Student 3D Artwork

This fall on Wednesday nights I've been teaching 3D graphics. My class consists of eight boys ranging from 3rd grade to 5th grade. Now, put eight boys in a room, and it's a challenge to keep them on task. But, sit them in front of their own laptop doing cool things, that is a challenge.

Their computer skills ranged from not at all to pretty good - their artistic sensitivity was nearly null. After several sessions trying to introduce 3D concepts and making them pay attention, we finally arrived to the last three weeks of class where they needed to start working on their final project that would be shown to all the parents of all the classes.

Below is a sample of their work so far - some pretty really cool things. One boy accidentally made a sky out of water and produced a really cool starting concept of mountains under water. The other boys latched on the sci-fi aspect and worked on their own planets or deathstars.

I'll post the final projects as soon as they are available.

Some Random Recent Paintings

I haven't posted here in sometime. Here are a few of my latest paintings.

Happy Birthday - Ava Mae

Today is my daughter Ava Mae’s fifth birthday. She’s the youngest of our three children, the second surprise for us (with Lexi being the first surprise).
When we had our first ultrasound, they told us that Ava was going to be a boy. The second ultrasound told us she was a girl. Even though they promised us that they were pretty sure she was going to be a girl, I still wondered. But, they were right and Ava was a girl.
Now, here are a few facts about Ava Mae:
• She has, without a doubt, the loudest voice I have ever heard. Even when’s she’s whining, it’s loud. How can such a little thing be so loud.
• She will be featured someday on the TLC’s Hoarders. I thought I was bad, oh no, I’m just an amateur compared to her. Ava Mae has saved every scrap of paper that fluttered through her attention. I found old post-it notes that I had written on years ago stowed away in her room.
• Without an effort, she can be the life of the party, or…
• When she’s in a bad mood, she’s not content to just state her displeasure, no, she plans to take you and everybody else down with her.
• Ava Mae is the most likely to get Daddy in trouble. Sometimes its entirely accidental (accidentally telling Mommy that Daddy let her drink Diet Coke). But, there are those times where she gets me in trouble just to show me that she can. It’s as if she wants to make sure that I have no misgivings about who really runs this house.
• She is very much a hybrid of her brother and sister. Devin is analytical and will make a great engineer, scientist, doctor, or mathematician. Lexi is the head-in-the-clouds dreamer, very creative, life of the party, with her very own entourage of fans in tow. Ava is equal parts both of those.
• Ava loves ballet. She is obsessed with it.
• Ava is very anxious to start learning the piano. She can find middle-C faster than her brother and sister can.
• One of her favorite television shows was the episode of Arrested Development where Tobias paints himself blue to join the Blue Man Group. She always asks me to see the Blue Man episode. In fact, she has suggested that I write a story about Blue Man. I’ll get back to you on that one.
• On night, Ava stood up at dinner and recited the qualities that make you a leader. I tried to write them down – they were pure Ava-isms.

Being a leader is … someone who is nice to everyone
Being a leader is … someone who helps his or her friends
Being a leader is … brushing your teeth like the dentist says
Being a leader is … making sure have a fancy pony birthday party for each of your WebKinz
Being a leader is … singing songs about Jesus
Being a leader is … dancing to all the High School Musical songs
Being a leader is … being stylish
Being a leader is … going on the potty
Being a leader is … not pushing girls off the playground swings
Being a leader is … being a good line leader
Being a leader is … is being a leader
Being a leader is … going to Jacob’s house
Being a leader is … Lexi not letting me play hide and go seek
Being a leader is … not letting the aliens come into our house and take our faces off

Words to live by.

Happy Birthday Lexi - 7 Years Old

Last week was my daughter Lexi's seventh birthday. Lexi is my child that has the most creative mind. We homeschool our children, and one of the subjects that I teach is Music Appreciation. We take all three kids, and play different styles of music and talk about the music. We will talk about the genre of the music - with entire blocks on classical, rock, jazz, and most recently R&B. One of things we focus on (especially for classical, jazz, new age, or soundtracks - with no words) is to listen to the music, and close their eyes, and tell a story about what you think happens while this music is playing. Lexi is the most creative, and she often comes to me and tells me a story and asks that I paint a picture of this story. Here are some examples of paintings I did that were inspired from Lexi's mind.

Devin in Art

Happy Birthday Devin. My son is eight years old today. I don't have much time to write, so I thought I would post some of the art I've done for him. Most of this was either done at request (the Fenway Park was his idea as he wanted a picture at home plate) or a result of a story the kids told me, and I rendered it in some artwork (some better than others).

Stealing the Witch's Crystal Ball

Finally finished with this piece that I wrote about in my last post. As I thought would be the case, the most difficult part was not the architecture of the castle, but the point of view and placement of the people (or monsters) that actually tell the story. The point of view for these are always critical, you want to show off the work you did on the castle, but in the end, it’s not the story. The story is Lexi getting the crystal ball and running from both the witch and her monster henchmen.

