Treeline 2012- Session Three at Caloundra City Private School

 One of the objectives of artist residencies in schools is to give students an insight into how artists work. Like many artists,  I use whatever comes to hand and whatever feels right for the job. Anything at all can become an art medium if you use it creatively.
For Session Three, our objective was to make more plant textures for the garden in Imagination sim, and students used a variety of tools.

 Digital images of real plants manipulated in Photoshop

 ArtRage on the ipad

 Crayons on Paper

Graphics tablet in Photoshop

The sim is starting to look more finished. it's our last session together on Friday and I plan on taking some preliminary video footage along so we can discuss the details of credits, music and sound effects, visual effects, mood etc.

Treeline 2012 - Session 3- More Textures

The Year 10 students were away on camp, so with a smaller group we had a relaxing day, with each student working on their own textures for the build. Noah, who missed the Photoshop session, was able to catch up. The images below show how Noah built up textures from images of small sections of real plants.

To the left is Noah's original  image from the camera.
Below are the textures he made as PNG files on transparent background in Photoshop.

The images below show Noah's textures used to make plants in the Imagination sim Inworldz.

In the image above Noah's texture has been recoloured in Photoshop to give a different feel to the plant.

The Stained Glass texture didn't work quite as well as it might. I will play around with some different plant shapes to see it it works better in a different format.

 The yellow image above is Noah's original photo of a flower from an umbrella plant.
The others are textures created from that image in Photoshop.

In our Imagination fantasy garden the real life colours look a little out of place, but it does make a nice grove of trees.

It fits into the build better coloured yellow (left), but also looks great in blue (below).

Virtual Vegetation - Treeline 2012

 What can you do with some simple drawings done by students on paper? All the drawings from my last trip to Caloundra City Private School as part of Treeline 2012 have now been scanned, and I've been experimenting with textures made from the drawings in my standalone sims and Inworldz.

 The students may or may not recognise their drawings after I've played with them in Photoshop and applied them to 3D objects, resized and recoloured them.

 I'll be visiting the school again next week and we'll be working together to develop more plant and terrain textures for the stand alone sims.

I've also been using some of the students' textures in the build I am doing in Inworldz in Imagination sim, kindly donated by art patron Jeri Rahja. This will allow the students' work to be part of a lasting build that is seen by a worldwide audience.

I'm looking forward to showing the students what's possible using simple drawings and a bit of technology, and how I turned their drawings into virtual vegetation.