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Makoto Tojiki-

Makoto Tojiki is an artist and designer who uses light as his primary medium of expression. He also works with jewelry that involves light reflections (Diamonds).

He was born in Miyazaki, Japan in 1975. Graduated Kinki University Kyushu faculty in industrial design engineering in 1998. Work as a in-house product designer from 1998 to 2003. Then started activity as a full-time freelance artist. Currently, he lives and works in Chiba, Japan.

His type of artwork is Light Sculpture. He uses materials like LEDs, Copper Wires, Integrated Circuits (ICs), Acrylics, Wood, Steel Rods, Optical Fibers, and Resin.

His concept revolves around the idea that objects can appear differently from how we remember them to be. However, this doesn’t mean that the object itself has changed, but the way we look at it has. The change in our perspective is what causes the object to appear different. The change in how we see the object may be “related to, and expressive of the object’s essence.” His interest is in exploring, “When, and for what reason, does a person’s perception of an object change?” Through his work, he seeks to stimulate how people see objects.

No Shadow – This series is inspired by the interconnectedness of light and shadow and how they can be manipulated and controlled. Tojiki begins his creative process by breaking down the light and the shadow to capture the essence of their relationship resulting in fleeting images that are as short-lived and mysterious as shadow itself. The series is made only with LEDs, Copper wires, and ICs.

Highlight – Is a piece that uses the shadow and shadow to create 3D images. The piece is crafted out of LEDs, Copper wires, Steel rods, ICs, and Acrylics

Princess Leia – Is a gift from Makoto to Carrie Fisher (Actress for Princess Leia). This artwork is made from LEDs, Copper wires, Stainless rods, and ICs.

PICTURES

VIDEOS

Art Experience:

Being an architectural engineering major I have always loved the concept of combining art with human living/interaction. However, I have never been the best at drawing and have always loved technology and math and therefore found the perfect major for me.

My humanities depth is in art history because being an architectural major I love learning about where certain styles originated from. However, I am in this class because I wanted to put my creativity to work. Light is a aspect in life that most people take for granted and don’t notice in their day to day routine which means if a user notices a great piece of light art the artist has done their job well.

At this school I have taken a few artistic classes such as drafting classes for my major both hand drawing and computer software based (Revit and AutoCAD) and photoshop shop classes. Here are a few of my works..

 

Photoshop:

 

AutoCAD: Design of a building facade system

 

I have a few hand drawings but I can not locate them right now. I will upload them when I find them.

Other Creative Arts:

Other creative arts that I enjoy include painting, photography, and crafting. I love painting on canvas, creating recycled art for housing décor, and making blankets.

Artistic Goals and Inspirations:

Some of my inspirations come from nature and abstract objects I see in day to day life. My artistic goals when creating pieces of art are to catch the viewers eye. I enjoy when someone looks at an art piece and has to think about it and take a second look.

Recent Creative Projects:

One of my recent projects I am proud of would have to be my MQP. This campus does not have a designated building for architectural engineering majors so my MQP team is a designing a building on the piece of land between the library and fuller. The architectural aspect is not as creative as we would have liked to design it because we only had a short amount of time to do so. Along with the architectural design we are designing the structural and mechanical systems.

Here is a render of the initial stages. The design is more defined now. The building on the left is the library, to the right in Kaven, and up above is fuller.

I’ve had a personal interest in making digital art ever since I started using computers. Back in middle school I used to love making geometric paintings in a program called Paint.NET:

I also used a program called Simply 3D to make cool 3D abstract scenes:

After that I started learning how to use photoshop to do simple photomanipulation and make space-themed paintings, which I’m probably most proud of:

After middle school I started learning programming, and my art turned to be more simulation- and interactivity-based. I started using Processing to make neat little simulations of fractals or physics or math concepts I was learning in school:

Followers

My dad was a math teacher at my high school, and ever since he was little he would pass his passion for the beauty of math to me. Programming (especially in Processing) was my way of exploring the concepts he told me about on my own. Processing was a great way to learn how to make these kinds of programs, since it was so easy and simple. Ever since then I’ve loved making neat little explorations of mathematical concepts in various programming languages, like this one on iterated functions. Often whenever I was learning a new language or platform I would make a Conway’s Game of Life simulation as a first project in it.

