The SEMAPHORE

ACCAD Alumni Newsletter
Winter 2008
The Ohio State University

Dr. Matthew Lewis The past year was a busy one for Matt and his students beginning with a collaboration with professor Kivi Sotaama from the Architecture department. Matt presented a week-long workshop on procedural shading at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (Die Angewandte) to students from Kivi's studio as well as to students from the studios of Greg Lynn, Zaha Hadid, and Wolf Prix. This work was then presented at the annual Generative Arts Conference in Milan, Italy.

Bezirtzis, Boris, Matthew Lewis, and Cara Christeson. "Interactive Evolution for Industrial Design". Creativity and Cognition, June 2007, Washington, DC.

Bezirtzis, Boris, Matthew Lewis, and Bryan Cline. "Visual Strategies for Parametric Modeling in Interactive Evolutionary Design". Europia11: Digital Thinking in Architecture, Civil Engineering, Archaeology, Urban Planning and Design : Finding the Ways, Sept 2007, Montreal.

Matt's book chapter in "The Art of Artificial Evolution" was finally published at the end of 2007. Design GRA Cara Christeson was a great help in organizing this lengthy survey of the field.

MURMUR		The International Computer Music Conference August 2007 Copenhagen
	click image for movie

Professor Marc Ainger (Music), Professor Norah Zuniga-Shaw (Dance) and Dr. Matthew Lewis (ACCAD) were invited to the International Computer Music Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark last August to present their interactive sound-movement work Murmur. Marc and Norah accepted the invitation, bringing along ACCAD graduate student Benjamin Schroeder (CSE) for technical support and Music faculty Ann Stimson for documentation of the event.

As part of the invitation, the group participated in a two week residency at the Akademiet for Utaemmet Kreativitet (the Academy for Untamed Creativity), where they further developed Murmur with some of the most illustrious artists of the current French New Circus scene (including Hyacinthe Reisch, Jerome Thomas and Agnes Bruhn). They also participated in a web radio interview on Danish Radio 2. The final performance occurred to a full house at the PLEX Theater in Copenhagen.

Developed at ACCAD, Murmur is built around an infrared vision system that tracks performers’ location in three-dimensional space. Position, speed, and the amount of performers’ actions control various aspects of the (multi-channel) sound. Sounds and voices recorded from various locations throughout the world are mapped to the performance space. While in Copenhagen, additional local sounds were incorporated.

For more information and movie clips go to: Murmur

The trip to Copenhagen was made possible by funding from ACCAD, Music, The College of the Arts, Dance and the Danish Arts Council. Funding for Murmur includes support from the OSU Arts and Humanities Seed Grant Program.

Professor Richard Parent

Congratulations to Dr. Rick Parent (CSE) on achieving Full Professor this past year. In addition to this recognition, the 2nd edition of his book "Computer Animation: Algorithms and Techniques" (Morgan Kaufmann, Publisher) was released September 2007. Ongoing research interests for Professor Parent include using model-based techniques to track human figures in video, on facial animation, and other animation tools for animators.

Several images included in Rick's book were contributed by ACCAD Alumni, Students and Staff. Below are a few examples:

In "Computer Animation", Rick illustrates a digital lighting concept using a series of images created by Sucheta Bhatawadekar (Design). The series of images in the book demonstrate a combination of key, fill and rim lights. The final image to the left was rendered with ray tracing, generating reflections on selective surfaces.

Character design by Chris Oatley (Design); Rig design by Cara Christeson (Design)

Character modeling and posing by Daniel Guinn (Design)

The left image (courtesy of Vita Berezina-Blackburn, ACCAD) illustrates the use of L-systems to animate plant-like creatures. The right image (courtesy of Brian Windsor, ACCAD; data courtesy of Brent Haley, CSE PhD candidate) shows 3D optical motion capture data applied to a skeleton.

Cara Christeson, MFA, Design, Spring 2007.
Thesis: Combining Methodologies for Generating Innovative Solutions in 3D Animated Character Setups.

