So this is a pretty crazy story: Scientists have developed a method of generating an image by analyzing the blood flow of a person’s brain!

One of the things that becomes apparent when you read the article closely is that the images they’ve extracted are actually based on an image the person was shown while they were doing the extraction.

As the image to the left shows, they were looking at the image of the text “neuron” and then the computer was able to determine the visual pattern.

On one hand, this is a far cry from printing out your imagination, but on the other hand, looking back over the acceleration of technology advances, especially in the recent decades, means that this could be just the black-and-white television version of what soon could be a full-blown mind’s-eye printer. It’s still amazing either way.

I have mused over the nature of mental images for some time now. As a visual artist, I would find it extremely handy to have crisp mental imagery which I could manipulate before sketching. I have on occasion, just as I was falling asleep (the half-awake/half-asleep hypnagogic state), had experiences like this so I know my mind is capable of it. However I cannot seem to control it consciously at all.

In fact, my mental imagery is quite vague and undefined; I rely heavily on the sketch stage to tease out the ideas in my mind’s eye. I usually get glimpses, notions of what I want something to look like, and need to work to get it in physical form. I wonder how effective this “mental imager” would work for someone like me who would be interested in getting a sketch concept out of my brain. For me it would be pretty useless since my mental imagery is so vague.

If you find these concepts interesting, you might enjoy the thread I started over at Ask Metafilter [How detailed is your mental imagery / mental visualization?] on the subject. Lots of good discussion and experience on the subject including the level of detail other people have with their mental imagery. Some in fact do have almost ‘photographic’ imaginations, but curiously it seemed the people in creative professions were the ones with the most vague mental imagery. Very interesting.

I’d be curious for readers to sound off in the comments section below about the degree of clarity in your mental imagery, and whether or not you are a visual artist.

via Pink Tentacle

Imagination.eps is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

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Bob was stuck trying to figure out how to accomplish a technique with Adobe Illustrator, and sent out a plea for help. I dropped a line and we hooked up via iChat to work through his issue.

Bob mentions in the podcast how he was instantly sold on Twitter after the experience. Twitter is a great resource if you follow other illustrators and socialize with them – tapping the collective creative community can be a great resource if you are stuck on how to do something with your software.

Chris Wilson has helped me with one of my Photoshop cries for help, trying to do something with duplicating Layers.

Follow Bob Ostrom and his podcasting partner-in-crime Chris Wilson on Twitter. And of course, you’ll want to follow your humble author as well.

Answers for Freelancers! – Creative Independence – Experiencing Technical Difficulties.

Twitter: The Creative Collective is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

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There’s still a handful of letters — uppercase & lowercase — as well as numbers left. Head over and drop Bittbox a line about the letter you’d like to create and join the community typeface project.

I created the uppercase “G”.

Conglomerfont is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

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