07 ‘Siggraph 2003': The Real Definition of NPR (Non-Photorealistic Renderings)

Keywords: great change, technique and process

Siggraph is an annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. I was very busy in starting a new project so I was not going to there; however, one of my senior worker asked me to go there. He said to me, "If you asked your boss to go there with me, maybe I can go."

After the producing of 'Tanabata', I was interested in new representation methods of NPR, and also, I was trying to use some NPR methods for the new project. Therefore, I participated the conference mainly focusing on the lectures about NPR. I then encountered a very interesting NPR lecture.

The lecture was mainly divided into two parts. One was 'Artistic Expression' which introduced NPR brushing techniques or textures, and the other was 'Inspiration' which explained how humans captured and understood their seeing image of world in the brains.

For me NPR was, at first, just the copies of drawing approaches, such as brushes, pencils or paints which you use, and textures on whch you paint or draw; however, even deformation or balance which I did not think about they were NPR was the NPR techniques! That is to say, deformation might be an act of distorting but also could be said what humans feel. If you visualized the pictures children draw, you would understand NPR is on the basis of what they see, focus, and understand. Through the lecture, I was able to think that, "If representing an image by hands or tools was one of NPR output methods, the former process by which humans make an image in the brains could be NPR as well." It was great change in me. 'Non-Photo' is literally 'everything but photograph'.

I think that designers seek a key by which they express the direction of graphic representation which they aim at in the future. In may case, NPR had accidentally came to me as the key.