Drawinglive News

Austrian Tagtool artists Seppi and Itzi provide the live visuals to accompany the beats of Sinjin Hawke in this performance at the Veletržní palác, Prague. Dmitri’s video is about 7 minutes long – turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy!

I think it’s a really exciting example of a multiplayer session using the Tagtool for iPad to create live animated visuals at a big public event. A shorter version of this video and lots of other photos and videos of Tagtool events and performances can be found on the Tagtool facebook site – if you are interested in all things Tagtool and haven’t already seen this site, do check it out!

There were performances featuring both the ‘oldschool’ Tagtool and the exciting new Tagtool for iPad at this big audiovisual event which was held this year in Prague’s National Gallery building, the Veletržní palác. As well as using the cinema in the basement for the main stage, the event spilled over into the salon on the ground floor and there were projections on the stairway and in the basement bar as well. The iPad workshop was held outside the entrance while our ‘oldschool’ Tagtool was located in the bar adjacent to the cinema. For this set up Dima used three projectors, enabling me to draw over the entire length of the wall above the bar.
My workstation was at the front of the chill-out area on the balcony opposite the bar (the rail of the balcony can be seen in the photo above) which meant that I had a clear unobstructed view over the heads of people standing at the bar below – an ideal Tagtool set up! Because people were coming and going all the time, especially between the performances in the cinema, I decided to develop several different drawings during the evening and then leave each one in place for a short while. Below are some of the photos that Dima took for the blog.

As it was a very long evening of drawing for me, halfway through I took a break and handed the pen to Ade. Of course she had to draw ‘cross handed’ (which is not at all easy!) as I was using my big left-handed Tagtool All-in-one. (Not so convenient for sharing with right-handers, but the necessary choice for me in this drawing situation as my All-in-one has a much more powerful graphic card than the one in the laptop that I use with my Tagtool mini. This means that I can use a lot more transparent layers and fading without activating the release button during drawing). Itzi joined Ade to do the animation and it was a nice fun session. I made the collage below from photos that I took with my little camera.

After this welcome break I returned to draw….

….and Dima took some more photos.

It was nearly 3 am when I began the final drawing in the photo above – it had been a very long night, but really wonderful to be able to draw in such a great location, and with such a big audience!

At the beginning of the evening Seppi and Itzi had intrigued and entertained the crowds outside the Veletržní palác with their Tagtool for iPad workshop; their performance in the cinema accompanying the beats of Sinjin Hawke from Montreal ended the festival programme. Dima has made a video of this performance but as the Tagtool for iPad is so brilliantly designed for animated painting I will save this video to put in a separate posting!

New subject matter for me! The photo on the left shows part of the Tagtool painting on a wild west theme that I did as a backdrop for K.U.N.T.Z. ‘The Golden Kuntry’ performance at the Viennese club mo.ë. on Saturday 16 March. I made this Tagtool painting before rather than during the performance – which gave me more time to develop the drawing and also meant that I could take some video with my new (but second-hand, Panasonic Lumix) camera while the band was playing. As usual Dima made a video which I’ll put in a later post when he has finished editing it but for now here is the video of the first ‘Golden Kuntry’ song of the evening….

In the main exhibition hall we set up two Tagtool workstations, one, using two projectors, for the ‘oldschool’ Tagtool drawing and another projector, beaming on the adjacent wall, for Seppi’s multiplayer Tagtool for iPad sessions.
At the beginning of the evening I did a bit of iPad drawing with Seppi (my small contribution to this sesssion, the bald puppet master, can be seen in the still above!) but as usual everyone wanted to try out the Tagtoool animation features on the iPad. Below is a photo I took later in the evening of one of Seppi’s (as always, very successful and engaging) multiplayer sessions.
I spent most of the evening drawing with my ‘oldschool’ all-in-one Tagtool.
As a complete contrast to the iPad multiplayer animations I decided to make a number of big figurative drawings during the course of the evening, some of which you can see in the photos below.

