Bowser Cosplay

Today is the day of the Boxwars! My Bowser costume is now fully complete, including a styrofoam Chain Chomp as my weapon. I created the headgear from a program called Cubeecraft. This program was much easier to use than Pepakura, although I had to take the texture into Photoshop to change it around a little bit. The shell was made from a box with 29 spikes glued to it. I painted Chain Chomp onto a styrofoam ball and attached zip ties for the chain.
Once we all geared up, we headed down to the student union - in costume - to battle it out. My weapon didn't last long, so I had to resort to running into people backwards and stab them with my shell spikes. It was a lot of fun, and we difinitely attracted a big audience.

3D Wolf

For our last collaborative project, I, along with a team of 3 other students, created a 3D cardboard wold made from Pepakura. Our process started when we created a survey asking students what kind of sculpture they would like to see on campus. Many of the responses we got were to create a wolf. We decided that we didn't want the crowd sourcing to stop there, so we came up with the idea to paint the wold with chalkboard paint and have students write on the wolf when it was installed. The overall piece ended up being very successful, and although we faced some inclement weather, we did have many people participate in the chalking of the wolf.

Emily Rogers - Photographer

On April 15th at 5:30pm, MFA candidate Emily Rogers gave a lecture about her work as a photographer. She began discussing work that inspired her, and is very interested in photography that shows feeling and emotion. Her subjects in her photos are not people, but rather the absence of people. The feelings that people get from photos is what Rogers loves the most about photography. Her first set of photos that she shared were inspired by her grandmother. They were pictures of mourning from the loss of her grandmother, and showed silence and emptiness in photographs. Rogers then began photographing houses when she went to Denver for Habitat for Humanity. She really liked capturing the shape of the homes, and the community and family that the homes were about. Rogers then began photographing local homes in Reno. She started with the fronts of the homes, but eventually moved into the neighborhood and got to know the people who lived in the homes. Her photos started to change as she was telling the stories of the people in the homes by photographing their homes. She enjoyed finding old stories about something that happened in the houses, and then photographed the houses to tell that particular story. She hung the story by the picture of the house in her exhibition.
Rogers' work was very powerful, and I enjoyed the emotion and stories that she told in her photos.

Genevieve Erin O'Brien

On March 26th, at 6pm, Genevieve Erin O'Brien gave a talk about her experience and her work as a performance artist. O'Brien is a Vietnamese-Irish-American artist who heavily identifies with each of her cultures. She likes to express her heritage through her artwork. One of her pieces was called "Astounding Race" and was about the idea that we only think of Vietnam as a war rather than a country. She had joe paper with her, and went to public areas where she silently asked people to write down what they think about Vietnam. A lot of the responses were about war, which was an astonishing finding. Another performance work she did was called Peace Salon, in which she asked for volunteers to come and she would shave their head for peace. This was a very powerful piece that reflected not only people's personal struggles, but also the bigger picture of peace.
The talk was very interesting and let me see a who new type of art.

Cosplay Boxfight Character

BOWSER!!

Bowser is the original villain of gaming. For this project, I would like to focus on creating his shell and his head. His bracelets and necklace will be add ons. Here are some other people's attempts at creating their own Bowser costume:

Since Bowser doesn't have a weapon, I would like to incorporate his comrade, Chain Chomp into my costume. While Chain Chomp isn't really recognized as an individual character, he is highly destructive and an ultimate badass.

The REAL Steve Madden

Steve Madden is a household name in the fashion world, particularly for his shoe designs. There have been many copycats to the design of his notable pumps, but none quite like this. This shoe was scanned using an Xbox Kinect, then transferred to Pepakura, where it was printed and folded. Included in the installation is Steve Madden's copyright notice.

Show Me The Money!

The game, Show Me The Money, is about how our lives revolve all around money. Whether we are spending money or getting money, it is an important aspect of our daily lives. You can beat the game when you successfully collect all the money. Good luck!

When Pigs Fly - Apocalypse Model

Will our world survive the effects of global warming? When pigs fly!

Well here they come soaring up and away from the land surface destruction we created through our own ignorant neglect.

