posted: November 8, 2010

I have recently enjoyed the fabulous feeling of Deja Vu working for a few art directors that supported my work through the crazy dot com era and one favorite was, Carole Erger-Fass who back then was Design Director at Mecklermedia, publishers of Virtual Reality World, CDrom World, and Internet World. For a short period during this time I was experimenting with 3D modeling as illustration and created work for Virtual Reality World and CDrom World among others. To create a reproduction quality model in the 90's required my Mac Quadra 600 8 hours to render. I would render at night and wake up several times to check on the rendering, an instant blip in power could corrupt a rendering, talk about stress!

3D modeling has come a long way since the 90's. Yesterday, In a related experience, myself Gwyn and our daughter Jillian were given a tour of Ex'pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville Ca. by her friend Kyle, who is studying motion graphics. Kyle showed us the motion capture studio which has a stage surrounded by cameras where students wear suits fitted with mirrored balls and these 360 degree cameras pick up the body movements and create articulate 3D skeletal models. He showed us his project and it was so fun to see kids inspired and creating with such powerful equipment and software, best of luck in your studies Kyle.

Getting back to this illustration. Carole, now art director at Chief Executive Magazine hired me to create this illustration for the story, "The Devil in the Data of Financial Reform" . This is a story about new requirements in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. There has been a new governmental oversight council developed that will process huge amounts of data looking for systemic risk factors within lending and financial institutions. Sounds like a nightmare, but it was a fun job to illustrate. Nice working with you again, Carole!