
She was inspired by an eagle and had a tattoo of the bird put on her thigh. Knowing my daughter, I thought that eagle should have a tattoo of my daughter on its thigh.
I actually drew the whole bird, it just wouldn’t fit legibly on the card.
no screaming this time, just a big stick
She was inspired by an eagle and had a tattoo of the bird put on her thigh. Knowing my daughter, I thought that eagle should have a tattoo of my daughter on its thigh.
I actually drew the whole bird, it just wouldn’t fit legibly on the card.
I ran this first in my Penn State blog. Is this the fifty-fifth anniversary? Maybe I should just bring it forward every year? Anyway, I thought it deserved a retread.
A student committee asked if I’d host the art room discussions about ecology. I was in the room practically all day anyway; it was my senior year and I spent all of my free periods working on art projects. I figured I could wing any discussion since discussion was easy. A mountain of trash, industrial air pollution and chemical run-off- Pottstown had it all: It was rich material. But when the day came, Earth Day 1970, no one talked. None of my fellow students had an opinion. At least, not early in the morning. I stuttered and stammered through the first period class, just filling the silence with my voice. As the class filed out, the art teacher strolled past and muttered, “Better get your head out of your rear, Stong. Come up with something quick.” Yeah. Got it. Bob Kingsley with sound advice. He was probably the best teacher I ever had. Too bad it was just for an elective my senior year of high school.
As the next class walked in, already bored having spent their last period talking about “ecology,” I was blank. Should I focus on ecologically sound art materials? Probably; but how boring would that be? How likely was it that any of these folks would go in to the Arts? In frustration, I started tossing out opinions, but even I was bored. The second class moved on and the third period started. Good grief did this suck.
“Look,” I said in frustration, “So we pollute. What’s the big deal? There are a lot of people. They’ll pollute until people die and there aren’t enough people to pollute any more.” Bingo. Reaction and discussion. Not much, just a bit; but there was discussion. Some of the students actually took strong issue with what I said.
“If we change nature’s balance won’t nature just adjust? re-balance on its own? So some weak species disappear and some sick people die, won’t we be stronger for it?” Could I call it performance art? Not really; performance, certainly, but art? Nah. It’s difficult being artistic while you pull your head out of your rear. I did create a moment for myself, though; a point, like a seed crystal, for memories to gather on and clarify. I realize in retrospect that this was probably a first for me. Performances of all sorts, some contrary some exaggerated some as a devil’s advocate, would follow. The most recent, suggesting we publish our salaries and performance reviews, led to my “early retirement.”
Every year the local high school enables students to paint holiday scenes on shop windows throughout downtown. Typical pictures are of the Grinch, Charlie Brown, or Snoopy. Year after year the same sorts of images go up, generally inspired by holiday cartoons. Last year, the Black Diamond Barbershop, which is on the first floor of my building, inspired the students with a little of the shop’s own quirkiness: the students doing the barbershop’s windows pulled imagery from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. The Tim Burton stop-motion animation is one of my favorites and the windows surprised and delighted me. It seems that last year wasn’t just a flash in the pan, but hopefully, an ongoing tradition.
This year, the barbershop’s inspiration continues. The students, given free rein by their teacher and the shop owner, came up with wonderfully gruesome images that slap those Charles Schulz and Dr Seuss images right in the face. A snowman toasting a screaming marshmallow, a shrieking evergreen tree. The images appear to be more original than I’ve seen before, though with web animation what it is the characters could be pulled directly from animation I’m unfamiliar with. Regardless of where exactly the characters are from, the stimulus can only be attributed to the shop itself. During the off season, basically the rest of the year, the Black Diamond Barbershop features their own brand of quirky art in the front windows (and throughout the shop)- animal skulls, antiques, and artwork that are all interesting, often dark, but always able to grab your gaze and stimulate your thoughts.
It’s wonderful stuff! Thanks to the shop owner, the students, and the faculty at Bellefonte High School.
I was sitting on the couch watching my ten-year-old granddaughter work in Minecraft. She enjoys creating in the environment even more than in real life. “It’s more creative, Grampop.” Her words. I started to tell her about Second Life and wanted to show her - but my Penn State work has been deleted and I can’t access Second Life from my old computer. So here, in two posts, are what I’d want to show her or anyone else about the virtual world. “Ew, Grampop, the graphics are terrible!” Yeah, it’s 20 years ago, kiddo.
This first video is my attempt to demonstrate the Straw Bale Project:
The second video shows a collaboration in which we demonstrated 3D visualization:
This last capture shows an attempt at an “in world” conference:
This is the first of two posts about the online 3D virtual world known as Second Life. It’s a re-posting of a Penn State blog post from 2010
I’d like to try to recap several years in Second Life. Brett asked how educators were using our environment, and not being an educator I thought I’d do my own wrap up here.
