3D YOURSELF (THE RESIN ANNIVERSARY)

Artec, the company that makes the 3D scanner we used on the Human Face of Big Data project just opened a retail store right across the street from Raygun to offer 3D scanning and printing. Sign of the times and what's to come. I remember the first laser printing service store opening up in Palo Alto in the 80s—it was called LaserWrite and offered the first desktop publishers a way to print their Mac creations. Then there was the first scanning, digital output and offset printing place, called Linotext in the 90s. Remember the term "Service Bureau"? And just a few years later AlphaCD Imaging popped up, a franchise too, offering PhotoCD scanning and converting your Syquests, Jazz and Zips to CD—alright, I think I've dated myself sufficiently. So now it's the 3D scanning, printing and face recognition retail store.

I had to check it out, of course. It seems that not only can you get the high end Artec scanning and incredibly detailed 3D output, but it's also tied in to this franchise called Shapify Me, with the idea that anybody with a xBox Kinect camera at home can scan themselves in and then have a small 3D sculpture printed for just 80 dollars there, or as the New York Times calls it—the 3D Selfie. There's definitely a connection to photography. I asked whether the sculptures are hand tinted, as they are reminiscent of the Märklin people waiting at the Black Forest train station, but not only is the 3D data captured but also a 3D photograph and printed as texture right onto the little sculptures. Very soft and Polaroid. But there is something eerily real about them.

For a few, well quite a few, dollars more you can have yourself scanned by the real deal—the $10,000 Artec scanner and then have a 6" replica of yourself printed in very high res with incredible photographic detail. That's for me! Or us actually. With the wedding anniversary coming up on April 1st, I couldn't think of a more unique, or for that matter a more geek memento. So I dragged Claudia over there. She didn't really know what was going on or what this was about, which was great and made it more of a surprise. Call it our Resin Anniversary ;-) Check out this 3D rendering of the model that came from the Artec scanner. I can't wait to see the print!







Want to see something crazy? Check out this UV map—the photo texture mapped onto the 3D scan:

NEW GILETTE BODY WASH COMMERCIAL

New Gillette Body Wash commercial. In this case the 3D has been used to cover the body of the model while having a shower. Movement, texture, speed, shape, anatomy and color have been the challenges to accomplish.

INSIDE OUT / OUTSIDE IN

Piece written by Jamie Kripke.

I had the opportunity to work with the insanely talented Michael Tompert of Raygun on this ad for EA's new game. It was a very cool experience to collaborate with another artist that looks at things so differently. As someone that creates 3D objects from scratch, he views things from the inside out, where as a photographer, I look at things the opposite way. This was totally fascinating to me, and has changed how I now look at objects.

For the record, Michael was hired by Heat (via Kate Chase) to create the image, and I was there to shoot photographic elements, and to create the feel and mood that would translate to the main image. We rented the Alameda airstrip and wet it down with a water truck, then arranged the cars into a rough approximation of the layout. We waited for the light to be just right, then started shooting like crazy in order to capture as many elements as we could. Which looked kind of like this:

Michael also did shots of everything from the car's POV so he could get the reflections right. We also did shots of the car blasting through the scene on wet pavement to get details of how the water comes out off the wheels, which was really fun to shoot, and looks kind of like this:


Then we shot a million more frames of everything, and Michael went back to his studio with a bunch of jpegs (yes, jpegs) and started work on the final image. When he sent it to me I was totally blown away. It had been through a million rounds of art direction and retouching and had taken on a life of its own. I think it looks pretty killer, but have a hard time seeing my hand in this project.


Michael insists that I did create the mood that was the starting point for the image. I guess I'll take his word for it. I had a blast on this shoot, and am hoping to do more of this kind of work.