Cara is currently working as a Character TD for PDI/Dreamworks in Redwood City, CA

John Andrew Berton (Art Ed, 1984) wrote.... I spent last year working at Walt Disney Studios on a project exploring techniques for live action stereographic (3D) visual effects. I am now working as the Visual Effects Supervisor on a new Adam Sandler project called "Bedtime Stories" (at Disney). I was also inducted this year as a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Still living in Northern California and working in Southern California.

John also worked on the fairly recent movie, "Charlotte's Web". The movie was nominated for Best Visual Effects in the 2006 Visual Effects Society Awards.

Bradd Birmingham (Design, 2004) has a new job as Senior Multimedia Designer at Franklin University in Columbus. In his spare time, Bradd also teaches storyboarding and drawing at Columbus State.

Heather Caprette (Design, 2005) is expecting their first child this July (2008). Congratulations to Heather and family. Heather also won an award for Best Non-Product / Service at the DevLearn Conference in San Jose. The occasion was DemoFest sponsored by Adobe Systems, Inc. Heather presented her Master's thesis project: "Canine Lameness Learning Module". Heather added, It was a blast, I got to see 2000 year old redwood trees for the first time in my life!

Wooksang Chang (Art & Tech, 2000) wrote from Korea: My second baby (girl) was born over 2 months ago. Her name is Seo-hyeun. She is fine and very healthy.

Todd Fechter (Design, 2002) is now an Assistant Professor of 3D Computer animation at The University of Texas at Dallas. Todd wrote, Besides teaching Modeling, Lighting and Texturing classes I have also directed the Trinity River Visualization Project for a not-for-profit group. It was a controversial project for the city of Dallas and we were charged with creating all of the proposed structures from CAD data, including bridges, water ways and recreational areas. Those elements were then composited into HD video footage of the actual site. From start to finish the final version of the animation was finished in one months time by 3 graduate students with no previous production experience. Here is a link to the final animation: thetrinitytrust.org Hope all is well in Columbus.

Kevin Geiger (Art & Tech, 1994) recently completed a speaking and consulting tour in mainland China under the auspices of his new company, Animation Options, LLC. While traveling, Kevin premiered his new presentations: "CG Production Principles and Practices: Keeping Your Money On The Screen And Off The Floor". For more information see: www.animationoption.com

Heesung Koo (Design, 2000) and family had their second baby girl recently. Heesung enjoys being home with her children, but is also interested in teaching opportunities in the Seattle, WA area. Heesung can be reached at: heesung@hotmail.com

Cara Christeson Malek (Design, 2007) has been a Character TD at PDI/Dreamworks for one full year since the end of January 2008. In that year, she has worked on many accessories, props, costumes, and hair setups for the characters of "Madagascar 2". She is currently working on hair setups and dragon characters in Dreamworks' Fall 2009 release, "How to Train Your Dragon". She loves PDI and the San Francisco Bay area. Along with a new job, a new home and a new timezone in 2007, Cara also got a new last name! She was married to Neil Malek in July at a small vineyard in northern California (but she's hoping to hang on to the "Christeson" for at least her first movie credit!). She misses the midwestern snow and football and hopes everyone at ACCAD is doing well!

Sonia Oster (Design, 2000) moved back to the US recently. She is living in Atlanta and working as a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design (www.scad.edu).

Saty Raghavachary (CSE, 1992) has a new RenderMan (RSL) book release entitled, "The RenderMan Shading Language Guide". It is the first-ever book on RSL and covers the gamut from beginner topics such as setting up a shader-writing environment to intermediate ones (how to write surface, displacement, light, volume and image shaders) to advanced topics such as ray-tracing and shader plug-ins. see: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/

Nathania Vishnevsky (Art, 1998) has been busy organizing an art show entitled, "Water Equals Life" at the Port Moody Art Centre in British Columbia, which opens February 14th. If you're in the area, stop by! See: http://www.nathania.com/water.html

ACCAD is an academic research center in computer visualization
and digital animation at The Ohio State University