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A few years ago, four professional digital artists working in diverse fields--from digital video to industrial design--met through Stratalist, an on-line discussion group focused on Strata's 3D product line. They soon discovered that they had a common interest in producing computer generated fine art. This sampling of their work, which shows surprising artistic variation, proves that an artist's style need not be not defined by the tool.

Chris Balaskas

Graphic designer/comic book artist Chris Balaskas discovered digital art while pursuing fine arts in college. "After playing with Adobe Systems' Photoshop for a few days, I became hooked on CG, and have been ever since," he recalls.

To generate his work, Balaskas uses Strata3DPro, along with Corel's Bryce and Curious Labs' Poser, running on a PC. His early projects consisted mainly of spaceships and planets, which reflects the artist's interest in science fiction. Recently, Balaskas has been concentrating on the artistic beauty of less "spectacular" subjects and settings as a result of studying the detailed textures of real world objects. "Although sci-fi will always be close to my heart, a simple plate of fruit can move me," he adds.

For Balaskas, creating original art remains one of the most challenging aspects of using a digital palette. "So much digital art contains CG cliches," he says. "It's easy to slap on lens flares and chrome, and say `wow,' But it's far more difficult and rewarding to avoid gimmicky effects. You can be subtle and still have an impact on the viewer."

Additional information about Balaskas's art can be found at www.balaskas.homestead.com.

Robot (AI) For Balaskas, one of the biggest advantages of using digital tools is that they enable him to easily incorporate changes. Yet, for this ambitious project, the artist progressed from a sketch to the final render with only minor revisions.