Art, Culture, and Technology: Show and Tell

Here is a link to what I would like to be shown on Thursday:

"Download DARPA's Sub-Hunting Sim, Help Train its ACTUV Automaton"

Really interesting article about some simulation that's happening to conduct real world training.

Art 450 Update

So here is my blog update for Tuesday... or Thursday, or whenever it is we're doing our group update for Art 450. I came up with a project idea that I'm really excited about (there's nothing like mouth surgery, pain meds, and Minecraft to give you some artistic inspiration >.>). The idea evolved from these sketches I worked on last week:

I received some good feedback from that particular image (people seemed to this it was weird, out there, and mildly humorous which I loved to hear!). So the following is a sort of stream of consciousness note-taking I did while I was thinking about this image (it might not make sense to anyone >.>):

- Everyday objects made grungy or disturbing in a way

- Simple kitchen objects?

- 1950's undead, housewives

- Ads, being beautiful an perfect from beyond the grave

- Ordinary as deadly: objects, people, 50's lifestyle

- Should take a look at home cooking magazines, maybe women's magazines to get some collage material

- 1950's undead kitchen

- Brain ice cream cone

- Recreate 1950's ads, or current home life ads, as undead versions

- "meat"loaf

- Bloodtini

- The housewife retaliates by making her husband part of all the meals/treats/objects, "finally, he can help out in the kitchen!"

- Eyeball wedding ring

- Graphic design + photog for ads

- 3D objects in a small environment

- An extreme portrayal of the 50's and its expectations? Or, utilizing an undead environment as a way to fight those expectations?

I think there's a lot to these random thoughts I was having and I could go in a few directions with it for a long term project. For the purposes of 450, I decided on creating some everyday objects in a 3D space/environment and texturing them to look and feel exactly the opposite of what they are. Although, I'm really hooked on the idea of that brain ice cream cone for some reason, haha, might have to toss that in there as well. Anyways, what I like about this idea is that I can make these 3D objects, and possibly a little bit of an environment (the 50's kitchen) but I can also expand on this with some graphic design, photography, and photo-manipulation at a later date. These objects will also be really simple, and won't take a ridiculous amount of time to model.

The fact that I landed on a bit of a satirical look at both the 1950's and the zombie culture didn't surprise me. I've always been incredibly fascinated by the lifestyle and mindset of the 50's. What's odd, is that I've always thought both utilizing the 50's as a platform for art and the huge pop culture interest in zombies as clichéd idea/concept. But, for some reason, I'm just really excited about combining these two ideas!

I'm really excited to kick start this with some visual research today or tomorrow and then get right into both Maya and Photoshop. Some advice I got from my friend in the industry to keep in mind and help set some goals:

- Keep the size of the environment appropriate, what's the point of spending a bunch of time on some objects that might end up looking too small in a full size kitchen environment?

- If I want to focus on strictly doing the objects, 10 objects would be a good number to shoot for without having an extensive environment to do.

- When I start modeling I need to keep in mind the angle that's important to the object. Will we only be seeing half of the object? Just the front? Or do I want it to be able to be utilized in a full 360 rotation?

- Current goals: Sketches of the scene and gathering reference material.

Ok I think that's all of the updating I have for Art 450 at this point. I've said this a lot already, but I'm really excited to jump into Maya/Photoshop and start this up!

Sketch Dump

Some of these have the incorrect orientation. :[

Blog post fail!

Art, Culture and Technology: Show and Tell

Due to the fact that I won't be able to attend class on Thursday, I'm posting a couple virtual reality/simulation related show and tell things here!

Virtusphere:
 This is an article engadget wrote last year when the Virtusphere was available to view and play with at GDC 2010.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/19/virtusphere-virtual-reality-hamster-ball-put-to-the-test/

The Virtusphere website.
http://www.virtusphere.com/

Minecraft + Kinect:
This is a video of people implementing the Kinect to build simulated statues of them within the world of Minecraft. It's animated too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2mCDkqXki0

ART 450: Project Proposal

1. A working title for your project.
     Crazy BFA Work


2. A one-sentence description of your project.
      This will be a project of study and completion of as many small pieces of work as possible leading up to my BFA review and beyond.

3. A one-paragraph description of your project.
     This will be a project of study and completion of as many small pieces of work as possible leading up to my BFA review and beyond. During the course of this term I will be producing as much work as possible while trying to truly find my project. Right now this is consisting of five minute duration drawings for long periods of time, just to get a lot of drawing done.

4. A one-page description of your project.
     This will be a project of study and completion of as many small pieces of work as possible leading up to my BFA review and beyond. During the course of this term I will be producing as much work as possible while trying to truly find my project. Right now this is consisting of five minute duration drawings for long periods of time, just to get a lot of drawing done. As I continue with this exercise I also hope to complete some texture art for an environment setting, this will most likely be the sewer setting from last term but may change over the course of this term. I have only been fully dedicated to this five minute drawing process for not even a full week and it has already helped me to come up with some ideas. So, the current plan is to stick to drawing a lot and starting on some texture art for an environment.

5. A description of your products of study—what you're going to actually produce during the course of your project.
     A lot of sketches/drawings and texture art!
 
6. Visual and/or written research for your project—other people’s work
     I've done quite a bit of visual research for the sewer environment which can be viewed in past blog posts and I'll be doing random visual research throughout the five minute drawing exercises which I will post to here.


7. Treatment visuals for your project—your own work
     My blog posts from last term show some of the sewer environment and I'll be showing some of the five minute sketches I've done so far during class.


8. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project.
     The only technical research I'll need to do this term is getting a quick refresher on UV mapping and such, then it will just be Photoshop as usual.

9. A timeline of your project. When you will be doing all of this good stuff. You must include specific deadlines (for example: "May 17th", not "some time in May."

     Besides just drawing like crazy, I think at least starting texture art related work by Thursday or next week would be a good direction.