I recently changed jobs and had a baby, so I’ve been rather busy lately. I haven’t posted a lot of what I’ve been working on lately, so I’m planning on fixing that with this series of posts. One of my last projects at the Aquarium was to do a whole bunch of exhibit murals. I never did post the finished products. This one ended up turning out a lot better than I was hoping. It’s kind…

I’m starting to really like working in watercolors. It’s a lot quicker than working in gouache. It’s nice not to have to worry about covering up the underlying sketch, plus mixing the colors is super quick. This piece was supposed to originally be done in gouache. These two seahorses are pot-bellied seahorses (Hippocampus abdominalis). Here are some progress shots. The first shows the original tracing paper sketch overlaid. I don’t normally do tracing paper, but…

Done! I digitally super-imposed it over a shot of the space were it will be going. Now time for the weekend.

Making progress on my paintings for work. Two more animals to go on this one.

The power went out at work last week, so I took the opportunity to go draw some fish. They were the only ones with full power because of the back up generators. My eyes hurt after drawing in the dark ambient lighting.

This is a series of whimsical billboards that I designed for the aquarium.

Here is a video of an opening title I’m working on for an interactive kiosk. The fish move based on an algorithm I wrote, it’s not a pre-set animation. It’s modified off of my webcam motion sensitive algorithm I’ve posted about previously which I’ve posted (and subsequently improved). This will play in Flash on the kiosk, but it might be fun to experiment programming animations for more traditional things.

It’s been awhile since I posted much here. I’m going to post some of the things I’ve been working on here in the next few days and try and catch up a bit. Here is a mural and gallery title graphic that I put together. The requested direction for the graphic was to have a bunch of animals on a mural that would draw visitors into the exhibit galleries. The mural is printed vinyl and PVC…

A design I did for the Aquarium brochure that was used primarily in brochure kiosks in the surrounding region.

Here’s a little demo of an interactive exhibit kiosk I am working on using motion detection. This is the implementation of the swarming red dots example I posted previously.

I finished a little animation of a shark for the kiosks I’m working on at work. He’s pretty fun.

Two designs for Aquarium Run shirts.

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A billboard for the promotional Scuba Santa dive shows.

This side shark ramp has been a blitzkrieg of work. I’ve airbrushed the ramp and had the murals installed in two days. I still have a little bit more blending and stencil work to accomplish today, but really this ramp has flown by. All hands have been on deck and we’ve been working like crazy. I’m stoked. That’s me airbrushing on the lift. That’s one big shark! The graphic is 16 feet long I blocked off the graphic…

I also haven’t posted the artwork of the other murals so I might as well do them right now. This was a fun guy to make. I took a photo of a great white, and then painted over him with my computer tablet in Photoshop to change the proportions and details. I moved a lot of stuff around and added muscles here and there. It was nice to have a photo to directly sample from. I…

We had a soft opening for the left ramp on the shark exhibit. We just switched over to the other side to start painting and getting that side ready. I can’t wait until we get the rest of the graphics and exhibit items installed in the ramps. This is exciting! Oh and also I’ve been working on finishing the fiberglass casts of sharks. I ordered unfinished cast blanks that I have to sand, fill in,…

Further progress on the shark ramps. I’m started to airbrush the walls in order to create a smooth gradient of color. I will add more details after this. As can be seen here the walls are painted in bands of blue in order to provide good coverage when I airbrush. So far this process is working really well. Meek Litho made it out again today and installed another backdrop, this time the entrance mural. Now I think…

A promo mailer or insert for the shark week events at the aquarium…

The oil rig vinyl backdrops started going up today! I love how transformative backdrops are. I can’t wait until they are all up, the tunnel is painted, and it gets lit. I also finished the last graphic bubble today. Progress!…

Let me first off say that we have an amazing walk-through tunnel and shark tank at the Aquarium as you can see from the photo above. However, when I first got the job here I thought to myself that the exhibit and space around it could really use some help. The sharks and tank itself are absolutely fabulous. The problems are the extremely dark tunnels and the complete lack of any type of signage. I…

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