We had a short session in the studio this afternoon having fun using the Tagtool for iPad app which is now installed on my new iPad 4. Below is a photo (also taken using the iPad) of the first drawing we made, projected on the studio wall.At first I was drawing by myself and I had completed the whole head before Dima joined in using his iPad 3, so it wasn’t a true multiplayer session. But when Dima added the animation of the man’s cigarette smoke and drew over and animated his lips, what was a very quick sketchy drawing really ‘came to life’!

I took Seppi’s advice and in the settings for the app turned the Reduced Resolution button to On and set both the Paint Gesture Filtering and the Animation Gesture Filtering to Zero. Although Seppi said this would make the drawn image on the iPad less sharp, I can’t say I noticed a great deal of difference (and the image on the wall was unchanged) but having the settings like this was really much better for me – the ‘feel’ of the drawing was so much smoother when I worked very quickly, especially when I was drawing using a lot of fine lines. Having used the big Wacom drawing tablet with my ‘oldschool’ Tagtool for so long, it has taken me some time to adjust to the small drawing area of the iPad and get used to using the zoom feature to ‘home in’ to draw detail – but it’s certainly great to be able just to walk into the studio carrying my iPad rather than a great mass of tangled wires and awkward shaped bits of equipment that all need to be hooked up together!
I spent the rest of the afternoon in the studio just playing about with my iPad –
here are a few of the drawings that I did during this session.Above – screenshot from the iPad. Below – the same image projected on the wall
Above is a photo that shows a drawing in zoom view on the iPad and below is a photo of the projection of the same image.Here are two more ‘views’ of another drawing – the first is a screenshot from my iPad which, because the drawing is not in zoom view and was being projected over two adjacent walls, looks very small and distorted, and below this is the ‘real’ projected drawing. Using our short throw projector converted this tiny iPad drawing into a really enormous image, dwarfing Dima sitting at the drums!

I don’t think I’m quite ready yet to abandon for ever my old and much loved ‘oldschool’ Tagtool, but the more I practise with the iPad app the more I enjoy using it – and discover all the wonderful things it can do!

A dinner with our friends at the studios – just like the old times….and the perfect opportunity for some after-dinner partying and Tagtooling!
Below is a drawing that was begun by Mick Martin…… with some ‘finishing touches’ added by me!The two collages below show some of the ‘oldschool’ Tagtool drawing and animation that accompanied the dancing later in the evening!
To make the image below, first I drew the figure in white over the existing Tagtool animation, then in black ‘drew over’ Dima standing against the wall and completed the drawing when he moved away. These two drawings are by Ed Hathaway……with some extra drawing added by me to this one!During the evening I also did the drawings below…We used the Panasonic PT AX200E projector that Dima bought second-hand a couple of weeks ago. This has proved to be a really good buy – it gives beautiful clear colours, ideal for Tagtool drawing!

Here are some photos from VJ Luper’s BLEM Fest album which has lots of great photos of all the installations and performances at Tiskárna – do check it out!
I’ve selected the ones for this blog post that show our ‘Tagtool corner’.
In the one below, here we are drawing at our Tagtools…..And here are some shots of our work …..And last, but not least, here are some photos of Jan and Dima, with my Tagtool drawing in the background, giving their performance, ‘Donkeys play Cards’.We are interested in doing more performances like this, combining masked actors with Tagtool drawing – but as can be seen in the photo above, first of all I must finish the donkey masks with brown cloth to cover the back of the heads so that the boys’ necks and hair don’t show when they turn sideways to the camera!