Brett first demonstrated the environment at a small brownbag I attended. It looked interesting, and, I thought, easy enough to try. It didn’t turn out to be exactly easy, but I managed to open an account, create an avatar, and fly around without much trauma. What I noticed first turned out to be important to my feeling the environment had tremendous potential while being important, too, to its seeming out-of-hand rejection. For me, watching Brett’s demo, or any of the videos created in the environment, was like watching a bad cgi film. Effects were crude, modeling was barely believable, and actions were very limited. At the time, there was no speech either; everything said was typed and read.
Once I had an avatar and was at the controls, everything changed. My avatar slipped on a cliff edge and slid downhill into a crevice between a house and cliff wall. The fall made me catch my breath and the entrapment instantly had me panicked. When I, or rather the avatar, was walking in an open wooded area, I had no idea where I was and felt desperately lost. Within a few days, that area seemed familiar and I found myself returning to it when I was overwhelmed by circumstances or about to be forced to chat with a stranger. Like in real life, I avoided others. This woodland spot felt like familiar ground; it had a gazebo with easels set up for a painting class, the sounds of birds and running water, and was far more comfortable than roaming where I might be seen. As other colleagues joined, I found security and comfort in the presence of their avatars. These emotions were real and powerful: They could be controlled and manipulated, but were there subtleties? Expressive artistic techniques? How much farther could emotional engagement be taken? What could we do with it? It was as engaging as a movie, even without a story and without the high quality special effects. At that point, knowing that the environment could be used to peak curiosity and affect emotions, I knew it could be used for games, stories, emotional statements. In fact, it could obviously be used engagingly for education. Without my willing participation, I wouldn’t have seen that; only a very bad, poorly made animated movie with no story.
I knew that as visual design support I would need to know how to produce quality images and understand how they’re used. Formats. Color depth. Resolution. I’d need to know how to construct anything that might contribute to an environment, or otherwise support a faculty members visual needs.
Initially, the only place to experiment was in a public sandbox. There, I learned how to build and manipulate objects and how to cover them with convincing textures. Then every night, the sandbox was wiped clean and the next day I started again. I managed to come up with two videos captured in the environment and started looking for something more valid as a demo. I remembered the straw bale project and visited their website. They used VRML models and plan projections to demonstrate what goes in to a straw bale house. I saw potential for a demo and created a short video to present the potential I saw and the ease with which assets could be created and situations filmed. The video isn’t especially polished, or of finished quality, but still seem to show, at least to me, some of the lost potential we had with Second Life. It’s embedded in the next post..
Shortly after making this video, ETS rented some land in the environment. Finally I could work on something that took more than one day to produce. Initially I used the assets that I already had to explore what a static display might be like. I set up straw bales, created signs, and gradually realized that with a bit of time I could create a fairly large, complex display. I sent a series of emails trying to find people who would support a large display- a virtual museum based on Penn State’s Palmer Museum.
Though I could shoot photos, I wasn’t comfortable using their images in my display without approval …or at least some interest.
Interest wasn’t forthcoming. I shot reference photos and started building pieces on my own. Since I didn’t have buy-in to use Palmer paintings, I created a Virtual Zoller Gallery to exhibit other work. The gallery space was underwater, in the bay in front of my empty museum. It had a distinct light quality and a peaceful ambience. I asked friends and colleagues and they all agreed to let me exhibit their work in a Virtual Staff Show. It was fun: I learned a lot about image formats and resolution, I loved seeing everyone’s work, but the show didn’t set any attendance records.
There were conferences in the environment, and interesting destinations outside of Penn State space. The New Media Consortium had land and hired someone to build displays and a museum. They hosted conference sessions by streaming media into their amphitheater. One conference in the environment had a poster session that put an interesting spin on the usual rows of cork board. I tried sharing the unique quality of the show by capturing several shots and combining them into an anaglyphic 3D image. It works, if you have glasses.
Penn State expanded their holdings and I was given my own little corner. I used my warehoused Palmer pieces to construct a display area for some of my project illustrations. I thought that since we had neighbors from other campuses, it might be useful to promote some of my illustration capabilities. About that same time I was contacted by several students in the IST school who were building a virtual Palmer Museum. I shared what I had—textures and objects based on my shots of the Palmer—and the IST built Palmer Art Museum really turned out nicely.
Actually creating pieces, rather than orchestrating large scale builds, was much more of the role I saw myself in. I managed to create pieces for an educational area that featured Spanish architecture. This involved authentic Moorish fencing and indigenous plants; that research, not just in object creation but in botany and Moorish architecture, was exciting and finally- of some use.
Coming up with something useful seems to be where I failed the SL project. The pieces for the Palmer were relatively worthwhile. My limited contribution to the hacienda, too, proved useful. But there was little else. I didn’t get Straw Bale buy-in, couldn’t sell a Palmer Museum, couldn’t build interest in replicating my Flash BiSci timeline activity in the environment even though it seemed like the perfect medium. I was able to test game images though.
