Are You Lonesome Tonight?

July 2, 2012 5:01 PM

Iconic Portraits Formed by Clusters of Tiny People. Starting his creative career as a street artist, Craig Alan developed his portraiture skills while earning a living to further fund his artistic pursuits. Since that point, the artist has been honing in on his craft and creating something more than your average portrait. He represents people as an amalgam of other people. The artist's portfolio boasts a series of inventive portraits of iconic figures whose visage appears to be composed of tiny pixels. Upon closer inspection, the spectator can see that the pixels are, in fact, people.

More People as Pixels.

posted by netbros (14 comments total)

I love this. Cheers.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:18 PM on July 2, 2012

How in the heck do you coordinate something like that? My theory when I looked at the pictures was that they were renders.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:22 PM on July 2, 2012

How in the heck do you coordinate something like that?

I was thinking about that too. My guess is that it's like doing field marching band. Everyone gets a grid sheet and is assigned a number. There's probably grid markers somewhere outside of the shot.
posted by Lutoslawski at 5:27 PM on July 2, 2012

When I look at it closely, it appears that I see repeating figures.... I don't think these are photographs.
posted by HuronBob at 5:31 PM on July 2, 2012

How in the heck do you coordinate something like that?

Does it even say anywhere it's not Photoshopped? The other work on his website aren't even photographs, their paintings. So I'm assuming if they weren't just Photoshopped directly they were painted, then Photoshopped (for the shadows).

There isn't even any foreshortening in the background, even though the people are clearly at an angle. The people in back should be smaller then those in front, etc.
posted by delmoi at 5:32 PM on July 2, 2012

Yeah they are paintings. The Galery page lists one of them as "30 x 30". So obviously it's a lot of work.
posted by delmoi at 5:34 PM on July 2, 2012

Kind of a bummer that they're paintings. It would be cooler, I think, if they were actually done with real people - and not all that difficult to do. A slightly more orchestrated Spencer Tunick with clothes.
posted by Lutoslawski at 5:37 PM on July 2, 2012

(and now looking at it again a bit more closely and not just skimming through, it's quite obvious they are paintings).
posted by Lutoslawski at 5:38 PM on July 2, 2012

It only became apparent to me when I saw the reds in the lips. They are casting red shadows which is would be pretty odd were it a photograph of people from above. Also, when you look at the slightly zoomed in shot, you can tell, even more, that the reds are painted. I wish it was real too! Oh well, it's still a pretty cool concept.
posted by mrzer0 at 5:56 PM on July 2, 2012

How in the heck do you coordinate something like that? My theory when I looked at the pictures was that they were renders.

Most likely, but you could also set a camera up overlooking a plaza of some sort, subtract the empty background, and then just capture lots of individual small people. It's the same concept as painting people out on video; you just clone the same area of a picture from a different time when they weren't standing or walking there. That's how they get those photos of famus locations like times Square with no people in them. The only headache is accounting for the movement of the sun in a daylight shot, but that's not that hard to cheat.
posted by anigbrowl at 6:37 PM on July 2, 2012

Bah, edit window...I can't be bothered to spell check on MeFi anymore but that had more typos than usual.
posted by anigbrowl at 6:38 PM on July 2, 2012

This was done with real people before 'pixel' was a word
posted by Gyrus at 9:39 PM on July 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Paintings? I had assumed he was using actual tiny figures, HO scale.
posted by cedar key at 6:11 AM on July 3, 2012

I am disturbingly reminded of that video from last week, of ants eating a dead gecko. I like the concept, but the ants are in my head!
posted by Goofyy at 8:25 AM on July 3, 2012