Art Contest

Original Picture


Design Poster



I've decided to enter the 2007 Art Contest being held on Campus for TAMU students. I will be submitting one of my works of a photograph I took at St. Mary's Catholic Church that I altered to change the contrast and colors to show the beauty of the light and shadows throughout the picture. The original picture is the first one and the second picture is a picture of the design poster I made of the church and image altered.

This is an important piece to me because it's religious so right away I have a strong connection to it but the way the light falls on the Virgin is very delicate but beautiful. It highlights her and creates a serene feeling that I tried to capture using a camera. The way the light streams in through the window makes a very calming soothing spiritual feeling. I then transfered this into several smaller frames of the same picture to create a design poster. This poster was used previously for submittal for my design foundations class taught by Professor and Artist Dick Davidson who gave me a respectful grade. It's not so much the grade that matters but the fact that it's a religious piece without necessarily saying so and is moving from my perspective is what matters most to me.


Art contest entry form

Contact Information ( some excluded on the internet to protect my identity)

Name Erica Salinas

Local Address excluded

City ST ZIP Code excluded

Permanent Address excluded

City ST ZIP Code excluded

Local Phone excluded

Cell Phone excluded

E-Mail Address excluded

Alternate E-Mail Address excluded

Hometown College Station

Major Environmental Design

Classification U2

Title of Work Blue Virgin

Medium Photography


Category
Select one of the following:
Photography

Physical Description
Compsition and collage of Photographs

Artist’s Statement
See blog above

See things is a different light.

ENDS Degree Plan for Texas A and M University

The above spread sheet was created using Microsoft Excel for the purpose of planning out my degree plan based off the previous courses taken and those anticipated to take during the summer at my local community college. Column dimensions were changed, text bolded and centered, and colors were added for further clarity. I need a total of 136 hours to graduate.

Please note when you click on the picture you will be seeing a very poor quality screen shot of 70% magnification if you click on the picture once an icon of a + with a magnifier will appear. If you click on it, it will appear in normal readable text.

The degree plan was taken from the TAMU website online catalog at:
http://www.tamu.edu/admissions/catalogs/06-07_UG_Catalog/architecture/environmental_design/arch_studies_opt.htm


Here is the link for the online google group published online:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?id=o15853536362093656857.2303814232487031428.00803465909050869604.3698548381248590497

Visual Mind

Above is a picture of a photo merged image of a screen shot taken from Visual Mind

The map is a things to do map that has the listing of my different professors and the assignments that are pending within this week.

Visual Mind is a program designed to help express the mind thought process both personal and for buisness gains. It is a tool that works similar to a bubble spider web but is designed to help the user sort out their thoughts by categorizing and differentiating between tasks through use of colors, text boxes, and notes. This becomes very helpful in the case where templates are predesigned with the user in mind to have them be pre fabricated to be able to express the thought process to others. For example, there is a template for buisness in which a buisness man using this program could write the program using a premade template to show the project ideas and pitch it to a client. The user can have the bubble text boxes collapse to show the main idea but when you look at the bottom of the screen the notes are clearly visible. They boxes extent to show the children categories as well and those also can collapse and expand. The program can be uploaded to the web for others to view and expand the different categories. Unfortunantly, at Texas A and M the internet for personal computers via wireless internet and dorm USB connection have been down and the Computing Center does not allow downloading or uploading of programs. Two screen shots were taken of the program and photomerged in Photoshop. Some of the resolution was lost unfortunantly and in the program I assure you it looks much more clearer. Personally, I would most likely not use this program again because unless it's used for buisness or projects for others to understand for personal use it's a bit tedious to write a program in what can be done in a minute to write a to-do list by hand. That's my personal opinion but it does have a nice professional look to it. If you're skilled enough at it and get quick enough at it then otherwise perhaps I could be proven wrong. For now though unless it's school related or buisness related, I'll stick to paper and pen.

