MAYA lantern scene

In this MAYA scene I used the Polygon tool to make the box of the lantern, including the disks and circles. The CV curve tool was used to make the top and the stand.

One of the wonders of MAYA is its ability to make shadows. Once I had placed the light source inside the lantern, and constructed walls and table, MAYA did the rest. Placing a faint 2nd light source (like first light of dawn) colored the shadows, and I made some adjustments to ensure they looked candle-light soft.

The candle shape initially looked like a solid dark gray cylinder, not a candle. Giving it color and making it translucent, with a fainter, 2nd light source inside ensured the candle-like appearance.

Push Pins MAYA scene

It will be a long time before I'm animating anything on MAYA, but, wow, is it fun to make images! The pushpin handles were made by drawing one line (representing 1/2 of the silhuetted shape), using the CV curve tool, then transformed it into a 3D image. I made the needles separately. Duplicated it, then gave them each color and texture, and lit the scene. Voila!

1st animated short

This is the very first video I have ever made! I drew the cartoons with a Wacom tablet and stylus in Flash. The project called for starting with a circle and changing into something and back into a circle three times. Fun and silly!

The semester at Parkland has just ended, and here is the video I produced in my 2d animation class to showcase some of the Natural History mural work I've done. I'm very excited about doing more digital work, and the possibility of getting into animation! I will be showing other pieces I've done at Parkland soon. The quality of this image isn't too good, I also have it on You Tube, where it looks a lot better! Look under: prehistoric finished.mov

T-shirt design.

This t-shirt was a design for my Computer Graphics class. The second of my pieces to make it into the student show, it was created using both Photoshop and Illustrator.

The project called for a design that evoked the work of a major graphic designer. I chose Moscoso whose style suited my taste for bright colors. Using a photo of a friend who posed for me, I masked out the background and used a variety of techniques, including color replacement, to get the psychedelic effect. The AIGA logo was drawn by hand, and scanned in.

Fright Night remake poster

The semester at Parkland is drawing to a close, and I am seeing some of the fruit of my studies. Two of my pieces made it into the Graphic Arts Student show, this poster was one of them!

It was made in Photoshop, using photos I took of a house near my neighborhood. One photo was at twilight, and the lit window was actually lit in that picture. However, there were too many other lights on, so most of the house is from a picture taken earlier in the day. Multiple effects were used to darken and distort it, giving the image a scary edge. The figure in the window was hand painted using Photoshop's brush tool.

The title font and style was chosen to make it more like the styles currently being used in horror movies. I added the spikes to the letters and kept the arrangement of title and tag line in honor of the original movie.

Horror is not my usual genre, so this was a fun and challenging change of pace.