In terms of consuming art, I love music probably most of all. I listen to music all the time when I’m working or playing games or out walking. I like lots of different kinds of modern rock and electronic music. In the past when I did more digital painting I also followed a lot of artists who did similar things on DeviantArt, such as chriscold and Tobias Roetsch.

I’ve always been fascinated with properties of light, both as an artistic medium and a physical and mathematical concept. I took a 3D graphics course last year where we learning a lot about light physics and light simulation, and that definitely piqued my interest. Often even the most simple 3D scenes can be given so much life and beauty simply by adding a good light simulation. I learned a lot about a 3D rendering technique called path tracing from this post, and was inspired by the beautifully-lit images of fractals they produced.

In this practicum I think I’d like to combine my interest in light with my love of music to make some sort of light-based music visualizer that tries to capture the mood and tone of the music that’s playing. I think this will work well because like music, light has a innate ability to evoke emotion.

Hi everyone, my name is Collin!

I’ve been called a car guy, I’ve been called a gaming nerd. I also love to play soccer and toss a disc around whenever the opportunity arises. With the wide variety of interests and hobbies I have, it’s difficult to settle on a single path. I feel that I am above average with most of these hobbies but can’t hold a candle to the respective professionals or experts.

Starting in middle school continuing on throughout high school, I drew cars in my free time, first from a direct side profile then from more proper angles. This is a brief history of my work:

From here, I began taking images of actual cars from the internet, printing them out, and ‘re-magnifying’ them.

As of lately (about 3 years or so), my artistical talent has been  mainly expressed through playing music. I am skilled at piano, guitar, and bass guitar. I also picked up a drum kit on a whim over this past summer. I’m a HUGE fan of Muse. They’ve been my favorite band of all time ever since I discovered them in 2011 and also inspired me into picking up the guitar a year later. I was extremely happy to be able to see them live twice for their past two albums. Over this past summer, my brother and I also began to record some Muse covers (none of which are out there on the net).

Not long after I began watching Muse’s live performances (a principle element of the band) on the internet, I started to take note of the light and laser shows they implemented. With their songs comprising a wide variety of moods and styles, the different atmospheres that the show designers create throughout the show are incredible. It was this that lead me to some AREN courses(hoping to pursue a minor, was originally a double major) and to take this humanities practicum.

Hello, my name is Adam Myers and I am currently a senior who plans to graduate this year with a double major in IMGD Tech and Computer Science. I love programming, playing games and making games.

My experience with art making includes: Photoshop, Maya, Blender, ZBrush (classes: Digital Imaging & Computer Art, 3d Modeling I)

Here is an image I made in photoshop for Digital Imaging that I quite like:

And here is my final model for 3d Modeling I, a crab humanoid creature(I like crabs):

My experience with programming/electronics includes: C/C++, Java, Python, Unity, Unreal Engine 4

I have created a bunch of programs and a few games, but the one I am most proud of and contributed to the art of (by that I mean I chose what art style we would go with and what assets we would use from the Unity Asset Store :P)  and programming of would be my recent MQP project with a group in Japan which is a game that teaches the player how to write hiragana (one of the syllabaries of the Japanese language) fluently through a rougelike mobile game. Here are some screenshots of it:

My other creative arts: Less often now, but I enjoy assembling and painting models from Game Workshop (Warhammer/Warhammer40k). Unfortunately I have none of my models with me and no pictures handy to show off.

As someone who has been interested in creating games for most of his life, my inspirations are often the games I have played, from Super Mario 64 to Dragon Quest to Dark Souls and so on. Outside of games, fantasy and science fictions works have always inspired me like the works of Tolkien, Star Wars, and Warhammer/Warhammer40k. My goal is to simulate the joys and experiences I had in these various games and works in my own games I have created and will create for others.

 

Howdy friendos!

My name is Erik and I like to make/play/eat/sleep/breath/etc. games. I’ve been pretending that I know how art works since I took an introductory studio art course senior year of high school. Sometime after that I decided “Hey. You know what would be cool? Making games,” and then I packed my bags and magically teleported to WPI.

As an IMGDTech major, I like to think that I understand how code works from time to time. While I’m not as good at programming as some of my peers, I feel confident in my abilities to figure out the answer to a problem using the mystical, magical powers of Google. But the minute we step from Software to Hardware, I have no idea what I’m doing. I want to change that. Maybe not like… a bunch… But I want to like make a circuit or something this term. Maybe.