Here is the link from the site directly for a 30 day trial version. Try it out for yourself and prove me wrong. As far as tutorials go there are tips of the day upon opening the program and the program is very basic and user friendly with helpful icons and menus that are clear to understand.

http://www.visual-mind.com/download.html

Up Side Down House

http://www.lostparks.com/bandwiththeft13k.jpg

Caligari TrueSpace 6.6

Note: The above pictures are screenshots of the workspace of the studies.

The program selected to learn about was Caligari TrueSpace 6.6. It is a unique program that combines 3-D modeling and rendering. I downloaded the trial version and shown in the links listed below and used the help of tutorials and experimentation to navigate throughout the program. Once you learn the basic principles the program is relatively easy to use on the surface but can become very complicated when camera angles and animation and layers are added. Unfortunantly, be forewarned that with the trial version you cannot save and are limited to certain tools as well as the file is not completely supported so not all the links are found in the program which causes it to crash and without save you have to start over each time. I learned in using the program there are pre-fabricated objects and scenes that could be manipulated to show different times and lightings of day. Grids could be used to manipulate the objects and replicate them. The human forms could be changed to adapt to the features of a person and mimic human expression such as if the icon happy was clicked the face object would grin. The human object could also mimic the features of a person in a photograph but could also be distorted horribly to the point that they are unrecognizable. This was the case in the scene where the figure looks alien like but the original is to the left of it. The spheres could be manipulated to have different textures and optical illusions. Paths could be added to make the objects move and collide into each other. All these components work together to create 3-D animation and essentially make up a fantasy world that mimics reality but where constraints and how you program it govern it rather than everyday life and physics.

Links:
http://www.render-lab.com/Getting_around_1.htm#1.%20Help%20is%20available!
Tutorial on how to use the basic functions and is very helpful.

http://www.spacekdet.com/tutorials/
Collection of many tutorials including video and step by step guides on how to create renderings and 3-D scenes.

http://www.caligari.com/download/trials.asp?Cate=DTrials
Download the trial version. This requires anywhere from half an hour to an hour to download.
Must include email address as they send you the code to enter to allow you to begin downloading.

http://www.caligari.com/Products/trueSpace/tS7/brochure/intro.asp?Cate=BIntro
Caligari website

Viz--The Thousand Hour Long Project that is actually rewarding in an odd sort of way...

My first approach as I'm not particularly skilled with Photoshop or Autodesk Viz was to watch the tutorials and try and import a file from Top Mod, a program I am familiar with to a point. This was a failed attempt and instead I started from a single cube in Autodesk Viz. I then began following the tutorial as listed in the links below and developing it to my own and personalizing it. I then added different tools and layers including: twist, taper, bend, wave, bend, face extrude, squeeze, edit mesh, and a combination of manipulating all these tools as well as the axix heights. The image was then rendered with ambient occlusion and a camera was added. The image was then transfered to Photoshop where it was further rendered using a layering of the images attained in the previous renderings from Autodesk Viz. Layers were added to give the effect of reflection and glass and a sailboat with three people were added to show scale. Above is the finished product. Believe me it takes a lot of time and it sounds a lot easier than it actually is, but it's really cool and interesting when it's finished.

Total: Start 3:30pm end 11:07pm I'm amazed. It takes a while but you don't feel it after a while. It is challenging though.

Link to the tutorial for Autodesk Viz and Photoshop:

http://www.ends170.com/tutorials/viz1

An Elephant Named Rickkkiiiiia

The baby elephant was created through us of several programs. The first being Top Mod in which the structure was designed around the to be elephant and then was built off the structure. This was mainly to develop the skills and if you really wanted to make it, it could be considered a circus tent. The elephant file saved as an .obj was transfered to Pepakura, an Asian orgami like program that unfolds the parts. The file was saved as a printed PDF and transfered to Photoshop were colors were added. The file was printed in color and then cut up and taped together to get the elephant as so. The steps are shown in the above photos.

In addition if you would like to try Pepkura for yourself the link is as follows:

http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/download/viewer.html

Video Tutorial:

http://www.ends170.com/tutorials/pepakura1