print Project This project by Jared Coles and James Van Arsdale III from the Philadelphia campus is a CD-ROM Flash presentation of photos taken with a Sprint cell phone camera.
Invitation This Flash-based invitation, one of several compiled by various students, including project manager Zach Pergament from the Philadelphia campus, were e-mailed to potential employers to announce a portfolio review showcasing the students' works.
Canyon This landscape project was created by Shiew Yeu Loh from the San Francisco campus for studying outdoor lighting and texturing.
When eager students began their education at The Art Institutes, they no doubt had visions of creating the next
Finding Nemo or
The Lord of the Rings movie. While such dreams may seem overly ambitious, they may not be out of reach. In fact, 14 of the 52 projects selected for last year's SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater were student works—which was an impressive showing for "artists in training."
Students arrive with fresh ideas, enthusiasm, and a willingness to absorb all they can, but it's up to the instructors to nurture these dreams and turn raw talent into professional skills. Aiding the instructors in this endeavor at The Art Institutes is Hewlett-Packard, whose 3500 entry-level and mid-range Windows-based Pentium/Xeon graphics workstations are used 16 hours a day at the school's campuses across the US. With the equipment, more than 20,000 students at The Art Institutes create illustrations, animations, and Web designs.
HP also works with The Art Institutes and other art schools and universities outside the classroom by showcasing student projects at major industry trade shows, including NAB.
A current selection of student projects from The Art Institutes appears on these two pages. —Karen Moltenbrey
TBB2 This music video project by Mitchell Loidolt from the school's Minnesota campus was created for the Teddy Bear Band, a group of local musicians whose main audience comprises children. The video was created in combustion, Illustrator, After Effects, Photoshop, and 3ds max.
Old Man This image is one of several created by Shiew Yeu Loh for an animation pre-production class at the school's San Francisco campus. Created in Maya and Photoshop, the model was a texturing challenge, requiring the student to combine nine color maps into one shader so it would interact properly with the lighting. Not only did this provide a subsurface scattering effect, but it also made the character's skin look moist.
Golden Gate Theater series These images, part of Shiew Yeu Loh's texture study for a class at the school's San Francisco campus, uses the historic Golden Gate Theater building as a reference for the photorealistic digital models, created in Maya and Photoshop.