what you do for a living, how you spend your time while not doing computer art.

Runyon I live with my wife, Cathy; and my 2 sons, Michael, 16; and Kevin, 14 in Decatur, Indiana. I'm a purchasing Agent/Inventory Manager for an Electric Supply Warehouse (1 of 5 branches). When not doing graphics I spend my time just doing average household chores. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, running the boys to guitar and drum practice and helping my parents out with odd jobs. I guess I'm just an average house husband. I love to read and at times have been known to collect Insects.

Digital
Artworks
Do you have any formal education in computer graphics?

Runyon Actually I have none at all. The only experience that I can offer is the Jr. High drafting classes about 30 years ago. I believe they are what I can attribute my modeling skills to.

Digital
Artworks
How did you get started in Computer Art? (Tell us about Night Hawks, the image).

Runyon This could get intense. I received my first computer in January 95. It was an old Packard Bell 8088 that ran at 3.3 MHz and had 2 5-1/4 floppy drives. It ran Dos 3.3 and I eventually forced it to run Dos 5. After absorbing the book Dos for Dummies, I realized I needed something new. In July of that year I found a used unit that had a 10" b/w screen, a 286 processor and no memory. It was sufficient to barely run Windows 3 and AOL and that's when I found the Internet and those incredible graphics (although they were in black and white). The following summer; 96, an electrical storm came in by the modem and smoked my baby forcing me to finally invest in a new unit (aw shucks). That's when I purchased the unit that I have now (although it has been modified quite a bit since then). I quit AOL and signed up with a local ISP that summer and discovered Microsoft Front Page and Jasc Paint Shop Pro. With a little nudge from Al, my ISP; I used Front Page to publish my first website and it just highlited a few of the pictures of Edward Hopper (who is the creator of the Nighthawks image that I first saw when I was in first grade). I must have signed up for about a million things on the Internet back then because catalogs started showing up on a regular basis and that's when I first met Bryce and Adobe.

When I saw the advertisements for these in the catalogs I just knew that these were what I wanted. I think it was in the summer of 97 that I finally invested in Bryce, Poser, and Photoshop. Actually it was my oldest son that learned how to use these programs and showed me how to add textures and import objects in Bryce. I was hooked and finally the dream that I had carried with me since I first saw Nighthawks in first grade began to take shape. I had always wanted to be an author, but my lack of understanding of the English language severly prohibited this. So, I concentrated on just making desktop images for myself and my friends. I thought that they were turning out fairly decent so www.nighthawks.com <http://www.nighthawks.com> was born to showcase what I was doing.

"Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper stirred that imagination in me at such a young age and I made the decision to use that name for anything creative that I would do. It is my hope that it conveys the idea of mystery and intrigue that I feel each time I look at it. (As a side note; I do have stories about the people in the picture, but have never committed them to paper!)

 

Digital
Artworks
Your earlier work, including the Boston Cover Art, is all oriented to Sci-Fi. Where did you get your inspiration back then?

Runyon I have always been a Sci-Fi fan from the early works of Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, the Doc Savage series and so many more that I could not possibly name them. Most of the early work that I did was just experiments in learning the programs that I had and giving tribute to the very people who had inspired me. Especially Boston (my favorite band). Tom Scholtz is quite an inspiration because almost all of his work was created in his basement!

Digital
Artworks
As you progressed, there are poser figures incorporated. Your earlier Poser work is as awesome as any Ive seen. Cyber and Dream show an extreme talent for presenting a living breathing model. Can you explain how you get the models to look so real? Their hair are perfect. Is it an object or do you post render the hair?

Runyon I had experimented with early Poser 3 figures in Bryce 3D and was always dissappointed in the results. There were just no decent clothing for the models and I didn't want to post nude women (although I have nothing against the nude form as long as it's artfully presented). Then along came the innovative Poser 4, Bryce 4 and Yamato and Mimi. Then everything changed! Mimi was the finest model that I had worked with and Yamato from Tokyo, Japan had created the facial morphs for this figure. I think that I was the first to post an image using this model and Yamato subsequently e-mailed me with his pleasure at the results.

