It’s quite obvious that all of us in the ArtRage Forum simply love using the wonderful painting
program, ArtRage - hence, all of the beautiful and creative artworks that are posted here as well
as the constant bragging about ArtRage! But many of us and especially anyone new to
ArtRage or anyone that is interested in using ArtRage, know nothing about who the individuals
are that are behind ArtRage and how it all got started.
The following are the questions I asked the guys from Ambient Design and MattRage was kind enough
to take the time out of his very busy day to answer for us. Thanks Matt!
Who are all the individuals behind Ambient Design and what kind of experience do they bring to
the table?
The core of the company has four people involved - three in New Zealand and one in the U.S.A. Here
in New Zealand, we have myself, Andy Bearsley, and David Jenner.
Andy and I write all the code. Andy writes the backbone of the application (the painting tool
technology, the way we interact with the operating system, undo, text support, etc.). I do the
interface design and write the code that makes the design work in the application.
David handles all of our tech support and also does Quality Assurance/Bug Hunting for us. He sits
down and breaks what we write so that we can rewrite it and make it more stable.
In the U.S.A., we have Uwe Maurer who handles all of our business development. He's responsible for
interfacing between us and partners such as Wacom who bundle us with some of their tablets. He's
also adept at finding channels to help get the product out there to more people.
Externally, we have worked with Mike who wrote our networking code (the stuff that lets us check
for updates) and Athena who provided the fantastic new tool icons, cursors, and application icons.
Athena also put together a number of sticker sheets and is working on some upcoming stuff for us as
well. She's a whiz with pixels!
Who is this mysterious cat named Tyco (you know - that cute little cat that pops up on occasion
between the layers on the Layers Pod)?
Tycho is my cat. He lives in the office here and spends most of his time shedding on the carpet. He
was originally just included as an Easter egg but he gained rapid popularity and he even
has his own email address now. He even gets fan-mail from time to time.
Where is the Ambient Design's office located and how many people are actually on staff there?
We have one main office and one satellite, both in Auckland, New Zealand. The main office is hiding
away in a forest and has two people and the satellite has one person. We operate from home rather
than having a distinct office. It's more comfortable and we find it promotes a creative approach to
what we do.
Does Ambient Designs have any other products - if so, what are they?
While we have worked on other products in the past, ArtRage is the only product we have done for
ourselves. We previously worked on Photoshop Filters, video software, networking applications and
all sorts of stuff of varying interest, but ArtRage is the only product we wrote for ourselves and
sell directly.
When and how did ArtRage start from a conception to what it is now (who se brainstorm was it and
how did it all come about?
Ambient was originally a contracting company doing work on other people's products and we started
to get fed up with that. There are only so many times you can be told to justify design or
technology decisions to a committee before you give up and do it your own way! We worked on a
number of fun products that didn't have those kind of restrictions but we always wanted to be able
to step aside and do our own thing.
ArtRage really started fermenting in the mid nineties. We'd written a 3D Painting product which was
aimed squarely at people with professional 3D needs and expensive computers. But, it introduced us
to the problems of digital paint and how it never really made sense to users of real painting
tools.
Lots of our contract work involved trying to make system more accessible. So we started to look
again at how we might take those principles as well as our general skill set in computer graphics
and turn it into a product.
ArtRage itself was born some time in the early 2000's (I remember a car trip when Andy and I
discussed potential ideas for it) and it turned into a commercial product when we won the 2004
Microsoft 'Does Your App Think In Ink' competition with ArtRage 1.
What has been your primary goals for ArtRage and do you see any of those changing along the
way?
We spent ArtRage 1 finding our feet for ArtRage 2 and then spent time learning from ArtRage 2
as we worked on Studio/Pro. So our goals have been driven by what we discovered about creating
and selling an entire product rather than just working on bits of a product. With Studio, our goal
has
been to fill in some of the gaps in 2.0 without losing the overall simplicity of use and, most
important, the invitation to be creative.
ArtRage was always about just getting in there and creating something. We wanted it to get out of
the way of the user and present natural tools that just worked, to let people get on with painting
rather than having to sit down and learn how some digital system wants you to approach its tools.
Over time, I think our goals have become clearer and easier to achieve. Since we've been able to
take advantage of lessons learned from previous versions, we've had more time to work on the really
important stuff.
