In April 1996 I had the pleasure to interview Mark Zimmer, one of the sound and graphics software pioneers in the computer industry and father of the natural art tool "Painter". Click on one of the images on this page to hear our in-depth conversation [english]. Scroll down to read a brief summary of what we talked about. My portrait of Mark and his then thriving company was aired in 1996 at German National Public Radio.

This half and hour long interview dates back quite a while but in many ways is still current. During one of my vacations in California I had the opportunity to meet one of the key figures in the computer graphics and computer music industry. Mark Zimmer, who calls himself a “Silicon Valley Kid” in this interview talks about number theory which he studied in the mid 70ies, about CAD systems he programmed and with which the Motorola 68000 processor (Atari, Mac) was designed. In the mid 80ies Mark together with Tom Hedges developed Soundcap - the first sound digitizer for the Macintosh computer. During that time he and his closest friends also programmed the first scanner drivers and image editors for the Mac: Image & Color Studio (Letraset). A competing piece of software (guess which one!) by a company named Adobe, however, won the race for professional photo editing and Mark and his friends in the late 80ies had to start something new: They explored a totally new field - the behaviour and interaction between colour, pens and brushes with paper. In fact, Mark finished programming the first algorithm for “natural painting” as early as September 1990. The fine result and the availabilty of graphic tablet technology finally led to a highly innovative and successful product named “Painter” and its little brother “Dabbler”. Mark’s company Fractal Design also brought Larry Weinberg’s “Poser” to the market, a software package for creating 3D human figures.

The mid 90ies when I visited Fractal’s cozy wooden office building in Santa Cruz were the high time of the company. Later Fractal was aquired by Metacreations. Currently Painter is in version 7 and distributed by Corel and Procreate. Mark Zimmer in 2001 founded a new company (“fractal.com”) which - according to their website - helps continue the development of Painter.

Most of my drawings and all paintings on my Current Picts Webpage were created using Painter.

Auch wenn dieses in englisch geführte halbstündige Interview schon eine Weile alt ist - Mark hat uns auch heute noch eine Menge zu sagen! Ich traf ihn während meines Urlaubs in Kalifornien in dem großen Holzhaus von „Fractal Design“ und sprach eine halbe Stunde mit ihm über sein Studienfach Zahlentheorie, frühe CAD-Systeme, die er entwickelte (u.a. wurde damit der Motorola 68000-Prozessor designt, der später in Atari STs und Macs hauste), das erste Soundsystem für den Mac (Soundcap, von Mark zusammen mit Tom Hedges programmiert), die von Letraset vermarkteten ersten Graphikprogramme für den Mac (Image & Color Studio, programmiert von Mark, später durch die Übermacht von Adobes Photoshop vom Markt verdrängt) und die Gründung von „Fractal Design“. Sinn des Unternehmens war es, die von Mark Anfang der 90er entwickelten digitalen Maltechniken zu vermarkten. Dabei ging es primär um die Simulation von Pinseln, Federn und Stiften und deren Interaktion mit verschiedenen Papiertypen. Die in C geschriebenen Algorithmen führten zu dem Programm „Painter“ und - in abgespeckter Version - „Dabbler“ und ermöglichte es Künstern, mit einem Grafiktablett ihre vertrauten Zeichen-, Mal- und Sprühtechniken anzuwenden, ohne sich die Hände zu bekleckern. 2001 gründete Mark mit seinen alten Freunden eine neue Firma, fractal.com und berät u.a. Corel und Procreate bei der Weiterentwicklung von Painter.

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