When I’m not consuming games, I like to sing, act, and make funny sounds with my mouth. I’m a member of the WPI Audiophiles and I’ve been in like… one VOX show here. So yeah.

“Creative Inspirations…” I honestly don’t know what inspires me creatively. My friends are probably a really big one. They’re really good walls to bounce ideas off of, even if most of the time we’re joking. Outside of that… I kind of draw some of my ideas from the Final Fantasy series for things like plot and game mechanics, I guess.

I think my artistic goals are just to “Be Better.” I’d love to evolve on my current art style and make it a lot cleaner and more… adaptive, I guess? I want to be able to apply it to things beyond just like… being adorable.

Some of my work:

This was a cow I drew for a game jam game called “Beef Cake,” where you bake cakes for cow customers. It’s super rushed because we started running low on time, but all-in-all I think he looks cute.

The title card for a WIP game that may or may not ever get finished. It was supposed to be a steampunk platformer.

A scene I made for Interactive Electronic Arts for the Everyday Mysteries assignment. I mainly put this here because the lamp is so good. The rest is cool too, but mainly the lamp.

You can see some of the games I’ve made at my website here.

Hello!

Art has always been something that I want to bring into school projects or different aspects of my life. In school, I’ve always wanted to approach class projects in a different way which normally translates to an artistic approach. For instance, we had a very open ended project in an English class in high school where we could interpret readings into anything we wanted to make- most people wrote passages in a journal or painted what they thought the scenes would look like. For my project, I created a shadow box representing themes from the passages we had read.

Outside of school, I’ve always loved to do creative art projects, but not anything like drawing or painting. In high school, I had a mini cake decorating business where I could create cakes and decorate them in many ways. I then progressed to pumpkin carving where every year I push myself to do something more intricate and complicated. I can now create my own patters or just freehand carvings to make pumpkins of things that I want to make.

Some pumpkins I have carved:

  

I haven’t had a lot of experience with technology in the sense of coding and designing electronics. The types of experiences that I have had don’t necessarily entail building or designing things, but knowing and learning how it works. When I worked for Disney, my first co-op involved running three different attractions in Tomorrowland, and my second co-op was with Engineering Services in Magic Kingdom. I have learned and played with a lot of technology that is used all over the parks from attractions to shows to parades and more. Being able to see how certain effects happen is something I can draw from and use.

Other creative arts I enjoy include piano and theater. I have never been in a play or musical, but I am very passionate about the shows and have worked a little backstage. I have seen many plays live and loved all of them! I have been playing the piano since Kindergarten and like to mess around on the piano in my free time.

As far as creative inspirations, I don’t think there are any specific people that inspire me. My career is focused on working for a themed entertainment industry with the top companies being Disney Parks and Resorts and Universal Studios. The work that they do to bring a story to life so people can experience and live in inspires me. It also works in the opposite ways where I see other inspiration and I imagine where I can involve or include it in an attraction or experience at a theme park.

As I mentioned before, my goal is to work for Disney or Universal. I have completed two six-month Co-Ops with Disney and this has confirmed the fact that I want to work in this industry. My artistic goals are included in this career goal because I hope to help with the creation of an attraction or, bigger picture, a whole park. I want to assist in having people be blown away at how something happens and leaving the attraction wondering how it happened. I like to work with senses and make people feel something as they experience whatever it is they are experiencing; it’s not just ‘pretty’ and ‘cool’.

My recent creative projects are probably my pumpkins that I carved. I started to just freehand designs and while I know that they aren’t my best work, I am still proud of being able to carve what I want to carve. Next year I hope to take more time to draw out a pattern and create a cool new design. I am excited to see what I can do in the future from school work to professional work and work in my own time.

 

Hello everyone! My name is Hayley Boigenzahn, and I am a junior Chemical Engineering major with a minor in Computer Science. Since high school, I have always been very involved in band, so mainly my extracurricular hobbies are music related. I have played French Horn for about 8 years, plus I play xylophone in the Pep Band and am working on learning guitar. Since I came to WPI, I have also been involved in tech and acting for Masque, the organization that puts on non-musical plays.