Not just a saying anymore, this flying pig it is your rescuer from the melting ice caps, ghastly hurricanes, and scorching ground temperatures. So throw on some shades, enjoy a nice mojito, and enjoy the breeze flowing through your hair as your trusty winged farm animal takes you to the only place left after global climate apocalypse – up in the sky!

SecondLife is Like a Box of Chocolates

A Machinima, by Alli Williams, Jason Libby, and Chris Scott.

3D Portrait, Apocalypse Model

The 3D portrait still needs some work, but as of now I'm working on how to transfer it in to 123D Design. I went with the original catch I made, I retook Ally's portrait 2 more times, but every time I put the pictures into the program, the back of her head was completely missing. I worked with the PC program to manually stitch photos together and get it right. Here is the progress thus far:

The Apocalypse model is almost complete. It is now primered and ready to be hand painted. Finished product to come next week.

Forrest's Goodbye

Here is the finished product of the Forrest Gump machinima. Being in SecondLife, we wanted every aspect of the scene we chose to be as realistic as possible. The overall product matched well with the scenes, and we are very proud of how the film turned out.

3D Model - Apocalypse model & classmate

This week, I printed out my 3D model of humanity in 50 years. Here's how it turned out:

All the extra stuff on the model is supporting material that I haven't yet removed. The glasses on the model did not print up at all, so I will have to make those out of paper and plastic and attach them. I'm also not sure if the wings will last after I take off the supporting material below them, so I might completely take off the wings and reattach them once I clean them up a bit. Almost ready to paint!

This week, we also used 123D Catch to make a 3D model of a classmate. Here's a still of how mine turned out:

It pieced the pictures together really well, with a few minor flaws. When I uploaded it onto my desktop, however, I couldn't change it because it was a pure black object. I tried deleting and re-uploading but have yet to successfully accomplish that.

Machinima Progress

I'm still working on the hair, but here is an updated version of the Forrest Gump avatar:

We have all the locations and just need to work on filming the rest of the scenes, which we will get done this week so we can work on editing over the weekend. More to come!

"Videogames and Art" Introduction - Discussion questions

The following discussion questions are derive from the introduction to "Videogames and Art". The book can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Videogames-Art-Intellect-Andy-Clarke/dp/1841501425

1. The writer talks about video games focusing on mechanics rather than aesthetics, and then goes on to discuss whether commercial video games in themselves are art. Do you believe that commercial video games can be considered art just as much as other types of video game art that uses these commercial games as their basis? The writer doesn't believe commercial games - in their entirety - can be considered art even if there are aesthetic art qualities to it. Do you agree or disagree with this claim?

2. Video game artists have to power to create their galleries fully within a game space, which would eliminate cost of showing art in a physical gallery. The intro talks about installation art being entirely entirely within the computer, and only gave benefits of this kind of idea. Do you find any shortcomings with this type of online-computer-gamespace only location?

3D Model - Climate Apocalypse

I altered my model a bit more to make her look a bit more futuristic rather than coming from the 90's. I added some robotic armor to her, as well as an umbrella hat to protect the sun rays from her head, rather than purley eye protection. I'm hoping to soon print the model.

Machinima project - Art 381

Movie: Forrest Gump

Scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISJ0VsnCvDo

We started developing our characters and choosing different locations to shoot the scenes in the clip. The first avatar we wanted to focus on was the star, Forrest Gump. We took a picture of the actor, Tom Hanks and imported that into the skin template for Second Life. We adjusted the facial features and hair to appear more like the actor. Here is the first attempt:

We also started scouting some locations. Here are the some screen shots:

More progress to come

Climate Apocalypse! - Art 451

Will our world survive the effects of global warming? When pigs fly!

Well here they come soaring up and away from the land surface destruction we created through our own ignorant neglect.

Not just a saying anymore, this flying pig it is your rescuer from the melting ice caps, ghastly hurricanes, and scorching ground temperatures. So throw on some shades, enjoy a nice mojito, and enjoy the breeze flowing through your hair as your trusty winged farm animal takes you to the only place left after global climate apocalypse – up in the sky!

Week 1 Progress