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Old Book Illustrations

2 years ago/17 comments/oldbookillustrations.com
3 years ago by enricozb

Tangentially related: fiziko [0], a MetaPost library that can draw old-style physics illustrations. This is not my software.

[0]: https://github.com/jemmybutton/fiziko

3 years ago by gtramont

This is amazing! Thanks for the link.

3 years ago by app4soft

You may follow Sergey Slyusarev (dev of 'fiziko) on Twitter to see some WIP works.[0]

Also, take a look on Kristof Dedene's procedural hatching and manga shaders in Blender.[1]

[0] https://twitter.com/cphlmy/status/1153433765072576520

[1] https://twitter.com/KDedeneArt/status/1332063491218399232

3 years ago by skytreader

Cool! I've been listening a lot to the Draftsmen podcast lately and one thing that they keep mentioning is "studying the (old) Masters". I'm not sure if these qualify as "Masterworks" per their definition but it's from the same era, i.e., when drawings/engravings/art had to be planned and executed carefully because a mistake is not as cheap as a CTRL + Z.

Another thing Draftsmen made me realize is the actual art (or at least craftsmanship) of comics. They may be mass entertainment (i.e., we're talking mainstream here, not your charming indie series) but even in their early incarnations comic art was still grounded in solid art principles. A lot of the works here exhibit that thesis:

- Prints like https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/dreams-lu... remind me of Marc Hempel's work on The Kindly Ones arc of Gaiman's Sandman.

- Kind of a cheap shot to mention Charles Vess but look at prints like https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/many-beat... and you really see the movements that influenced him.

- The range of https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/woman-par... might as well be 80s-90s pop art, if not for the finer details in the shadows.

- Like Vess, Frazetta might be too easy an example but I fancy he took his technique of theatrical lighting and exaggerated dynamic ranges from old black and white engravings.

3 years ago by samstave

Link to a preferred ep of draftsman? I’d like to check that podcast out

3 years ago by skytreader

So I think the one thing that will resonate with the HN crowd is the fact that Stan Prokopenko, one of the hosts, is also some sort of small-time tech entrepreneur. This comes up throughout the episodes but two that really focus on his efforts are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtApUuFLeGA&list=PLVeITADsnv...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtpRGxe5_H8&list=PLVeITADsnv...

If you take programming/hacking as an art and hold fierce ideals over it, some of their other episodes might also benefit you, either personally or professionally:

Reinventing yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2gp5_F7-9U&list=PLVeITADsnv...

On the Gaming Industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBkbFBl05-s&list=PLVeITADsnv...

Becoming more creative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX9e5WAOoQ8&list=PLVeITADsnv...

I just want to say, whatever your feelings about programming as an art there are still definitely differences between the two industries. I might just be biased because if I didn't love my paycheck too much, I'd probably be making indie comics.

3 years ago by akudha

not your parent commenter, but maybe this is what they are referring to? https://open.spotify.com/show/46YccBlYhfOKq4zD4NHoxn

3 years ago by senux

> Another thing Draftsmen made me > realize is the actual art (or at least > craftsmanship) of comics

Reminded me of Strip Panel Naked. Great video breakdowns of comic book story telling theory.

3 years ago by svcrunch

Thank you for sharing.

A while back, I fell in love with James Mahoney's illustrations of many Dickens' classics. That's when I realized there were no high quality digital copies of this Victorian master's ink drawings.

You can find the version of Oliver Twist I created here:

http://ahmadsoft.org/typesetting.html

You can compare the quality of the artwork with the nearest alternative, available here:

https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/mahoney/ot.html

I've also been working on typesetting Little Dorrit. Unfortunately, the text of both books have a lot of typographical errors that I'd like to correct at some point. Perhaps some future advance in machine learning will help me automate the process because I don't have the patience to do it all manually.

3 years ago by andybak

Can we get these into StyleGan please?

(nice to get so much Gustave Dore in one place: https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/artists/dore-gustave/ )

3 years ago by lordleft

Amazing resource!

Assuming it's legal to do so, what's the best way to get some of these printed, for wall art or whatnot? Is this something a Fedex Kinkos would specialize in?

3 years ago by ghaff

I'd just search around for printing posters. FedEx seems to (https://www.fedex.com/en-us/printing/posters/prints.html) but I imagine most printing places would. I'm sure there are plenty of on-line sources as well.

3 years ago by quaffapint

My daughter did exactly this with some old prints she found online. It was really cheap and the prints actually turned out quite well.

3 years ago by marcodiego

It would be nice if someone vectorized it and put on https://openclipart.org

3 years ago by exabrial

Ah, we finally figured out what website O'Reilly uses

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