3Delayed

So it's been a long time since I've updated this. It's not like I haven't been busy. I actually have a bunch of things I could get up here, and I eventually will.

Anyways, here are a couple things from my 3D illustration/animation class. I took the course this summer, but just recently finished it up 'officially'. The 3D modeling was done with 3D Studio Max 2010, combination with Discovery Studio Visualizer, which helped convert protein structure data into a basic scaffold to then use in 3DS Max. Post-production for stills was done in Adobe Photoshop, and for the animation in Photoshop and Adobe After Effects (still stuck on CS4 for both).



Hemoglobin! Hand-delivers us oxygen all day every day. With a smile. This still image was done for an early class assignment, when learning to export Protein Database models to 3DS Max for manipulation. It was really just a chance to play around with lighting in 3D and other effects in Photoshop to put together a finished image.



This was for a later assignment where we followed a set of instructions to learn how to manipulate basic shapes into more complex ones. In this case the example was a basic neuron. So the underlying model is technically made by me, but following a specific set of instructions. Where I had my own control was in the placement and look of the dendrites and axons of the nerve. Post-production again done in Photoshop. I would like to re-do this with a more realistic neuron model in the future, but it was fun to learn on.



The final project for the class was a short, simple 3D animated educational video about a protein of our choice. I chose the Arp2/3 protein complex, and animated it in this extremely simplified video. The idea was that I wanted it to be a (fake) part in a series of AP Biology level high school animations that might accompany a textbook. What I have here is actually not the most final version, but I will upload that when I am able. It's basically the same, with only a few minor tweaks. I don't know how I feel about the video. I learned quite a bit making it, but if I did it again I would have done it totally differently. And much better. But it was a fun learning exercise. Models/cameras were done in 3D Studio Max, post-production art in Photoshop, and video editing/compositing done with After Effects.

That's my update for today. I will update more often in the future, along with retroactively getting up some stuff from the past few months too.

Posin' Ivy

I realized I hadn't posted this piece at all when I originally made it. It's from class I had last fall about learning how to use Adobe Illustrator. It's inked, colored, and laid-out in Illustrator, after scanning in hand-drawn pencil drawings. The image depicts a simple first aid procedure about how to treat poison ivy (besides praying for it to go away quickly). That's really all there is to say about it; it's a pretty simple way to get acquainted with the program.


Also, Helvetica.

Photography, or: I should stop doing projects about delicious seafood

This is where I put up some of the pictures I took in my photography class.

The main project was to again make a teaching piece about a plant or animal specimen of our choice, by taking the necessary pictures, researching, and creating the appropriate layout. Seeing as I had some white shrimp in my refrigerator (and they are interesting to look at), I decided to do my piece about shrimp anatomy.


Taking the photos for this was fun. My professor had a ton of different lighting set-ups for us to use. To take this, I ended up submerging the shrimp underwater in a flat-bottomed glass bowl, to eliminate any out-of-water reflection due to it being wet. The bowl was placed on a sheet of glass raised about a 4-5 inches above black velvet (which was to absorb light below the shrimp). For the actual light, I used a set-up of four surrounding LED lights on the end of flexible necks. With two of them I pointed up at the shrimp from below the glass platform, to back-light the carapace and legs. The other two I pointed obliquely across the top of the shrimp to catch some of the features facing the camera. It took a bit of set-up and test photos, but the pictures came out incredibly clear and I am very happy with them. They were then put into a layout in which I tried to show most of the shrimp's general surface anatomy.

That was the "teaching" portion, but there were many other assignments for the class as well. Some of them are portraits that I won't put up for privacy reasons, but here are some others from the class. They were mainly for experimenting with our cameras and getting used to photography in general.

Black-and-White conversion:
Boring? I can buy that. But it was great really finding out and playing with how to digitally convert color photos to black-and-white and avoiding the "Convert to grayscale" option, which is horrible. This was taken at the Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore.


Sculpture photography:
The idea was to take 3 outdoor photos of a sculpture to be theoretically used to present or promote the sculpture by whatever institution it belongs to. These are 3 (of many more I took) of a 1906 bronze piece by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle titled, "Fruit."


Architecture:
These were taken when I did a half-day rotation in the Hopkins photography department. Architecture photography wasn't an assignment, but it happened to be what I helped do during the rotation. These were really fun to take, because I got to crawl all over the hospital rooftops to get them. 3 are of the construction of the new wing of the hospital, and one is of part of Baltimore's harbor.


The panoramas were stitched together from 3 and 4 shots, respectively.

cephaloPod

It's been a while since I've posted anything new, so I thought I'd update with some recent work.

This piece was the result of a project from two classes: a tone drawing class, and an introductory class to illustration with Adobe Photoshop. The goal was to find and teach something, such as interesting anatomy or behavior, on a plant or animal of our choice, in the form of an informational poster or something similar. The first half of the project was to create the base illustration using graphite. In my case, that is the large squid in the top-right of the layout. The second half was to place that image within a layout that involves the necessary text and insets to explain the idea behind the illustration. To get us used to illustrating in Photoshop, we were supposed to render any additional images to look as if they were done with the traditional media (graphite) used for the main drawing.


I chose to do a piece on how squids (and by extension the other cephalopods) propel themselves through the water. To supplement my library research, I ordered a preserved squid online to dissect, and I bought a ton of fresh squid from Asian food superstore H-Mart, which had me constantly wanting to eat fried calamari. It was an interesting project to do, but as with anything, when it's all said and done I can see a bunch of things I would do differently a second time around. Still, it was a fun piece to do for my first real illustration.