Author: Ben Wagner

My first pattern falls under the animal category as the background is supposed to be similar to photos you see of animal eyes glowing in the dark.

My second pattern falls under the synthetic category.  I took a picture of a can of Monster I had and used one part of the green “M” for the ring, while I cut the “o” from the word “Monster” for the center.  I did, however, download the lightning bolt in the corner of each tile, but it was edited somewhat to fit better with the rest of the image.

Oftentimes, in the middle of a particularly bad game in which goals are just constantly being scored against them, water polo goalies can feel like they don’t even exist in the cage.  For that reason, I decided to try to take the goalie out.  It was easier to take out the goalie’s arms and head when in front of the net or water behind it, but it was a challenge to adapt the movement of water both behind the goalie and coming off of the two arms.

Hi there!

My name is Ben Wagner and I’m a junior trying to complete a Mechanical and Robotics dual major.   I am currently the Vice President and student coach of the Club Water Polo team and am a brother of Tau Kappa Epsilon.  Being able to take part in these organizations has really helped me to expand my views on certain topics, really develop as an individual, and discover my true passions in life.

I’ve enjoyed digital art for years.  All through high school, I enrolled in multimedia courses that taught me how to build 3D animations from scratch.  In my junior and senior years, I worked extensively with a particular character model (changing the skin as necessary) in order to produce the introductory animations for our yearly presentation.  Beyond what I make, I enjoy any other animated product, whether video games or animated movies, because seeing what other people have created just astounds me.  I enjoy seeing how close to reality animation gets with each successive year.  I was blown away when 343 Industries remastered Halo 2 with 60 FPS cutscenes, and, frankly, I was pretty over the moon when I saw the CGI that was in Rogue One.

While at WPI, I completed the drawing seen below in AR1100 essentials of art using colored sticks and paper (reference image below).  I’m fairly proud of this piece, as I had a firm belief that I could not draw anything.  The assignment was to assemble one final still life with at least one large difference in color (see the orange panel) and a cup or mug of some sort.  I decided to push myself and try to draw a rock in addition to the cup and paper airplane, as I had done very little work with natural objects throughout the rest of the course.

Outside of classes, I made a Week in Review video, highlighting my fraternity’s biggest fundraising week- dubbed “TKE Week.”  During this week, the brothers of Tau Kappa Epsilon stay up for all day and night for a week raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, hosting difference mini-fundraisers every day in order to keep people interested.  This past A term, the week ended with a 5K walk in Boston with all the teams throughout the region participating. I had the general idea for the video before the week even began, and attempted to take as many short videos and interviews as possible so that I could assemble them at the end.  As a direct result of seeing the video, several generous family members and friends donated, pushing us well over our original goal for the week.

https://www.facebook.com/TKEZetaMU/videos/1497961996965354/

Finally, my Bitmap image, in which I attempted to make a water polo goalie.  I first started out with a simple water polo player, such as what you see when they advertise the matches for the Olympic games, but ended up with too much negative space.  Since I am a goalie for the WPI water polo team, I wanted to create something that I connected with a little bit more than a generic player.  A big part of being a goalie in the water is relying on your legs to keep you up while blocking with only your torso and hands.  It was difficult to portray the minute detail I wanted- including the cap and netting while still preserving the figure shape overall- but I feel like this could potentially be a character in an 8-bit shootout game.