In your opinion, what makes ArtRage so uniquely different from all of the other painting
programs that are out there?
It's hard to say, really. I think the biggest difference is how we try not to sacrifice the natural
feel for digital precision. The canvas in ArtRage is a great example. It sits there constantly
under the
painting because it's an integral part of the piece. Real canvas isn't flat white and most other
packages, even if they recognize a canvas texture when their tools work, don't show that canvas
without using special filters or settings. In ArtRage, you have a piece of material to paint on and
it's shown there from the outset.
The paint tools follow the same sort of system. There are loads of potential dials and levers that
could be added to the oil paint, for example. But instead of putting in all that complex tweaking,
we chose to give some natural settings and avoid exposing the bits and pieces that just aren't
needed. There's nothing worse than a system that tells you you can get a realistic brush “if you
just know how to adjust these 20 parameters". This means that people who are used to absolutely
precise tweaking and paint work may have a problem adapting. But the upside is that we present a
brush that just works and has that natural chaotic feel that I believe you can lose if you spend
too
long focusing on the pixels.
If you zoom in to your painting in ArtRage, we don't just make the pixels bigger, we smooth them as
best we can because we're not about showing you how many little squares you have slapped onto
the canvas.
I think we sit alongside other packages quite well. I have never told anyone they should be using
ArtRage to the exclusion of all other products because I don't think there are any other products
out there that have the same approach. Since we're not trying to replace any other product, we're
free to
do things our own way and I think that's what makes us so different.
How are you able to put so much time and effort into the development of ArtRage yet only
charge such a minimal fee unlike the others who charge hundreds for their software?
Part of it relates to the size of the company. We don't have anywhere near as many overheads to
worry about as some of the larger companies out there. Another part of it relates to the target
market. ArtRage has lots of features for pro users but the larger part of the potential market for
'art on a computer' (as opposed to Digital Art, which I feel has a slightly different focus) is
surely in the non-professional users who just want to play around with paint and learn about art,
produce their own pieces, and show their work to others without having to invest huge amounts of
money.
To support that market, we make sure that we maintain a low cost version so that it's accessible to
all. I can't say for sure how it all works, but it does, and I'm happy with that!
How much work went into ArtRage 3.0 compared to prior releases? In order to help others
understand the development process of new releases for ArtRage, explain to us what is all
involved (for the most part) and where in your development phase is most of the time dedicated?
The Studio/Studio Pro version took us about two and a half years of development time. There were
asides during that time to handle updates to AR2.5 and builds for specific partners but most of it
was development.
Much of the early time was spent doing research on new ideas and systems, such as the Text system
and Stickers. That's the skeleton stage, when you start to hook bits and pieces together to form a
framework for the new product. During that period, we were using a modified version of the ArtRage
2 interface because I was working on the new designs.
About a year before release, we really started working on the final version and getting some meat
on the bones we had constructed previously. That's when we started to look at the work we had done
and work out what needed to be interacted with by users, which functions to show and which to
manage internally, that kind of thing.
The interface happens alongside all this and as it happens, it wasn't until partly into 2009 that
we actually had a model that would be used for the final version. There were a few other ideas
explored before I went with the model you see in there today.
The last six months was spent with fixing bugs in the early code and making sure that the features
really worked for users. There were a number of major changes made to how we did things when we saw
how the alpha and beta groups had been working with the product. That final stage is about
polishing the raw material you've put into the product and making it shine. We took about twice as
long over this release as we had over previous ones.
What future development plans do you have for ArtRage?
Now that we're finishing off another update release, we're starting to look at some of the features
that didn't make the 3.0 cut. We have some plans coming together but there's nothing solid enough
to reveal at this point.
The sticker and filter systems provide some interesting possibilities for side-projects along the
way and we have plans sketched up for our community systems as well but we don't have schedules set
right now. We're still recovering from the release in a way. We had the most hectic month we've
ever had and we're just starting to take a breather now!
What does it mean to you to having such a strong and devoted ArtRage user community in the
ArtRage Forum?
It has been absolutely fantastic watching the community grow. We originally implemented the forum
expecting a few users who might give a bit of feedback about the product and share images but it
rapidly became obvious that there was something more going on there.
I think that our focus on 'every man painting' has led to a community that doesn't have quite so
narrow a field of interest as some digital art forums and the result has been astonishing to watch.
It's always nice to know that you have created something people enjoy using - the sheer volume of
incredible work that fills the forums, the marvelous personalities and the warm welcomes you see
there all the time have been a huge encouragement for us working on the product.
It's part of the product's appeal too, I think. We see people commenting on ArtRage but noting the
forums as they do so, the two are fairly well integrated in the minds of onlookers.
Do you have any plans in the near future on updating the ArtRage Forum no w that AR3 is out and
are you opened to any feedback from the forum members on what they would like to see?
We're looking into this at the moment, specifically in relation to how it interacts with the member
area, how we can support other languages, and how we can expand to provide support for specific
user communities such as education. We've wanted to do this for some time but work on Studio/Pro
took all of our resources. We're always happy for feedback, too. It really helps to know what people are looking for.
How surprised are you at the ever increasing popularity of ArtRage and how much of it do you
think is mostly by word of mouth from existing ArtRage users?
No new release has ever failed to surprise us with its popularity. We tend to be cautiously
optimistic about things but each time we put something out there. The response has been way better
than expected. The response to the Studio/Pro launch was overwhelming and to see people waiting on
the forums for the release to happen on launch day was fantastic (it also made it all the harder
when we had to postpone to the following day to let the member area upgrades get tested!).
How can others help with the ArtRage "evangelism"?
I'd say a lot of the success of the product has to relate to word of mouth and general product
evangelism. We don't do that much advertising currently and I believe most of the larger markets
we're touching are ones that we couldn't really advertise to anyway.
So much of its success must be due to people liking it enough to tell their friends. I'd say that's
the best way to be though. To be able to see a product spread because it's well liked and gives
people what they want is really rewarding.
For more information on the company and the wonderful people behind it, please visit:
http://www.artrage.com/company.html
The ArtRage Team
Matt Fox-Wilson / MattRage
Creative Director
Andy Bearsley / AndyRage
Technical Director
Dave Jenner / DaveRage
QA Engineer
Mike Van Bokhoven / MikeRage
Application Engineer
Tycho
Vicious House Cat
program, ArtRage - hence, all of the beautiful and creative artworks that are posted here as well
as the constant bragging about ArtRage! But many of us and especially anyone new to
ArtRage or anyone that is interested in using ArtRage, know nothing about who the individuals
are that are behind ArtRage and how it all got started.
The following are the questions I asked the guys from Ambient Design and MattRage was kind enough
to take the time out of his very busy day to answer for us. Thanks Matt!
Who are all the individuals behind Ambient Design and what kind of experience do they bring to
the table?
The core of the company has four people involved - three in New Zealand and one in the U.S.A. Here
in New Zealand, we have myself, Andy Bearsley, and David Jenner.
Andy and I write all the code. Andy writes the backbone of the application (the painting tool
technology, the way we interact with the operating system, undo, text support, etc.). I do the
interface design and write the code that makes the design work in the application.
David handles all of our tech support and also does Quality Assurance/Bug Hunting for us. He sits
down and breaks what we write so that we can rewrite it and make it more stable.
In the U.S.A., we have Uwe Maurer who handles all of our business development. He's responsible for
interfacing between us and partners such as Wacom who bundle us with some of their tablets. He's
also adept at finding channels to help get the product out there to more people.
Externally, we have worked with Mike who wrote our networking code (the stuff that lets us check
for updates) and Athena who provided the fantastic new tool icons, cursors, and application icons.
Athena also put together a number of sticker sheets and is working on some upcoming stuff for us as
well. She's a whiz with pixels!
Who is this mysterious cat named Tyco (you know - that cute little cat that pops up on occasion
between the layers on the Layers Pod)?
Tycho is my cat. He lives in the office here and spends most of his time shedding on the carpet. He
was originally just included as an Easter egg but he gained rapid popularity and he even
has his own email address now. He even gets fan-mail from time to time.
Where is the Ambient Design's office located and how many people are actually on staff there?
We have one main office and one satellite, both in Auckland, New Zealand. The main office is hiding
away in a forest and has two people and the satellite has one person. We operate from home rather
than having a distinct office. It's more comfortable and we find it promotes a creative approach to
what we do.
Does Ambient Designs have any other products - if so, what are they?
