Light Art 2016

My name is Robyn- I’m a 3rd year Computer Science major. I’ve done digital and traditional drawing for about 7 years now, primarily pencil/pen sketches, digital art, and pixel art on a tablet. I primarily use the program Paint Tool SAI, but I’m also comfortable with Photoshop.

I have ~4 years of programming experience, and some basic electronics experience working with smaller electronic systems. I’ve worked on business systems at Pratt and Whitney for an internship, as well as general comp. sci coursework at WPI. I also play the oboe in concert band, and like to make plushies occasionally!

I like to draw from games a lot, as well as some of my favorite books and songs- I also enjoy drawing animals, like cats:

Recently I’ve been wanting to improve in my digital painting skills and expand my general drawing skills, as well as trying different types of art that I haven’t used much (e.g animation)- I’d like to be able to draw more interesting backgrounds and scenes to frame characters in.

I’ve had a few recent project where I was pretty happy how I painted the lighting, or captured a style well (such as the Gameboy Color pixel style below). As part of an inspiration from video games, I like to do create pixel art that matches the particular style or palette of a game/system.

 

Hopefully by the end of this term, I’ll have created something interesting with light that I can learn from, and hopefully expand into similar project even after the class is over. It will be interesting to combine technology and art together, given my experience in each of the two individually.

My name is Tony Garside. I am a Computer Science student currently wrapping up my Senior year at WPI. I’m fairly experienced in software engineering having interned at Cimpress (better known as VistaPrint) and having done my MQP in Silicon Valley with NVIDIA as well as doing general computer science course work at WPI.

I have experience with many programming and scripting languages including Java, C#, C, and Python. My electronics background is basic. I took electronics classes in high school and I spent two summers working at an electronics manufacturing company, however, most of my experience is in assembling circuits rather than designing them. I’ve played a little bit with Arduino and Raspberry pi.

My experience with art is mostly digital. I’m very comfortable with Photoshop. I would like to expand my artistic ability with light and possibly music mediums. I think it could be very interesting to create art that utilizes programming, perhaps merging artificial intelligence with music creation.

This is a surreal scene that I made for a digital art class using Photoshop. It pictures two very unlikely friends hording a stash of Halloween candy in an alternate universe. I’m not quite sure what I was thinking when I made this, but I think it looks pretty.

This is an art project that I created with two other WPI students while taking the Essentials of Art class. The goal of this assignment was to create a work of art using similar methodology to how Andy Goldsworthy creates sculptors. Andy Goldsworthy is a British Sculptor that creates temporary works of art using only objects that he can find in a particular environment. Pictured is a colorful combination of liter that we found on WPI’s campus. Featured at one end of the colorful liter snake is a used condom, hence the name of the piece is “Reused Condom”. (Don’t worry, none of us actually touched the condom and we washed our hands thoroughly after cleaning up the liter).

I tend to be more interested in weird, unconventional, and psychedelic pieces of art. One of my creative inspirations that I may use to influence my project for this class are the live light shows from Daft Punk concerts that took place around 2007.

By the end of this project, I hope to have created a piece of light art that I can be proud of. Ideally I hope to create something that is expandable so that I can continue to build upon it after this course is over. Lastly I hope to learn more about the process of creating art that utilizes technology to allow me to further expand my ability to create interesting projects.

Cameron Back

Light Art Humanities Practicum

Biography:

My name is Cameron Back, I am currently studying Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). As a college student, I study a lot of electrical systems, and also do a lot of work in: python, C, C++, matlab, CCS, and Vivado.  Most recently, I have been working with MSP programmable boards.

I decided to pursue visual art as my humanities requirement because despite my main focus being engineering, the field of art has always been incredibly interesting to me.

My interest in visual art is mostly inspired by my love of movies, cartoons, comics, and other similar pop culture. Most of my work has been influenced by comic book superheroes, such as the Avengers, the Justice League, and Watchmen. These stories continue to thrill me even today, and most of my best works of art are in reference to characters from these stories.

In fact, I spent most of my early years of middle and high school learning to draw things from these types of stories, and slowly began to learn more about perspective, lighting, and the human anatomy. In high school, I learned how to use In-Design as a 2D digital art software, and from there, began to pursue other methods of digital Art in College remembering that experience. These include: Maya, Zbrush, and Flash Animation.

However, the type of art that excites me the most is costume design and fashion. Because WPI is a very project based program, I decided to take on a project the summer before attending.  I did this to prove to myself that I could see it all the way through to perfection. During that summer, my friend and I attended Comic Conn in St. Louis, and were blown away by costumes people wore there. Each one had incredible amounts of detail and style to them, and I wanted to take on a project like that for myself.  I chose to create a Green Arrow inspired suit for myself that summer. I spent several hours every day working on both the design of the suit, and on the actual construction of the suit.

By the end, I had something to be proud of, and the confidence to pursue future projects at WPI.

But despite the project being over, I still think quite a lot about different possible costumes and Ideas, and would love the opportunity to work on this type of project again.

LEDshift LED fashion page

Lots of great LED fashion videos.

Site is in German, but use the built in translate function at the top.