So the SL project didn’t fail me. When I did graphics for the EcoRacer game, there was no way that I could assess my Photoshop images before I handed them off as game assets. That meant they’d need to become part of the game and involve effort on the part of others before I could see there were lines or a fringe that I should’ve erased or a semi-transparency that wasn’t displaying correctly. I was able to upload and attach these 32 bit targa files to prims in the SL environment and see exactly how they’d get rendered by a gaming engine without troubling the game developers or waiting for results. That’s what I saw initially, too; SL wasn’t an end. It’s a low-impact, pre-fab environment set up so folks like me could start mastering techniques for later. There was no other way I could have experimented with images in an immersive environment and learned what I did.
Across the bottom of the Superintendent’s page on the BASD website, it says
The Bellefonte Area School District community continually strives to “Inspire and Prepare Today’s Learners to Embrace Tomorrow’s Challenges.” Welcome!BE Informed • BE Involved • BE Connected • BElong in BEllefonte
On the Middle School site, it says, “At BAMS, we follow 4 school wide rules: •Be Respectful •Be Kind •Be Safe •Be Here and Be Ready
That “Be” is at the heart of the Be shirt design. I think it has real merit. I uploaded the design and put it on a Be Shirt. It’s available there for kids and for adults. The mark can also be put on long sleeve Be Shirts, sweat shirts, and hoodies for kids and adults.
“Hailey!” I called to her and her eyes popped open. She saw me, leaned over and put a finger to her lips.
“We have to keep the noise down, coach. There’s nothing so far. I don’t want to scare ‘em.” She whispered down to me.
“I know! Your brother just made contact. He wanted me to give you a heads up.” I whispered back as best I could, excited as I was. She gave me a quick nod, then stood back up with her arms out. Her eyes darted from side to side. She looked worried. Wasn’t this going to be her first time handling bees? She’s an amazing tad, but she’s still a tad.
“Warren told me that if anybody can learn this stuff and pull it off, it’s his sister. He said you’ve got this.” She stood for a moment, then her mouth curved into a smile and both her thumbs went up.
She stood smiling with her arms out for a long while. Then, I thought I heard bees. Hailey already had her eyes locked on a spot out over the field. I followed where she was looking and saw them. It wasn’t a big cloud like we saw from the tree, it was a smaller group drifting towards us. It looked like they were changing positions in the cloud as they flew. Finally one broke away and flew closer to Hailey. It stopped before it reached her and just hung there in the air, looking. Hailey was motionless. That one bee drifted closer, till it was right in front of her. First it looked in her face, then it drifted back and forth along her arms getting close, then drifting back, getting close, then drifting back. They were both motionless, looking at each other. Then it dropped to the deck and walked around. It looked like it was looking for something back and forth along the deck. I have no idea how bees do what they do. This one moved about and finally went up to the entrance darting in and out several times before it flew away. I was shocked, and started to say something when Hailey gave me a quick, soft “Shhh!” She was still motionless.
This, along with several sheets of vellum showing different arrangements, just tumbled out of a pile of old papers. After 30 years, I had forgotten all about it.
Back before I started at the university, I’d left the restaurant to try to make it as a commercial artist. I bought a list of different businesses that purchased illustrations.
For one outlet, I thought I could come up with a cover for Jack and Jill Magazine. My daughter, getting ready to test fly a doubting pet cat seemed ideal. Especially in a unique setting like our apartment complex.
This was an experiment to see if the idea would work and how I could do it. It never got past this initial attempt. I think I started part time work at the university about this time. Now, I can see so much wrong with it. I know I could “fix” it digitally, but it makes me smile just like this.
It was such a moment. I had to draw it..
Warren looked at me and raised his eyebrows, “630s?”
“Books in a library are kept in order by general subject and given numbers that the library adds to the book spine. See? These shelves here are, well, these shelves are all fiction. That’s by author. Over there starts the 100s. We can go from there.”
As it turned out, the library had a shelf of beekeeping books. Warren pulled out a few that looked useful to him and I grabbed one to look at to stay busy. We found seats and I sat in a comfortable little arm chair. Warren found a small couch and spread his books around him. After reading for a bit, I looked up and Hailey had joined Warren on the couch. She was reading her new unicorn book, but lost interest when she saw Warren’s focus. She pressed up against him and read along, jotting down things that she saw Warren jot down. They made a warm picture. Their devotion to each other was so obvious. Warren wanted to learn and the tad was determined to help. They kept at it for a while, even conferring in whispers. I only caught a word or two when their excitement made them ignore the library’s rules of silence.
Then I must’ve drifted off. I realized I had when Warren asked if I was learning much. Glad I had my head down and an open book on my lap. I said, “This is fascinating Warren. I see you have a helper- are the two of you learning anything?”