Commercial Art
Image Date
December 1st, 1998
Project Description
My senior year of high school, I took a vocational commercial art class; it ran 3 periods long, and allowed us to work on larger projects throughout the year. We covered a lot of concepts (negative space, shape, graphic design layout), and the coursework was designed to get us to practice a variety of mediums (paint, colored pencil, digital art). We all had quite the extensive lesson on various commercial arts - which I still use to this day.
Technologies Used
Other Notes
Oof, this class. Where do I start...
Prior to taking this class, I was enrolled in a different art class in High School. I had seen an old Silicon Graphics computer in the supply closet, and was EXTREMELY interested in 3D animation (which I would later go to art school for). I was already working on animation projects of my own, and wanted the ability to work on them at school. The teacher was a colleague of my dad's - who also taught HS art - and he suggested I speak with my teacher about it. Before enrolling, I talked with her about the possibility of taking an Independent Study from this teacher. "Oh, well - I don't have time to write a curriculum just for one student...". So I told her, "No problem - I'll write one myself!". We agreed, and I enrolled in the class.
The following year, my teacher had absolutely no memory of this discussion. I was now enrolled in a commercial art class, and the teacher felt shocked that I'd even suggest working on 3D animation.
On top of that, she was absolutely terrified of technology. She was a photographer by trade, and so she felt that anything done with a computer was "too easy" and was "cheating". I reminded her that, in addition to modeling scenes, texturing them, and lighting them, I -STILL- needed to know how to compose a shot - which is exactly what Photography does in the first place. If 3D Renderings weren't art, neither was Photography. Needless to say, my time in that class was... tenuous.
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