We were back in Prague on Friday 9 February for another evening of Tagtooling at Galerie Tiskárna. At this event we had a corner all to ourselves at the other end of the gallery from the main stage where we were able to make a big installation using a set-up consisting of three projectors and two Tagtools.The photos above show the odd angles and sloping walls of this fifth floor attic gallery space – presenting very interesting and complex possibilities for Tagtool drawing! We decided to make our installation in the form of a triptych, using the sloping corner walls for the central panel and making two semi-transparent vertical surfaces on either side by suspending several layers of net curtains from the ceiling. These two ‘wings’ were Chann’s Tagtool canvas; I used the second Tagtool to draw on the central panel. The donkey heads were laid out on a small table in the corner with the papier-mâché crow on its stand suspended from the ceiling above, in readiness for the short performance by K.U.N.T.Z. Zirkus, ‘Donkeys play Cards’, which was scheduled for later in the evening.As it was difficult for me to capture the whole projection with my small camera, above are two photos that I took of my drawings at the beginning of the evening and below is a drawing by Chann on one of the semi-transparent side panels.
Some wider shots of our installation can be seen in the photos below….
…and here is a close-up shot of the crow and donkey heads.
There were so many people crowded around Chann and Dima’s, ‘Donkeys play Cards’ performance that it was very difficult for me to see to draw or to take photos. In the photo below I used flash (by mistake!)… …and in this one (without flash) it is possible to see my background drawing.After Chann and Dima’s performance was over there was time for me to do some more drawings – so to end this post here are two more photos….There were a lot of different projections and performances at this BLEM Fest – so when we were not drawing we were able to join the large and enthusiastic audience to enjoy some of the other events during the evening!

This BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) one night event was organised by VJ Luper (Nicola Pavone) in Galerie Tiskárna , a newly established exhibition/event space under the roof of this architecturally most interesting building in the centre of Prague – an ideal location to set up a multitude of projections.Above – setting up projectors in the afternoon. Nic had created a central stage area for the musicians and DJs surrounded by sheets of semi-transparent plastic sheeting on which I was to do the ‘oldschool’ Tagtool drawing, while the Tagtool for iPad multiplayer sessions would be shown on one of the adjacent walls.This was a really good opportunity to display the complete Tagtool project in the one location and for people to try out the new iPad Tagtool for themselves. As the collage of photos below shows, this proved to be extremely popular!Using the three iPads, the groups of people who queued up to ‘have a go’ using the iPad Tagtool soon produced a kaleidoscope of vibrantly coloured moving images – a continuous multiplayer session that lasted all night!

This was the first time that I had experimented with drawing on this type of semi-transparent plastic using the ‘oldschool’ Tagtool.It was a very interesting, and different, experience from working on an opaque screen, wall or other solid surface – the stronger and more brightly coloured images appeared on the ‘back’ of the plastic while the image that I could see from the position where I was drawing was much softer and more diffused.On this material it was really only possible to use opaque colour or black and white for drawing as any line or shape soon became invisible on the ‘front’ of the plastic sheet whenever I used the transparency slider.I made a number of different drawings during the evening then photographed them from both sides of the plastic and different angles. Here is a selection.
This photo below of my computer monitor shows just how much the projected images – the ones the audience could see – differed from my Tagtool drawing.As it was a very long night of drawing for me I was very happy to be able to hand over the pen to Chann (Jan Linke) to do some drawing. I took the photos in the collage below of his session then went to look at some of the other projections. The event was very well attended and there was a great party atmosphere….So, to end this post, here are three photos from my final drawing session.

We have had a lot of fun recently making these Donkey masks for the video we are working on as part of the promotional material for the song cycle ‘Animals’ – so, to welcome in the New Year’s drawing projects on the blog, I decided to continue the donkey theme with this little Tagtool for iPad session.First I drew these two donkeys….Then in successive layers I put in the small figure they are watching….Then finally, by switching to the Tagtool animation mode, I was able to make the small figure move! The stills above are screenshots from the iPad but in order to make the video below I used my little Canon IXUS camera to capture the drawing sequence directly from the screen (which is why it is a bit shaky!).

I had to make several attempts to get the small figure’s arm to swing and I found it difficult to get the walking movement to look really convincing but I think that this was in part because I had drawn the figure so small that even using the Tagtool’s zoom mode it wasn’t easy to animate the limbs accurately.
Next time I will do better!

Did you know?

Tagtool for iPad will be available from the Apple Apps Store
from 19 December!
So – the answer to the question, ‘What can I give someone who is getting an iPad for Christmas?’, is – ‘Tagtool for iPad, of course!’
The app comes with clear and easy to follow instructions.
Here’s a sneak preview….

I’ve been testing this app – and I can tell you that it’s lots of fun (especially if you get together with friends for a multiplayer session!) and the animation features are really great!

Find out more at http://www.omai.at/