I’m Vincent Miller, and I’m a senior at WPI. I’m majoring in IMGD tech, and although I’m primarily a programmer, my interest in games has led me to pick up some art skills as well. Since I’m in this class you already know that I’m doing art as my humanities depth. The art classes I took are digital imaging, 3D modelling, animation, and digital painting. I’ve gained technical and artistic skills in these classes, but most of the work I’ve done that I’m actually proud of is from outside class for personal projects. For my own games I’ve done a lot of 3D work in blender including modelling, rigging, and animation, as well as texturing in Substance Painter. Additionally, I’m very interested in working with VFX such as particle systems in game engines, as this often combines artistic and programming skills.

My electronics experience consists primarily of using Arduinos for small, technically focused projects. In high school, I co-led a weeklong workshop which served as an introduction to arduinos and basic electronics skills. During this workshop I made a simple motion-based input device that could control games through the mouse cursor. Input devices like this were the focus of an IMGD class I took sophomore year at WPI, Novel Interfaces. Because of this, I have a good amount of experience using electronics, but haven’t really done so for artistic purposes yet.

My inspiration comes from many places. Often I like to look at shapes such as buildings, and base a design off of that. One thing I love modelling is futuristic spacecraft, which can involve many different shapes and introduce an interesting balance between practicality and aesthetics. I find science fiction in general to be a really fun genre to explore artistically. In particular, I’m a big fan of the neon aesthetic associated with 80s style music and science fiction themes.

I’m taking this class because it combines my previous experience with 3D art, programming, and electronics. I’m excited for the opportunity to use these skills to explore a new medium and create high-tech art. I haven’t really done much with physical art in the past, so this will be a very different experience.

Finally, here are some examples of my work in programming and art:

GLow, a hovercar racing game with changing gravity and an 80s art style. I did all of the art and a large part of the code.

My final project from the class IMGD3100: Novel Interfaces for Interactive Environments. It’s a platformer where the gravity is controlled by an accelerometer attached to an arduino, along with a simple joystick and button interface.

A rendering of a spaceship I modelled and textured in Blender, along with some VFX and background elements.

A custom implementation of particles in Unity. It can handle several orders of magnitude more particles than the built in particle system, due to running entirely on the GPU. The demo includes a scene made up entirely of particles.

A semi-realistic rendering of a SPAS-12 shotgun modelled in Blender and textured in Substance Painter. The model is low poly and ready to use in a game.

Yoda model created in ZBrush for my 3D modelling class.