'Blending In' at the Academy of Visual Arts

Guest article by students Rosanel R., Dezires O. and Micely C.

In Bob Leibow’s Graphic Design class at the Academy of Visual Arts, which is part of Manhattan's High School of Graphic Communication Arts, seniors use Blender, a free, open-source program for making 3-D objects. As you can see in their on-line slideshow -- http://docs.google.com/present/embed?id=dgcn78ch_115d2pg7jj6 -- these students created images they thought were fun and simple. For example, Emely R. chose to create “The Powerpuff Girls," while another student, Andrew G., created the school mascot, a little devil.

We interviewed four students, all seniors, and they all agreed that the program was fun and a great experience. As one student, Dennis, said “If you like comic books or animated things you will pretty much like Blender.”

According to the students, Blender is very tricky, time consuming, and powerful, but with patience you can produce a very promising piece of art work. They recommended that anyone interested in the program should at least have some understanding of Adobe Photoshop. In this program, they said, if you don’t take your time and you make a mistake, you’ll end up having to start ALL over again.

If you would like to leave a comment for us or for these students, please visit our school's blog: http://academyofvisualarts.edublogs.org/.
Please tell us, What are some things that you really like about the work? What did you find interesting about it? What questions do you have about the work or the process? Would you like to try it yourself?

(You can download Blender at: http://www.blender.org/)