Visual Thinking with TouchDesigner
The professional's choice for real-time rendering & prototyping
Published by BNN a company specializing in books relating to design, computing, and craft Visual Thinking With TouchDesigner is slated for release September 15, 2017 and will be available at Amazon, Rakuten, honto and Yodobashi.com.
Beautifully designed and typeset by Someone's Garden the ambitious project is spearheaded and authored by Shuhei Matsuyama and Naohide Matsunami (antymark), both driving-forces behind the software's adoption in Japan with their monthly TouchDesigner workshops (respectively in Tokyo and Kansai) and their remarkable portfolios of work and development. Ben Voigt, product manager at Derivative was also consulted in guiding and supervising the book.
The book is introduced by the authors as "a comprehensive manual covering everything from basic skills to practical application methods for beginners who are about to begin working with TouchDesigner and for beginners and intermediate users who want to master the software further." It consists of interviews with pioneers and creators like artist and professor Noboru Tsubaki, Moment Factory and Obscura Digital as well as content examining the production process and design philosophy of prominent digital artists. A full table of contents is available here.
We spoke briefly to Matsuyama-san about what inspired them to make this book and about the TouchDesigner community in Japan and what needs Visual Thinking With TouchDesigner will address.
Shuhei Matsuyama: This book's main focus is to be an introduction of TouchDesigner. You can learn how to use the software and all of its general functions. It's not only for beginners but also good for intermediate users and more. It has many amazing interviews about top creators. You can learn essential points and creators' styles through their works and through the interviews.
Now in Japan I feel that every month has TouchDesigner events, sometimes three events in a month! I have never seen this situation in other countries. So many people are interested in TouchDesigner. But TouchDesigner still lacks Japanese documentation which has become a big barrier for beginners. This is the reason why we made this book.
I have held about 10 workshops in two years where I met many types of TouchDesigner users and beginners. They have different backgrounds - engineers, designers, researchers and students. They all make things but they also make it differently and TouchDesigner works well in all their fields.
I think TouchDesigner's potential extends beyond visual art and the field of media art. And I also think that if practitioners in other fields start to use TouchDesigner that it will have a very good effect for visual art. I believe this book will spur an increase of interest in TouchDesigner users in Japan. I hope it also has a good effect for the Japanese visual sense and media art scene!
Author Profile
Shuhei Matsuyama
Visual artist / programmer. Director of T & S R & D Dept., Inc. Matsuyama-san mainly deals with advertisement exhibition and corporate R&D, audio-visual works, interactive installations and so on. I also participate in the creative label nor, and we also produce work for art museums, mainly art festivals. TouchDesigner workshop in Tokyo also held.
Naohide Matsunami
Since 2008 "antymark" began production related to images and lighting as "antymark" establishing antymark joint company in 2012. He also consults mainly on projection mapping and interactive content development. Matsunami-san moved to Kyoto three years ago where he organizes TouchDesigner workshops and seminars in Kansai. He is seeking" a new way of working not being caught in place or time".
Ben Voigt
A 15 year veteran with Derivative, Ben has seen TouchDesigner develop from the earliest days of version 007. Currently as Product Manager at Derivative, he is engaged in software design and client production, working closely with the R&D team. He is also integral in shaping TouchDesigner learning material and in teaching workshops. Coming from a background and education in Computer Science, he later found his passion for visuals through film vfx and games. The opportunity presented by TouchDesigner to unify these disciplines proved to be irresistible, and the rest is history. Currently Ben is interested in new ways of feeding light to retinas, from advances in lighting and laser technology to new formats like holograms and VR.
SOMEONE'S GARDEN
Daisuke Nishimura + Creative Unit of Asako Tsurusaki. Editing & design of books and magazines (TOKION NY, QUOTATION etc), design & programming of applications (MAZDA official, JT official position information linked game etc), video production ("dog formula" PV, Unilever "CLEAR" CM, Tower Records Shibuya et al.), WebSocket + Three.js "I travel abroad. "(NHK Integrated) Many such as inductive interface production.
ISBN: 978-4-8025-1071-4
List price: main unit 3,800 yen + tax
Specification: B5 size / 312 pages
Release date: Sep 15, 2017
Author: Shuhei Matsuyama, Naohide Matsunami
Supervised by Ben Voigt
Editing and Design: Someone's Garden
