Let us introduce Pierre Duranleau aka Cafargo, an artist and designer from Montreal, Canada. He started as a fine artist in the 1980s, then worked on a dream position with Softimage (3D and XSI), and now is a guru of garden, landscape, and farm design. We asked Pierre how he uses Filter Forge and what he likes about it.
Pierre Duranleau
– How long have you been using Filter Forge? How did you learn about it?
I stumbled upon Filter Forge a few years back on the internet, as I was searching for a miracle 2D FX software program that would be intuitive, practical, fast and easy to understand and use. I was tired of spending too much time on other applications and always being disappointed with the results. There had to have been a program that could deliver the type of criteria I was looking for. Well, in the end, I did find my miracle in Filter Forge. I instantly fell in love with the whole package, the insane amount and variety of effects and the speed at which I could obtain results.
Joonga: the Arrival
– What did you need it for at the beginning and how do you use it now?
The accent of my works is for the most part very textured and painterly, and I was simply blown away how Filter Forge filters enhanced, modified and transformed my scanned traditional graphics works into entirely new and different creations, thus adding and presenting a myriad of new and unimagined graphic and textured looks.
What I love the most is the flexibility I have to experiment on the fly, using multiple filters on the same image, and output a multitude of variations based on one image. This is super important for me, as I will use some of the Filter Forge results as templates for eventual traditional media graphic works, thus going full circle from scanned drawing, to Filter Forge modifications, then back to the traditional drawing medium. It blows me away every time I work with Filter Forge, where I spend hours and hours experimenting and playing with the plethora of brilliantly designed and crafted filters and FX.
I can't work without Filter Forge now; it's an integral part of my artistic pipeline and toolkit.
Joonga: the Arrival
– What are your favorite filters?
There are quite a few, but here is a short list of ten (not in alphabetical order): Modern art, Diabolica Visio, X-Ray by Carl, Refractal Art, Dreamscene1, Cubism meets Picasso, Artistic: rectangle distortion, Circuitizer, Ronjonie's Rad Art collection and Urban Artistry.
The Messiah
– Have you ever tried to make your own filters? If so, which ones?
Due to time constraints, my main focus is on spending time working with the available filters to modify my images. Though I'm very curious about delving into the world of custom FF filters, I simply do not have the available time to do so.
Lil Kid Nevada
– What filters and features are you missing in Filter Forge?
I am generally very satisfied with the vast and varied choice of filters available. Though, I'd love to see a type of mixer feature that can blend between filters. Think of a Filter editor type of environment, where one can drop nodes into the workspace representing one's Filter(s); one can then connect the said Filter node into a Mixer input (e.g. Mixer 1, Mixer 2, etc...). The Mixer properties can then include a basic set of properties to modify, such as weight and a variety of Blending modes (e.g. normal, difference, darken, overlay, multiply, etc...). When I worked for Softimage back in the day, the devs created a brilliant Shader editor whereby one could easily mix different Shader nodes together. Absolutely brilliant feature that allowed for even more flexibility and fantastic visual results.
Pierre, thank you for the answers! Find out more about Pierre Duranleau and his art on his official site.
