“Loggerheads” – 2012
Modeled and rendered in Blender. Texturing and post-processing in GIMP.
From the Blog
So this is pretty rad… here is recent Ph.D. recipient Dr. Kira L. Krend holding up “Oahu Amakihi,” which I designed specifically for her. It was commissioned as a graduation present for Kira by her friend, the illustrious scientist/writer Christie Wilcox (of “Observations of a Nerd” fame).
As mentioned in my original post, the islands in the pond are the Hawaiian islands where Kira studied the Oahu Amakihi honeycreeper (perched on Oahu) and the disease ecology of malaria (mosquito). I couldn’t really figure out a good way to get a Plasmodium into the image…
Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store
or buy fancier prints at the
Laughing Mantis RedBubble store.
Commissioned as a graduation present for a Ph.D. student in Hawaii (notice the islands in the pond) studying the Oahu Amakihi honeycreeper (the bird – note the island it’s perched on) and the disease ecology of malaria (mosquito). Modeled & rendered in Blender 2.57. Post-processing and texture creation in GIMP. Textures based on photos taken by the student.
Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store
or buy fancier prints at the
Laughing Mantis RedBubble store.
Do you like Octopuses? How about Dinosaurs?
Then check out this new T-shirt I designed. That’s right – it’s an Octopus eating a Velociraptor in a tree.
(note: this is a compressed jpeg version – the original and t-shirts are much higher quality).
Buy this T-shirt at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.
Octopus vs. Velociraptor - on white
Octopus vs. Velociraptor - White T-shirt
Octopus vs. Velociraptor - Detail
You can get it in black or white (or multiple other colors I believe).
Octopus vs. Velociraptor - Black T-shirt
Octopus vs. Velociraptor - Black T-Shirt
It’s basically a re-rendering of my detailed digital artwork “Octopus arborealus”
Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus
A voracioius lionfish on the heels of a springbok in the African savannah.
This is the ninth in a series of pieces, “Ocean Invasion,” which finds ocean creatures living in absurd land habitats.
This piece was inspired by a marine biologist friend who is currently studying these invasive fish in Hawaii (Christie Wilcox of the popular “Observations of a Nerd” science blog).
Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.
Detail: (note – these are compressed jpeg files – the original is much higher quality and resolution)
Lionfish detail
Springbok detail
My artwork, “Out of Warranty,” has been featured in the latest issue of Blender Art Magazine, Issue #29, which had an “Industrial Revolution” theme.
The piece was inspired by both the industrial revolution and it’s eventual hand in the oil spill in the gulf.
You can download this issue (and all issues) as a free .pdf file HERE.
Alternatively, you can read the magazine in online format HERE.
Feuturing “Out of Warranty”
I made this video back in 2006 for an old high school friend who was in the Seattle band “Bronze Fawn” (he’s no longer with them). It was the first animation I ever made, apart from a couple of tiny tutorials, so really I learned animation by trying to make this video (I used Maya 6 software). It took many months and countless hours, but it’s really the project that got me hooked on digital art.
When I originally uploaded this video to YouTube it ended up getting almost 500,000 views thanks to a feature on the front page. Looking back now, the original upload is barely watchable because the resolution is so low. I managed to dig up this higher resolution version and decided to upload it.
The song is “Moonbeam Death Ray.”
The band is “Bronze Fawn.”
Hopefully you can make the connection at the end 
Still frame from "Moonbeam Death Ray"
From August 2009 to August 2010 I worked as a post-doc in the lab of Dr. Veronica Hinman at Carnegie Mellon University. Basically, I studied the evolution of gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Specifically, our lab focused on looking at GRNs in the context of development using the wonderful sea critters in the phylum Echinodermata. For those of you not in the know, the “spiny-skinned” echinoderms are the asteroids (starfish/sea stars), ophiuroids (brittle stars), echinoids (sea urchins), holothuroids (sea cucumbers), and crinoids (feather stars, sea lillies and such).
Click for larger! Or Click HERE for super high resolution posters.
In celebration, I spent a fair bit of time getting back to my art roots creating the above cladogram in the sand of the Echinoderm phylum.
I spent a while trying to find time-lapses or animations of starfish development online, to no avail. Thus I spent a week of much needed downtime to create this computer animation using Blender: (note – you can also watch it in High Definition on youtube).
NOTE: The details of the actual metamorphosis of the rudiment into the juvenile are not accurate – it’s quite hard to animate these types of changes – and to be honest I had not actually seen these creatures in the flesh. But it’s good enough to get a good idea of how the whole developmental process occurs in this type of sea star.
Starfish Development Still Frame
Way back in 2005/2006 I was trying to finish up a Ph.D. in biology studying the genetics of heart development, using the frog as a model. My advisor at the time was also going up for tenure and wanted a decent animation of heart development for his presentation. Thus I convinced him to buy us a copy of Maya, with which I made the following video and started learning how to create 3D art and animations.
Cardiogenesis Still Frame
The excellent scientist and blogger, Dr. Christopher Mah (of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Echinoblog was interviewed at Ocean Portal about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill’s impact on some of the lesser appreciated organisms: the echinoderms (sea stars, sea urchins, etc). My artwork “Echinodermata” is prominently displayed behind him (Note: the poster was originally a gift to Chris back when I created it).
Here is the interview:
Look for this behind Chris:
