Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011 - (Page 24)

by Theo Pajaczkowska Three Weeks at Penn’s Summer Academy in Applied Science and Technology (SAAST) was perusing the booths at my school college fair last year when, on a whim, I approached the University of Pennsylvania booth. After briefly discussing my interests—physics, art, and math—with the head of admissions, I decided to take a look at Penn’s summer program in Digital Media Design. That chance interaction changed my life. The computer graphics course at Penn’s Summer Academy was described as a combination of science and art. Although I had never taken art classes outside of school, art had always been my primary hobby, and computer graphics fascinate me. I applied to the program and was thrilled to be accepted. A total of 19 students would spend the threeweek program creating a 3D digital model of a character of our own design using the computer graphics program Maya. I was excited at the idea of bringing to life one of the many characters I had sketched in the past. Would I choose a character from a comic I had been writing with my friends? Or the one I had doodled in my math notes the previous day? Would I do a self-portrait? I was enthralled by the possibilities. we were writing. As we sketched our characters and sculpted them out of clay, we focused on perfecting anatomy by studying musculature and the shapes formed by the human body. In those first few days, I learned more about anatomy than I had in three years of high school art classes. Our instructor, Dr. Mark van Langeveld, taught us to avoid mistakes such as allowing a character’s body to become square around the edges, a common problem resulting from relying on our sketches as references. By looking only at the front and profile of a character, we would neglect the smooth transitions from front to side. The teaching assistants were helpful, constantly reminding us to keep looking at our figures from all angles. I began to think in three dimensions. Using Maya, we began digitally sculpting our character’s body. Starting with a single cube, we moved the vertices and added an edge loop—a loop of edges that traces a complete circle around an object—to our cubes. We then extruded one of its I Thinking Three-Dimensionally I decided to work on the character of a teenage boy that my friends and I had invented for the comic 24 imagine May/Jun 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
App Quest
Become a Citizen Scientist with Your Cell Phone
Media Arts and Technology at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards
The Accidental Animator
The New Media Explorers
Learning by Design
A Generation of Criminals
Digital Storytelling
Drama and Duct Tape
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011