While we have worked on other products in the past, ArtRage is the only product we have done for
ourselves. We previously worked on Photoshop Filters, video software, networking applications and
all sorts of stuff of varying interest, but ArtRage is the only product we wrote for ourselves and
sell directly.
When and how did ArtRage start from a conception to what it is now (who se brainstorm was it and
how did it all come about?
Ambient was originally a contracting company doing work on other people's products and we started
to get fed up with that. There are only so many times you can be told to justify design or
technology decisions to a committee before you give up and do it your own way! We worked on a
number of fun products that didn't have those kind of restrictions but we always wanted to be able
to step aside and do our own thing.
ArtRage really started fermenting in the mid nineties. We'd written a 3D Painting product which was
aimed squarely at people with professional 3D needs and expensive computers. But, it introduced us
to the problems of digital paint and how it never really made sense to users of real painting
tools.
Lots of our contract work involved trying to make system more accessible. So we started to look
again at how we might take those principles as well as our general skill set in computer graphics
and turn it into a product.
ArtRage itself was born some time in the early 2000's (I remember a car trip when Andy and I
discussed potential ideas for it) and it turned into a commercial product when we won the 2004
Microsoft 'Does Your App Think In Ink' competition with ArtRage 1.
What has been your primary goals for ArtRage and do you see any of those changing along the
way?
We spent ArtRage 1 finding our feet for ArtRage 2 and then spent time learning from ArtRage 2
as we worked on Studio/Pro. So our goals have been driven by what we discovered about creating
and selling an entire product rather than just working on bits of a product. With Studio, our goal
has
been to fill in some of the gaps in 2.0 without losing the overall simplicity of use and, most
important, the invitation to be creative.
ArtRage was always about just getting in there and creating something. We wanted it to get out of
the way of the user and present natural tools that just worked, to let people get on with painting
rather than having to sit down and learn how some digital system wants you to approach its tools.
Over time, I think our goals have become clearer and easier to achieve. Since we've been able to
take advantage of lessons learned from previous versions, we've had more time to work on the really
important stuff.
In your opinion, what makes ArtRage so uniquely different from all of the other painting
programs that are out there?
It's hard to say, really. I think the biggest difference is how we try not to sacrifice the natural
feel for digital precision. The canvas in ArtRage is a great example. It sits there constantly
under the
painting because it's an integral part of the piece. Real canvas isn't flat white and most other
packages, even if they recognize a canvas texture when their tools work, don't show that canvas
without using special filters or settings. In ArtRage, you have a piece of material to paint on and
it's shown there from the outset.
The paint tools follow the same sort of system. There are loads of potential dials and levers that
could be added to the oil paint, for example. But instead of putting in all that complex tweaking,
we chose to give some natural settings and avoid exposing the bits and pieces that just aren't
needed. There's nothing worse than a system that tells you you can get a realistic brush “if you
just know how to adjust these 20 parameters". This means that people who are used to absolutely
precise tweaking and paint work may have a problem adapting. But the upside is that we present a
brush that just works and has that natural chaotic feel that I believe you can lose if you spend
too
long focusing on the pixels.
If you zoom in to your painting in ArtRage, we don't just make the pixels bigger, we smooth them as
best we can because we're not about showing you how many little squares you have slapped onto
the canvas.
I think we sit alongside other packages quite well. I have never told anyone they should be using
ArtRage to the exclusion of all other products because I don't think there are any other products
out there that have the same approach. Since we're not trying to replace any other product, we're
free to
do things our own way and I think that's what makes us so different.
How are you able to put so much time and effort into the development of ArtRage yet only
charge such a minimal fee unlike the others who charge hundreds for their software?
Part of it relates to the size of the company. We don't have anywhere near as many overheads to
worry about as some of the larger companies out there. Another part of it relates to the target
market. ArtRage has lots of features for pro users but the larger part of the potential market for
'art on a computer' (as opposed to Digital Art, which I feel has a slightly different focus) is
surely in the non-professional users who just want to play around with paint and learn about art,
produce their own pieces, and show their work to others without having to invest huge amounts of
money.
To support that market, we make sure that we maintain a low cost version so that it's accessible to
all. I can't say for sure how it all works, but it does, and I'm happy with that!
How much work went into ArtRage 3.0 compared to prior releases? In order to help others
understand the development process of new releases for ArtRage, explain to us what is all
involved (for the most part) and where in your development phase is most of the time dedicated?