I experimented with a few textures on the hair and usually do very dark renderings so that the stiffness and solidness of the hair cannot easily be noticed. About the only post render that I do to images is in a hint that I read in a Bryce book. I render at very large sizes and in Photoshop I use the smudge, blend and rubber stamp tool to smooth out the roughness of the 3D figures and any other nuisances that I can find. Then resize the image and apply the filters that bring out the colors and the effects that I'm going for.

Digital
Artworks
Your switch from the ordinary to the orient........Suddenly David Runyon is creating awesome renderings of subjects from the far east. How and why did you make this drastic transformation?

Runyon Again I must blame Yamato. Because of Mimi (and eventually Nene and Linlin) we became very good friends exchanging e-mail and my visualizations of how his models could be presented. I even became a beta tester for the new morph models that he came out with and would offer suggestions on how they were working. I first became interested in Japan when I saw Bruce Lee in the weekly Green Hornet show (although he was Cantonese and more of Chinese heritage-I didn't know that when I was that young). The interest stayed with me all my life and became focused toward Japanese culture and Art. Yamato was the spark that brought that interest back to the forefront of my imagination; and my current work is a tribute to his creativity and friendship.

Digital
Artworks
Your modeling skills are evident in "Casual Interest" and "Gosho Guruma". How did you get started modeling and what programs do you prefer?

Runyon I was just looking for a way to create models for myself. I had downloaded literally thousands of models that other people had created but was thinking all along that I wanted to make pictures with models that I could say were made be me. In the many posts and articles that I had read on the Internet and in magazines; the conclusion that presented itself was 3D studio Max. I picked up a copy of it earlier this year and just dove in. (I'm hoping my oldest son dives in too because I hate reading manuals).

Digital
Artworks
Since you dropped the "NightHawks" signature, you have used Japanese symbols as a signature. Tell us what they mean to you and why you dropped the Night Hawks signature.

Runyon Again that is the influence of my dear friend Yamato. I asked him early on if he could create a character for me (kanji) of "Nighthawks". He sent 2 different characters and I settled on "Yoru-no-taka" which I think means hawks at night. (Again, mystery and intrigue).

Digital
Artworks
If you had to pick one image by any other artist to be your favorite, what would that be? (Please include a link, if applicable)

Runyon It has to be "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper. After all, thats what started all of this. 

<http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/>


Digital
Artworks
Lets talk computers. Can you give our readers the scoop on your system and why you chose the system you have?

Runyon When the desktop unit with the 10" monitor was fried I went out and bought a system that had a 133 Pentium processor, 16 meg of ram, a 13" color monitor and a 1.8 gig hard drive. (Top of the line for it's time). Since then it has been gutted and expanded to include a PII 400, 256 megs of ram, a 15" monitor, an ATI 32 meg graphics card, 22 gig in hard drive space, Altec Lansing subwoofer and speaker system (for those wonderful MP3's). A Hewlett Packard scanner and an Epson Printer that prints photographic copies of my work. I run Windows 98 as the OS, and my render times have been cut from 36 hours down to about 3 or 4 hours for the really complex scenes in Bryce.

Digital
Artworks
What can our visitors expect from you from here on out?

Runyon This is probably the hardest question because I never know where I'm going. I just let my imagination go, and follow it wherever it leads. I never imagined that I could be considered an artist. I never imagined that anyone would really like my work. I never imagined that I would make friends all over the world. The entire experience has been quite a shock and a special blessing. All I can really say is thank you Lord. Thank you to all of the people who have contributed to my success (Yamato, Kozaburo (for his stunning hair models), Phil Cook, Bushi, Willow, Paul Telesco, TranzorZ, H2, LoboUK, Ghost, Ghostofmacbeth and so many others (sorry I cannot remember all of you). It was the endless hours struggling with the tutorials (I have an incredibly difficult time with written text; I usually need to be shown before I can grasp even the fundamentals). Hopefully I can create some Japanese art that is worthy of the great "Edo" masters and maybe I can be called the first American-Japanese artist of the digital age.

Thank you so very much for your interest and support Jerry.

David A. Runyon

(Still with so very much to learn)

 

Digital
Artworks
Thank you David, it's been a pleasure working with you on this and I look forward to more of your work

Jerry Composano
for Digital Artworks

 


Page TOP