Art was a hobby I picked up during high school, doing elaborate drawings on the back of old homework assignments. Since I’m often busy with other activities, I haven’t always spent as much time on my art as I would have liked. I’m sure that I could learn a lot from other students who have more artistic

background and practice. I took Figure Drawing at WPI to improve my ability to draw people and characters, and still enjoy doing studies and sketches in pencil and occasionally charcoal. I also enjoy painting- I use acrylic or gouache, because that’s what I happen to already own.

I definitely enjoy Photoshop, and have had experience with both digital painting and photo-editing. However, everything I’ve done in Photoshop

recently is more of speed-paint style than a long term project because it runs slowly on my laptop.  I have also had some experience with Zbrush, from when I took 3D Modelling during freshman year at WPI. Since I am a CS minor, I have experience programming in a few different languages, but very little of it has been related to art or development – mostly data analysis.

I don’t usually like to create my own characters, so a lot of my artwork would be considered fan art, or at least contains a reference to something. I am a big fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, which are great for imagery. I also like combining characters and settings from separate stories together. In the world of landscapes, my influences are my grandma, who paints crafts and landscapes, and Bob Ross, who hosted a PBS series called The Joy of Painting in which he taught wet-on-wet oil technique for speed painting landscapes.

I will admit that I’m not sure what my artistic goals are right now. The best goal for me to start with is to spend more time doing art. I had very little time for any hobby over the past semester because of IQP, so any goal I make now would have no recent context to it. Once I spend more time  getting into my projects, both personal and for this class, I’m sure better artistic goals will become apparent.

 

Hello, my name is Kelly Zhang and I’m currently a Junior studying Computer Science and Interactive Media & Game Development. My interests lie in experimenting with and building novel concepts using existing technology. I am super passionate about exploring the intersections between art and technology.

Experience with art making

In regards to art making, I am well versed in digital art. I use the Adobe Suite, primarily Photoshop and Illustrator as my tools of the trade.
As for traditional mediums, I enjoy using acrylics and watercolors though I am rusty with those two.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes fanart print. 

Technical Experience

My technical background is rather broad. I have experience making games, web applications, and simple robots. If given the chance, I like using the Raspberry Pi along with the Arduino to bridge the three.

Ricky the Robot. Made them during my internship at MITRE. Is controlled via Unity over a network and displays data it collects on a website.

Other Creative Endeavors

Other creative arts I like to dabble in are DIY crafts. Though I haven’t had the time recently, I also like to cosplay and enjoy making props for my costumes.

Artistic Inspiration

My primary source of inspiration is from my Twitter feed. I follow a lot of artists, game developers, designers, etcetc who often share progress of their work and their inspirations. Other times, I like going to niche meetups in Boston and see what fellow peers in my fields of interest are up to.

My artistic goal:

Constantly learn and apply concepts that I see from existing art into my own.

Recent creative projects I’m proud of:

Heist Night!

I am the 2D artist and web developer for this project. I have learned a ridiculous amount as a result, such as networked code and character concept art.

Concept art for one of the characters: Lulu

Movement in the game. This would be performed on a mobile device.

GALDOR

This was a small VR project done with 2 other people in 24 hours, in which I made the random mad libs generator part of the game. It was very spooky. If you own a GearVR and would like to try it out, there’s a download here.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=t5niuOeFE_Q

 

 

My name is Jamie Donahue and I am a senior majoring Aerospace Engineering and a minor in Electrical Engineering. My main medium of artwork was drawing for the longest time, but I was able to expand that after taking several classes that are digital art. I now have gained new tools like Photoshop, Maya, and Z-Brush. I have done some programming with Arduino in my Guidance, Navigation, and Communication class (AE4733) for a GPS system.  I have some knowledge of electronics from my Electrical Engineering Labs (Circuit building, LEDs, etc.).  Other than art I am very interested in music. I am learning to play the piano and read music. My creativity is very wide in range. I like a lot of things and enjoy looking through different perspectives.  I get a lot of my ideas from nature, anime, and online games like Guild Wars. I aspire to make art that makes people happy and fills them with adventure and exploration. Some of my most recent work that I am proud of is my landscape image, my 3D Painting, and my Koi fish drawing. I have never used programming in my art before and it is typically not my preference, but I do plan on experimenting with it this term. Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Jamie Donahue