The Studio/Studio Pro version took us about two and a half years of development time. There were
asides during that time to handle updates to AR2.5 and builds for specific partners but most of it
was development.
Much of the early time was spent doing research on new ideas and systems, such as the Text system
and Stickers. That's the skeleton stage, when you start to hook bits and pieces together to form a
framework for the new product. During that period, we were using a modified version of the ArtRage
2 interface because I was working on the new designs.
About a year before release, we really started working on the final version and getting some meat
on the bones we had constructed previously. That's when we started to look at the work we had done
and work out what needed to be interacted with by users, which functions to show and which to
manage internally, that kind of thing.
The interface happens alongside all this and as it happens, it wasn't until partly into 2009 that
we actually had a model that would be used for the final version. There were a few other ideas
explored before I went with the model you see in there today.
The last six months was spent with fixing bugs in the early code and making sure that the features
really worked for users. There were a number of major changes made to how we did things when we saw
how the alpha and beta groups had been working with the product. That final stage is about
polishing the raw material you've put into the product and making it shine. We took about twice as
long over this release as we had over previous ones.
What future development plans do you have for ArtRage?
Now that we're finishing off another update release, we're starting to look at some of the features
that didn't make the 3.0 cut. We have some plans coming together but there's nothing solid enough
to reveal at this point.
The sticker and filter systems provide some interesting possibilities for side-projects along the
way and we have plans sketched up for our community systems as well but we don't have schedules set
right now. We're still recovering from the release in a way. We had the most hectic month we've
ever had and we're just starting to take a breather now!
What does it mean to you to having such a strong and devoted ArtRage user community in the
ArtRage Forum?
It has been absolutely fantastic watching the community grow. We originally implemented the forum
expecting a few users who might give a bit of feedback about the product and share images but it
rapidly became obvious that there was something more going on there.
I think that our focus on 'every man painting' has led to a community that doesn't have quite so
narrow a field of interest as some digital art forums and the result has been astonishing to watch.
It's always nice to know that you have created something people enjoy using - the sheer volume of
incredible work that fills the forums, the marvelous personalities and the warm welcomes you see
there all the time have been a huge encouragement for us working on the product.
It's part of the product's appeal too, I think. We see people commenting on ArtRage but noting the
forums as they do so, the two are fairly well integrated in the minds of onlookers.
Do you have any plans in the near future on updating the ArtRage Forum no w that AR3 is out and
are you opened to any feedback from the forum members on what they would like to see?
We're looking into this at the moment, specifically in relation to how it interacts with the member
area, how we can support other languages, and how we can expand to provide support for specific
user communities such as education. We've wanted to do this for some time but work on Studio/Pro
took all of our resources. We're always happy for feedback, too. It really helps to know what people are looking for.
How surprised are you at the ever increasing popularity of ArtRage and how much of it do you
think is mostly by word of mouth from existing ArtRage users?
No new release has ever failed to surprise us with its popularity. We tend to be cautiously
optimistic about things but each time we put something out there. The response has been way better
than expected. The response to the Studio/Pro launch was overwhelming and to see people waiting on
the forums for the release to happen on launch day was fantastic (it also made it all the harder
when we had to postpone to the following day to let the member area upgrades get tested!).
How can others help with the ArtRage "evangelism"?
I'd say a lot of the success of the product has to relate to word of mouth and general product
evangelism. We don't do that much advertising currently and I believe most of the larger markets
we're touching are ones that we couldn't really advertise to anyway.
So much of its success must be due to people liking it enough to tell their friends. I'd say that's
the best way to be though. To be able to see a product spread because it's well liked and gives
people what they want is really rewarding.
For more information on the company and the wonderful people behind it, please visit:
http://www.artrage.com/company.html
The ArtRage Team
Matt Fox-Wilson / MattRage
Creative Director
Andy Bearsley / AndyRage
Technical Director
Dave Jenner / DaveRage
QA Engineer
Mike Van Bokhoven / MikeRage
Application Engineer
Tycho
Vicious House Cat
An Interview with MattRage at Ambient Design on ArtRage
Published in ArtRageUS Magazine February 2010 (our first published Issue)
Published in ArtRageUS Magazine February 2010 (our first published Issue)
Webmaster Bobbyray Howle 2010 2011 2012