Illustration Projects​
For nearing thirty years, I have ventured into digital illustrative endeavours, beginning with a student copy of Photoshop 7 that I purchased from Madison College. I specialized in antique and railroad photo restoration and design. Since then, I worked in 3D with the discovery of Blender in its early days, focusing on character art and narrative illustration. Then came 3D printing, and a curious opportunity to become a lead print designer in Hasbro's year-long SuperFanArt project. Even beyond this, I have had the fun of working with videography and effects in my teaching and curriculum design years. These days, as a veteran of 2D, 3D, and similar media, and as a full-time father and provider for my family, I have incorporated A.I. and render engines with those other skills, combined to produce composite illustrations for my own books and projects. What you see here is a variety of my work and projects over the years as an illustrator and 3D designer and artist.​
Narrative Illustration
Book Trailer Animation Project​
Below is a book trailer I made for my first novel while working my way through graduate school. Book trailers were a new concept at the time and most of them were very badly done in those days, but the idea inspired this video. The book never reached publication but did become parts of later novels, and I may someday rewrite it in new form. I gave myself six months to both learn the skills and complete the project during a semester at Hamline, and this is the result. I learned so much in the project that I used ever after. The scene you see in the thumbnail below was wholly rebuilt after seeing an animator's project called "The Golden Age," that really pushed me to do better. The only limitation I found was that I couldn't get the locomotive steam venting to work without my pitiful laptop crashing. You'll see the hat blow away as the camera pans toward the train, which was supposed to be due to the aforementioned venting. I ended up adding a simple breeze sound effect to compensate, but always felt it was incomplete without this visual effect.
3D Modeling Work Sample​
This video is the screen capture of a "resurrection" project, after a catastrophic double-hard drive crash during backup, losing me all original 3D data of the first draft of Last Astronomer's book cover, including character models. The video tells the rest, and though heartbreaking at the time, it changed the course of the book series in surprising ways!
Advertising & Layouts​
These are just a few recent projects, mostly page-advertisements or tri-fold brochures, but all the graphics of this site were my own design in one fashion or another, even the earth background! I enjoy making compelling and useful aesthetic engagement for people.
3D Printing: Dioramas & Figures​
As mentioned above, I spent a year working with Hasbro on their SuperFanArt project as one of the lead designers for My Little Pony prints. Seriously. But we kept going, into classic game characters and others. From trade shows and even a commercial or two, it was a wild ride. You can see some of the projects below, and they're even still available!
3D Printing: Jewelry​
Alongside our BitScenes project of figures and models, we worked with Shapeways on some nerd jewelry, but our bread and butter was Impressions, a brand of actual baby footprint engravings with birth information on pendants, dogtags, and other forms.
