Contemporary media practice involves a rigorous investigation of, and engagement with continually evolving technologies. Our digital arts program encourages students to combine an understanding of the theoretical discourses of new media and visual arts with strong technical sophistication, a rich sense of visual design and an ability to articulately express themselves as artists.

ARTD 471
3D Computer Imaging

3D Computer Imaging is an exploration of virtual 3D space in the critical and contemporary art contexts and is a hands-on lab in using Blender3D, an extremely powerful (and completely free) 3d modeling/rendering/animation software package. In a short 10 weeks students will go from manipulating primitive geometry, such as cube and spheres, and work their way up to compositing and complex organic sub-surface modeling and rendering. Below are some sample projects from this class.
Download course syllabus

Deep Sea Creatures Project
by Assorted Students

Nostalgia
by Sarah M Chan

Green Planet
by Shawn Prime

Digital Artist Shawn Prime turns the lens of cautionary storytelling towards our planet in this 3D earthscape.

MegaMan
by David Mellor

Digital Artist David Mellor dissects the early gaming character MegaMan in this playful and nostalgic rendering

World View
by Brett Ciccarello

Digital Artist Brett Ciccarello creates a worldview populated with some of the historical explanations for the, at that time, unexplicable natural properties of our world. These include the Hellenic perspective that the stars were pinprick holes in a blanket covering the earth, the monsters that exist in the margins outside of early nautical maps, even the idea of the earth being flat itself.

Character Development | 3D Creatures
by Eric Chandler, Kyle Knapp, Rachel Matagora, Ryan Mowery, Andrew Hassold, Brian Aebi

Click HERE to see the process that six students are going through to design, develop, model, texture, rig and animate characters. These are all works in progress...

Red
by Ivan Mirolyubenko

Software used: Blender 3D, Photoshop

Suffocation
by Daniel Cowley

Software used: Blender 3D, Photoshop

Venus
by Kimberly Cagney

Software used: Blender 3D

An Ideal Workspace
by Chris Wilson

Software used: Blender 3D, photoshop

Character Design
by Eric Chandler

Low polygon model created from scratch, then separate versions prepared for high-resolution still imagery, low-poly gaming/rigging, as well as export to the 3D printer.