Working with a photo I took of Lexi on my iPhone, I turned her into a 3D model and placed her within the scene. With some difficulty placed the castle on a rocky terrain that I edited, trying to make sure the spikes didn’t cut through the castle. I created a bridge that spanned the gap, though it’s always difficult doing anything intricate with a terrain because it’s often very difficult to truly see where the upper spikes are, so that is basically try it, render it, fix it, render it, fix it again, render it. The bridge was supposed to be a flimsy rope bridge, and Lexi was going to be cutting it while the monsters are crossing. However, that was a much more difficult story to convey in an image, so I changed it to Lexi running ahead of the monsters.

The green monsters are creations I made that deform the face of a normal person to upturn the face (like an Orc) and make the ears pointy (like a goblin) and make them huge and incredibly strong (like an Ogre). The witch in the sky is really just a black form made in the shape of a witch flying on a broomstick.

The chasm that the bridge spans was originally supposed to be some smoky glowing liquid. And that is actually still there, but in the end with the point of view and dark atmosphere, it just wasn’t prominently visible and it really didn’t add anything to the end result. There’s a bridge there, you know that Lexi has crossed, and the monsters are crossing it now, and is it important to know what is beneath it?

The story goes as follows. The small village is terrorized by an evil witch. The witch has targeted Lexi’s family, and with her crystal ball, is able to see what she and her brother and sister are doing at all times, making it simple to catch them. Lexi decides to be brave and venture into the castle to steal her crystal ball to break it so the witch will not find it so easy to find them.

Storming the Castle - Sort of

Here’s a shot of my latest painting still in progress, a pure raw rendering with none of the final painting that I do over the rendering. This painting is based on a story that my daughter Lexi is making up. The concept is, and this is always subject to change either by me or Lexi, is that this is the castle of the evil witch. Lexi has just escaped from the castle, running from the highest tower, across a dangerous rope bridge, while being chased by Trolls. She wants the painting to be at the end of the chase, where she has just crossed the bridge, and she wants to be cutting the ropes on the bridge while the Trolls are still running across.

The good news is that the most intricate part is done. Designing the castle was difficult and tedious. But I’m rather pleased, as this raw rendering looks pretty good. The castle looks forbidding enough, I added a blue glow to it. The rock that it sits on is basically a terrain inverted with a smaller rocky terrain on top of it.

The bad news is that I’m struggling with exactly how to display the scene she wants. The rope bridge has to look random and dangerous enough, and I have to be careful of too many patterns, as they eye will catch that quickly. I have to build the terrain that is the other side of the bridge, which will be closest to the camera. Lexi will have to be kneeling down cutting the bridge (with the broom in her hand). I’m worried that her image will not be very big, and hard to see what she is doing. And then there’s the trolls. Well, I don’t want to think about them just yet. Then I need to think about the background, and this is critical as it can't take away from the effect of the castle and cliff it sits on.

This is why my paintings seldom end the way I anticipate they will.

The Story of the Abandoned Mine

One of the things that my children and I do is make up stories. We do it in a number of ways. One variation consists of me coming up with a starting point, and we pass it from person to person, with each adding the next event. We find that this allows the story to go in a number of directions.

Another variation actually started during our music studies last year. We homeschool our children, and one of the subjects I teach is music. I felt it was important before they learned to play an instrument that they have an understanding and love for music. Our music class talks about genres of music, instruments, and a visual aspect of music. The visual aspect is them communicating what they see when they close their eyes and listen to this music. I found that they were quite good at making up stories. I started finding classical soundtrack music from movies, and that style of music inspired wonderful tales from my children.

So, I started asking for the kids to come up with a story, and I would paint a picture with them in it. I will publish some of those stories as we do it, and the artwork that has come out of it.

Today’s story is a tale of Devin’s adventure searching for treasure in the abandoned mine. He imagined that he found a map to a gold mine that had been abandoned and forgotten about for years. He bravely took his flashlight and entered the mine. After several turns, he happened upon a horrible scene, two skeletons of adventurers like him who had died in the mine. He was on his guard, which was a good thing as up ahead the wooden support gave way and nearly toppled on top of him. But still he managed to get by.

This painting was a lot of fun to do. It was interesting doing a concept of a long tunnel. I started with the infinite tunnel idea, but it didn’t look right for a mine. I wanted the mine to feel small and claustrophobic, and showing a turn ahead in the mine was a good way to do that. I liked the touch of the two skeletons, but struggled with the texture to show them. A standard bone color blended in too much with the dirt and overall color scheme of the mine. I ended up adding almost a blue tinge to the bones to make them standout.

I always struggle when I have to add a photo of a real model to my paintings. To my eyes, it never seems perfect. For this one, I took a picture of Devin with my iPhone just to use a test subject in the renderings. The photo was good, but grainy compared to our more expensive high-resolution digital camera. But the look was great, I found that I had to do very little with the picture of Devin other than cut out the background. He really looks like he fits perfectly with the scene.
I added the flashlight at the end in Photoshop by creating a very bright Adjustment Layer with Curves. Then only showed the beam path of the flashlight. About the only other things I did in Photoshop was add a photofilter that gave the scene a golden look, and added a soft focus look.